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Who Wants To Be a Billionaire Coder?

Posted by timothy on from the will-settle-for-billionaire dept.

theodp writes "Computerworld reports that 60-year-old billionaire John Sall still enjoys cranking out code as the chief architect of JMP ('John's Macintosh Project'), the less-profitable-but-more-fun software from SAS that's used primarily by research scientists, engineers, and Six Sigma manufacturing types. 'It's always been my job to be a statistical software developer,' explains SAS co-founder Sall. So if you didn't have to work — and had more money than George Lucas and Steven Spielberg — would you be like Sall and continue to program? And if so, what type of projects would you work on?"

26 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. heh. by SinShiva · · Score: 2, Insightful

    PulseAudio.

  2. Who needs to be a billionaire? by wrook · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I quit my 100 hour a week job and picked something a little bit less stressful. Now I'm only working 35 hours a week and don't program for a living. I live 5 minutes from work. I have plenty of time to do whatever I want including coding. I hate this attitude that you need to have more money that many small countries in order to do what you want. There are many routes to happiness. Programmers are supposed to be good problem solvers -- find a solution that works for you!

    1. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by Fourier404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Programming something I'm not particularly fond of is better than spending 35 hours/week I'm probably even less interested in. Obviously you have to put in those hours in order to make a living, and the point of this article is "if you didn't have to do it for a living (i.e. you already have more money than you need), what would you be programming?", not "what would you do with a tons of money?"

    2. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I feel you are deliberately misinterpreting the question, and changing to subject to congratulate yourself on your life. The entire premise is set up to eliminate one common consideration in evaluating the many paths to happiness, and then asking if coding is in the remaining options.

      For me, a person who also lives close to work and does 35-40 hours a week in a job I'm happy with and well-paid for, the answer is...no. I would probably not code. I probably wouldn't go back to school for physics, either, but that's at least in the realm of possibility and would be above coding on the list of things to do, despite the difference in time commitments (I mean, I might put together a batch file or something for myself to make my life slightly easier, but no significant coding).

      The vision in my head is of an eternal weekend, and it is a glorious one. The only thing that could persuade me to code again would be the prospect of meeting people that I have something in common with. Like many slashdotters, I'm not naturally very social.

    3. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by nEoN+nOoDlE · · Score: 5, Insightful

      you don't need a billion dollars to be happy, but if he loses his job, he still could continue doing whatever he wants to do for the rest of his life, and his children (if he has any) don't have to work a single day of their lives. You might be happy, but you're happiness hangs on the state of the company you work for. If they start downsizing, or go completely bust, you could say goodbye to your 35 hour/week job that's 5 minutes away from home. I don't know about you, but my happiness being beholden to a third party I have no control over adds a certain level of stress which eats away at that happiness. A billion dollars to relieve that stress would be nice.

      --
      Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
    4. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by DoctorPepper · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I totally agree. I used to program for a living, now I'm a middle-ware systems engineer on Unix systems, for a large U.S. corporation. I get to work from home, play in Unix and Linux all day, make a pretty good living, and still code for myself.

      Am I a billionaire? hardly. Do I enjoy my life a bit more then I did? Most assuredly.

      --

      No matter where you go... there you are.
    5. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That's what most people who are not billionaires (and some billionaires) think. In reality, you'll only be replacing your problem with a billionaire's problems. Admittedly, money makes things easier, but it's really the attitude that matters. It is also how you define your happiness. Since we are all social animals, your "happiness" will always be dependant on some third party regardless whether you have money or not. In the above example, if GP lost his job, he can always find another one, or move somewhere he can find one within 5 minutes of his home. There are more options available to people who are open-minded.

    6. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Having a job isn't simply about money. It's also about the accomplishment, and feeling accomplished. Some people loathe their jobs. That's unfortunate. But for those who do something they like doing, that they feel is worthwhile doing, the money's just icing on the cake. Or it's really, an extra bonus for what they'd be doing for free anything.

      I doubt this. There's a reason it's called "work", and there's a reason that "work" and "fun" are not listed together in the thesaurus.

      Personally, I could definitely see myself coding if I was a billionaire, except I'd be working on some interesting open-source project. I would NOT be doing the type of work I do at work. It's not that I dislike coding (which is my primary job at work), it's that I dislike everything else: commuting to an inconveniently-located office every morning in traffic, having a shitty desk (not even a real cubicle) in an open work area where I can see all my cow-orkers and be subject to constant noise and commotion, having to work on something that's not exactly the most interesting project to me (unlike an OSS project of my choosing), dealing with deadlines and pressure from management, dealing with the crappy bug database we use, having to use Windows and Outlook which takes 30-60 seconds to read a single email, dealing with annoying cow-orkers, having to use bathrooms that smell like a sewer, etc. ad nauseum.

      Of course, I have some other hobbies I enjoy too when I have the time (not nearly enough), such as woodworking. If I was a billionaire, I'd simply spend all my time pursuing these hobbies, while I'm not traveling. And when I'm coding, I'd be doing it at home in an environment I like without noisy coworkers, working on projects I'm interested in which may have no monetary potential.

      So back to your original statement quoted above, really, how many people would get up every morning and go to an office and deal with coworkers and bosses if they weren't required to for a paycheck? I seriously doubt many would. They might go volunteer somewhere for a worthy cause or whatever, like many retired people do, but I'm pretty sure corporate office work would grind to a halt if everyone had all the money they wanted and didn't have to go work at some boring office for a living.

    7. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Personally, I could definitely see myself coding if I was a billionaire, except I'd be working on some interesting open-source project. I would NOT be doing the type of work I do at work. It's not that I dislike coding (which is my primary job at work), it's that I dislike everything else

      Many people would describe that as enjoying your work, but hating your job. You told steelfood that work and fun are disjoint, then proceeded to tell us that you'd continue doing your work for free, just not for the people, or in the place, where you currently happen to work.

      My sense is that many people fall in that category, which I describe as "sufficiently distracted by inconveniences to forget they love their work." Work is the productive, creative stuff you do. Job is the bureaucracy and tedium the work is wrapped up in. Even as a billionaire coder, or billionaire woodworker, you would have to deal with inconveniences, even if only the inconvenience of hiring someone to do the scut work for you.

    8. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Having a job isn't simply about money. It's also about the accomplishment, and feeling accomplished.

      Some people (and I'm raising my hand here), couldn't care less about accomplishing anything. I don't need to feel like I've done something important, I just want to do things I enjoy doing. Most of those things, although not all, require money, and that's why I work. Am I proud every once in a while when I do something cool at work that other people are using? Sure. I'd be way happier if I never accomplished anything but didn't have to work for the cash.

    9. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by Grishnakh · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I enjoy being able to socially interact with my co-workers instead of us all sitting there staring at our screens 8 hours a day and then leaving without a word.

      I'm not a terribly social person, and don't usually find cow-orkers I like to talk to. My last job was a big exception, and had several very interesting people, but our company laid our whole team off and we've since scattered.

      If you hate your job so much, why are you still in it?

      $$$$

      Find a different one which has projects you are excited about. If you are a good programmer you should have a good resume by now since you have worked in the industry and should be able to get a job in various places.

      If you haven't noticed, the economy isn't in good shape, and places aren't hiring like they were 3-4 years ago. I'm lucky I got this job (and that it pays much better than the last one too). There are some other places I could work in this area, but for a 30% pay cut. I can't afford that. There's not much work in this city, except for a LOT of defense contracting, which I'm trying really hard to avoid falling into like many of my past colleagues have. And I can't leave this city at this time.

      Don't worry, I plan to get out and move elsewhere in about 3 years. The time isn't right yet. I can deal with the stinky bathrooms and noisy work environment until then, and relieve my stress by complaining about it on Slashdot.

    10. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by shaitand · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "I do what I like to do for a living. Guess what I do when I come home at the end of the day. "

      For how long? One year? Two? Five years? Have you made it ten?

    11. Re:Who needs to be a billionaire? by Grishnakh · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's largely because people keep reinventing the wheel in the proprietary software world.

      Move to the open-source world, where people work together on projects that last decades. Of course, not all projects do this, and there is definitely some competition, but by and large I think any contributions are much more meaningful on average than contributions to proprietary software. Look at the Apache webserver, for instance: it's the most-used webserver, and it's been around for years and shows no sign of being supplanted by anything else. It's evolving, of course, like any good software, but it's not like there's a bunch of people trying to make a workalike webserver to replace it just so they can make money. Its only real competition any more (aside from tiny OSS embedded webservers which have a different purpose altogether) is MS IIS. Making contributions to Apache would be much more rewarding, I think, than to some proprietary webserver that's now defunct.

      There's lots of other large OSS projects out there which aren't going away any time soon: the Linux and FreeBSD kernels, KDE, Gimp, Blender, OpenOffice, etc.

  3. Wow by ShooterNeo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The man's 60, and the clock is ticking. The number of good years he has left could be 10 or 20, or it could be 1. If you could do anything you wanted, but were sure to die in a decade or two, would you really spend time programming computers? Programming can be fun, but there's more interesting things to do in life.

    1. Re:Wow by Sylos · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To each their own. Yeah, if I had 60 billion dollars and 20 years to spend it on doing things I wanted..I'd travel the world, visit the people, etc. But at the end of the day? I'd log on to check my emails, read slashdot (:o), mod someone flamebait for GP, then wander off and program. Just because someone is wealthy as sin doesn't mean they have to stop enjoying certain things. Programming is fun. No need to stop programming. If anything, it removes the stress from deadlines or certain requirements and lets you program completely on your own terms. It would mean that all those things you ever wanted to do, you could do. You could wander off to 'theoryland' and think things through without someone breathing down your neck asking for "results" or a deadline that forces a hack job. It'd truly let someone do what they wanted.

      --
      'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
    2. Re:Wow by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You'd really be able to peel yourself away from the tropical island with 10 servants on the clock 24 hours a day to serve you 200 year old wine, your private library larger than Google's (except all in hardcover first editions), baths of gold coins, a private jet with built in casino, and your 200 square foot bed covered with silk sheets and priceless animal furs and dotted with down-fluff pillows to just browse slashdot?

      OK I probably would too. I'd do it with the processing power of my private botnet which I paid Microsoft to build into every NT-based OS since NT4.

      Nah that isn't right either. TBH I think I would buy a nice, small house in some suburb with FIOS. It'd be mostly bare except for ludicrously expensive art I liked which I'd hang inconspicuously in my bedroom. And I'd have a couple of machines which I'd keep updated. Maybe I'd buy some of those $50,000 cisco clunkers to play around with occasionally. I'd browse slashdot, read wikipedia, and learn everything there is to learn.

      And for some reason when I imagine myself rich I see myself doing daily tasks (mail, slashdot, irc) on the very latest MacBook. I just might.

    3. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Traveling nowadays is a sure way to shorten your life.
      Terrorism, exotic illnesses, simple accidents are much more frequent compared to sitting in the basement and playing with bits.
      If you are not especially fond of traveling, but you like your life, why would you suddenly start traveling.

  4. Does he program in SAS, though? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If he does, he's one sick masochistic sonofabitch. Gawd, SAS is some nasty ass looking code. I once had to replace a SAS program with a much more efficient (and infinitely easier to read) COBOL program. Yes, you heard that right, C-O-B-O-L. COBOL kicks SAS's ass. BAM! Take that, John Sall!

    Now, where'd I leave my beer...

  5. Ask the retired by macemoneta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I retired eight years ago. I write code almost every day. Being ultimately lazy, I try to automate everything that I see. If it's a function that has to be performed more than once, and some aspect can be simplified with software, I write the code.

    Most everything is for my own use, and not generally applicable. A few things are more broadly useful, and those I've released under the GPL. Even those only get a few hundred interested people with the same niche interests.

    Some people are carpenters, and they work in their shops. Some people are artists, and they work with their medium. People that are really programmers must write code.

    --

    Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.

  6. Of course. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Money buys one the freedom to do what makes one happy.

  7. Re:the patient tasks by seifried · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You contradict yourself:

    have an investment horizon that is tough because these are projects that will take a good 5 years

    But then go on to say:

    and while we'd try to have some positive income spin-offs each year from 0 onward, the goal would be to create the kind of environment where we can take off some of the bigger, long-neglected problems.

    So immediately you're pushing to have immediate spin offs, with immediate returns which sort of puts pressure on your people (and you only have 10...) to make money fast, er I mean to show immediate results. Good luck with those long term projects. Stuff coming out of IBM's research lab has in some cases taken 10 or 20 years, but resulted in things like hard drives larger than a gigabyte, etc.

  8. it could happen to all of us by Tom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So if you didn't have to work -- and had more money than George Lucas and Steven Spielberg

    You don't have to be reach to be able to do what you want. The idea of Basic Income is getting widespread support and the movement has been growing for some years. What if you didn't have to work? I have a flyer on my desk right now with the exact same question (in german).

    Indeed, most of us would probably pursue their hobby projects, and find out that people are willing to pay for them. I make money with hobby stuff. Not enough for a living, but some here and some there. It's surprising what people are willing to pay for if they don't need every cent for the rent.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    1. Re:it could happen to all of us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Most people would sit on their ass and watch tv.

    2. Re:it could happen to all of us by janwedekind · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have seen the video Grundeinkommen (German) and I was very intrigued by the idea. But after (admittedly lengthy) consideration I start having doubts. I'm not so concerned about people not working at all. It's rather about cooperation, i.e. everybody will only do the fun part of his/her work. Why would you continue to align your interest with what society requires while everybody else is pursuing their own interest?

  9. Doing what you love by Burning1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I had the opportunity to do something I would consider a 'dream job' for a couple of years. I was living at home, and accepted a job as a Martial Arts instructor, something I had been doing in my spare time for a while, anyway.

    What I learned in the process is that when you take on your hobby as a job, you find that you end up doing a lot of work you wouldn't have originally considered fun. Teaching was great, and I'm proud of it. It could also be tiring. But sales, and accounting? You don't think of that when you accept a job at a martial arts school.

    The same is true of open source projects. How many guys really want to run the entire project themselves -- writing documentation, offering customer support. Even when you're just a coder, you're eventually put in the position of taking on responsibilities that you might not want.

    Personally, I like to work on cars. There's no way in hell I'd do it professionally.

    Conversely... I'd like to be the billionaire, but I absolutely could not stand having an eternal weekend. I'd need pursuits. The money would free me to choose my own work, and hire people to do the stuff I wasn't particularly interested in.

  10. chief architect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The article says he is chief architect. That's not really a coder, is it.