Are We in the Middle of a Programming Bubble? • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by typetehcodez » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

CaptainJustin wrote: post #13

I view it more as a gold rush. Creating the future has never been more accessible and companies are in a terrible rush to find their 'plot' and start finding nuggets. Software engineers are the people who can do the work and so demand go up. The returns (value) these ventures produce warrant continued competition in winning decent talent and the price gets pegged in some range for some region in some category / indus…

To further add to your point: developers now have control over the means to production and, unlike the industrial revolution, we programmers do not need access to capital and expensive manufacturing equipment to build a product. We just need some technical skills that are essentially free to learn. And as the best of us figure out how to add the entrepreneurial talent stack into our own, existing corporations have to pay us as consultants or continue to increase pay to keep that talent. In time, I think we will see it is the corporate structure that is in a bubble. (See "Developer Hegemony" by Erik Dietrich)

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

#242

Post by gammateam » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

ryan93 wrote: post #164

gammateam wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG companies have engineers staying just 2 years because they made enough money. Your statistics don't account for time. Sure its not "easy" to get into those companies, but it isn't an outlier to get into them either. The simple reality is this: If you are an engineer at a publicly traded tech company, it is customary to get RSUs and Refresher RSUs. These have compounding effects as their vesting schedules start…

People have enough money after two years!?!?!

Yes a lot of people are content with their earnings from 2 years at a FAANG. They aren't thinkings its enough to live off of forever, but its enough for:

A house somewhere else and never paying rent again

or

A downpayment on a home in a high priced area where demand doesn't seem to stop, which is always a low-interest leveraged investment that has cashflow opportunities

or

"Taking a break" which means years of luxury at every music festival and socialite event while optionally networking and pursuing other fulfilling money-making activities, with almost no opportunity cost of having 'gaps' on your resume

or

Riding off the resume entry of being an "ex-Googler" to secure advisory roles, raise capital easier, get C-level titles at someone else's startup

or

Joining another FAANG company at a higher premium

and/or

Leaving the company so you can write covered calls on all those shares you earned, for passive income

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

#243

Post by enthalpyx » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

"stress"

Being the engineer on-call when the website/service/app is down and the company is losing $xMM/minute while you debug the problem is the very definition of stress.

Some companies like Google cordon this responsibility off to SREs. While Amazon has started developing a similar job family, the burden of supporting critical services still largely falls to software engineers.

While software engineering is certainly not the worst job from a stress perspective, my experience (particularly with operations at Amazon) is far from the zen-like state the author describes. It can also be pretty exciting.

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

#244

Post by stevebmark » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

We're in a machine learning bubble for sure, it's what engineers are flocking to for higher salaries. 90% of it isn't useful, but companies haven't yet learned there's almost no return on investment.

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

#245

Post by empath75 » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

duderific wrote: post #89

leoc wrote: 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…

If the current tech bubble bursts, it’s going to absolutely wreck amazon, fb and google—the three companies that actually gain most of the benefit from all these tech companies blowing their funding on ads and AWS spend.

Those are the companies driving up salaries — once that rollercoast ride stops I imagine that there are going to be mass layoffs and salary readjustments for years afterwards.

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

#246

Post by tomrod » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

natalyarostova wrote: post #52

amrrs wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I came in to the pydata library after extended time in Matlab/Octave. Learning there first was terrible for programming basics (e.g. polymorphism) but was excellent for ensuring I knew what a given algorithm does/should do.

I highly recommend spending some time in C/C++, Go, or Julia to pydata-first folks that ask.

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

#247

Post by mathdog » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

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…

> Can this last forever? Of course not, nothing lasts forever. But wondering why the wealthiest corporations in the world pay their workers high salaries is perhaps like wondering why water is wet. Software has a low marginal cost, and the rest is basic incentives for the corporations.

Agree

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

#248

Post by friedman23 » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

devoply wrote: post #207

seem_2211 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't keep a significant portion of the upside without taking on more risk.

> Privatizing profits and socializing losses refers to the practice of treating firms' earnings as the rightful property of their shareholders, while treating losses as a responsibility that society as a whole must shoulder, for example through taxpayer-funded subsidies or bailouts.

which software businesses have been bailed out by the government?

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

#249

Post by marvin » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #116

jdmoreira wrote: post #4

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.

That's as close to a lifestyle choice as you can get it. It sure does feel like kind of a ripoff when you're paying 60% of your annual salary in taxes and fees and cost the state somewhere around 5% of that amount, but maybe the perception shifts as we get older and use the public services more.

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

#250

Post by Consultant32452 » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:16 PM UTC

ttcbj wrote: post #38

I think there are a number of caveats to this article: 1. The amount that a company can sustainably pay you is dependent on how much value your efforts have in its industry. Software has significantly higher margins than medicine, law, or almost anything else. As long as those margins are sustained, it is possible to pay high salaries. (As buffet says: I'd rather work for a mediocre company in a great industry than a…

#4 is a lesson I'm still struggling with in spite of nearly a decade in "leadership" roles. I've been discouraged from coding beyond tiny situationally dependent snippets to teach a more junior programmer something. My value is no longer in producing things directly, my value is in being the guy on the conference call where the customer says "If Consultant32454 says it will work, it will work.". I understand this is valuable, but not having a "thing" I built with my own hands at the end of the day is difficult for me. I wonder if this is a result of low class upbringing or something... Plenty of people in the management/executive class seem to be able to accept credit/responsibility for things they managed into existence rather than produced into existence... It's hard to accept being a force multiplier rather than a force, if that makes sense.