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I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

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Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#191

Post by TheCoelacanth »

formercoder wrote: post #141
hanoz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software is still the most well paid, expanding industry of the last 40 years. In a lot of the world it's nowhere near as well paid as most of the professions which have comparable requirements in terms of the amount academic study, vocational apprenticeship and natural aptitude needed.

Even in the U.S. I’m not sure where this myth of SWE being the most well paid industry comes from. Try many finance jobs and big law, also medicine in certain specializations. They all pay much better than 95% of all software engineering jobs. It’s also well known that to be an incredibly high paid SWE, you need to be at a large public tech company. That means you’re making a huge bet on their stock - the folks makin…

The high-paying finance and big-law jobs are exceptionally competitive. You have to compare that to the pay at highly competitive jobs like at FANG, not just a bog-standard SWE job.

High-paying medical specializations take far more education than SWE does. You start your career at 30, not at 22 like SWEs do.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#193

Post by yayana »

troughway wrote: post #182
rpiguy wrote: post #135

If you can’t read a hopeful, personal story without screaming “Survivorship Bias” and plunging headfirst into self-victimhood, good luck with the rest of your life!

Saying nonsense such as "textbook survivorship bias" whenever anyone succeeds at anything is a tragic coping mechanism for some small subset of HN commenters. (Although I'm surprised you weren't downvoted into oblivion.)

"and you will too" is a big part of why this is the accurate TLDR.

I looked at the job market a few months ago and Carona aside, the market is in a terrible state. Companies are looking for unicorns that agree with them on style, chose all the right techs four years ago, are young or otherwise willing to accept abuse, and write like someone with 10 years experience teaching TDD style programming. On top of that they want you to agree that they have chosen a profitable business that will save the world.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#194

Post by charlesu »

austincheney wrote: post #131
533474 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Survivorship bias. Our system is broken, humanity needs a way to encourage success without punishing failure. Failure shouln't be hunger and homelessness...This will be another generation of hopeless dreamers lost in the looming financial depression. Why is our antidote hope against the adversity of going against all the odds?. Congrats to those who made it but more recognition to those who failed and managed to over…

> without punishing failure Why not punish failure?

Would you rather optimize for people succeeding or optimize for people not failing? They are not the same thing.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#195

Post by asdfman123 »

533474 wrote: post #117
brosinante wrote: post #100

You graduated in one of the most well paid, expanding industry of the last 40 years and made it. Excellent.

Survivorship bias. Our system is broken, humanity needs a way to encourage success without punishing failure. Failure shouln't be hunger and homelessness...This will be another generation of hopeless dreamers lost in the looming financial depression. Why is our antidote hope against the adversity of going against all the odds?. Congrats to those who made it but more recognition to those who failed and managed to over…

You should look at statistics about how many countries are rising out of desperate poverty and joining the rich world. It's gotten so good that we've forgotten what desperate poverty even looks like.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#196

Post by ianai »

rswail wrote: post #62
taurath wrote: post #17

What’s the basis for this recession being dotcom level for tech and engineers broadly?

It's likely to be dotcom level+ for all industries. At this point, casual and low level employees have been laid off, businesses are conserving cash and negotiating with their lenders. This is not a financial recession, its a completely different beast. We are in uncharted waters of a connected global economy being affected globally by the pandemic. The unemployment numbers are at least 10 million in the last 2 month…

6.61 million new unemployment filings last week bringing the total to over 16.6 million.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#197

Post by krustyburger »

arcticbull wrote: post #87
krustyburger wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can all agree that it was the first aquatic organism that bravely oozed onto dry land.

Uh, I think reddit is leaking

I’m not sure how serious you are, but that gate-keeping formulation (that another community is “leaking”) is just about the most Reddit-esque thing you could say.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#198

Post by sverona »

imgabe wrote: post #190
BigJono wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, but the title of the post literally contains "you will too". The author isn't only presenting an anecdote, they're making a claim that it applies to other's situations too. So I think it's fair game to call it out for being a single data point and not really relevant to anything that's happening right now.

Is it really that hard to distinguish reassuring rhetoric from a scientific claim? Like, if you got laid off and your friend said "Hey man, it'll be ok" do you demand a peer reviewed study proving it?

You know, at this point, I probably would. But I'm a depressed person about to graduate into the middle of what looks an awful lot like the end of the world as we know it, so...

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#199

Post by brianmcc »

ianai wrote: post #188
brianmcc wrote: post #169

My take on this - the guy's not boasting about accomplishments here, just trying to reassure some young people who will be feeling pretty anxious about their future. Why the hostility?

For one, the US just announced 6.61 million new unemployment filings last week to being their total to over 16 million over the last three. Meanwhile the stock market is on a rally this morning. I can’t emphasize enough how tone deaf that looks to me. I imagine those unemployed would feel pretty invisible and left out today in comparison.

But he's not saying "everything's currently super" he's saying "things are truly crappy right now but they will get better".

I don't see what's tone deaf there. He's pitching a message of long-term-reassurance at a time when many people might find that comforting - specifically the younger folks who've never seen cycles of down/up/down-again/up-again.

Re: I graduated into the dot com bust as a programmer and made it – you will too

#200

Post by dragonwriter »

rpiguy wrote: post #135

If you can’t read a hopeful, personal story without screaming “Survivorship Bias” and plunging headfirst into self-victimhood, good luck with the rest of your life!

I can read a hopeful, personal story without screaming survivorship bias.

OTOH, I can't read a generalization about the fate of others supported only by a a hopeful, personal story without screaming...“unwarranted generalization from personal experience”. To even rise to the level of survivorship bias, it’d have to be based on others experiences, but distorted by the relative visibility of the successful examples.

None of this has anything to do with self-victimhood, as I'm not in the graduating-into-the-current-situation group at whom the unwarranted generalization is directed.

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