Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs • Hacker News Board

Re: Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

#11

Post by loteck » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 11:04 PM UTC

Eager, but not "too." Reading this site I see very little interest from developers in professionalizing their industry. That would require standards bodies, licensing, and many other layers of management and cruft.

Personally, I'd say good on developers for welcoming all comers. Hack the planet, you know?

Re: Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

#12

Post by vsareto » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

There's been decades to make a decent and well recognized credential like lawyers/doctors but the industry was having none of it, so I guess we are getting "commoditized".

Re: Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

#13

Post by fuckthemachine » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 11:06 PM UTC

wow, what a jerk. this is some seriously classist BS right here..

Re: Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

#14

Post by not2b » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

The short answer is yes, the bar for a developer is much, much lower than for a lawyer, a doctor, or an accountant, requiring much less training. Doesn't mean that there aren't some forms of development that require considerable skill and experience, but many positions just don't.

Re: Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

#15

Post by edoceo » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

For lawyers, passing the Bar and education are just one requirement. In some cases your criminal record simply classes you as not "good moral character" and you are denied admission to the Bar or school (w/o significant effort)

Re: Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

#16

Post by asdfman123 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

People who think devs can become blue collar workers don't understand that you actually have to be smart to be a good developer regardless of credentials.

The only difference between a programmer and a lawyer is a lawyer can't practice law on his own and get feedback without hurting anyone, and a programmer can get feedback from his laptop.

Re: Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

#17

Post by edoceo » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

Haha, A+ certification from the late 90s has entered the chat. MCSE anyone?

Re: Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

#18

Post by the_only_law » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 11:09 PM UTC

But you can get surprisingly far in the field without being a good programmer.

Re: Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

#19

Post by edoceo » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 11:11 PM UTC

Didn't see him on their GitHub, can't see LinkedIn.

Maybe just a cool guy tweeting about a cool thing.

Re: Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

#20

Post by geofft » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

What's wrong with being a blue-collar worker / commoditizing the profession? Seems fine, in and of itself.

If you mean it as a proxy for salaries going down because of competition - so many engineering orgs are understaffed, I don't think that's realistic. And tech is, as they say, eating the world. Demand for software engineers seems to be steadily growing; I'm not concerned about supply catching up, at least within my lifetime.

If you're concerned about working with formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged people - that's on you, buddy. Seems great to me. (And yes, that's on most doctors, lawyers, and accountants too. The legal profession in particular, as another commenter pointed out, is awfully gatekeepy. The medical profession requires a whole bunch of formal training, which we have culturally never been excited about imposing. And so forth.)