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Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

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Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#51

Post by pmiller2 »

devoply wrote: post #31
jjeaff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if another programmer is willing to make me a million for only 25%? That's how markets work. You get paid what what the market will bear, not what you "should" make.

As I said good programmers are underpaid. They should figure out how much they are making their companies and ask for more. The market can often afford to pay more, if you just negotiate better. You can also unionize to get your employers closer to what you are worth to them rather than what they are worth to you.

Suppose I’m working on pulling out some functionality from a large, monolithic application. How much am I making my company?

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#52

Post by natalyarostova »

amrrs wrote: post #26
shantanubala wrote: post #9

I think programmers tend to underestimate the difficulties involved with becoming a good programmer because once you're good, you only see the even steeper learning curve ahead of you. Some of the smartest people I know work in other domains: biology, chemistry, and even physics. They are sometimes baffled by tasks that seem trivial to me, and I'm under no impression that I'm more intelligent than them. I simply spec…

Absolutely right and something we see in Data science too. Coding is a domain where we work cross-architecture. I can't be just a useful Python programmer - I can only be a useful Python programmer in Marketing automation or some Business associated with it. The fat package makes programmers not realize this.

As a data scientists who considers himself moderately good with the pydata library set, I realized the other day if you took those 5 libraries away from me, I'm not sure I have that much to offer in terms of my programming abilities. I don't necessarily feel bad about that, although it did give me pause.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#53

Post by spamizbad »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #25
shantanubala wrote: post #9

I think programmers tend to underestimate the difficulties involved with becoming a good programmer because once you're good, you only see the even steeper learning curve ahead of you. Some of the smartest people I know work in other domains: biology, chemistry, and even physics. They are sometimes baffled by tasks that seem trivial to me, and I'm under no impression that I'm more intelligent than them. I simply spec…

> I think programmers tend to underestimate the difficulties involved with becoming a good programmer because once you're good, you only see the even steeper learning curve ahead of you. Good programmers I know also overestimate the skill needed to earn high salary in this job. You don't have to go up the learning curve much; these days, you just learn yourself JS a little bit and go for a webdev job, making shit cod…

> Nah, that's like wondering why is this ice block sitting on a hot plate and still solid. The answer is: because it just got put there, and it'll melt in a moment. So too, will end high salaries, as most low-hanging fruits get eaten by software, made by mass-produced cohort of programmers.

Our industry has its share of cycles, but this, in my view, is largely wishful thinking on the part of people. Nothing wrong with optimism but...

Every 5-10 years there's a "technical shift" that forces everyone to reevaluate how they build software or more importantly what they build, and the race starts all over again. The ice block is removed from the hot plate is replaced by a bigger, colder block of ice. And when these technical shifts aren't taking place, the bar for what constitutes as "good software" inches upward.

If your standards for acceptable software were frozen in time in 1985: using modern hardware and software toolchains, you could accomplish in one day what used to take a small team an entire month. But if I delivered, say, what passed for a "good enough" database in 1985, it would resemble someone's 200-level CS final project rather than a commercially-viable piece of software.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#54

Post by tanilama »

shantanubala wrote: post #9

I think programmers tend to underestimate the difficulties involved with becoming a good programmer because once you're good, you only see the even steeper learning curve ahead of you. Some of the smartest people I know work in other domains: biology, chemistry, and even physics. They are sometimes baffled by tasks that seem trivial to me, and I'm under no impression that I'm more intelligent than them. I simply spec…

> I think programmers tend to underestimate the difficulties involved with becoming a good programmer because once you're good, you only see the even steeper learning curve ahead of you.

But that is no definition of bubble. Bubble, at a very basic level, means there is a lot of capital flowing within, it has little to do with whether how difficult your job is.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#55

Post by pcstl »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #34
sharkweek wrote: post #15

I dunno about a bubble, implying it will pop in some catastrophic way. But will market forces correct the above average salary? I think so. More young students than ever are learning to code, which is naturally going to increase the labor pool. The supply of software engineers is going to go up in the next 10-20 years (as will the demand, though! But I still think supply will outpace). This seems like it would mostly…

> More young students than ever are learning to code More young students than ever are being taught the utmost basics. But is it true that more people than ever are pursuing it in the sense of seeking professional mastery over the craft? A proxy for this might be population-relative CS program enrollment and graduation rates. It would also be interesting to know how this is scaling compared to the overall volume of p…

As far as I can tell, CS enrollment is at an all-time high.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#56

Post by wonderwonder »

Could not read the article, site is down; with that said I don't think we are in a bubble. Software is essentially eating the world, replacing non software jobs. Just look at grocery stores and the proliferation of self checkouts. Then look at Amazon's concept stores where you just walk out with whatever you want and your account is charged. All of these technologies lead to reduced non tech jobs but an increase in the need for software engineers.

Self driving taxis and trucks are another example of the potential of software to replace non technical jobs. As automation and technology increases it appears that the need for non technical workers will decrease and the need for skilled engineers will continue to increase. The future is coming and software / hardware engineers are it's architects. Unfortunately the chances that non technical workers will lose jobs goes hand in hand with that.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#57

Post by angarg12 »

sciencewolf wrote: post #20

How many software engineers are truly making over $300k as a rank-and-file? Let's be generous and say there's about a dozen or so companies that routinely pay engineers that well. Each FAANG will have on average, 10k engineers? So that's around 120,000 out of an estimated ~20 million developers (from a quick google search). That's around 0.6% earning pay in a "bubble" situation, the rest being senior folks or executi…

Let's put it another way: we are looking at the top 1% of software engineers. Is it surprising that they have incomes in the 1% range?

For comparison, in Amazon, Senior and above engineers count for ~20% of the total, and those are the ones pulling +300k regularly. So only the top 20% of one of the top companies are getting such compensation.

And to follow the article, this won't last forever. Whenever the next stock market crash comes, almost half of that compensation (the equity based one) will almost vanish. But maybe on the next bull market we will see a similar situation (remember people in the 90s making 250k?).

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#58

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sharkweek wrote: post #39
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More young students than ever are learning to code More young students than ever are being taught the utmost basics. But is it true that more people than ever are pursuing it in the sense of seeking professional mastery over the craft? A proxy for this might be population-relative CS program enrollment and graduation rates. It would also be interesting to know how this is scaling compared to the overall volume of p…

Anecdotal, but the CS program overtook the business school at the University of Washington a few years back, my alma matter. I remember when I was there, the CS classes were for NERDS and now here we are, everyone wants in.

UW CSE has always been supply constrained, not demand constrained. Even back more than 20 years ago when I entered the program.

Re: Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble?

#59

Post by akhilcacharya »

sciencewolf wrote: post #20

How many software engineers are truly making over $300k as a rank-and-file? Let's be generous and say there's about a dozen or so companies that routinely pay engineers that well. Each FAANG will have on average, 10k engineers? So that's around 120,000 out of an estimated ~20 million developers (from a quick google search). That's around 0.6% earning pay in a "bubble" situation, the rest being senior folks or executi…

> Each FAANG will have on average, 10k engineers?

That's..really low. FB has around that many, Google has like 50k, and from what I've heard Amazon has about the same number or more.

Considering that everyone I know got >= $100k base out of undergrad regardless of location I don't think it's as uncommon as you would think anymore.

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