What sacrifices do you have to make to be a programmer? I thought the first two obvious ones were time with family and friends, but I'm being told by a guy that I'm completely wrong and that there is no sacrifices for being a programmer. This goes against everything I've ever read and been told so I figured I'd ask here. What are the sacrifices to be a programmer? This was in regards to achieving your dream job.

There are no sacrifices to being a programmer. On the other hand there will be a sacrifice of time to be a GREAT programmer. Social life could suffer and you really can't afford the time it takes to build a strong relationship with members of the female gender. However, 99% of programmers don't go to such extremes and the super majority would not find these things to be sacrifices as they are commonly not extroverted anyway.

Compared to what?

But yes, there's no reason you'd have to never see family/friends because programming. In every office I've worked in, every staff member, no matter their job, worked 38 hours per week :P

You have to make the exact same sacrifices as someone who becomes a trapeze artist.

Which is to say, it's entirely up to you what you give up, and what you don't.

i had to sacrifice my hands, but it was well worth it.

This is completely opposite of what I had always been told. Even by the career advisors during college. I've always been told that if I want to be a programmer of any field I had better be ready to sacrifice time with family and friends to constantly improve my skills. Then when I was presented with a counter claim I started googling and found article after article saying social life would be a big sacrifice for becoming a professional programmer. I'm of the mindset that my wife and son are part of my social life. This fact was even more pressed for careers(dream jobs), that you will sacrifice a lot to get it and become good at it.

One thing I can guarantee a programmer sacrifices is good eyesight. Have glasses and wear them proudly.

Feh, it's just a job. It's not brain surgery or the priesthood.

Most programmers earn a decent living putting their pants on one leg at a time to go work their 9-to-5 job.

They're not stupid enough to believe the myth, even while culturing the image.

The sacrifices are not necessary to become a programmer Its true enough that you will probably make sacrifices to excel in any field, but you're not forced.

That said, programmers are still, but especially in the past, subject to being overworked, either slave-driven by management or simply of their own determination (or the lack of a social life). A programmer ought to work 40 hrs/week like everyone else, but its not uncommon from where I sit to see some, not all, programmers working ~50 hrs/week during normal operations, and even more during crunch time. Expectations are high, the software world moves quickly, and you don't want to be the guy who couldn't ship his feature on time. Good management avoids this, poor management never sees it coming, and bad management takes advantage.

Luckily there's a lot of good management out there, and relatively little bad -- unfortunately, there's an uncomfortably-high (but minority-stake, thankfully) amount of poor management filling in the gaps. Poor management is something of a double-edged sword -- on one hand, its a question of incompetence rather than malice and they want to do better, on the other hand you can see and avoid bad management from a mile away, but poor management is sometimes more difficult to suss out, and that they try to improve at all sometimes inspires loyalties that outlive what the company might deserve.

Part of the problem is also the number of software jobs and the number of software developers competing for them. In games, there are 5 fresh-faced grads willing to accept long hours and relatively low pay for every grizzled veteran who retires or burns out. And there's not nearly enough growth in the industry to absorb the other 4 elsewhere; hence there's an oversupply of labor, who sit just outside ready to accept less than those already working in the field just so that they can be a part of it. In other types of software development, you compete against outsourcing to places where the cost of operations and wage standards are lower, and this places the burden on those who aren't outsourced to justify their higher cost of keeping around.

The one thing to keep in mind though, is that no one can make sacrifices for you, only *you* can make a sacrifice. If anyone is putting you in a position where you are effectively required to accept sacrifices being forced upon you, then in reality they are *taking* from you. Its possible that you might have to remove yourself from their employ to avoid this sort of greed, but the choice is yours. If you feel like you have no other choice, then you might have a more fundamental problem of being weakly positioned (such as if you have a very narrow skillset, or are geographically tied to an area where there is only one outlet for you to employ your skills for greatest gain).

It's the same for any professional job though. There'll be some abusive workplaces where everyone's doing 60hr weeks to try and score that promotion. There'll be that guy with no talent, or just the impostor syndrome who componsates with punctuality and voluntary overtime.

Generally, the more talented you are, the more choice you have about which workplaces you'll accept being in. Also which country you're in puts a cap on the amount of abuse that workplaces can get away with...