I need to know how you feel about working with computers

[andrewducker]

Poll #25568

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 80

View Respondents

Working with computers

View Answers

I work with computers, and wish I worked doing something else
2 (2.5%)

I work with computers, and I'm happy about that
39 (48.8%)

I don't work with computers, and I'm happy about that
24 (30.0%)

I don't work with computers, and wish that I did
3 (3.8%)

Something Else I Will Explain In Comments
12 (15.0%)

Yes, I know, no job is perfect, and you may well not like all of the associated stuff that goes along with it. If you like the "working with computers" bit then tick option 1, even if you don't enjoy your morning huddle.

Context is this tweet, where someone maintains that 90% of people in tech dream about getting out. Whereas I rather like working with computers, have wanted to do so since I was 12, and have no intention of ever stopping playing with them.

To clarify, as it seems to be causing confusion, by "with computers" I mean that your job is *about* computers. So if you're doing accounting, and computers are a tool you use for this, then that's not "with computers". If your job is specifically about making computers work better, differently, or otherwise specifically focussed on a computer-specific output, then that's "with computers".

Comments

[simont]

All the least fun parts of working with computers are the parts that don't (or only tangentially) involve computers! It's always best when I can get out of planning meetings and pratting about with Jira and Confluence, and back to making a piece of actual code do something useful.

[andrewducker]

Same!

[rhythmaning]

I'm retired.

But like just about everyone else I know, I use computers daily.

When I worked, computers were an integral part of my work. I could have done my job without computers, but it would have been completely different.

It was not however "in computers".

For office workers, every job involves computer technology; so do most customer service jobs. The computers may be tools rather then the purpose of the job - but then computers are just a tool for your employer (albeit one that provides employment for you in, essentially, keeping them running).

I think the distinction between technology firms and others has become very blurred. Technology is intrinsic to every business.

[andrewducker]

You don't "work in cars" if you're a travelling salesman.

There's a clear difference between "I write some documents in Word and keep my contacts an electronic contact management system" and "I work with computers". Although some people may do a little of the latter as part of a larger job, and they're definitely more edge-cases.

[rmc28]

I like writing software and making the computer do what I want it to. But I am now actively seeking to move into technical management, where I will no longer be working directly with computers, but making it (hopefully!) easier for other people to carry on working with computers.

It's not really the computers for me, it's the problem-solving and technical management has a lot of problem-solving.

[andrewducker]

It does. Sadly not one I particularly enjoy (and I find it a lot more stressful).

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

SEWIWEIC: I worked in tech for a few years and enjoyed it. I stopped to have kids rather than to get out of tech. My current (part-time, freelance) work is mostly non-tech but involves some scripting occasionally. I'm happy with it, but expect to get back into full-time tech one day. (So that could have been any of "tech and happy about it", "non-tech and happy about it", or "non-tech but wish I worked in tech".)

I think the person in the tweet is deluding herself to make herself feel better about her own job dissatisfaction.

I also think respondents would be less confused if you said "in tech" rather than "with computers". (I had to click through to the tweet to clarify whether you meant "in the computing industry" or "using a computer".)

[andrewducker]

Well, I work in the finance industry. But in the Software Engineering department.

[calimac]

It depends on what "work with computers" means. At my paying job, I would sit in front of a computer all day. Now I write and edit, and do that with documents.

But I'm not "in tech." You describe yourself as liking working with computers, playing with them, and always wanting to. Our difference is that I have no interest in computers for themselves, though if I had been I was of the perfect age to get in on the ground floor and make a fortune in Silicon Valley, and some of my classmates did so. I am only interested in computers for what they can do. To revise a long article without having to retype it, to analyze vast reams of data by just clicking a button in Excel, to look up facts immediately online without having to run down to the library: these are great.

[andrewducker]

Exactly. If you work "with computers" you're doing things to computers, to make computers work in a specific way. Not doing a task which happens to involve computers.

[gingicat]

As an office manager, I help people with their computers, purchase computers and other tech as recommended, maintain the office inventory list (which includes computers), and do a very small amount of phone system management. But our IT consultants do all of the sysadmin and help desk stuff.

[gingicat]

I should add that I have worked "in tech" exactly three times and am delighted not to be doing so any more:
- sysadmin-ish for an insurance company in 1997
- admin-plus for the Dragon Systems recording department in 1999-2000
- technical trainer-in-training for Lucent in 2000

[pozorvlak]

SEWIWEIC: I havered between options 1 and 2. I work as a programmer (and a bit of a data scientist, these days). The actual programming/data-science can be fun and interesting, but computers can also be dreadfully frustrating (I just spent half an hour trying to move some vertices in a GIS program!). Partly this can be improved by getting to know my tools better - I've acquired shallow knowledge of a lot of tools and languages over my career, and I'm now trying to use Python for everything and get to know it well so I don't spend so much time looking things up and dealing with minor speedbumps. Anki cards help here, but the main thing is practice. Some of the frustrations can be helped with better processes, tooling and communication (communication being a big problem for many teams now we're all working from home). But some of the frustrations are inherent to the nature of working in the industry, or at least widespread enough that they appear inherent.

The bigger issue is that I would like my job to involve spending more time outside and interacting with the physical world, and less time sitting in an office (or, right now, a boxroom). Not sure how to get there from here.

[andrewducker]

A friend of mine worked on software for some automated seagoing systems, and so spent a fair bit of time sitting on a boat with a laptop. If you fancied that kind of thing :-)

[reverancepavane]

Whilst I worked extensively with computers (whilst I was still working) I always preferred using computers to actually do something, rather than just doing something with computers. Although I've done jobs did one or the other (as well as both). Knowing how computers work is invaluable in the first case though, both for optimising code and troubleshooting.

[eatsoylentgreen]

I don't work with computers, and I enjoy my job and don't need to work with computers, they're a bit frustrating, but I wish I earned enough money to buy a house, and there were only two jobs when I did earn that much, one was tech support, the other was a horrible union job in the 1980s where I saved something like 20 thousand dollars in one year.

[liv]

I am happy not working primarily "with" computers (my white collar job involves using software for other things but essentially no coding or sysadmin). But that's not because I dislike computer work, it's because I really, really like my job. If the options available to me involved relatively uninspiring jobs that pay the bills, programming would be superior to many other possibilities and I slightly regret that sexism pushed me out of learning to program in the 90s when lots of my contemporaries had hobbies that turned into lucrative careers.

Apart from general confusion about poll wording, there is a very big difference between "working with computers" and "working in tech". The majority of people who work in companies whose primary output is software are not paid handsomely to play with computers. They're doing the same kind of grunt jobs or middle management jobs that exist in other sectors, but having to do them in an environment which is often toxic to anyone who isn't a white male with highly sought after programming skills. So I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of people "in tech" want out, because probably 90% of people in tech are not actually programmers / software engineers / etc. They're doing normal support and admin and finance and office jobs but in a worse industry than other people with normal office jobs.

[aldabra]

I think it's entirely possible that 90% of people working in computers are code monkeys with unpleasant management, and this is entirely consistent with there being pleasing professional careers too, and also consistent with 90% of the people I know in computing being at the pleasing professional career end. Computers increase the toxicity of toxic management by making it even easier to depersonalise decisions.

(It occurs to me that maybe upwards of 20% of the people I know in pleasing professional IT careers have crashed out with breakdowns at some stage, including me from the Excel job, and at least a couple were made redundant in their early forties and are still redundant in their early fifties.)

[lovelyangel]

I’ve been in Information Technology my entire career – a programmer for the first half of that – and the remainder either specifying what programmers are supposed to create or working with leadership to direct traffic – like cloud initiatives or automation initiatives. 44 years of career. And even now, I’ll still program an occasional Excel spreadsheet or code CSS for a webpage. When I retire, I’d like to do some personal project programming. I love programming.

But reading that thread, it seems like most commenters are in a code mill – like for videogames or consumer-facing apps. And, sure, that kind of coding can be miserable. The apps I programmed were internal-facing, so while I was on call or had to roll back releases or had emergency patches to rush out, the pressure wasn’t anything like what some young folks in tech have to go through nowadays. Being a code slave in the giant machine is different. Sure, I’d want to get away from that. And in the way I’ve managed my career, I’ve done that. (Like, I didn’t jump ship and chase big bucks in the dot com boom.)

[helen_keeble]

I spent nearly two decades as a software engineer, starting with making tools for programming industrial controllers (meta!) and ending up as a senior consultant in a big firm, mostly doing industrial robots and suchlike.

I now make my living writing books with kissing and men who turn into dragons.

I thoroughly enjoyed my tech career, especially all the parts that actually involved tech. But after a certain career level, there’s the choice between continuing to get to play with cool stuff (but other people who are much better paid tell you what to do and decide your fate), or mostly just enabling other people to do the cool stuff ( but getting stacks of money and having the power to steer strategy).

I was good at both roles (because being confident and articulate alongside analytical skills will get you a LONG way in tech) but I didn’t enjoy management. Being my own boss is far more fun, and more profitable too.

[dewline]

There was seven months where I was doing quality-assurance testing of a sort. I'd write up ideas for testing specific pieces of software and web pages, and then - eventually - actually carry out those tests. All of it based on other peoples' coding for in-house software and websites for the same employer. It's as close to working "with computers" by your definition as I think I'll ever get.

I had fun with that while it lasted. I'd like to do more of it. But I don't know that I'll be able to make that happen a second time in my life.

[pink_halen]

I think I am unique. I have owned a computer since 1978, an Apple ][.
I programed for fun writing programs which assisted my work on the farm.
I created programs in Basic to add up weight tickets. I created a large database on and IBM PC to manage a public Radio Membership base. It would divide the alphabet into two parts storing names starting with a-m to drive A and n-z to drive B and was capable of sorting the two together alphabetically.

I loved BASIC. I would write simple programs on the fly to do quick things. I never made any money on computers.

Now I do a lot of writing on my machine and search the internet. Because of trust issues My next computer will probably be a lunix machine.

I struggle to understand why foolish companies think they can understand us and sell us more.
I regularly use open source software and regularly obfuscate things by deleting cookies and other markers.

I guess I am an old dog when it comes to using computers
I do it for fun.

[snippy]

I do not work with computers, and wish I did. As a legal secretary I use computers all day, but in a previous job (that I was at for almost 30 years) I also did IT support (small law firm that didn't want to pay for IT support). And I've always been the person who figured out how to make the software do what people wanted it to do-writing macros in WordPerfect etc. And a very long time ago at a different job I wrangled dBase III+ into a usable form for environmental scientists. And I wrote a webpage in the 1990s that was moderately popular on a Usenet group. And I've always taken some kind of programming class every few years - most recently a little Python about 5 years ago. And I built all my own computers until around 2010.

But I make a reasonable living as a legal secretary, with good benefits and a well-defined work day. As much as I spent the 1990s and even early 2000s wishing I was in tech, I could never accept the pay difference of becoming a beginner in a new field - I needed to support my kids.

[andrewducker]

Never too late!

(particularly if your kids are more self-supporting now)

I did some work with dBase III+, back in the early 90s. Good stuff!

[tedonarrival]

Scientific Instrumentation has evolved a significant amount in the last few decades, eg Chromatography (separation of chemical compounds in a mixture by means of chemical or physical manipulation of the sample's environment in the instrument) used to be a simple matter of introducing the sample to the instrument and the electrical signal induced in a detector was measured (analogue) by a pen on a rolling printer - the measurements could be made by weighing the cut-out paper shape of the detected 'peaks', now the instrument parameters and sample sequence are controlled by an input sheet and the results can be observed as they happen or hours after the fact using a variety of mathematical formulae depending on what works best for the individual compound(s) under investigation. having used a few different software packages which largely do the same thing, some are better at doing it than others, some of these 'others' although might come from the same company that make the instruments and might be thought to be better suited for the task are alas not and some of THESE have in the last few years had updates to streamline how they work, but have actually ended up becoming clunky to use and make the user wish for a now gone function to be re-instated. Generally in the science sector, applications which go for an elegant approach in their use (steps d through x becoming automated, with options for abc variables being input at start or along the way, leaving the results y&z being auto generated) are usually better received than others which have so many variables to input that it doesn't actually feel like the computer is making it easier for you.
So overall, it varies as to what Scientists like to use and what they're 'made' to use (because the company has chosen a cheaper option for some reason). And if they're using elegant software they're likely to be happier in their work than if they're stuck with a bells & whistles package where updates have clad the clapper and blocked the holes.

[threemeninaboat]

I was a sysadmin in the Windows ME era, promptly went into medicine :)

[andrewducker]

You have my sympathy :-)

[wildeabandon]

My SEWIWEIC is that even with your clarification, the question of whether or not I work with computers is a bit fuzzy. However, I enjoy both the bits of my work that involve being nose deep in data and systems and tech, and the bits that involve the wider processes and people and context, and I would enjoy it less overall if it didn't have the variety between the two.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, plenty of people out there who like both. Which is great, because you're really really useful!

[dreema]

I really don't mind the 'working with computers' bit. It's the 'dealing with blithering idiots that use the computers' that gets me.

[duckshaveears]

Ashfae here--technically I work with information rather than computers, but so much of that involves teaching patrons how to access information with computers/figuring out why they're having difficulty/doing basic IT support that I think it counts somewhat as working in tech. At any rate I love it and I love it even more and am even better at it now that computers are a huge part of it, which can't be said for everyone in IS.

[andrewducker]

I'm glad you love it!

Working with computers

[symbioid]

What does that mean, though? I assume network ops, dev/programming, IT, etc...

If I do data entry is that "working with computers"?

What about Telecom?

I'm not sure if I "work with computers" as I've both done Data Entry, SOHO IT, and now Telecom.

All I know is I hate my telecom job. But the pay is good enough, and I don't know if anything out there beats it and apparently I suck for programming type jobs.

[yalovetz]

I ticked SEWIWEIC.

I'm a data curator in an academic library. My role is incredibly diverse, and that's part of what I love about it. I work with data, and researchers, and data management systems, and research practices that affect how researchers store their data. And I work with computers. Occasionally I write code, usually python or R scripts to harvest data from library or scholarly publishing APIs, or to analyse usage data from or perform maintenance tasks with data management systems. But that's quite a tiny part of what I do. Most of what I do involves talking to people, understanding their working practices, teaching new researchers good data management principles, creating documentation and help materials, etc. I like all of it.

[alithea]

I enjoyed tech writing very much. What I did not enjoy was working full time at a computer - my body is not designed to spend 8 hours a day sitting at a screen - and academic culture and funding woes. If I could get a part time, work from home tech writing job, that wasn't short term contracts and working for a workaholic academic, I would totally work with computers again.

[jducoeur]

I may have an unusual perspective: programming is my artform. I've been doing it essentially my entire life (I initially learned to program as a child, in the early 70s); I apprenticed to my father in a classic craft-guild style; by now I've been doing it for decades in dozens of languages, and I find it utterly joyous to keep learning new skills and using them to build cool stuff. And I perceive code with the aesthetic parts of my brain: code feels "pretty" or "ugly" to me.

Mind, the organizational bullshit around building complex systems can drive me positively up a wall. But I'm literally incapable of going more than about a week without setting my hands to code -- it's every bit as much my calling as painting or writing are to many folks.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, coding is definitely a craft - and you can feel when it's right or wrong. I miss it when I don't get anywhere near it for a while.