About developer's lifestyle

I'm now just a year and two months in my professional software development career. But before that I was a PC superuser, so basically I know my way around computers... better then most computer users.

For me buying/setuping/installing/assembling/whatever with a computer is a simple and effortless task. Even software development, which is the hardest thing that I've been doing on a computer (next thing is recovering a Bob's crashed system ... full of malware), isn't really that hard because it's interesting and complex enough for it to be challenging but not impossible. And I like a challenge :)

EDIT: Basically fixing a crashed system IS the hardest thing. Developing is easy :)

In other domains outside of project management, software engineering and all computer related stuff however, my situation is not as shiny :)

One of those lacking things is the amount of real-estate I have. Nothing. I only have a car (a good one) :O

Buying one? I really think something is wrong there. I think this world is set up for it to be almost impossible if you are a normal employee of a normal company. Yes, I'm still early in my career (very early, but light years in the software engineering field, I'm afraid) compared to other jobs currently on the market, and the country I'm living in doesn't really respect my kind of work so my options are not that good. Actually, they underestimate it and call software engineers "weirdos" and "nerds". And that we only sit and type and click and make money. Because we're not selling something or lifting heavy objects doesn't mean a software engineer's jobs is easy.

A common misconception (in Croatia).

It's hard.

And it's damn hard if you do not understand exactly what you're doing and have excellentmental abstraction and concentration skills. Otherwise you'll just see a bunch of text connected with dots and a lot of brackets. We are not underpaid, but the salary doesn'tscale well. For example a software engineer in Croatia has double the salary of a shoe salesman or saleswoman, but works at least ten times harder. The mind quickly gets tired.

This is true with all creative and mental jobs. For example, cooks need to think hard about the ratios of the spices, ingredients and amount of food they need to cook. Hairdressers need to think how to cut the hair for it to look good, create a mental image, imagine the process how to get there, and not to make mistakes because you cannot undo over cut hair, or to have a wrong idea of the hairstyle the customer wants... hard stuff. And not valued right.

I'd give the cook at least ten times bigger salary then the shoe salesperson. I'd give the hairdresser at least ten times bigger salary then the shoe salesperson. I'd give anyone that needs to professionally concentrate more that four hours per day at least ten times bigger salary then the shoe salesperson.

But this is not the way the world works and I surely live in a dream world. So what I want most is to get the work valued right. The effort and the results. In the meantime - fail.

There's hope, still

In a hopeless underpaid world you cannot really buy your own real estate and enjoy it. You need to either have a respectable and profitable company that makes a lot of money, and after paying all the taxes, have enough money to buy yourself real estate. You need to work your ass off!!!!!
Or you inherit some. I'm not that lucky either. So the only option for me to have my own place is to work my ass off. That's not a problem while I'm doing the job I like. I can always rent a place and live there :). Buying one is not an option unless the two before-mentioned things happen. Never an option.

Having a rented place is very flexible, and I think it works great with my current line of work. A developer is mobile, flexible and remote. As long as you type code, it really doesn't matter where you type it from. So you can be anywhere where there's an Internet connection. So I don't need a fixed place to live. Only a place to live. With an Internet connection, of course.

Decisions, decisions

Karma has it hard. Especially when I'm surrounded with people that do not understand our line of work. And that it's the kind of work that's not fixed in any way, but extremely agile. We don't need a fucking real estate to call our own. We only need a car to travel, and a place with the Internet connection. And that's OK :)

We will not be bound. That will be all.