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Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

#31

Post by mynameishere »

javagram wrote: post #23
jstewartmobile wrote: post #18

" Today, Mr. Davis, 27, is a cybersecurity specialist working on an incident response team at the company. He earns above $40,000, more than twice his salary in retail. " Isn't that like what people at Costco make for running a cash register and being friendly? And who do you think has more job security? edit: To be less coy about it, if you are any good at this stuff and are only making "above $40k", you are getting…

Costco jobs are an outlier in retail as I understand it. $40k/ year in Georgia may be a liveable salary, and if this is an entry level job for him there’s probably the possibility to increase that salary by a 1.5x factor or more over 5 years if he can continue career growth (not sure exactly what a cybersecurity job path looks like, but I assume there is some upward mobility or increased ability to transfer to other…

Out of curiosity, what compels people to use terms like "liveable salary"? ("Living wage" used to be more common, but whatever.)

The median salary in the US is less than 32,000/year. Do you think half the country is failing at "living" in anything but a totally fantastical definition of the word "living"? It's a cheap propaganda term--obviously--so why use it? Is it just habit?

(https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html)

Re: Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

#32

Post by Chyzwar »

eropple wrote: post #26
Chyzwar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, the professional developers are paid well. However the more Jira and agile ideas takes over, you become more replaceable. Why? You're just a card-filling machine dealing with feature requests or problem reports. Agile do not make developer replaceable. If anything it empower developers to become on equal footing with everyone else. > And sure, the next developer may fill less cards, but they will improve with…

Agile shouldn't make developers more replaceable, but in my experience that's the effect of Scrum when wielded by many kinds of management. Stuff like "story points" rigged such that a problem that would take a week must be reduced to smaller--preferably parallelizable--micro-stories that have implicit context but no explicit dependencies so that the decision of farming it out to many juniors can be upheld. I'm not s…

Splitting the store into smaller tasks is better. It forces you to plan and communicate your progress. It allows for adjustments in both requirements and estimation. In many business cases, this approach is better. The senior developer should outperform multiple juniors anyway, in most cases, it is seniors that carry progress.

Toxic companies will twist a good process and make it horrible. It is not Agile or Scrum to blame.

Re: Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

#33

Post by colordrops »

blahblahthrow wrote: post #28
colordrops wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like manufacturing jobs, some software work could be completed by uneducated felons, and some work could only be done by PhD specialists. In fact I work at such a place that has an extremely wide gamut of both software engineers and production staff.

It's cool how nobody with a PhD ever committed a crime and only worthless, stupid people do crimes.

I would say the statistics would probably support your comment (besides the binary "nobody" and "only"), despite its obvious sarcasm. But that wasn't really my point. I had no intent to criticize certain classes. My point was that software people should get over the exceptionalism.

Re: Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

#34

Post by jaabe »

seibelj wrote: post #13

There has always been a bottom-tier category of software development, which is programming at the level of "tweaking wordpress websites". Not that all jobs at this level are doing this, but the technical skill is what it takes to setup, configure, operate, and tweak a wordpress website, which requires some understanding of how websites work, web servers, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, a plugin ecosystem, backups, etc. It is q…

Is fixing Wordpress really bottom-tier programming jobs? I know people who do that as freelance consultants, and they have a lot of freedom in their lives. Compare that to some enterprise developers who get hired right out of the university to build exactly what they are told, when they are told for long hours until they turn 36 and get replaced.

I mean, the latter requires a higher education, which is something that doesn’t exactly rain on people below the middle class, it also pays better and the problems are more interesting, but I know which of the two I’d personally prefer.

Re: Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

#35

Post by eropple »

Chyzwar wrote: post #32
eropple wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agile shouldn't make developers more replaceable, but in my experience that's the effect of Scrum when wielded by many kinds of management. Stuff like "story points" rigged such that a problem that would take a week must be reduced to smaller--preferably parallelizable--micro-stories that have implicit context but no explicit dependencies so that the decision of farming it out to many juniors can be upheld. I'm not s…

Splitting the store into smaller tasks is better. It forces you to plan and communicate your progress. It allows for adjustments in both requirements and estimation. In many business cases, this approach is better. The senior developer should outperform multiple juniors anyway, in most cases, it is seniors that carry progress. Toxic companies will twist a good process and make it horrible. It is not Agile or Scrum to…

Splitting things is not inherently bad.

Doing so in an attempt to commodify its application is not inherently bad.

Doing so in an attempt to commodify its application is definitely bad for developers' careers.

Re: Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

#36

Post by njepa »

marsrover wrote: post #2

I'm tired of the continued devaluation of my profession. Software development (I hate the term "coding") is not a manufacturing job, as much as some company wants it to be. And apprenticeships at body shops isn't going to create software developers, it's just going to create terrible software with obvious rot and decay as the years go own.

The devaluation of the profession happened a few decades ago, otherwise most of us wouldn't have been able to join the industry. Especially in the last decade most people in the industry have been cheering on the abstraction of what you do from what you make. At some point someone is going to call the bluff. I think people who join the industry now can do very well. And they probably see it more as a profession than most of the industry with all their social conventions. Then we can go back to the profession being valued for what it actually delivers.

Re: Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

#37

Post by catmanjan »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #3
marsrover wrote: post #2

I'm tired of the continued devaluation of my profession. Software development (I hate the term "coding") is not a manufacturing job, as much as some company wants it to be. And apprenticeships at body shops isn't going to create software developers, it's just going to create terrible software with obvious rot and decay as the years go own.

I'm a sysad in a software business. Sure, the professional developers are paid well. However the more Jira and agile ideas takes over, you become more replaceable. Why? You're just a card-filling machine dealing with feature requests or problem reports. And sure, the next developer may fill less cards, but they will improve with time. And if you don't work in a protected area (federal, etc), then you can buy card-fil…

Thats a funny way to look at it - if anything a sysadmin is more of a line worker (I do both dev and sysadmin so I'm not particularly invested in either), with enough software you could be replaced by BA's coming up with architecture requirements and a system like docker...

Just a perspective thing I wonder

Re: Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

#38

Post by mlevental »

marsrover wrote: post #2

I'm tired of the continued devaluation of my profession. Software development (I hate the term "coding") is not a manufacturing job, as much as some company wants it to be. And apprenticeships at body shops isn't going to create software developers, it's just going to create terrible software with obvious rot and decay as the years go own.

how can someone else "devalue" your profession? market forces decide the value of your profession. if you feel like your value is being diluted then I hate to break it to you but the truth is that you're not valuable anymore. you are welcome to upskill (in order to be able to deliver more value) or change careers.

like I love people praising the maw of capital (startups rule the world yay!) and simultaneously inveighing against. you have an issue? unionize (but you'll be excommunicated from the church of capital for trying to).

Re: Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

#39

Post by jinfiesto »

jaabe wrote: post #34
seibelj wrote: post #13

There has always been a bottom-tier category of software development, which is programming at the level of "tweaking wordpress websites". Not that all jobs at this level are doing this, but the technical skill is what it takes to setup, configure, operate, and tweak a wordpress website, which requires some understanding of how websites work, web servers, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, a plugin ecosystem, backups, etc. It is q…

Is fixing Wordpress really bottom-tier programming jobs? I know people who do that as freelance consultants, and they have a lot of freedom in their lives. Compare that to some enterprise developers who get hired right out of the university to build exactly what they are told, when they are told for long hours until they turn 36 and get replaced. I mean, the latter requires a higher education, which is something that…

Skill-wise, absolutely. Demand-wise, absolutely not. I'm a freelance developer now, but before I was a senior engineer at an international software company. I've considered several times pivoting to productized Wordpress consulting because of how easy it is and relatively scalable vs other kinds of software development. The level of demand for basic Wordpress setup/configuration is really pretty astounding.

Re: Tech Jobs Lead to the Middle Class, But Not for the Masses

#40

Post by true_tuna »

marsrover wrote: post #2

I'm tired of the continued devaluation of my profession. Software development (I hate the term "coding") is not a manufacturing job, as much as some company wants it to be. And apprenticeships at body shops isn't going to create software developers, it's just going to create terrible software with obvious rot and decay as the years go own.

Hate to break it to you, but well trained software engineers create terrible software too. Everywhere I’ve worked had some really boneheaded things going on. A reasonable person showing up with a keen eye to making things better can contribute a lot. We had one software engineer at YouTube just hunted down and deleted unused code. This reduced the maintenance complexity and generally made the codebase more maintainable. Was she a rockstar? Probably not, but every day she made the codebase better. For the most part, showing up, being reasonable and having a handle on the basics goes a long way. I’ll take that over a hotshot working on the wrong problem any day. There’s nothing like the smart man monkey trap to make otherwise intelligent people cause more harm than good.
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