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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

#121

Post by NotSammyHagar »

Mirioron wrote: post #117
nick_kline wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$300 a month is astoundingly low. What can they be doing for that amount of money, I'm amazed the cost is living is so low. If they got remote jobs to first world countries they could make 30 times as much if they could do java or c++.

It's difficult to get jobs like that though.

Yeah, but a 1000 a month for a remote worker who can do java would be feasible. Think about how much you could outsource with just one person's salary. Of course that's the fantasy of moving work away. I don't want that exactly, I'm fortunate and privileged to be an american programmer. But I need to justify my high salary by being very productive, careful, use good techniques and use good engineering practices.

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

#122

Post by threatofrain »

njepa wrote: post #77
crazygringo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. A friend of mine wanted to give back and started teaching programming to disadvantaged kids. He was shocked to ultimately discover that for most of his students, they simply didn't seem to be fundamentally capable of the abstract thought required, and it didn't matter how much time he spent with them. He came away from the experience fairly disillusioned, and I also never expected the difference in ability to…

I will disagree with most of the comments and say that the barrier to entry in programming isn't abstract though or critical thinking but quirks, inconsistencies and obscurities. That is really why programming favors having an interest in it. Because you need to some extent be excited about banging your head against the wall, in one way or another. That is why very smart people with PhDs aren't necessarily good progr…

All fields have quirks but I think software has among the fewest quirks, and at least software is very aware of its own quirks and tries to fix them. Law, medicine, or literature are by far more quirky subjects of study, areas of study which will never be amenable to the lens of something as simplifying as the lambda calculus.

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

#123

Post by hiram112 »

rayiner wrote: post #43
javagram wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The explosion in cost of living in places like SF has severely distorted peoples’ views of what is a reasonable salary in the vast majority of the country. $40k/year is a good salary almost anywhere in the US. It’s above the median starting salary for college graduates. For a couple, that’s probably $60,000-70,000 in household income. In my county you can get a 3BR house in a good school district for $200-230k, which…

Loudoun county or Maryland somewhere?

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

#124

Post by threatofrain »

Mirioron wrote: post #118
SantalBlush wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what bothers me about the concept of meritocracy. Sure, hard work is unquestionably a necessary component to success, but humans also require a large amount of capital investment (education, medicine, etc.) to reach their full potential; without that, they are doomed to the pool of unskilled labor. People are generally sorted into career hierarchies before they are even given a choice. What is the solution? I…

But I don't think that's really true in this day and age when it comes to programming. All the information to learn programming is out there. You have direct access to all of the lectures and materials of university courses.

I speculate there are more intelligent people than people with strong psychologies (those who are committed to learning), but by filtering for the intersection you're throwing lots of industry advantage away.

I also say that the problem people are bothered by is human suffering. Even if you don't like how meritocracy is conducted today, like maybe you feel that 50% of positions in society are not sufficiently merited, and even if you could snap your fingers and magically sort people by potential like an oracle, you are still left with a meritorious race where few people win and losers suffer bad.

As a society we should contemplate more deliberately the fate of losers.

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

#125

Post by alexgmcm »

Mirioron wrote: post #118
SantalBlush wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what bothers me about the concept of meritocracy. Sure, hard work is unquestionably a necessary component to success, but humans also require a large amount of capital investment (education, medicine, etc.) to reach their full potential; without that, they are doomed to the pool of unskilled labor. People are generally sorted into career hierarchies before they are even given a choice. What is the solution? I…

But I don't think that's really true in this day and age when it comes to programming. All the information to learn programming is out there. You have direct access to all of the lectures and materials of university courses.

Yeah, but then you still need the time and environment to be able to do it which can be hard if you are working long hours in two jobs or whatever to make rent.

Then you have the old problem that in many companies HR will still want a degree cert.

I think technical and professional education should be always available to people - it helps us all if people can reach their potential after all.

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

#126

Post by Grangar »

BadJokeReality wrote: post #85
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…

I work 9 to 6 on one of the most prestigious companies of the country, write high-quality C++ and Java for a complex domain almost on daily basis, and only make $15,000 a year. You people live in a great country.

Those are American salaries, you should account for cost of living and possible lack of employer-covered pension savings cost with that.

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

#127

Post by wincy »

BurningFrog wrote: post #59
crazygringo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. A friend of mine wanted to give back and started teaching programming to disadvantaged kids. He was shocked to ultimately discover that for most of his students, they simply didn't seem to be fundamentally capable of the abstract thought required, and it didn't matter how much time he spent with them. He came away from the experience fairly disillusioned, and I also never expected the difference in ability to…

I recommend to everyone to get outside your tribe and comfort zones and spend real time with people who are genuinely different than you. For me, the biggest such time was being a conscript in my small European country. Not a great time, but holy shit, did it open my eyes to the existence of people I would never have thought were real! Emigrating to California was comparatively a mild culture shock. Turns out I had m…

I work as a software professional in the US Midwest. A few times conversations about what the average American citizen looks like, and I remind my coworkers that it’s not us, and if they want to view a more accurate cross section of society to visit the DMV.

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

#128

Post by jhbadger »

neilv wrote: post #73
nostrademons wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's talking about the skill level, defined roughly as how much background knowledge you need to perform the job + how much judgment & concentration + how much creative/analytical thought. This doesn't necessarily correlate with either remuneration or work environment. There are plumbers in the Bay Area who make more than a theoretical physics post-doc and deal with a lot less stress, but most people would ag…

I don't think plumber vs. theoretical physics post-doc is a great example. Plumbing is critical skilled work, taking years to master, and is paid accordingly. I imagine plumbing is also very stressful, at times, such as when you're being careful not to flood a building, or avoiding breaking something that would require ripping open a floor to fix. Though plumbing guild training sounds not entirely different than acad…

It is interesting how the trade profession system of apprentices, journeymen, and masters resembles that of the academic system of grad students, postdocs, and PIs.

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

#129

Post by wincy »

crazygringo wrote: post #45
frankbreetz wrote: post #22

I worked teaching factory workers how to use a software, and can say that no matter how much education and training the majority of these people receive they are not going to become software developers, and it isn't just the older generation. It takes a certain level of abstract thought to be a software developer. The kind of software development jobs that a typical factory worker is capable of are quickly disappeari…

Indeed. A friend of mine wanted to give back and started teaching programming to disadvantaged kids. He was shocked to ultimately discover that for most of his students, they simply didn't seem to be fundamentally capable of the abstract thought required, and it didn't matter how much time he spent with them. He came away from the experience fairly disillusioned, and I also never expected the difference in ability to…

I haven’t seen it mentioned here but isn’t childhood nutrition and things like getting enough iodine, avoiding exposure to lead, and not getting abused huge in terms of how intelligent someone might become?

We might not be good at augmenting intelligence but it’s pretty easy to ruin potential, and all of these things are far more likely to happen to a disadvantaged child.

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

#130

Post by wincy »

ambicapter wrote: post #71
p1necone wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if abstract thought/problem solving and critical thinking need to be taught quite young to stick. Sort of similar to how much easier it is for young children to learn new languages compared to adults.

Wasn't there a HN post recently arguing about the lack of difference between adults and children learning languages?

I believe so, a large crux of the argument was that true immersion learning becomes much more difficult if not impossible as an adult because while children will just speak to other children normally, an adult will “tone it down” and talk to someone struggling with a new language, ultimately putting the adult at a disadvantage, since the adult might not hear as much natural language in the new tongue.
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