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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?

#171

Post by gcb0 »

spamizbad wrote: post #53
TeMPOraL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wit…

your whole point is extremely backwards! software in 1985 was more "complete" than today. Even CD roms shipped with magazines had to support more windows variations than "good software" today supports of browsers! not to mention that every corporation with a software team also had usability and QA teams. Software quality and resiliency was much better than today. Then in the 90s it took a dive because online made "first to market wins", and it have been downhill from there.

so, your software concepts from 85 would be overkill today, not lacking.

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

#172

Post by fgandiya »

esoterica wrote: post #131
pmiller2 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would rather make $500k a year and have "no rights" than have strong labor rights protecting me from being fired from my $50k/year job.

I doubt the difference would be that dramatic (see Hollywood actors and athletes). Also, what's the point of 500K if you're prohibited from working on personal projects, open source and have non-competes, no vacation out leave time and NDAs to deal with? Maybe if you're willing to deal with it for a few years so you can retire early and loaded?

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

#173

Post by kerng »

convolvatron wrote: post #117
spamizbad wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'm not sure why you get downvoted, I'll upvote you.

The "modern" database systems are now going back to the exact design principles that the books you refer to solved long time ago. There is tons of research, dissertations,.. that focuses on this from decades ago.

Its just now that the new systems realize that these problems actually exist.

If you dont know the history of a certain field and what came out, you repeat and make the same mistakes again. This seems to also apply to software engineering.

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

#174

Post by Tade0 »

jdmoreira wrote: post #144
Tade0 wrote: 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.

$50k in Poland? Not bad! This is from payscale.com: Average Mid-Career Software Developer Salary in Stockholm $61,262

$50k in Poland? Not bad!

I was surprised to find that at least in Warsaw this is entirely possible.

There's even this ridiculous Facebook group named "Praca dla Programistów - powyżej 20000zł" (Jobs for Programmers - over PLN 20000 - that's monthly) where offers start at ~$64k.

I mean, where was all this back in 2014 when I was scraping by for $12k?

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

#175

Post by OlafM »

I reckon there are 3 factors here that determine the salaries, one being mentioned in the article:

1. Equity Most high "salaries" are more sharing of the profit or stock then mere salary. Lawyers become partners and thus share in the profit the firm makes (same goes for consultants)

2. Supply and demand There are way more positions than people willing to do the work.* So the ones who do, can pick 'n choose there employer. Thus work conditions improve, as do salaries. Most other professions mentioned are high stake jobs, but with more willing to do it * * . So once you're in, it is still possible for the employer to demand hard work, because you're more replaceable.

3. Scalability The work of a doctor is limited to the amount of patients. Lawyers can do large cases (then they get paid much), but most of them will do work that effect a limited amount of people Code (especially at the big 5) reaches literally billions of people. So the values you can possibly add is huge.

* I think it is still kind of weird how many people don't even try to learn how to code (or scripting) while working in excel all the time, it's a magical barrier, few dare to cross.

* * I don't know why, but I would guess it's because (i) The sciences are viewed as arcane or simply unreachable for many people (self-claimed "I just can't do math") (ii) those job tend to have more social status (think Suits for lawyers & Grey's Anatomy for doctors, to name a few)

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

#176

Post by Animats »

zanny wrote: post #160
TeMPOraL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

End user tasks might be able to be automated into dumb programming jobs, but companies have tried for decades to down-source their programming and it always falls flat on its face. Even if you have library support to hand hold your budget coders, even if you use a lot of them, even if you give them all the time in the world, they will produce more complicated, less coherent, less stable, buggier, and harder to modify…

"any programming environment you can never stop someone from iterating by index over a binary searchable tree for a specific element in it."

SQL solved that problem a long time ago. You write SELECT, the query optimizer figures out how, using any available indices.

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

#177

Post by esoterica »

fgandiya wrote: post #172
esoterica wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather make $500k a year and have "no rights" than have strong labor rights protecting me from being fired from my $50k/year job.

I doubt the difference would be that dramatic (see Hollywood actors and athletes). Also, what's the point of 500K if you're prohibited from working on personal projects, open source and have non-competes, no vacation out leave time and NDAs to deal with? Maybe if you're willing to deal with it for a few years so you can retire early and loaded?

There are no non-competes in California, and most of the best paying tech companies have decent vacation policies (though maybe not as good as the norm in Sweden). Lots of people have hobbies other than coding, so they wouldn't mind not coding on personal projects after work. Is it really that hard to imagine that people might be willing to make fairly minor sacrifices in exchange for several hundred thousand dollars a year?

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

#178

Post by spamizbad »

gaius wrote: post #153
spamizbad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wit…

your standards for acceptable software were frozen in time in 1985 Haha in 1985 Amiga had a multitasking GUI desktop in 512k and 7Mhz. Now we have millions of times more computational power and struggle to deliver an experience as crisp and satisfying. I wish people still made software like it was 1985, that actually used the full power of the hardware for something useful...

Yeah but Exec/Kickstart/Workbench was missing some basic niceties that are table stakes today:

- No process or kernel security (processes could rewrite kernel code)

- Processes could effectively disable the scheduler

- Supported only a single, fixed address space: both a massive limitation and a performance hack that made the system bearable to use

- Single-user

- No security model

There are embedded applications these days where not having these features are deak-breakers. Let me assure you: if you re-implemented the original Amiga OS feature set it too will be screaming fast. The tricky part is keeping it fast once you start adding protection and additional functionality on top of it.

And largely what happened when you tried to implement more complicated applications on top of these primitive systems is that they would crash the entire system, constantly.

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

#179

Post by esoterica »

pmiller2 wrote: post #159
esoterica wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather make $500k a year and have "no rights" than have strong labor rights protecting me from being fired from my $50k/year job.

Well, do you make 500k? If not, then why not? It’s possible in the US, but the median US household income is 1/8 that. The vast majority of workers, probably including most software engineers, ate better off at $50k but not having to worry about insurance if they get laid off, and getting 3-6 weeks notice when being let go (among other things).

The people pulling bubbly SV comp numbers (i.e. the topic of the thread) are not part of that majority though.

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

#180

Post by ams6110 »

howard941 wrote: post #97
akhilcacharya wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>= $100K outside of a major city for a green undergrad doesn't seem typical. Do you hang with grads from big name schools?

Agree, in the Midwest USA for example even very experienced developers are barely into six figures.

Of course cost of living is a fraction of what it is in SV. And quality of life is (subjectively) better.

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