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Software Developer Tops List of U.S. News & World Report's Annual Best Jobs Rankings (usatoday.com)
According to U.S. News and World Report's annual best jobs rankings, software developer is the top pick for the new year. "The publication's Best Jobs of 2019 list takes seven factors into account, including median salary, employment rate and stress level," reports USA Today. "The median salary for a software developer is $101,790, and the unemployment rate is 1.9 percent, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics." From the report: Though software developers have neither the highest median salary nor lowest unemployment rate on the U.S. News Best Jobs of 2019 list, the position's projected increase in demand -- roughly 30 percent between 2016 and 2026 -- and average stress levels helped it land the top spot, said Rebecca Koenig, careers reporter at U.S. News and World Report. "Unlike some other jobs that do pretty well on the list, which are very demanding, software developer tends not to be a really stressful profession," Koenig said. Here are the Top 10, in order:
1. Software Developer
2. Statistician
3. Physician assistant
4. Dentist
5. (tie) Orthodontist
6. (tie) Nurse anesthetist
7. Nurse practitioner
8. Pediatrician
9. (tie) Obstetrician and gynecologist
9. (tie) Oral and maxillofacial surgeon
9. (tie) Prosthodontist
9. (tie) Physician
1. Software Developer
2. Statistician
3. Physician assistant
4. Dentist
5. (tie) Orthodontist
6. (tie) Nurse anesthetist
7. Nurse practitioner
8. Pediatrician
9. (tie) Obstetrician and gynecologist
9. (tie) Oral and maxillofacial surgeon
9. (tie) Prosthodontist
9. (tie) Physician
to find "Statistician" at #2, clear the Statistician at US news are gaming the "study" for this "report"
"software developer tends not to be a really stressful profession" - Pfft, you're doing it wrong.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
If you are developing video games, expect to work very long hours all the time and be very stressed.
Outside of that market segment, developers tend to be treated well and paid well because the unemployment rate is 1.9 percent. It wasn't always that low, and when the labor market favored the employers it really sucked to be a developer. It was awful, and it drove many people out of the industry. And that was only a little under two decades ago!
Don't forget that the industry is also agist, so you need to make your money early on and invest it well so you can handle the possibility that you simply won't be able to find work after 50.
Last, but not least, you actually have to like programming. It simply isn't for everyone.
Structural, electrical, telecom, controls, instrumentation or computer engineering.
I can't put my finger on it, but I have my doubts the authors of the study have any experience with Software Development, Software Developers, or even heard of the stress and work conditions. I also have know some pretty stressed Dentists, Orthodontists, Anesthetists, Nurses, etc... I think this was devised by a rogue Statistician with sadistic streak.
The effective salary average may not be quite as high as one would think compared to other professions. Silicon Valley and some other parts of California tend to have a lot of software people. They also tend to have high prices and salaries - a devalued dollar.
Iowa and Nebraska tend to have a much higher numbers of corn farmers, and much lower prices. A Silicon Valley software developer making $100K isn't doing nearly as well as a Nebraska corn farmer averaging $100K. You can live pretty well on $100K in Nebraska.
So looking at national averages using nominal dollars overstates the effective pay for jobs that tend to cluster in California and and understates the buying power of jobs that tend to be found more in inexpensive areas.
As a specific example, the cost of living is about 2 1/2 times higher in San Jose than Dallas. That makes a difference. It means people working in aerospace and defense on average have more buying power than someone with the same salary working in solar-electric development.
Well, many of the others listed are medical-related. Those professions often have to deal with life-threatening emergencies, people in severe pain/duress, etc. For most software dev jobs, nobody gets injured, dies, nor puked on no matter how bad you or your colleagues screw up.
The big problem with software development is it has no direct future. If you don't move into management-esque positions, your career will plateau early. It can be decent money, don't get me wrong, but it's a poor ticket to a bigger and better future.
"Old" developers are typically not very welcomed. The reasons are a long and winding topic, and there are exceptions, but the bottom line is the software biz is not kind to "age".
Table-ized A.I.
Good news, Hermie! But I thought that was a high-suicide field..
Iâ(TM)ve heard this for as long as Iâ(TM)ve been on Slashdot I think â" which is since like â99 â" but have not witnessed it in practice. My experience is that itâ(TM)s really tough to break into the profession because nobody wants some kid who knows nothing when they could get a senior-level engineer that can design circles around the entry-level candidate.
Iâ(TM)ve been fighting for years to get junior devs on my team. There arenâ(TM)t enough seniors to meet the demand.
(Please forgive the mangled characters sure to arise here. I wrote this on an iPhone.)
Systemd puked core dumps on me, and made me puke.
Among the software developers the better paid ones are the ones with some skill like PhD in computational geometry or machine learning or robotics or something and the software, usually C++, acts as a force multiplier.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You can be a productive doctor until you're six feet under. A software engineer over 40 is considered used up by a lot of companies, and it only gets worse as you get older. Obviously not in all cases, but I hear about it a lot in the industry. When I was working in hospitals, I never heard anything similar from the staff there.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
Obviously game developers were totally ignored here
During economic slumps that can be true. The ideal candidate has roughly 7 to 15 years of experience for "established" technologies, and about 3 to 7 for newer stuff.
In short, the industry "likes the middle". Both age "ends" get squeezed. (That didn't sound PC, did it.)
Also note that just because your shop values experienced developers, does not mean others do.
Table-ized A.I.
Although what you said is true, I see it as one of the biggest problems. In Software, anything over 1 year isn't "new". And very few things last over 10 years.
Yet as you said, people still expect 3-7 in new stuff and 10-15 in old stuff. So you end up with people who have to lie to you to be given the chance to prove themselves.
The big problem with software development is it has no direct future.
Why isn't it "continue to develop software"?
For most software dev jobs, nobody gets injured, dies, nor puked on no matter how bad you or your colleagues screw up.
Some, not all. Because some people do write software for the medical professionals during life-threatening emergencies, people in severe pain/duress, etc.
The big problem with software development is it has no direct future. If you don't move into management-esque positions, your career will plateau early. It can be decent money, don't get me wrong, but it's a poor ticket to a bigger and better future.
"Old" developers are typically not very welcomed. The reasons are a long and winding topic, and there are exceptions, but the bottom line is the software biz is not kind to "age".
At what point does this age problem kick in? I'm 50 and not seeing it. I have coworkers in their 60s and they're not seeing it. Heck, I know one guy in his early 70s who just likes to work and doesn't want to retire. He's independently wealthy at this point, having been through a couple of successful startups, so he tends to work for a year or two (at a premium salary, given his incredible depth and breadth of experience) and then take a year off.
From what I can see, software development is about as close to a pure merit-based industry as I've seen. If you can write good code, nobody much cares what you look like, how you dress (well, clothing is generally mandatory), the color of your hair, etc.
The one issue I have seen is that software devs who have accumulated only one or two years of experience in 20 years of work, meaning they've spent the whole time doing the same things over and over again, find it hard to get a job because they want to be paid like a 20-year veteran, but aren't any more effective than someone a couple years out of school.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Where's the 10th? Is that some kind of decimal counter rollover joke for the software developers?
Last on the list: Presidential Proctologist.
I'm in IT and the imaging department tries to recruit me. If I was younger I'd go in a heartbeat. My SoCal semi-rural hospital is $35/hr union protected for a 3x12 schedule first day out of school. CT cert =+$5/hr on top of. MRI cert =+$5/hr on top of. And they'll OJT that shit. You can be 10 years deep sitting on a $50/hr, 3 day a week job. If you don't want weekends - trade. If you want to hog OT and make bank, trade. If you've been there a decade work the 6 straight and have 8 days off 2x a month. We have people that never take PTO because they take a week foreign vacation every month and cash out PTO. Did I mention you can be 20, and making $100k if you want? "100 Reasons to Kill Your Guidance Counselor." See also LA county senior Lifeguards who ride a boat around for what was ~$75K in 2000.
Yet as you said, people still expect 3-7 in new stuff and 10-15 in old stuff. So you end up with people who have to lie to you to be given the chance to prove themselves.
It's not to prove themselves, it's a sleazy management tactic used to squeeze employees out of salaries on par with the actual job. If someone feels they're being "given a chance" they are less likely to haggle.
Also note that just because your shop values experienced developers, does not mean others do.
Maybe it's your shop that doesn't value experienced developers? However I think this is the core issue, not enough people know about software development to be able to do it well.
There are always shops that take an burn and churn approach to software development because they aren't very good. The good thing about churn and burn shops is that you can learn a lot in a short time, if you survive the pressure then you will probably have a lasting career.
After that you tend to figure out how to apply design patterns and create methods so that you can learn things quickly and you only get to do that in the quality shops where they have been bitten by technical debt and understand how it relates to their business' bottom line. I.e. they give you time so things don't go haywire later.
If you don't move into management-esque positions, your career will plateau early.
Yeah sort of. My experience was to be able to pick up business and project management skills and be able to adapt them to the circumstances you find yourself in. It's this adaptability that links your career to longevity as management starts to ask your advice and takes you more seriously as you can see the big problems before they are. They only have to not listen to you once or twice before they suddenly discover that you are trying to save them time, money and stress.
I repeat two maxims to them, the first: You can do it right the first time or the second time, it's your choice and the second: It's your money (budget) you can waste it however you choose.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Why isn't it "continue to develop software"?
Because it's way more stressful than anyone wants to admit (devs out of pride and managers out of hiring prospects.) The reason ageism exists in software development so strongly is it takes years of actual experience to produce anything production-worthy (even are barely-passing levels,) and the stress of never having time to think about your own shit (software design is unlike any other profession, in that your time on the clock you are whoring out your mind, the time off the clock you're trying to switch gears to deal with your own shit for a few hours before passing out, and then only if you stay up late every night and live in a perpetually sleep-deprived state because it will often take highly proficient developers with years of experience 1-3 hours to switch gears, depending on their project [if they even can with the project they're on before passing out.])
That equates to money not stretching nearly as far (especially for single developers who weren't lucky enough to find a match before starting their career,) because there's essentially no time to be frugal about things by shopping around, or often even cooking meals instead of grabbing to-go or fast food or microwave dinners. Over time that adds up, and by the time a developer is 50 they're effectively burnt out and incapable of meeting deadlines no matter how hard they push themselves. People need time to develop themselves, and in other professions people get to keep their personal thoughts while working, even if just in a background process - they don't have to be fully immersed in the job to get it done.
In addition, since the money wasn't stretching and it's tough to find time for proper investments in the "good" years there is added stress in the fact it's hard for developers to save up with retirement looming. Once they get there they're often like the male equivalent of the hot chick at 40: no good looks to rely upon, completely vapid, and no hobbies while hating the world with the belief it's the world which changed on them - only instead it's: no spirit, no drive, autistic levels of self-sureness and systems thinking while being unable to grasp how to move into another profession.
Developers really need to put their foot down more often (especially when younger and thinking they will get their foot in the door then climb up after lowballing the salary expectations for employers,) and get more of the intangible perks to go along with a decent salary if not an outright top-of-the-bell-curve-salary: work from home when there's nothing actively on fire requiring an all-hands meeting (it's amazing how much shaving 1-3 hours off your daily routine in the form of a commute and the stress therein can accomplish, or even the more relaxed home environment on days when you need to drive in for a meeting,) bringing pets with you, flexible hours (if nothing other than to make up for the insomnia typically induced by the job, though most shops do actually have that one and have for years because it's a common and unavoidable trend among developers - especially the ones who learned as teenagers staying up all night and never broke the habit.) You definitely need the salary and benefits, but the intangibles go a long way toward maintaining your health and sanity over the long run.
At what point does this age problem kick in? I'm 50 and not seeing it. I have coworkers in their 60s and they're not seeing it. Heck, I know one guy in his early 70s who just likes to work and doesn't want to retire. He's independently wealthy at this point, having been through a couple of successful startups, so he tends to work for a year or two (at a premium salary, given his incredible depth and breadth of experience) and then take a year off.
That's pretty far from the norm, few life-long developers are startup millionaires, especially now that the startup culture mostly died out and the industry matured more (that happened around the .com bubble popping for anyone who didn't already have a name for themselves or know someone who did.)
I feel like we live on different planets.
I've been a software developer for a decade now and I have never come within an iota of experiencing or feeling anything you talked about in your post. The developers I know 10 and 20 years older than me don't seem any different from me either.
I love my work, I moved close to my office (10 minute drive). I've been putting away max 401k, RothIRA, HSA every year for a decade now, so I've already saved about 250K which has grown in investments to close to 400K in my very early 30s.
I don't understand the concept of burning out and not being able to safe for retirement and all that stuff at least personally. I can't think of feeling stressed more than once or twice a year. I cook all my own meals at home, I travel the world on vacations about 5 weeks a year. I feel like I have more free time than I know what to do with. I really don't feel like I have a single complaint in life and I'm not sure why this would change.
All I can assume is that it must be location based or something. I live in Wisconsin, I don't work or live in a big city and I work for a relatively small local company and I much prefer it that way.
And judge it. Often books are judged by covers by those not fully understanding what they are looking at, and younger people seem to have a knack for finding and "surfing" fashions and fads to seem cool and up-to-date to the uninitiated.
One guy recently convinced the boss to use microservices (ms) for something that clearly didn't need ms. The ms pusher got all kinds of bullshit off the web about ms being magic plug-in Lego-like building blocks that give you instant abstraction and reuse (above what app-language API's can provide). I still haven't convinced the boss it's bullshit for our projects. (The boss is smart, but he's from another platform and still new to our stack.)
If I were younger and more naive, I'd go along with the ms BS with a smile that would probably superficially make me look better to management.
A lot of software development is a fashion/fad chase, and young people usually do better at fashion/fads. Logic is secondary. The bastard will probably stick something "AI" or quantum-edge-clouds in it next for the sheer hell of it, or maybe for resume buzzword collecting.
Yes, that's why earlier I said "unless you move into management-esque positions" (paraphrased). To be frank, I'm often right about stuff because of my long experience of watching many things go wrong, but few give me any credit for being right. If I point it out, I sound like a braggart or a get-off-my-lawn trend hater. Maybe if I were super articulate I'd find a better way to present assessments. Still working on de-blunting my style.
Table-ized A.I.
As a statistician who develops software for medical/life sciences clients, I occasionally see claims data from physicians who have passed away, so maybe doctors can be productive even after they're six feet under...
I make more money than 99.9% of all of you because I'm awesome. I'm also smarter, and more informed than all of you on practically every subject you think is important.
Suck it.
All I can assume is that it must be location based or something. I live in Wisconsin
bingo.
I'm in the bay area. I'm over 50 and have been doing software since my teens, commercially. been in the area for over 25 years and am american-born. in the bay area, that's the kiss of death. wish I was kidding, but everyone my age says the same thing, its not unique to me.
this area ONLY wants kids. if you are over 35, good luck to you.
and yeah, that's one huge reason why software and hardware from the bay area is sucking more and more. we sold ourselves out to h1b and kids; all because the CEOs save money on them.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
A hot tip: you can change an iOS setting very easily to not produce those non-standard characters that junk up so many forum postings.
Stop torturing everyone:
https://www.howtogeek.com/344310/how-to-turn-off-smart-punctuation-on-your-iphone-and-ipad/
1. Median salary
2. Past 10 year job growth prospects
3. Future years job growth prospects
4. Stress levels
Get past jobs that pay well and have good growth prospects and the story has 'stress levels' as a criteria.
Stress levels are much higher that mentioned unless you are a short timer and job hopping ever 6 - 12 months.
Carry project team of 20+, mixed onshore/offshore developers/QA/BA as a senior/lead developer and then measure the stress level - my 40 hour+ developer job + 20+ hour lead developer job each week. Yes, change your company mantra could apply; but having several jobs in this vein over the last 10 years, fail to see the 'leave me alone, i want to develop software' jobs.
The waterfall budget and waterfall timeline pretending to be agile is a definite root cause.
A colleague in a previous jobs was aged over 60, had worked as a project manager in a previous life, and now worked as a manual writer/technical writer. Boring stuff but somebody had to do it. It suited his stress level just fine.
Why should I change? Heâ(TM)s the one that sucks!
You're young. Wait until you get older and start having some actual commitments. Especially children and a big ass mortgage.
Also in Wisconsin. Company does have its issues, but overall excellent benefits and salary puts me in the top 10% of households while HR forces management to make sure we use our vacation time. The average employee has been working with the company for 15 years, quite a few programmers in their 50s and 60s, enough female programmers for there to always be one around, programming teams are self managed.
On the other hand, we do have a slight issue with tenure programmers and some almost Dilbert effect. At least the lack of management means these dilbert people can't micromanage, which limits their damage. They just get placed into "architect" level roles and everyone else has to compensate for them. But those roles have real potential value and the damage is inter-team coordination is hurt by a lack of clear technical vision.
You're really new at this if you think "architect" level roles don't have vastly more influence than developer roles.
Maybe don't make commitments you cant keep?
When you have a sample size of 1, it's easy to believe in spells and fairies....however in the real world, in corporate America where turn over is a constant, old programmers get tossed on their ass on a regular basis. Don't believe me, read a few articles about IBM's layoffs. How about the Microsoft? Google? Perhaps UC Medical Center?
The point is if you bothered to read the news and follow what's been going on in the IT sector, you'd understand that state of the industry.
The big problem with software development is it has no direct future. If you don't move into management-esque positions, your career will plateau early
Your statement is true. Once upon a time, that bothered me. Nowadays, I don't know I want a management position. I have witnessed many places though where when a management position opens up, they don't promote a programmer, they promote a salesman, or someone from marketing, or some other branch. Once a programmer, it's hard to get out of being a programmer.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Although us software developers, most of the time its just one of that "hats" in our toolset. It comes at a price for some. Technology changes fast, keep up or get out does happen. Some do survive on long term languages like c++,java,.net, etc, "web",databases software engineer title gets played around with allot and gets merged. The standards can very, IMO it seems job requests are usually a complete STACK with more. if not all or multiple stacks. No matter what the job is, it depends on the environment you go into. I not only use glassdoor , i talk to "former" employees on linked in, and get their reference.
>1-3 hours to switch gears
That sounds like the crux of most of your problems. As a developer you've probably spent a lot of time learning to use your mind efficiently, now may I suggest you spend some serious time investing in learning how to manage it more effectively? For starters, it sounds like you've got 1-3 hours per day of currently wasted time that you could productively spend practicing.
As someone who tends to get mentally fixated myself, I found meditation very useful for that - once you learn to simply turn your mind *off* on command, it's a lot easier to get it focused on something else when you turn it back on.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The must have forgotten to include work hours as a factor in this analysis. A lot of those medical professions have terrible hours. Although advancements in medicine have improved things, obstetricians don't usually get to schedule when children are born.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
With lists like this there's not enough definition of the roles for it to be a meaningful comparison. What industry does their software developer work in, do they support or document applications, do they do anything other than coding & even then the language used is going to make a difference.
Sick of embedded. How do I get a phone apps job, preferrably wfh some days a week?
How desperate are these companies? Willing to train phone?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
To be fair none of these jobs have much of a career path. Physician assistants and nurses are still going to be PAs and nurses 20 years later. Most of the rest of the jobs listed are doctors of some kind or another so you could argue they are already at the top of their food chain, but even they will have to move into management if they want career advancement. I'm not sure what statisticians do to advance their careers but I'm sure most places they have to get on a management track to move up as well.
Sorry, but my experience and that of colleagues differ.
I first noticed it myself when I used to do contracting. Multiple times in contract interviews they'd ask variations of, "We'd like to confirm you are comfortable working for a project lead who is younger." They wouldn't ask such unless something about age made them hesitant.
Perhaps they had encountered people similar to your final paragraph who felt their (narrow) experience was under-appreciated or under-compensated, and worried I'd be one of them also. In a sense it's a kind of profiling where enough older people carry such resentments to form a stereotype that creates worries for those hiring. Humans do profile; I'm just the messenger. It's often not overt, but dances around in the back of the head, influencing decisions.
Most other fields value experience more compared to IT such that those in IT perhaps on average don't handle the plateau properly as they age, generating a general impression in IT that older people have a chip on their shoulder. The plateau surprises them and they react with a degree of frustrustration and resentment that is a normal and expected human reaction to such.
One solution is warn and educate those going into IT about age-related issues and perceptions so they don't get frustrated and spoil the entire apple cart for older people in general. As the scouts say, Be Prepared.
Career guides & counselors often ignore the age issue, which is a mistake.
Table-ized A.I.
no, i won't forgive the fact that you or someone you're close to bought the most closed fucking phone they could find. you are complicit in the enslavement of humanity.
Game developer in most cases (not all) means low wages, long hours, zero job security, high-stress, and very little personal autonomy. You won't be getting much that resembles game time and the real fun for a dev is in creatively finding solutions and solving problems. IT in any industry can provide that. I've done my work primarily at large insurance and finance companies. Met quite a few former game developers who switched to doing the kind of thing I was doing for all of the reasons above.
What you want is high wages, good job security, short hours, flexible hours, low-stress (no midnight phone calls), good benefits, opportunity to learn, and a lot of personal autonomy. Start with looking for high wages and as much of the rest as you can. Take that and keep on looking. I know for a fact it's possible to eventually get them all, and no, once you reach a attain a certain level of real and unquestioned competence, gray hair (or even bald) doesn't hurt at all, and may even be an asset.
Junior devs might be able to render an ASCII apostrophe so it presents correctly on Slashdot.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Cool story bro.
When you have a sample size of 1, it's easy to believe in spells and fairies....however in the real world, in corporate America where turn over is a constant, old programmers get tossed on their ass on a regular basis. Don't believe me, read a few articles about IBM's layoffs. How about the Microsoft? Google? Perhaps UC Medical Center?
Interesting that you should mention Google, since that's where I work :-)
And if you read the post you responded to, you'll see my sample size is far more than one. Not only did I mention my co-workers (who have a lot of collective experience), but I've been in the industry for 30 years which obviously cannot all have been at Google. As it happens a big chunk of it was at IBM, where the only ageism I saw was pension cost-cutting.
The point is if you bothered to read the news and follow what's been going on in the IT sector, you'd understand that state of the industry.
IT or software development? The two are hugely different.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
But those roles have real potential value and the damage is inter-team coordination is hurt by a lack of clear technical vision.
The "architects" mostly just say "use these tools" and very little direction in general. It's up to everyone else to work together. Results in no clear understanding how the system as a whole is supposed to work. This is still better than micromanaging management.
I know I can't turn my mind off. The conscious "me" has always been a slow dimwitted entity. Changing gears is extremely mentally exhausting. If I get too exhausted, I have mental energy left to control my mind and it feels like there are tens of concurrent thoughts running through my head. It gets bad enough that it impairs my ability to even talk.
On the other hand, my subconscious can find answers in seconds to problems that perplex someone else for hours or days. I don't actively think when it comes to problem solving. The answer just pops into my head. Whatever is actually instantly figuring out difficult problems, that part of my mind I have no control over and will flood my consciousness if I get too exhausted.
>I know I can't turn my mind off.
> that part of my mind I have no control over
That can change. You have no control, because you've never *learned* control. Perhaps you have some condition that makes it more difficult, but more likely it's just that, like most people, you were never taught how to do it. Purely internal mental discipline is not something our society values or teaches.
Even the boundaries of "the conscious you" are, to a large extent, self-imposed. You can learn to extend your consciousness far into the dark reaches of your mind - right down to asserting conscious control over normally autonomous functions like your digestion, heartbeat, or thermogenesis, if you so desire. (I actually learned the last one, and it's glorious)
There was a time you knew you couldn't read, or whistle, or ride a bike, or do basic addition. And then (I'm assuming) eventually, probably after lots of practice and failed attempts, something finally "clicked" for each of those. And soon thereafter doing them felt so completely easy and natural that it was hard to believe that you used to have so much trouble.
I suggest meditation in part because it's one of the few areas of mental discipline that has had a LOT of time and energy across thousands of years put into developing effective teaching techniques for purely internal self-discipline. Most other areas of mental discipline focus instead on the results - math and logic education for example almost always focus on a rigorous process that reduces the mind to little more than an inefficient computer. While the discipline to function that way, to say nothing of the non-conscious intuitive "big picture" understanding that lets you readily leap to solutions, is left for you to develop for yourself. Or not, for most people.
That, and stopping the mind really is meditation 101, so if an out-of-control mind is a problem for you, it probably is the best possible place to start.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
While this is true, I often liken it to the old joke with the bulls ...
Two bulls, one old and one young, sitting on the top of a hill, looking down and seeing a bunch of cows. The young bull says to the old bull "hey, why don't we run down there and fuck one of those cows?" The old bull looks at the young bull, and says "nah, let's walk down and fuck them all."
What short sighted companies fail to realize is the experience of us old bulls sometimes means we don't make mistakes we made years ago that the young bulls have let to learn from.
You may be younger and faster than I am, but I'm sneakier and meaner.