The Ups and Downs of Working as a Programmer

Well, I am currently working as a programmer at a fairly large company, which shall remain nameless. We work in the mining industry, developing software to evaluate and design mines. I have worked at this particular company for over a year now, and as a progamer for seven years.

Most of my work involves sitting in front of my computer, writing software, testing it, and trying to figure out why it fails... With the occasional client meeting thrown in for a bit of variety.

The Ups

There are a lot of things that I really like about my current job:

1. The People - I work with some extremally nice and intelligent people, all of whom are very dedicated and expert in what they do, yet still able to have fun.

2. The hours - I work flexible hours, and my manager is far more interested that stuff gets done, rather than me sitting in the office for the alloted time. I have manged to work out a schedule that mean that miss the traffic to and from work
3. The work itself - The work is challenging, just at that right level where it is difficult enough to be interesting, without becoming fustrating
4. The Money - It could always be more, but it allows me to provide for my family.

The Downs

And alot of things that I do not:

1. The Clients - Yes, I have to admit that the clients get on my nerves somewhat, with constantly changing requirements and expectations. It is partially my fault, since I have never taken the time to iron out the requirements
2. Testing - We do not have dedicated testers, which means that the testing falls on the shoulders of us developers. Alas, that is something that I have never had patience with, and iI inevitably miss something
3. Office Politics - I suspect that this is temporary, but the last two months, the ffice structure has been in chaos, since a lot of the managers left for various reasons (I don't think that this was on purpose, it just happened that way)