Interview with a programmer (2 in fact)

I have spoken to 2 programmers, who are both self-taught and or have taken some online courses, rather than have had a specific education in their respective fields. One is a developer for a hedge-fund and has created proprietary programs for portfolio management and statistical analysis, whereas the other was the other one does app development for friends.

Both of them have surprisingly for me the same outlook on programming and working with non-tech people. The main issue that they see is that the client does not really understand the technical portion of coding, as well as the time frame litigation. The major issue for them, the deal-breaker, is the client’s wish to get into too much detail and expect something that is impossible at their current technical expertise or know-how (obviously, those limitations are stated beforehand). Misunderstanding on the clients behave is the most frustrating part of the job for them. Also, it is very different (as in any job) when the client does not have an understanding on what he wants and constantly changes his mind.

Both of them have no desire to work with someone else’s code, if that person is no longer on the team. Debugging code for them is a gruesome task that they will go to lengths to avoid and prefer to work on the project from the beginning.

Overall, I must say I was surprised by the similarity of their position because they are continents apart with drastically different backgrounds, but yet have similar opinions on their job and what makes it difficult.