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Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

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Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#261

Post by Mezzie »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #240
Mezzie wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post 2008, I'd say. I was a 2010 graduate, and the change between 'do what you love' and 'College is for MONEY' was like a culture bomb going off.

Yeah graduating at a time where even a "useful" degree couldnt get you a job will do that.

Yup. I even planned out my debt at the age of 17. When I selected a college in 2005, I would have graduated with 8k in debt. Quite reasonable.

The crash my junior year and the resulting divorce of two of my parents means over half my undergrad debt was from my senior year. I had to choose between doubling my debt and dropping out with a year left.

And I also effed myself by working my way through school to try to keep costs down/take out less debt. It meant I had no money when I graduated so I couldn't even afford things like interview clothes for basic office jobs and I had to take the first thing I could get. In retrospect, working on tech projects in my spare time would have been a better FINANCIAL option than working a job for 7.25/hr, especially since this was '06-'10 and I was interested in things like NLP.

I just don't care anymore. I tried to be responsible, it didn't work, and now I just don't care.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#262

Post by travisgriggs »

> We don’t have the Alan Kay / Free Software / Hypercard dream of everybody having control over their own computer because integrating with disparate APIs is really fucking hard and takes a lot of work to do.

APIs and distributed integration are hard. But the modern API landscape is a long long long way away from what Alan and folks were shooting for. Sure, you get the messaging part, but that research team wrote a number of papers, one of my favorite being Design Principles behind Smalltalk (https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/smalltalk....). When I read through the headlines there, I don’t feel like the modern API space lives up to those principles very well.

To be clear, Alan Kay’s entire hypothesis may be flawed. I’m not asserting either way on that issue. I’m just pointing out that alluding that Alans dream didn’t work out because APIs are what he said and we’re miserable, doesn’t really follow, because there’s so much lacking in the rest of the picture.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#263

Post by melony »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #74

My Own Addition: 14. Those who code for a living make good money. I have a lot of friends who went into various fields, and it seems relative to the number of buttons we press daily, anyone who works on software makes great money. We didn't spend a ton of $ to go to medical school and 3 years of residency. We didn't go to law school and take the bar. Most of us went to 4 years, or less, of school, and here we are mak…

To a large extent, it is their individual choices. They went in with their eyes wide open, knowing what the market is like. If you decided to pursue something like librarian studies without a concrete plan for income, then it is hardly the fault of society if you do not get a job. I have commented on this yesterday and I will post it here again. Not every job will change the world, but often those boring but well paying jobs are more important than the "impactful" careers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29553341

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#264

Post by DnDGrognard »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #74

My Own Addition: 14. Those who code for a living make good money. I have a lot of friends who went into various fields, and it seems relative to the number of buttons we press daily, anyone who works on software makes great money. We didn't spend a ton of $ to go to medical school and 3 years of residency. We didn't go to law school and take the bar. Most of us went to 4 years, or less, of school, and here we are mak…

But at the same point in our careers for the same equivalent we do not have the same $ and status as professions like law and medicine.

You are also confusing our broadly speaking "professional" jobs with some of those other examples and firefighters have early retirement and DB pensions in the UK

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#265

Post by pc86 »

Oregon893 wrote: post #256
pc86 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has never been a 1:1 relationship between how essential a job is, nor how difficult it is, and the pay. It's mostly about a) the barriers to entry, which can be academic (law, medicine), regulatory (law, medicine, probably finance?), institutional (finance, tier 1 law), or just how grueling it is to get through (definitely medicine outside of some specialties like family med or peds, probably tier 1 finance/IB…

I think you forgot what has been the single largest driver of salaries for most Europeans, unions and legistlation.

I'd rather be a software developer in the US than a teacher in Europe.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#266

Post by Jensson »

notreallyserio wrote: post #215
MathCodeLove wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is the same in reverse. I've heard horrible anecdotes by male friends in female dominated industries such as teaching, nursing, etc. Why is the same societal push not happening in those industries? I never said we shouldn't strive to be welcoming and to cultivate a friendly environment for all, just that the intentional push for more of any specific demographic seems strange to me. Shitty people are going t…

Are you sure the current campaigns aren't effective? The demographics are indeed changing. I know causation correlation blah blah, but we're just speculating in this thread, supplying no data anyway.

> The demographics are indeed changing.

The gender ratio isn't changing though. If anything it is becoming worse, it was decades ago that less women went into software engineering today.

The only thin that changed is that now every company tries to put their women software engineers front and center, in their marketing material, to go speak at conferences etc. So it looks like there are more women, but there aren't. Tech companies also tries to improve these statistics by bundling non programmers into this category, like product and project managers.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#267

Post by DnDGrognard »

Mezzie wrote: post #233
gonehome wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real calculus should be do something that interests you, but also consider ROI and if education cost is worth it. Most of the people I know with the worst financial outcomes overpaid to study stuff they didn’t care much about (and isn’t marketable or often even valuable) because they thought it was what they were supposed to do.

Eh, I'd go beyond that and say invest in yourself first and foremost, but I've been VERY SCREWED after trying to make decent financial choices. 1.) I was into computers and programming in the 90s but I was too young for the dot-com boom, so by the time I could work we were in the bust. So computers weren't a 'safe' ROI. 2.) So I went into languages and wanted to be a diplomat: I studied rare languages to be more valu…

You did not consider TLA's with that language background ?

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#268

Post by gorgoiler »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #74

My Own Addition: 14. Those who code for a living make good money. I have a lot of friends who went into various fields, and it seems relative to the number of buttons we press daily, anyone who works on software makes great money. We didn't spend a ton of $ to go to medical school and 3 years of residency. We didn't go to law school and take the bar. Most of us went to 4 years, or less, of school, and here we are mak…

Software engineers get to have leverage 100% of the time.

Poor teachers: when I was teaching it was more like 20% of the time, and the other 80% was breaking rocks. Planning, marking, parents, discipline, pastoral care, sports, and straight up babysitting.

That’s a big part of why the pay is so different, in my experience. Teachers have to put in a lot of time and effort to make a diff[erence] and the rest of the work is completely unskilled labor.

For SWEs, the next pull request is only limited by your ability to focus and type.

I’m a full time SWE these days, and enjoying the 10x pay.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#269

Post by pc86 »

cm2012 wrote: post #140
pc86 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has never been a 1:1 relationship between how essential a job is, nor how difficult it is, and the pay. It's mostly about a) the barriers to entry, which can be academic (law, medicine), regulatory (law, medicine, probably finance?), institutional (finance, tier 1 law), or just how grueling it is to get through (definitely medicine outside of some specialties like family med or peds, probably tier 1 finance/IB…

For most non stem teachers, teaching is the best paid job they could possibly get once you account for pension, etc

Yes even in US public schools, and even for relatively new hires, the benefits can be pretty great. Time off, retirement, etc. And it's still possible to get into administration and make what an entry-level SWE makes. Hell, when I was in HS in the very early 00's there was a big scandal in my area because we found out the district superintendent was making $200k/yr. For context, most of my friends' parents worked blue collar and manual labor jobs. Teachers averaged $44k/yr or so back then.

Re: Uncomfortable Truths in Software Engineering

#270

Post by CuriouslyC »

merpnderp wrote: post #70
CuriouslyC wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the fault of a system that rewards unethical behavior by having a massively skewed risk/reward profile for said behavior, it's the fault of people with low-normal levels of empathy who make rational decisions. Sure.

That same line of argument could work for socialism/communism. What country that doesn't use the free trade paradigm for their economy isn't some authoritarian nightmare of poverty and despair? Are they just bad actors using the system wrong, or is it a system that always ends that way?

Corruption isn't a problem of free trade, it's a problem resulting from centralization of authority. A single (or small cabal of) regulatory gatekeeper is comparatively cheap to pay off compared to satisfying all interested parties. Bribe one person? Check. Bribe 10,000 without having it break the bank or turn into a PR nightmare? Not so much.

Clearly, our "free market" isn't really free, and our regulatory and enforcement strategies are the problem.

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