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

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

#371

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 12:09 PM UTC

shubb wrote: post #322

ggm wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No lawyer, accountant, doctor, engineer, scientist or other professional stands up each day to report *to their peers* on their progress Doctors do something not far removed. It's really important to them to caucus on case management. I think other professions may do the same.

It's interesting to consider the difference between project and event driven (ops) work. Engineering project teams doing Scrum struggle when tasks need to be initiated and completed at a faster cadence than their sprint cycle - for instance an engineer doing development work planned monthly gets 3 calls a day asking him to reboot a server. There are apparently better ways of managing operational work - for kanban (wi…

Operational safety focused professions (not just ER) have shift change meetings, where they tell the people from the next shift what they should be wary about.

Scrum dailys are very clearly based on those, despite the fact that development work is neither operational nor shift-based. It's cargo-culting all the way down.

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

#372

Post by herodoturtle » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 12:09 PM UTC

dustinmoris wrote: post #311

herodoturtle wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this, but only under certain conditions. The standup is meant to be a quick meeting, 10 minutes tops. It's not there for deep advice between lead and each team member. Instead it's there to get everyone on the same page. The deep one-on-one meetings still happen separately - when needed. And as you say, the added benefit of daily standups is that sometimes a team member has great insight into someone…

> Instead it's there to get everyone on the same page. How do you get everyone on the same page if you cannot ask questions? This whole standup theatre is complete bullshit. It's true it's a waste of time. You say it's only meant to be a quick "status update" 10 minute meeting. What is the point of that if then asking questions is not allowed? If it is allowed then it's true though that for the majority of listeners…

> How do you get everyone on the same page if you cannot ask questions?

Not sure why you're asking me this. I welcome questions in standups. And if a question warrants a deeper one-on-one chat, then at least everyone knows an issue has been raised (but often someone on the team knows the answer straight away). They hardly take up time.

I suspect we have radically different experiences of standup meetings, hence the polar opposite views.

In my case (16 year old company, high functioning team), daily standups are fun - hardly a chore - and you'd be surprised what surfaces in these team meetings (that wouldn't necessarily come to light if we were to simply rely on team members to speak up only "when there was something to talk about").

Just to be clear, I'm not criticising your lived experience. I don't doubt you for a second.

But let's be fair - it really depends on the team, and the environment, and the desire for daily standups to begin with.

It's a bit like project management tools. If abused, or used solely for the sake of ticking boxes, they're annoying. But if used correctly, and everyone is happy using them, then they certainly add value.

I suppose it's highly anecdotal.

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

#373

Post by lowercased » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 12:10 PM 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…

> As an independent contractor for the past two years, It hasn't been much of a grind finding and retaining customers....I think the most late it's ever been has been 2 weeks.

When it's you who's gettind paid a bit late... it's manageable. When those late payments affect people you have to pay... it's a whole different game. I've been on both sides of this and it's great when it works, and bad when it doesn't. Building up a large buffer helps, but can take some time to get to an effective place that gets you more than a couple weeks of runway.

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

#374

Post by lytefm » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 12:12 PM UTC

dom96 wrote: post #333

dystroy wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We don't have software driven vehicles, we have software driven humans. Wow, this is a very prescient quote. I think we will hear this repeated often in the years to come.

There are two ways to look at it, though:

One is to lament how previously specialized professions like taxi drivers become replaced by low-skilled laborers who just need to drive and use an app.

The other way is to appreciate how technology augments what humans can do and be more productive. It's not like all accountants got fired when Excel started being a thing: It's that they got way more work done!

There is no sign of a decrease in demand for labour in countries like the US or Germany: Quite the opposite, we have to get a lot more efficient in order to sustain an aging population!

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

#375

Post by nikau » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 12:13 PM UTC

Dave3of5 wrote: post #348

iSnow wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could get this across to my PMs, bosses and other non-technical stake-holders. Current PM is an nice guy but first of all, he absolutely loves to talk and second, he believes the "daily status meeting" format is what Scrum is all about.

Send him this link: https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-daily-scrum From the horses mouth: "The Daily Scrum is Not a Status Meeting" Or maybe see about getting him certified.

But it always is.

They go around the room and everyone has to say something and it ends up being a status update.

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

#376

Post by skhm » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 12:14 PM UTC

LAC-Tech wrote: post #176

I feel like we have so much leverage and don't use it at all. We're still attending stand-ups every day with non programmers telling us when we can and cannot refactor. It's nuts to me that a skilled profession - that not many can do - lets themselves get micro-managed like this. If anyone has read Developer Hegemony , I'm fully on board with that general premise - we start operating like lawyers with partnerships, a…

That book really resonated with me; as in, it vibrated at exactly my resonant frequency and, like a wine glass, broke me. I couldn't enjoy professional programming in the same way once the veil had been lifted.

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

#377

Post by deelly » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 12:16 PM UTC

machiaweliczny wrote: post #230

ta78373764 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that by 2030 we should have conversations that produce most of business software. Think of CLI + AI. There are already people working on this. My bet is on Microsoft or them buying winning startup

But who will verify results of this conversation? Who will be the one to make changes, create changes, verify that changes are correct? Who will take blame if error happens?

Customer or user of this software?

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

#378

Post by jstanley » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 12:16 PM UTC

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #207

5% speed improvement in my tooling would result in about 0.0000001% improvement in my productivity. first of all, so little of what we do is about the tooling. yes, it's very helpful, but no tool, no matter how good, can tell you how to migrate a monolithic service into microseconds microservices with no downtime and no data loss. maybe if we didn't fuck up the original implementation such things wouldn't be needed b…

If a 5% speed improvement represents 0.0000001% of your time, then isn't 1000x speed improvement still only 0.002%?

I don't understand how you can simultaneously argue that almost 0 of your time is spent waiting on tooling, and also that your tooling is so slow that it needs to be 1000x faster.

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

#379

Post by ciphol » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 12:17 PM 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.

Wait a few years, we might have software driven humans. And that's a much bigger deal. Replacing the driver versus replacing the map.

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

#380

Post by thenerdhead » Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 12:17 PM UTC

Although there’s a constant supply, there’s still an exponential demand.

Programming has already created two classes of developers for many years. Those blue collar type programmers who translate requirements into code. And those white collar type engineers who design & gather requirements into concepts.

I think the big divide here has always been for the latter, but companies still need the former to train & skill up to the latter.

I don’t see this trend slowing down for the next 20-30 years. Hell, even by 2025 there will be a deficient of over 150 million. I don’t think we can train nor repopulate fast enough for that demand which will only increase each year in addition.

Times will be great for knowledge work jobs in the tech industry. Not just programming. Programming experience will only become more required for non-coding jobs. Especially any people management or leadership type role.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/06/30/microsoft-launch...