Pro Developer - This is Business

First, let's take a look at why you became a professional programmer to begin with. Sure, coding is more fun than just about anything else that comes to mind, but you could code in your spare time for free. In fact, the programming you do in your spare time is often much more rewarding from a creative point of view because you're not tied to the constraints of business apps. You can write the programs and use the technologies that really excite you. So, come to think of it, why the heck would you want to spend all day writing Corporate Software that's not nearly as cool as you'd like to make it, when you could instead spend your time kicking out the really great, bleeding edge stuff that gets your motor running? Easy. Your company pays you money to write software, and even if it's not as sexy as what you do in your spare time, you need that money. Pizza ain't free.

And when you get right down to it, this really speaks to the heart of the matter. You get up each day, you shower (or so your co workers hope, anyway), you jump into the transit vehicle of your choice, and you fight the masses to get to the office so that you can pursue your day as a professional software developer. Of course, once you get there, instead of coding, you spend a large portion of each day dealing with the fallout from unrealistic marketing schemes and ill informed decisions from clueless managers who think that semicolons are merely punctuation marks for sentences. You cope with an endless stream of pointless meetings, interminable bureaucracy, insipid mission statements, unrealistic deadline pressures and a general environment that seems to care about almost everything except the cool software you're trying, against all odds, to deliver. You don't have to cope with any of this nonsense when you're sitting at home on the weekend, coding away on your favorite pet project in your robe and bunny slippers. So, tell me again why you spend a significant portion of your waking hours fighting traffic and wearing uncomfortable clothes to spend time in an office environment that seems dead set on working against the very things in life that you hold dear?

Oh, yeah, that's right. They pay you money to do so. Sorry. I forgot. Really I did.

We're in this for the money

Now let's clear one thing up right off the bat. I'm not some starry eyed, naïve musician who would classify your art as "commercial" just because your primary purpose is making money. Oh, wait, what's that you say? That's not your primary purpose? Yeah, right. The word I would normally bark out in response to that relates to the end result of the digestive process of bulls, but I'm going to try my best to be a bit more eloquent here. So, let me try to put this another way.

Rubbish!

Every single hour of every single day that you spend in the corporate world as a professional software developer is driven by one, and only one thing. Money. Get warm and fuzzy with that, or find another career. Regardless of how passionate you may be about the art and science of software development, at the end of the day, it's highly unlikely that you'd spend five seconds of your time at the office if they weren't paying you to do so. You're there for the money. I don't make the rules. It's just the way it is.

So, no matter how passionate you may be about your craft, at the end of the day, you're a hired gun. Maybe you're a full time employee. Or maybe, like me, you're a professional mercenary. It doesn't matter. Either way, it all boils down to the same thing. You show up to code only when people offer to pay you money to do so. Personally, I find no dishonor in this lifestyle. I deliver the very best I have to offer to my clients. They offer the very greenest American dollars they possess in return. From my point of view, everybody wins in this scenario. And so, I'm constantly baffled by programmers I encounter in everyday life who speak from the perspective that only the software is important, and nothing else.

Really? Is that true? Then can I have your paycheck? I mean, only if you don't care about it, that is. Personally, I could find a lot of uses for it. But if the software is all that's important to you then shucks, let me give you my bank account number. I'd be happy to assist you in dealing with those pesky details that arise from the business end of the programming vocation. It's no trouble. Really. I'm happy to help.