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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?

#71

Post by stickfigure »

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 the comparison to biology/chemistry/physics is interesting. Perhaps even more than software, there's a huge spread between the value of low and high performers - the best scientists make new discoveries that can be worth billions.

On the other hand, if you think the software industry has a hard time figuring out (at hiring time) who the high performers are... science is driven by serendipity. Nobody can predict who will find the billion dollar discovery. Not even past performance is a reliable indicator.

So it makes sense to me that the salary spread in science is relatively even. If they could reliably figure out who to dump money on, they would. On the other hand, the FAANG companies clearly believe their hiring practices can select out the high performers... and perhaps they are right? If they're paying 3-4X what everyone else does, they expect to get at least 3-4X the value.

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

#72

Post by jsjohnst »

pmiller2 wrote: post #51
devoply wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Depends on what the outcome is. If it makes the site 50% more performant on 25% less hardware, pretty easy to swag it. Same if the outcome makes developers on the team able to ship new functionality 20% faster with 33% fewer bugs.

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

#73

Post by tenaciousDaniel »

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…

Ironically, knowing that I can get a good salary with relatively shit skills makes me want to up my game. Because it seems like a situation that is inherently unstable.

Eventually it has to change (imo), either through companies becoming more scrupulous in their hiring, or through a massive flood of new devs.

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

#74

Post by leoc »

specialp wrote: post #44

This has been contemplated for many years and the price has gone almost nowhere but up. In the early to mid 2000's it was thought that most work would go to much cheaper India, and put highly compensated on shore workers out of jobs. It was tried to some extent, and failed. Then it was thought that lots of people would then fill the demand by going to university for CS and other related fields and saturate the market…

CS has been through a couple of salary busts in the US previously though, no? One in the '80s when all the then-new CS programs started to release graduates into the market, then another after the dot-com bubble; or have I been misinformed?

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

#75

Post by brandall10 »

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…

I remember back in the early aughts after the .dom implosion and the resultant uptake of outsourcing. There was a pervasive attitude that the high paying software jobs were not going to come back in any meaningful way. Yeah, well...

There will be a day, but when is hard to say. Thinking it's right around the corner is akin to the belief we're on the cusp of true AI. We're more pessimistic today than we were in the mid 80s. And non-programmers were programming with hypercard, filemaker pro, VBA, etc, back in the 90s.

There are of course former well paying jobs such as old-school front end devs (html/css/sprinkle of js) that are largely commoditized, but that's a given considering the low barrier to entry.

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

#76

Post by gizmo686 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #56

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 t…

It might not be a bubble, but what you are describing (which I agree with) is not stable. At the moment there is a boom in software development because there is a lot of software to build. But, as the industry stabilizes, we will find that once we have built the software, then the software is already built. At some point in the future, there will be an inflection point where there is simply less software work to be done today then there was yesterday. I don't know when this inflection point will happen, but it will happen.

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

#78

Post by adventured »

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…

You should probably narrow that since you're almost exclusively talking about the US market. There are a few pockets outside the US where you can earn that, it's just quite rare comparatively.

The US has anywhere from one to four million software developers, depending on your source. The BLS lists 1.2 million US software developers, with a $103,560 median pay (excludes benefits) in 2017.

You have closer to a 5% to 10% chance of earning $300,000 in total compensation as a software developer in the US, at some point in your career. Frequently high incomes don't last, there's a relatively high turnover because peak earning power only lasts so long, layoffs happen, specialization changes, job changes, et al.

The giant caveat to this, as everyone here knows, is you have a <1% chance of earning that outside of a small group of markets (ie it's very much not evenly distributed; if you're in New Orleans or El Paso you have almost a zero shot at it; if you're in SF or NY you have a legitimate shot at it).

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

#79

Post by pascalxus »

Great insights, but let's not forget, at most companies being a programmer is no picknick. Some places like amazon, things are so bad employees cry (that amazon article).

Also, don't forget, FAANG employees are the exception not the rule. Those are probably the top 5% in terms of engineering compensation, so it shouldn't be used as an average case for software engineers. You have to be a top 5% engineer or at least top 5% lucky to be in one of those companies.

And, let's not forget 400K isn't so much when your employer chooses to be in a location where housing costs an average of 3M to 4M and day care costs 30K per year (if you're lucky enough to get it).

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

#80

Post by jsjohnst »

pcstl wrote: post #55
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…

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

When you start from a very small base, it’s easier to continue to grow and reach “all-time highs”.
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