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Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource?
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Re: Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource?
#2There's a huge stratification going on, between developers as commodities and developers as assets.
Re: Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource?
#3Certain businesses see developers as a commodity and work to further commoditize them by using cookie-cutter tooling that turns programming as closely as possible into plugging cords into outlets. However this can only take you so far.
If you have developers that use ever-more-simplified-tools and languages, there are companies that make those tools, and cloud companies that make the infrastructure and build all the things that make life easier for other companies. They still need strong programmers.
There will always be the need for extremely good programmers. If you are an extremely good programmer then you should be able to earn outsized monetary rewards and find intellectually stimulating projects if you are able to move to the right location (SF, Boston) and interview well.
Re: Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource?
#4Yes and no. Being a computer programmer covers a wide range of skills and roles. It's like construction. There's a huge range. Some people cut and nail up dry wall. They do their work without having to invent things, using skills that can be executed rote. Other builders have to design a custom bridge for a unique mountain range that must handle stress not normally found in cookie cutter bridge designs.
A big part of the market is making CRUD apps. The skills to develop these kinds of apps can be reliably learned. But even still, it's not quite as rote a skill as being a cog on an assembly line. There's still a lot of variability, and lots of parts to master (front end, databases, etc), interpretation of requirements. It's hard to just hire an army of peons and expect them to participate in CRUD.
If the development is exploring out new territory, then the workers will never be a commodity. Making new things never done before. Facial recognition, OCR with high reliability for crumby hand writing, etc. For these workers to be a commodity, you will have to create an AI with human level creativity to do exploratory creation. That will likely not happen in our great great great grand children's lifetimes.
Re: Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource?
#5It depends a lot on what you're hiring developers for. If you need a developer to add some new UI features to a web app, there will be thousands of junior developers you can hire. On the other hand, if you need to reduce the time it takes to execute a stock trade by 0.25 microseconds, there may many fewer developers in the world with the domain knowledge (high frequency trading) and programming skills (high performance C++ programming) to do that. Even fewer developers will have the skills needed to write the flight control software for a new spacecraft.
Re: Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource?
#6Yes and no. Being a computer programmer covers a wide range of skills and roles. It's like construction. There's a huge range. Some people cut and nail up dry wall. They do their work without having to invent things, using skills that can be executed rote. Other builders have to design a custom bridge for a unique mountain range that must handle stress not normally found in cookie cutter bridge designs. A big part of…
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
Elbert Hubbard
Re: Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource?
#7Yes and no. Being a computer programmer covers a wide range of skills and roles. It's like construction. There's a huge range. Some people cut and nail up dry wall. They do their work without having to invent things, using skills that can be executed rote. Other builders have to design a custom bridge for a unique mountain range that must handle stress not normally found in cookie cutter bridge designs. A big part of…
> Other builders have to design a custom bridge for a unique mountain range that must handle stress not normally found in cookie cutter bridge designs.
Aren’t you confusing builders and engineers?
Re: Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource?
#8No, but the most common problems become commoditised. 15 years ago I could make money building a restaurant website, now it's just squarespace or Wix. I could build a CMS or set up an ecommerce site. There was enough demand that companies like Shopify grew into existence.
But while the baseline expectation is higher, so is the complexity of new problems. Being a developer is to constantly be learning and adapting, changing direction and always trying new things.
Re: Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource?
#9Agile did it. Developers became resources to be pluged into existing projects sprints.
Want it quickier just add more resources.
Re: Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource?
#10Agile did it. Developers became resources to be pluged into existing projects sprints. Want it quickier just add more resources.
Huh? How does that even work?