You love programming, and you love solving problems. You also love creating cutting-edge software, and you love making a name for yourself by doing interesting, cool, and innovative things. You love thinking of ways that code can be optimized or enhanced. You want to start your own company, and you want to be a coder for your startup. So, is it a good idea to be a programmer for a private company?

Private companies hire developers all the time. Your favorite business products are likely designed with coding by programmers, including everything from mobile apps to customer service software to online music players. But if you’re the kind of person who wants to be a programmer for a private company, should you? Let’s take a look at some pros and cons to see whether or not this career choice would be good for you. 

If not, you can always use your programming skills for other things! Whether it’s developing games, apps, or gambling, your skills will prove to be useful, especially in the 21st century. 

Pros

• As a programmer, you’re not going to make a ton of money. Sure, an average salary is around $70,000, but if you’ve got a degree in computer science and are good at your job, you could be making upwards of $100,000. A lot of young people have the goal of becoming programmers and software engineers. The attraction is understandable: programmer jobs typically pay well and don’t require a college degree to get started. But just like you need more than just a college degree to establish a successful career, it also takes more than just software programming knowledge to become a successful developer.
• Working for a private company can be very rewarding, but it’s important to understand how, as an employee, you can best contribute to your company. Besides the obvious: coming in on time, doing a good job, etc., you need to understand how you can best interact with the people you work for. You can become a programmer for private companies in various ways, but the most common is through building connections. Connections and an understanding of programming can help you become a programmer for private companies. Building connections helps you get jobs at companies that hire computer programmers, and this enables you to make connections. As you build these connections, you build an understanding of programming, and this enables you to become a programmer for private companies.

Cons 

• When working for a company, you are expected to follow a strict schedule. If you deviate from the schedule, you risk getting in trouble. You aren’t allowed to work on projects outside your designated schedule, and submitting reports late is always an issue. However, working this way isn’t ideal for productivity. Whether you work for a company or are self-employed, you have to adhere to a schedule. This schedule could be for your entire week, and you may have some flexibility, but for the most part, the times you are at work and the time you are at home are yours. If you are working for a company, then everything revolves around you and your work schedule
• As a computer programmer, you will spend the vast majority of each day staring at a computer screen. Some claim that staring at a screen all day is “the new smoking.” Whether or not this is hyperbole, there is a lot of merit in taking a break from your screen. In fact, in 2017, a study by Royal (Royal, 2017) showed that programmers who take breaks from their screens were 13% more productive than those who remained glued to their monitors.