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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?

#491

Post by matheusmoreira »

biztos wrote: post #354
lelanthran wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is actually quite interesting as I was just talking to a few other professionals about this in a social setting. I was the only one in software development. I mentioned how stand-ups work briefl…

> No lawyer, accountant, doctor, engineer, scientist or other professional stands up each day... I think this has a lot to do with the office culture of software being figured out at the same time as the professionalization of Management and the trend of "methodologies" to give a veneer of objectivity to the managerial class. Combined with FOMO about the fortunes being made at certain other companies, whose whims and…

> For example the extended hazing ritual by which we mint medical doctors in the USA is completely insane

In case anyone wants a glimpse of how bad medical school could be:

https://web.archive.org/web/20101218031844/http://www.medsch...

It's a pretty old site, no idea what it's like now.

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

#492

Post by mattgreenrocks »

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…

> 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.

100%. It is completely absurd to watch. This sort of subordinate attitude pulls us all down. I think the issue boils down to:

* new devs are not going to rock the boat

* lots of people see software dev as as way to be successful within existing corporate hierarchies

* a lot of devs have very little experience of what life looks like with engineers at the helm

There's also the thing of most people seem to need hierarchies to feel secure. I don't quite understand it but I'm probably just weird.

Personally, I will succeed in partially decoupling time for money in my labor. It's just a matter of when.

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

#493

Post by wellpast »

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…

None of this will happen until there we have an objective metric for determining the tangible value provided by developer.

So, so many devs are great at building interesting tech, refactoring to more interesting tech, and so on, but entirely missing the mark of optimizing actual, upstream value delivery.

I'm sure other industries have their means of demonstrating that this or that practitioner can both deliver and deliver quality. We don't have this at all in the software industry. Furthermore the overly common team processes and team structures in use don't even allow for demonstrating this.

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

#494

Post by fatnoah »

bruce343434 wrote: post #314
nivenkos wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay 40% income tax (56% marginal), 25% sales tax, 35% electricity tax. It means 80k doesn't go as far as it'd seem, especially with increasing interest rates. Considering Americans are on 200k+, it just doesn't compare.

I doubt it to be honest. I think that that's just the bragging, survivor biased subset of the top enclave of salaries you can get in crazy expensive places like SF, NY, CA. And you still have taxes there, and (health) insurance costs a lot more.

Tax burden in those areas (all-in, including federal, state, and city) reaches 50% at the highest tiers, but 50% of $200k+ is a lot of money. Health insurance for bigger companies is usually very good, with about you paying around $400/month out of pocket for your family with a low/no deductible plan. That comes out pre-tax, so the true cost is lower, depending on your tax bracket. The end result is that insurance ends up being significantly less than 1% of your income at that level. That highlights the main problem with health care in the US, which is that your quality of care depends entirely on your employer.

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

#495

Post by whoomp12342 »

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…

man, thats terrifying from a birds eye view especially given how terrible lots of us are at writing good code

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

#496

Post by tarsinge »

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…

The problem is programmers are relatively immature regarding business, and confuse hobby programming with professional programming. Lawyers might like reading laws, but they are hired for winning a case. Programmers will continue to need non programmers to tell them what to do until they truly accept that code is just a mean to an end and that they are really hired to add business value. The test is simple: are they more concerned about the tech or the core business of their customers and how they can help them. Being paid for their hobby was nice but that golden age is over.

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

#498

Post by whoomp12342 »

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…

keep in mind, accounting is a broad field. I dont see accountants being replaced. There are three main sections of accountants:

Audit, Tax, and Corporate.

Corporate is the cushiest and most likely to be automated. Auditing is much like consulting and require human conversations and complex analysis. Maybe one day with sophisticated AI, but not any time soon. Tax constantly changes and need accountants to understand and translate to the programmers on a continual basis, and there will always be adept accountants with better interpretations for $$$ hire. Could they be automated? sure, the easiest way would be to have the govt automatically file, but they wont because the industry doesn't want that.

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

#499

Post by Aeolun »

edanm wrote: post #229
LAC-Tech wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're definitely better at non-developers at software development. Yet we literally have outside people dictating to us when they think it's appropriate for refactoring to happen. Or when it's time to update a dependency. This is a lot different from than "no on besides them can have any insight on timelines, or budget, on which features are or aren't important.". I definitely value the input of other profess…

Again, I'm not defending every single workplace here. Obviously some developers aren't treated well, and in those cases, they should find another job. I was commenting on the fairly blanket statement made. But the way the conversation should go isn't the developer deciding when refactoring should happen. It's the developer giving an analysis of the cost and benefit of a refactoring (it will take X time, but will save…

> It's the developer giving an analysis of the cost and benefit of a refactoring (it will take X time, but will save Y work in the future).

I think I just fundamentally disagree that this is the managers job. He tells me what needs doing, and I get that done as soon as possible within a given block of time (mostly sprints, so two weeks). They should be able to trust me to refactor as necessary within that block.

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

#500

Post by deepsquirrelnet »

Damogran6 wrote: post #429

I’m coming to the uncomforable conclusion that we’re ALL doing a dance. Programmers make a product, Managers manage the people, HR protects the company, Legal protects HR, the Shareholders leverage the Executive Staff to make their profit margins. But in all of this, very little ACTUAL STUFF happens. (I say this as a security guy, who’s line on the balance sheet is ALWAYS in the cost column.) So much of what we do is…

On any given day, fewer than half of people with jobs really need to work. A lot of people attend their job and don't really do work -- not because they're lazy -- but because deep down they know it doesn't really matter.

We (collectively) invent work to slow ourselves down, or create jobs that don't really need to exist. We know that people who want jobs need to have things to do, but maybe that there just isn't that much that needs doing. George Jetson pushed a single red button for a living. There's a certain truth behind why the show's creators gave him that.

This has been the case at least long enough before the movie Office Space came out to have been well understood by then.

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