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Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

blog.cerebralab.com

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Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#261

Post by opportune »

commandlinefan wrote: post #32

> 3. Most "good" programmers move to the high-income countries > Again, fairly hard to find data on this I'm surprised it's hard to find data, but yes, this consistently matches my observation over the past 30 years and four different geographic locations: very few American programmers are American at all. When I did my master's in CS 15 years ago, I was almost always the only person in the room born in the United St…

Yeah, this. Most people I’ve worked with aren’t American (although Canadians+Americans together are a plurality or maybe even a majority). It makes sense that if you want to make money and are OK with living in the US, you would move here to take advantage of the significant pay arbitrage.

Although CS masters in the US are glorified paid immigration programs so it’s not a perfect comparison. But this also holds up in industry.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#262

Post by matz1 »

contravariant wrote: post #96
matz1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This remind me of the recent Microsoft AI that can write code demo. You give the AI instruction and explanation in English, preferably as clear and as detailed as possible and you get back code. Essentially its very similar workflow when working with offshore developer, in the future you could in theory replace the offshore dev with AI, except with much less latency.

With a precise and clear enough description you could throw it at a python interpreter and run it. Though things could get fun if AI can enable more flexible declarative programming.

if you could throw it at a python interpreter and run it then that wouldn't be english.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#263

Post by matz1 »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #164
matz1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This remind me of the recent Microsoft AI that can write code demo. You give the AI instruction and explanation in English, preferably as clear and as detailed as possible and you get back code. Essentially its very similar workflow when working with offshore developer, in the future you could in theory replace the offshore dev with AI, except with much less latency.

We had a similar technology for a long time. You give the computer instructions and explanation in a language, as clear as detailed as possible and you get back machine code. It's called a compiler.

>You give the computer instructions and explanation in a language, as clear as detailed as possible and you get back machine code

I specifically referring to English though, not computer language.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#264

Post by tuatoru »

belval wrote: post #249
koala_man wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your manager wants to put diesel in a gasoline car, you often have to agree If you are using this as a metaphor for a decision you personally consider stupid, then maybe. If it's actually putting diesel in a gas car, then no, I can't imagine any case in which an intern couldn't safely tell that to their director or CEO.

It puzzles me whenever a thread like this comes up on HN, how I either always had reasonable managers or people are exaggerating a lot. When something is obviously not going to work akin to diesel in a gas car, I have never met someone who wasn't willing to at least take a second look at their "solution".

You always had reasonable managers.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#265

Post by [deleted] »

29athrowaway wrote: post #179
silvestrov wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another aspect of culture: how one-sided the communication is. Silicon Valley and Scandinavian cultures are very flat, so it is possible for "the man on the floor" to tell management that it doesn't work to put diesel into a gasoline car. In authoritarian cultures this would be a mistake as it's seen as embarrassing the management by saying they made a mistake. If you want to continue being employed then it is much b…

Having worked in both of the locations you mentioned I can say that Scandinavian culture is much less dogmatic than the American engineering culture. Scandinavians communicate more directly. At the moment of giving feedback, Americans lack initiative, communicate vaguely and avoid confrontations.

[deleted]

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#266

Post by cryptonector »

> 3. Most "good" programmers move to the high-income countries

It might be interesting to look at the `N_programmers * AVG_salary` for various countries. Maybe no explanation is needed for disparities if most programmers aren't affected by them because they've all moved to where the high salaries are. Though I doubt this is an explanation.

Also, let's check back on this a year and two and three from now, when we've fully absorbed the impact of covid-19 shutdowns on the knowledge industry.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#267

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

Frost1x wrote: post #108
silvestrov wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another aspect of culture: how one-sided the communication is. Silicon Valley and Scandinavian cultures are very flat, so it is possible for "the man on the floor" to tell management that it doesn't work to put diesel into a gasoline car. In authoritarian cultures this would be a mistake as it's seen as embarrassing the management by saying they made a mistake. If you want to continue being employed then it is much b…

Business culture in the US is also quite authoritarian. There have been decades of strategic peeling away of labor rights to put labor in a more leveraged situation, leading to restricted freedoms. Sure, you can tell your manager/director/CIO/CTO their choice is idiotic but the fact is, you'll be fired instantly and depending on circumstances, you may be in a bad situation financially and future career wise. The very…

I agree. I worked in some American companies (in US) and did not like the oppressive environment. Now I am back in Central Asia, where I was born, and the employers are way more relaxed here.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#268

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

bsder wrote: post #236
Frost1x wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business culture in the US is also quite authoritarian. There have been decades of strategic peeling away of labor rights to put labor in a more leveraged situation, leading to restricted freedoms. Sure, you can tell your manager/director/CIO/CTO their choice is idiotic but the fact is, you'll be fired instantly and depending on circumstances, you may be in a bad situation financially and future career wise. The very…

> Business culture in the US is also quite authoritarian. You ain't seen nothin' then. Try challenging an elder boss in Japan (or China or South Korea, but Japan is especially bad) and watch what happens, for example. I find that very few cultures allow challenging authority like the US does.

On the other hand, Japanese or Korean boss would not spit some random bullshit, because he/she would emabarass themselves and will have to leave. Never happens with an American boss.

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#269

Post by [deleted] »

gwern wrote: post #202

To toss in a second-hand anecdote: I once asked someone who worked at/with companies screening Africans for diamonds in the rough, smart guys who could do programming but were being paid peanuts, like $10k/year, and paying them a multiple of that for outsourcing, why it wasn't such a great idea, when Africa seems to have so many under-utilized people. He said that despite expectations, they were not much cheaper to h…

[deleted]

Re: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

#270

Post by hzhou321 »

To do a good programming job, is "skills" the most important factor? The blog seems to assume so, which leads to the confusion. Scientifically, when conclusion seems confusing or contradicting, challenge your assumption.

I think a very important factor in a good programming job is communication. It takes communication to convey requirement and expectation, it takes communication to understand requirement and expectation, and it takes communication to spot and clarify misunderstanding and confusion. Reviewing my own work, I think I am dealing with clarifying misunderstanding and confusion most of the time. It is rare I gave a code review and the author understand my comment spot on right away. There is always some misunderstanding and cross-talking. I think the issue is so bad that even within the same department where we can freely discuss face to face with a whiteboard, we often ended up avoiding touching controversial code, avoid refactoring, instead embracing add-on orthogonal patches, and only focusing the review on trivial stuff such as white spaces and test failures. Our software sucks because of this communication factor. In fact, I think the OOP prevails because it allows us to sidestep the communication to some extent (at the cost of bad code (but functional) ).

The communication factor dictates that we hire people within the culture, within the location, and within the education background -- regardless of the correlation to skills.

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