I'm a programmer in the financial industry. In general I enjoy it, though I don't really feel like a productive member of society. Maybe once a year I have a moral crisis about working in an industry that I hate and feel is fairly detrimental overall to society. That said I really like my boss and the problems we have to solve tend to be interesting. I do plan on trying to switch industries while staying a programmer, but my current job will pay for most of grad school, so it won't be until after I get my masters.
Me too, at the moment. Embedded programmer, credit card machines now, but lots of other devices in the past.
It could be a lot worse! I had to leave a job a few years back, for similar reasons - I was working for a company that made training gear for military exercises - weapons simulators, etc. Very cool stuff to work on, and all non-lethal - it was even stuff designed to save lives, by training soldiers in proper weapons use. But I could not escape the fact that I was in the war business, and so I had to leave it eventually.I'm a programmer in the financial industry
Maybe once a year I have a moral crisis about working in an industry that I hate and feel is fairly detrimental overall to society
Yeah, back when I was in college I was thinking about pursuing cyber security, but a little research quickly indicated that I'd most likely end up making software that helps 3rd World Despots better silence critics. Currently I work on one of the myriads of markets that isn't the NYSE and while the problems are really interesting it's hard to feel right about what essentially amounts to helping HFT and my general distaste for the fact that it's legalized gambling that masquerades as a retirement strategy.