Anyone who does not know the specifics of working in the IT industry thinks that it is a wonderful job, because you don’t have to work too much, and you earn good money, especially programmers. But is it really so, and the profession of an encoder is only fun and good payouts? It is worth taking a closer look at it before you decide to change your profession. There is generally information about the advantages of encoders, but relatively little information about what the disadvantages are.

So let’s analyse how it really is

Undoubtedly, one of the most visible and noticeable drawbacks is that in this job you cannot just be left after 8 hours and left the office. Sometimes it happens that a great solution to the problem appears in an unusual situation after work, e.g. while driving a car or showering, so leaving work does not mean the end of it.

Another disadvantage is tiredness, which is ubiquitous in a programmer’s life. The mental tiredness that strikes a programmer is very specific and cannot be compared to physical exhaustion. It manifests itself primarily in the fact that it is impossible to focus on a specific task, and therefore efficiency drops. Many large companies, while taking care of the good condition of their employees, encourage physical effort because they realize that an unregenerated and tired employee is much less efficient.

A significant drawback is the need to constantly improve qualifications. It is not possible to learn one framework once and use it all the time and use only this knowledge. Of course, there are programmers who do this, but they are probably not among the top specialists in their field. As this industry is evolving very quickly, you need to constantly expand your knowledge to stay up to date with the latest news. And here more and more workplaces meet their employees by organizing training courses to improve qualifications or delegating an employee during working hours so that he can train himself. In some companies, it can be noticed that employees are available for 4 days, while the 5th day can be devoted to any activities.

Clients are a topic of the river, and probably everyone who has work with clients knows what a difficult task it is. It is the same in the IT industry. A client who orders the implementation of a website and questions the high costs and execution time at the very beginning is a real bane. Customers generally have no idea how much time and effort it takes to make a given website look the same as their requirements. Sometimes even a small visual change (e.g. animation) requires a few and sometimes even several hours of work. The best solution is a customer who knows at least a little about technology.

Managers are another endless story in the circle of programmers. One of the poorly thought-out decisions of a manager is adding someone new to the team while creating a larger project. His idea might have seemed well-thought-out because he wanted to help the employees, but the result is often the opposite. The team, instead of proceeding with work, wastes time familiarizing a new colleague with the project, making him aware of what is still missing, and what can be improved, etc. Fortunately, such managers are rare, but if you do, you have to be as assertive as possible, because there was practically no such project that would be completed within the given time frame. Therefore, programmers working under time pressure have developed a gene of opposition to managers. They are typically able to confront the boss with the solutions he imposes, insisting that their idea is definitely better, supporting it, of course, with appropriate arguments.

Projects usually last for several or even several months. During the execution of the order, the client’s requirements may change, which causes a lot of mess in the code. Often, the customer only after seeing the finished application decides that it does not fully meet his expectations and that some changes need to be made. Being aware that this may happen, programmers try to make their code very flexible and able to be changed at any time.

It is impossible to do everything alone, it is not worth even trying, because even a good programmer can make mistakes. Programming is generally best done in collaboration with others. When writing an application or program, you have to refer to many libraries written by others, and it happens that some errors will be found there as well. Even in Android itself, there are a ton of shortcomings. Therefore, it is worth getting used to writing various workarounds or modifications to fix errors of other developers. But in fact, this “remedial” writing has its upsides, because you can learn a lot about the internal architecture of components that you can use later on.

Programming undoubtedly involves many hours of sitting in front of the monitor. This mode of work entails various health problems. Back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, degeneration of the cervical vertebrae or eye problems. Unfortunately, sedentary mode also causes numerous cases of obesity and problems with the circulatory system. All these ailments are part of this profession, as it were.

Although there is a general stereotype that a programmer’s job is only a series of successes and a good payout, it is actually extremely stressful. Taking responsibility for product quality is not enough. Soulless deadlines force you to work under constant stress, unforeseen problems need to be quickly verified, repaired and sometimes even faced with dissatisfied customers. It all adds up to programmer burnout, and it is quite a common occurrence. These are, in short, most of the disadvantages that make up the everyday life of people working in the IT industry. However, it cannot be assumed that the work of a programmer is one set of inconveniences and issues, because it is not. The satisfaction after the project is finished, when everything works great and the client is delighted, simply priceless.