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Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

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Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#121

Post by ta78373764 »

notduncansmith wrote: post #30
ta78373764 wrote: post #13

Right now developer salaries have greatly risen at the top end - the max has risen much faster than the median. Much of the top end growth has been at companies benefitting from easy investor capital. I think this will follow a typical business cycle. When the next recession comes, investors and companies will focus on shorter term ROI, and many high end developers and long term projects will seem too expensive. Redu…

> I don't expect low-code, AI, or developer productivity jumps to have any real impact anytime soon; there's no real evidence of a true jump in the productivity of the overall project I respectfully disagree. I don’t think those productivity gains will be evenly distributed throughout the industry, but I think AI and developer tooling will evolve radically over the next decade and programming in 2032 will look quite…

It's certainly possible, I just don't see any real evidence for it yet. AI has a history of promising demos and then very long (decades) stalls in progress. I could be wrong, but I'm skeptical of the current round of AI as well. It will generate code in the same way as AI generates online articles or music - not very well.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#122

Post by kukabynd »

It doesn’t.

Software has been eating the world, and there’s no sign of it stopping.

Software gave people like me a way to escape dire economic situation, and is the main reason for increased social mobility as in having lots of options. That is attractive to every young person out there, and the demand goes up and to the right.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#123

Post by bedobi »

Apocryphon wrote: post #120
bedobi wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it does to nonsensically apply the same rule in literally every context. People and programmers are not apples. The economy and society are not gravity. I don't know what else to tell you, and I guess it doesn't matter, since people with a zero sum world view can't be convinced otherwise.

There's a difference between believing there is a zero sum world view, and observing that every economy that has ever existed has generally operated on boom and bust cycles.

I don't think anyone is disputing the economy has boom and bust cycles. But despite the great depression, two world wars, the cold war, the dot com bubble, the 08 crash, insane environmental destruction, climate change etc etc the economy is growing, the global population is growing, and rather than more and more people fighting over less and less resources, pretty much everyone everywhere is healthier and more prosperous than ever, and extreme poverty is on track to be completely eradicated in our lifetimes. (this doesn't mean there aren't exceptions, or that there isn't still lots to do to address climate change, global economic and health inequality etc etc, but it does prove the peak oil doomer zero sum world view people wrong)

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#124

Post by Animats »

I'm amazed that web site development and web servers are still so complicated. I expected that to be all drag and drop by now. Most of it isn't very original.

As for programmer employment, we've seen that collapse before. Go read SFGirl from 2001.[1] Check out the Pink Slip Parties.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20010302012226/http://www.sfgirl...

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#125

Post by joe5150 »

strken wrote: post #85
Kaze404 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the saddest thing I've read on this website. I hope for your own sake you allow yourself to learn new things in the future.

It's not about what you're allowed to do, it's about what professionals in a field need to do to get to the top. I've been programming since I was 8. I've been drawing since I was 29. I will probably never reach the same percentile of drawing ability that I have with programming ability. That's okay for me because I enjoy it anyway, but from the perspective of training people to do their best work, starting younger c…

people don’t generally tend to feel this way about training to work in medicine or hvac or law. or even language, really. obviously children learn how to use language, but training for a professional job as a teacher or a translator (or whatever) doesn’t start at age 8.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#126

Post by bagels »

haskellandchill wrote: post #53

> Much of the demand for programmers right now stems more from expectations of future profits than from profits being currently made. That's a big assumption to make.

Many very large software companies are making handsome profits. We will probably see changes in software employment if that fact changes.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#128

Post by vparikh »

All it takes is two things:

1. The investor bubble to bust - and I think this will happen due to the soon to be rising interest rates making capital much more difficult too secure.

2. One of the big employers dumps devs into the market - say one of the FAANG companies has a sever downturn and lays of thousands of devs. Don't think it can happen - Facebook and Google are just a few regulations away from mass lay offs and downsizing.

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#129

Post by Apocryphon »

bedobi wrote: post #123
Apocryphon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between believing there is a zero sum world view, and observing that every economy that has ever existed has generally operated on boom and bust cycles.

I don't think anyone is disputing the economy has boom and bust cycles. But despite the great depression, two world wars, the cold war, the dot com bubble, the 08 crash, insane environmental destruction, climate change etc etc the economy is growing, the global population is growing, and rather than more and more people fighting over less and less resources, pretty much everyone everywhere is healthier and more prosp…

We have been living at the sufferance of zero interest rate policies for the last dozen years. It's hard to say what happens when the music starts slowing down.

It just sounds like an extremely hubristic statement, mocking the very fates themselves, to claim that unlimited economic growth will continue indefinitely, that this era of cheap capital will continue indefinitely, and there wouldn't even be one economic downturn or hiccup to disrupt the gravy train. This is the stuff that "things that aged poorly" is made of. Optimism is one thing; irrational exuberance is another. I would rather not laugh in the face of whatever the Fed is planning to do about inflation.

Hell, this was published just hours ago.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-20/federa...

Re: Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

#130

Post by echelon »

twblalock wrote: post #118
echelon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing is different now. 1. Venture capital is making major investments in India, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. At a scale never before seen. 2. Offices will never happen again. Now employees could be in Antarctica for all you're concerned -- as long as they're on a relatively friendly time zone with the rest of their team, it'll work. This time is different.

Offices are still "happening" and will not go away. The current optimism about remote work is overly exuberant, and many people will be disappointed about the pullback of remote work over the next few years. Also, people are dreaming if they think Silicon Valley companies will continue to pay Silicon Valley salaries to workers in other locations, even if remote work continues to be broadly accepted. Furthermore, Indi…

> The current optimism about remote work is overly exuberant, and many people will be disappointed about the pullback of remote work over the next few years.

Mostly anecdotal evidence follows.

At my company,

- Most teams have two or more remote ICs

- A large percentage of teams have the majority of their ICs in a different location than their manager.

- A large percentage of ICs are now no longer near an office (or in the same state as an office)

- Offices are still ghost towns

They're not going to pull a magic wand and make all of us go back. Cat's out of the bag. They couldn't afford to fire these folks, either.

> Also, people are dreaming if they think Silicon Valley companies will continue to pay Silicon Valley salaries to workers in other locations, even if remote work continues to be broadly accepted.

I've received near-SF wages in Atlanta for eight years. Before the market pullback, my total comp was $500k a year. It's still ridiculously good.

> Furthermore, India and much of Europe (especially eastern Europe) are definitely not friendly time zones for collaboration with colleagues in North America.

We're building out offices there.

I've had meetings with Europe, Australia, and Japan this year. A first.

If your company won't, new capital funding new startups will take advantage of those workers and bring them into the fold.

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