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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?

#111
> doctors, lawyers

Doctors only book so many patients a day. Lawyers are also working for a limited number of clients.

An app I did myself (on top of a FOSS base), released independently, was downloaded millions of times within a year.

Google back in 2011 had one billion MAU. In that context, a $150k+ a year salary (plus equity etc.) for helping provide the content for those one billion MAU is plausible.

Also Google is a web intermediary for web sites with content for consumers. So Google benefits from the work of anyone who puts up a web site, contributes to Wikipedia etc. as well.

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

#112
post #64

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…

There is a bubble on salaries in the Bay area. Only because of the real estate bubble that has been artificially created there. It will eventually burst as more companies will seek to hire in cheaper areas.

Top companies pay similar salaries in Seattle and New York. New York real estate isn't as bubble-like as SV, and Seattle's is possibly bubble-like but still about half the price as SV.

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

#113
post #95
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poland, 7 years, less than $50k here. If there's any bubble then I don't think it'll affect the "value proposition" that we ultimately are.

How much do doctors and lawyers typically make in Poland?

Lawyers: ~$33k average, partners get up to $200k.

Doctors: varies wildly, but $20k seems to be the norm with enough hours. The base salary is outrageously low, so many doctors take additional shifts - especially in private clinics where they are compensated much better.

Experienced specialists can count on up to $80k.

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

#114
A key issue beyond the supply and demand of programmers is the wider technological transformation of the economy. Programmers are highly remunerated because they provide massive market value to the capital owners and they do that essentially by automating, by teaching machines to do things previously done by people. This activity seems to create significant capital accumulation and machines don't usually forget what they learn or need to be reprogrammed from scratch: once a problem is solved, its solution is frequently made available to other programmers who can build on it to solve even more complex problems previously thought intractable for computers.

If this continues unabated for the long run and we don't hit an intrinsic automation plateau, it can logically have two possible outcomes: either programming will become the main employment of humans and source of income, which seems unlikely, or the capital owners with the help of programmers will manage to make large swaths of the population unemployable.

Another feature of technological capitalism is that it highly conducive to monopoly rents, walled gardens and strong barriers of entry. The early mover advantage of Microsoft on the operating system market still earns it billions in pure rents. So competitors who would like to change and equalize the earnings distribution, for example by employing programmers in another country, will be in general unsuccessful.

I know it doesn't seem like that now, on the contrary, the tech industry seems like a wild west of endless possibilities and opportunity for all, but it's worth pondering if the apparent "tech boom" isn't really a massive economic shift for a very different, highly polarized and almost feudal society, with the programmers acting as the samurai, the sell-swords used by capital-owning rulers.

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

#115
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The dot com bubble caused a salary bust because so many companies that were employing lots of people went out of business. This put a glut of programmers on the market with nowhere to work, which predictably pushed salary levels down. This is nothing like the current environment, where there is a consistent demand for programming talent which outstrips the supply, and the industry as a whole is far more stable. Of co…

I'm certainly not claiming that the future will necessarily resemble the past. But GP was making an argument from the past, so in that context we should certainly at least try to get the past right as much as possible. (And there was (I am told http://philip.greenspun.com/research/tr1408/lessons-learned.... ) the '80s, where the salary slump was driven by increased supply rather than a collapse in demand.)

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

#116

Well. I live in Sweden and I don't make anywhere close to these values. Not even remotely close. I have been programming for 12 years and I like to think I'm not half bad at it. So is peak programming just in the valley or should I be worried as well?

You have a social safety net and actual workers’ rights that make up for at least some of the difference.

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

#117
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not noticed these technical shifts per se. What I have noticed is that mature engineers move on and do other things and new ones reinvent the wheel with some new fancy language or term which then becomes the new way of doing things, and the cycle repeats. Sometimes there is a great deal of value when a new level of abstraction happens but I wouldnt call this a shift, it's just progression. Many of the underlyi…

When I talk about shifts, I'm referring to things like the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, which increase the net-demand for software and along with an entirely new specializations of knowledge. While there are some key concepts to things like databases, the fact remains that your 1985 database would not be considered sufficient in todays world: It would have too many limitations, lack features we now take…

i'll just leave this here https://books.google.com/books/about/Distributed_Databases.h...

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

#118

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 is #6 nationally for software engineering and #60 overall... rankings are imprecise, but that might have something to do with it. Top students from all over the country compete for a small number of spots at top 10 schools.

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

#119

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 t…

You don’t have to be a top 5% engineer. You just have to pass their leetcode interviews and be good enough to not get fired and also able to deal with working for a massively evil company (except possibly for Netflix and Apple).

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

#120
post #82
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I graduated from a no-name college shortly after the dotcom bubble burst and it was still easy for me to find a job paying $60k/year, which was plenty to live off as a single person in the SF bay area at the time.

Okay, but that doesn't seem to contradict the conventional wisdom that the hiring maket was significantly better there (from the developer's POV) a year or two earlier.
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