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Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

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Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#31

Post by saas_co_de »

WalterBright wrote: post #24
hkmurakami wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought something similar as well. If you have one Bill Gates and everyone else making $80k, then Bill Gates has a pretty low upper limit on consumption of scarce assets, and thus goods and services are not bid up. But when a larger and larger number of people make more than their peers, then you start to have a bidding war for scarce goods (ex: housing, education, etc). Hats what you have in the Bay Area. Mor…

Industries that have government heavily involved in (health care, education, housing) have seen huge runups in prices. Ones government is not involved in (such as software) have seen precipitous price declines.

yeah, deflation is bad for the economy, unless it is high tech, in which case staggering rates of year-after-year deflation for decades on end are the engine of economic growth.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#32

Post by maxxxxx »

bigmario wrote: post #11
Animats wrote: post #6

Don't worry. Programming is becoming a blue collar job. Being an "electrician" in 1880 was a big deal, the high technology job of its day. By 1920 it was a union blue collar job. That's programming.

Lots of people make this claim with no evidence. It's understandable to feel insecure about future career prospects in our fast-changing industry, but honestly I'll believe it when I see it.

I bet a lot of the frontend guys will have problems when someone comes out with something like Visual Basic for the web. It's harder now to develop a LOB app than when it was twenty years ago and I think this will change at some point. Same for a lot of "data scientists". Unless you are on the forefront of development there will be more and more tools that make the data accessible to regular people instead of having to go to data scientists.

Yes, software developers will always be in demand. The profession stays but the people in it get quickly marked as obsolete and replaced by new people.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#33

Post by hkmurakami »

WalterBright wrote: post #24
hkmurakami wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought something similar as well. If you have one Bill Gates and everyone else making $80k, then Bill Gates has a pretty low upper limit on consumption of scarce assets, and thus goods and services are not bid up. But when a larger and larger number of people make more than their peers, then you start to have a bidding war for scarce goods (ex: housing, education, etc). Hats what you have in the Bay Area. Mor…

Industries that have government heavily involved in (health care, education, housing) have seen huge runups in prices. Ones government is not involved in (such as software) have seen precipitous price declines.

At least in the states, both healthcare and education are subsidized by the government so everyone can "afford" to pay more.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#34

Post by jsky_goog »

justinator wrote: post #9
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #4

Before industrialization, land that mattered was farmland. Then as industrialization took hold, urban land became more important as the grouping of people together allowed for economies of scale in manufacturing. But then the petrochemical revolution put things in reverse, as people could live anywhere and travel by car. Suddenly, open space was economically desirable, as it made more sense to build a factory in supe…

Google, Amazon (for example), are building large work centers in desirable places to work, which are raising the cost of living of everyone else in the town that may not have a six figure income. Google is moving to Boulder, CO as we speak; Denver was on the shortlist for Amazon. It's the same problem with kicking out artists in a dilapidated warehouse area, and moving in boring professionals to live in lofts built o…

I always get slightly sad when I hear the complaints against Google in Boulder as I honestly believe the effect it has had on housing prices has been overstated. For some context, I'm a Boulder native, I grew up here, went to preschool through college here, and am fortunate enough to get a job that pays me enough to stay here. And for what it's worth Google has had an office in Boulder for about 10 or 11 years now. I'm more than happy to discuss this more thoroughly here, through pms, or over coffee :)

Disclaimer: I work at Google, in Boulder.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#35

Post by francisofascii »

Animats wrote: post #15
bigmario wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people make this claim with no evidence. It's understandable to feel insecure about future career prospects in our fast-changing industry, but honestly I'll believe it when I see it.

Apply for a job as a PHP programmer and see what you're offered.

Actually, there is a quite a bit of jobs that require PHP considering the plethora of sites built on Drupal and WordPress. I guess it depends where you live.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#36

Post by thewarrior »

WalterBright wrote: post #29
thewarrior wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could nt that happen to programming as well ?

I'm in the compiler business. Compilers handle an increasing amount of routine programming tasks, but programmers respond to that by making more complex programs, so the creative input needed by programmers is about the same.

What do you think about the API ification of things because of AWS or Google Spanner database . Everything is abstracted away so you're just gluing things together.

Its not AI but it turns even complex projects into things that anyone can learn to do in months . I can't imagine this remaining so well paying in such circumstances.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#37

Post by maxxxxx »

WalterBright wrote: post #24
hkmurakami wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought something similar as well. If you have one Bill Gates and everyone else making $80k, then Bill Gates has a pretty low upper limit on consumption of scarce assets, and thus goods and services are not bid up. But when a larger and larger number of people make more than their peers, then you start to have a bidding war for scarce goods (ex: housing, education, etc). Hats what you have in the Bay Area. Mor…

Industries that have government heavily involved in (health care, education, housing) have seen huge runups in prices. Ones government is not involved in (such as software) have seen precipitous price declines.

You can't blame everything on government involvement. You can't just not get involved in heath care, education or housing, You may get sick, to get a job you often need a degree and you need to live somewhere. But you can live without an iphone.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#38

Post by scientistem »

megaman22 wrote: post #21
hkmurakami wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik electrician is still a solid blue collar job?

Electrician can be a very good blue collar job - if I hadn't gone to college, I'd have thought real hard about doing electrical in a trade school. I'd be sort of surprised to see it significantly automated any time in the near future, as well.

I wouldn’t even call it a blue collar job: the labor isn’t very intense, the pay is excellent, and it’s very stable; easily salariable compared to seasonal and contract work (though you can contract if you want).

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#39

Post by scientistem »

francisofascii wrote: post #35
Animats wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apply for a job as a PHP programmer and see what you're offered.

Actually, there is a quite a bit of jobs that require PHP considering the plethora of sites built on Drupal and WordPress. I guess it depends where you live.

I actually intepreted that as the jobs require a very low level of skill and provide low compensation—exactly what you’d expect from making a job “blue collar”.

Re: Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well

#40

Post by banderman »

thewarrior wrote: post #26
WalterBright wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An electrician in 1880 did a lot of design work. One of 1920 (and today) does it by rote - they just follow canned rules and procedures already worked out. It's all coded into regulations, too, so there's little flexibility. An electrical engineer, on the other hand, does design work.

Could nt that happen to programming as well ?

Isn't that what being a Software Engineer or Software Architect is?
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