Times are great for programmers now. How does it end? • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by WJW » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 9:02 AM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #232

WJW wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting an agency is the easiest part. Then after that comes the never ending grind to find and retain customers, who will never pay on time, refuse to budget time for frivolities like "testing" and "refactoring" and who will mercilessly shop out the work to as many of your competitors as they can find. Developer agencies have existed for decades and the reason that not everybody is rushing to work for them is becau…

As an independent contractor for the past two years, It hasn't been much of a grind finding and retaining customers. You have to put some work in, sure, but I don't feel it's particularly onerous. Never had to take someone out to dinner or cold call. People need software development skills and generally like it when you find them. As for never being paid on time - I think the most late it's ever been has been 2 weeks…

Maybe I misunderstand what you hope to get out of the partnership then? The Dev Hegemony book describes a situation where everyone (every dev at least) magically becomes an "opportunist" in the books terms, without going into what will happen to all the pragmatists and idealists. Nor does it have an answer for why the opportunist/idealist/pragmatist divide will not reappear inside the agency.

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

#242

Post by CraigJPerry » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 9:04 AM UTC

jdrc wrote: post #238

I prefer to see it in terms of power hierarchy. Programmers gained a massive advantage in the past decades because they got to dictate to everyone how to work - they went higher in the power hierarchy. This has taken the wages of everyone else lower and lower and lower, while tech companies have been making absurd margins (yes there is a lot of zero sum in it). But now free money is over and inflation is showing its…

All the inflation around appears to be either supply side issues (cars, anything with semi conductors, transport issues, …) rather than demand side. There’s definitely more money sloshing around but everyone appears to be using it to jack up equities prices.

Any other price rises i can spy right now appear to be opportunistic profiteering rather than over demand. Eg the used car market is already back to many cars not moving since Christmas because they’re over priced where last summer there was a legitimate shortage, no adverts were old adverts for used cars back then.

That said, It doesn’t really matter with inflation whether it’s based in supply or a demand side cause or not, there will be effects just because enough people believe they will come. A self fulfilling prophecy to some extent. Im not sure the effects will be the predicted ones though, i suspect a less rational outcome because the basis for this is not on rational ground.

As for programmers, I’d have to take the other side of that bet. No code has yet again proven itself to be the same useless junk it was in every other incarnation of that idea. Code is infecting everything today. Good luck buying even just a tv without apps, never mind a new car without some junk entertainment system tacked on. Still no one has solved how to write good code - the type hype just now still leads to building the wrong thing for the customers needs and still produces software with very basic security vulns like XSS.

Until someone can solve making code writing reliable, the status quo will continue.

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

#243

Post by throwaway4good » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 9:05 AM UTC

Boom and bust has always been a part of this business. It was hard to find jobs as a programmer in the early 90es, the early 00es, and around the financial crisis in 2008. You can be sure that there will be a bust again, simply because hype and optimism eventually will overshoot.

It has nothing to do with "no code", more productive development environments, or end-users becomming programmers. That pressure has always been in the business but the increase in productivity has always been gobled up by increase in complexity, expansion of scope, or automatization of new business.

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

#244

Post by mstipetic » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 9:09 AM UTC

jseban wrote: post #239

edanm wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. I highly disagree with this. For some reason, many devs seem to think they are somehow better than everyone else, that they are the most important part of any team, that no on besides them can have any insight on timelines, or budget, on which features are or aren't important. News flash - all of the above is…

Doctors and lawyers have way more integrity and status, because they are well rounded people as well as experts. They can put their knowledge to the best possible use. In the software industry there is a lingering stereotype of the eccentric genius who is really good with computers, and really bad at everything else in life, and their computer skills make up for lacking a lot of basic skills of a functioning adult, s…

As someone who has managed developers And worked as a developer I’m not sure that’s completely untrue. I’ve seen bored devops people starting to build their own ci/cd system, massive meetings where people started building their own micro service framework, a dev in my startup spent a month reworking things into sagas with no consideration that we have no product market fit yet, people that insist on “contributing their thoughts” even though they’re not the least qualified or experienced… I’ve seen millions and millions of euros get wasted on things that don’t matter.

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

#245

Post by ido » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 9:09 AM UTC

dystroy wrote: post #233

hooby wrote: post #212

Programmers are increasingly needed for *everything*. I mean, we've entered an age, where a farmer can't milk their cows, if the software of the milking robot has a hitch - can't plow their fields, when the gps-software that drives the tractor isn't working. Apart from that, programming is becoming every other job - as far as domain knowledge is concerned. I've personally experienced (multiple times!) professional ac…

For taxi drivers, the most important change was already done and it took decades: it wasn't replacing them with self driving vehicles. It was replacing very competent drivers having a perfect knowledge of the town and of the optimal paths with drivers with absolutely no competence needed. We don't have software driven vehicles, we have software driven humans.

I remember this free book making the same argument (I've read it many - maybe 20? - years ago but I recall enjoying it at the time):

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

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

#246

Post by mihaigalos » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 9:10 AM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #135

mrtksn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it has not completed doesn't mean it isn't happening. These days very small number of people know how computers actually work(how many know assembly or even C?) but there's a huge number of people building their businesses by programming machines do things. In the last 20 years, people were using languages close to English to express their ideas to a computer and make it do work. You touch computer scien…

Oh yeah, I remember people saying that about SQL a long time ago. People wouldn't need database engineers any more. Same with Visual Basic. No more application developers. Just drag and drop! You might ask yourself why VB6 or Delphi didn't simply rule the world forever. We had those ~25 years ago and with those tools, non-engineers could drag and drop their client/server database-CRUD apps together. Hell, you could d…

beautiful sum up!

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

#247

Post by jokoon » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 9:16 AM UTC

I have depression issues, and have been coding for 10 years now. I don't know if I'm bad at programming, or if it's because I lack a degree, or because I have been chronically unemployed and lack experience, or because I'm too selective with the jobs I apply on (I can't bear php or js stuff like angular), or because I live in france or in the wrong city. I may have an atypical profile.

Programming has not been very good to me.

When I hear "programmers are in high demand", I don't see it applying to me.

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

#248

Post by sails » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 9:16 AM UTC

As to what might happen regarding "Decreased Investment", this article [1] has an interesting analysis for those working in rapidly funded startups. In short it predicts a Minsky moment, but in relation to funding "speed" rather than "value".

> Does the compression of timelines in venture change the distribution of terminal outcomes for venture-backed companies? [1]

> A Minsky moment is a sudden, major collapse of asset values which marks the end of the growth phase of a cycle in credit markets or business activity.[2]

[1] https://pivotal.substack.com/p/minsky-moments-in-venture-cap...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsky_moment

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

#249

Post by n_time » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 9:19 AM UTC

It's worth considering that the number of programmers/technologists working in an organisation serves a signal for the organisation as an financial instrument. An organisation wants to show growth in terms of revenue but also in terms of their capabilities, and frequently the "human capital" of the organisation is a metric that is reviewed here.

If you've been in a growing tech company you've probably seen this as colleagues being hire when you're not clear why, and the organisation actually preferring solutions that require many more employees.

There's also just the factor that – today at least – technology management have a lot of social power within their organisations. Most managers wants to grow their little fiefdom – which usually means more headcount.

Anywho, I guess I'm just saying there's a lot of factors completely unrelated to automation that incentivize hiring more programmers. Many of these factors are not rational for the organistions themselves – managers growing their headcount to the limit their structure will allow. Some of them are though! I.E. company as a financial instrument rather than as a business.

The model of a business selling something and optimizing process for maximum profits is in there for sure, but from my experience there's a lot of other factors that end up building a very incoherent whole.

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

#250

Post by schnitzelstoat » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 9:22 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #109

irrational wrote: post #83

> The markets are doing their thing. Everyone sees tech workers making money and just generally having a good time and they think: “Hey that sounds like a good career choice”. It seems like you could replace tech workers with any other profession that sounds like a good career choice. Can literally everyone (or even the majority) learn to code? Do they want to learn to code? In my experience, the answer to both quest…

It’s not hard to make a living writing code. That’s why people with a high school education can do it. Obviously it’s not for everyone, but it’s also not reserved for a select few who have had a life-long passion for messing with computers. Look at the medical profession where there are tiers of expertise / earnings. Not everyone can be a neurosurgeon, obviously. But many people can make good livings. And the profess…

There are other differences that make it easier to move into tech too.

In my country at least, the number of students that are permitted to study medicine each year is strictly limited.

Similarly, in law to get a decent job one has to complete a pupillage which can be extremely hard to get and is often based on family connections etc.

Finance can also be quite classist/nepotistic.

So compared to these other top professions, software engineering is more meritocratic and accessible.