Suck? Maybe they suck, but working as a programmer is better than not working. Believe me, I'm being laid off at a mortage company (that was once a thriving internet startup -- don't ask), and watching these loan people deal with the fact that they may not work for years is harsh.
Tedious grind? You can create your own opportunities, but in software you're more likely to find a job in rough times than most other industries. Don't spit that fortune in the eye.
Not to mention software is one of the rare industries where, if you're not happy taking orders from the MBA PHB, you can leave and start your own thing. No other industry requires less capital to start your own business. The amount you can accomplish with spare time and your personal laptop is insane compared to the kind of capital other industries demand for their startups.
Anything where the business owner can create intangible products himself/herself (e.g. writing, design, wedding planning, whatever) has just as low starting capital required.
The argument "X is better than being unemployed" can be made for many values of X. It isn't spitting on fortune to suggest that some values of X are more desirable than others, and should be pursued strategically over the course of a career.
Was it really necessary to treat this as a binary choice? This comment and the one above it seem latent with severe blowhard sentiment, where one declares that x sucks, and the other declares things other than x that suck more. It takes some of the wind out of the argument they are trying to make, which maybe are worth exploring further.
Is there age discrimination in programming? Probably, although I've had at least one manager assert to me, with some plausible evidence, that reverse age discrimination also exists.
But, unfortunately, that conversation gets drowned out in cynicism and hyperbole, and oneupsmanship by additional cynicism. It is tiring, because all it succeeds in doing is creating additional angst and frustration.
In the people who believe what is being said, they now believe they are now facing down a life consisting of death marches and idiocy, with the other option being indefinite unemployment. It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, where they will engender that kind of attitude in the places they work and live; with some regularity, what they expect a place to be like is what it will become.
For the people who try to fight against that sentiment but find their thoughts, however reasonable, drowned out in the sea of people who claim that they lack sufficient context simply because they lack the requisite cynicism, they'll eventually give up and either succumb to the prophecy or just leave the community to its own misery.
To this I ask, do we really need more cynicism, and is it really deserved? Are we certain this hasn't gone past discussing things reasonably, into the realm where people attempt to out-gloom one another in hopes that it justifies them tolerating their own plight? When do we stop admitting the inevitability of this and start taking action to change that, or at least investigating deeper what action can be taken? How are we so certain that all of these crappy programming jobs that we look at with disdain aren't the product of the cynicism of people, perhaps like us, who currently work in them and make them and the rest of the culture that way? It is, to me, increasingly hard to tell where things honestly suck, and where people make them suck for the sake of producing drama and fulfilling their own expectations of misery.
I agree with Joel; this is the textbook definition (if there were a textbook) of a mutual self-confirmation club, and I worry that it exists even here on HN.
Tedious grind? You can create your own opportunities, but in software you're more likely to find a job in rough times than most other industries. Don't spit that fortune in the eye.