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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?

#541

Post by aor215 »

blindmute wrote: post #521

As far as I'm concerned, the ride stops when the masses realize how easy the profession actually is. You can take any office worker and train them to an entry level competency in 3-5 months, when they will get a job for at least $75k. They are then in a new career path and will soon make 100k. I find it impossible to convince non devs that being a developer is easy. They can't fathom why we get paid so much if it's e…

I used to think the same. I too find my job to be easy and sometimes feel like we have this secret in the software industry that our work really isn't all that difficult these days, with so many hard problems having already been solved. I say this as a senior SDE in big tech.

But, after watching a close friend, who is brilliant—she had gone to a top 30 college undergrad and had top SAT scores—go to a coding bootcamp (the same one I went to) and fail to switch careers I started to think differently. For some reason, I find the work easy and interesting, but many others do not.

I do agree that many more people are capable of becoming developers than choose to do so. But this fact may not be as interesting as it sounds. Many people just don't like coding. Many just don't want to spend their days writing code, even if it pays well.

I don't mean to downplay irrational reasons why people choose not to pursue software. The industry still has a lot of negative stereotypes about what the work is actually like that prevent people from giving it a try, but, more and more, I've noticed that, even among people who know such stereotypes are false, many just don't want to do the job, even if they could.

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

#542

Post by phkahler »

>> I think this is the most likely scenario. Much of the demand for programmers right now stems more from expectations of future profits than from profits being currently made.

This is certainly true for companies that sell software. Revenue comes from sales of software that already exists and developers are paid to create the next version. Software companies are in effect charging rent for something they have already developed that has zero production cost. SaaS takes this to the next level. Most of these companies are ripe for destruction by Free Software unless they provide something of exceptional value that is hard to replicate. To me the examples are things like Mathematica, or high end CAD or FEA software. PCB design has recently been conquered by KiCAD 6, though there are (apparently) some very high-end tools that have exotic capabilities still. Blender is really taking a shot at animation software, but there is still plenty of room for the high-end.

Most software written today is not product software, but internal software to automate things, or otherwise make a business run. Until FLOSS takes over in this space there will always be a need for programmers simply because new companies are always being created that need automation.

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

#543

Post by rdevsrex »

usrbinbash wrote: post #299
rdevsrex wrote: post #293

It ends with ecological and societal collapse. While the party lasts tech will increase. But eventually in the next 20-50 years tech will mean very little given we don't have the resources to continue growth exponentially. In the interim, programming is a great way to make money, but at some point it's going to lose its prominence.

How do you figure that tech will mean very little? What cannot continue is economic growth, for the simple reasons that the planets (and its biospheres) resources are finite. What will continue however, is technological growth, as in technology will grow ever more complex, and solve more difficult tasks. Techn development is not inherently tied to economic growth.

Collapse is a complex topic, but essentially if the thesis is true, then we are on a downward spiral in complexity and in population. At some point, high tech will be replaced with low-tech solutions that take less energy and less maintenance.

To me that means that there will be programmers, but far fewer, focused on only vital areas, like climate change adaptation.

I don't think it's an immediate concern, but if I was 22, I'd keep my eyes peeled and try to specialize in some field that would still exist if our main concern was trying to make do with less.

I know that's a bleaker outlook compared to the techno-utopianism that's common. That said, growth is a part of our system, so I think the outlook for programmers is great in the short term. Capital is going to try to maximize value right up until we fall off a cliff.

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

#544

Post by Apocryphon »

rajin444 wrote: post #442
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing how we coped with Covid has made me wonder how well we would manage an event like that. Supposedly we are well prepared in the UK but that was also the case for Covid and we know how that turned out.

The average age of death for Covid is higher than the average life expectancy. You’re going to have a hard time convincing people that is a true crisis.

What about the state of the health care system? Hospital occupancy?

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

#545

Post by flippinburgers »

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…

I would absolutely love to know what formula could possibly determine time saved in the future.

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

#546

Post by rdevsrex »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #297
rdevsrex wrote: post #293

It ends with ecological and societal collapse. While the party lasts tech will increase. But eventually in the next 20-50 years tech will mean very little given we don't have the resources to continue growth exponentially. In the interim, programming is a great way to make money, but at some point it's going to lose its prominence.

so make your primary job programmer, but maybe develop fallbacks in carpentry and subsistence farming.

Yep! This is my plan. I already work remote, so I plan to continue that as long as I can. Eventually, I want to buy land in a remote place that is as climate change resistant as possible, like the upper midwest.

I want to build an off grid house and learn how to grow most of my own food and develop strong ties with the community, as well as learning lots of non-tech skills.

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

#547

Post by BlargMcLarg »

gregkerzhner wrote: post #511
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…

Daily standups can be useful when its a small group of people (3 or 4) working on the same project. In such meetings participants actually have the context to make meaningful suggestions based on other's updates "oh.. have you considered this? you should try this!" Standups with more people working on separate projects are useless*. My most recent standup with a group of 8 who were working on many separate projects s…

That's pretty much the gist of it. The ideals of "agile" (or really just Scrum for the majority of people) aren't what most developers rail against. It's how tightly the "how" is defined and acclaimed as the "one true way", despite authors repeatedly writing it isn't, and despite proof of software projects having done just fine otherwise. Which then saps the energy of many participants, making them less likely to do what they would do otherwise.

I've never heard opponents go "communication doesn't matter", yet the moment we talk about taking down these meetings, that's the first kneejerk most proponents I spoke to reach for. As if being against standups is indicative of thinking poorly of communication. Same goes for specification of goals, cooperating to keep everyone going strong, and improving to make things less of a drag. Is there so little faith in basic human intelligence and cooperation, that this one method is the only way we silly developers can be redeemed?

Now we have a bunch of people who haven't touched code in multiple years parroting what the consultants sold them and trying to talk their way out of aforementioned proof. Or they make claims like "well but it is better now!", as if their previous methodology wasn't so horrible they could've thrown a dart and very likely get a better result.

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

#548

Post by blindmute »

gravypod wrote: post #472
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…

> our tooling is so effing slow it needs a 1000x improvement. not in how fast we can write code, just to compile and test the damn stuff Not just that. Why do we have 30 tools for 30 programming languages. JetBrains has one IDE per language (approximately). What happens when I have a project with two languages? It is a mess. Don't get me started about build systems. Something like Bazel is greatly needed which would…

Jetbrains has one IDE (IDEA Ultimate) and redistributes it with various built in plugins for cheaper licensing and marketing. If you get the more expensive Ultimate, it has support for all languages via the same plugins.

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

#549

Post by IshKebab »

logifail wrote: post #332
Dave3of5 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DSU shouldn't be for non-technical people. They literally should not speak at all during this daily meeting if they are even there. It's for Devs only to make sure they are not blocked and they are communicating what they are working on. In my last company the non-tech people weren't allowed and the DSU was only for engineering. It is not a daily status meeting! If it has turned into this then it should be scrapp…

> It's for Devs only to make sure they are not blocked[..] If in the course of one's work one becomes blocked, would one really wait until the following day's stand-up to tell anyone about this? If so then I think both the worker and the company have bigger issues than whether the stand-up itself is a good use of time. The mind boggles.

No of course not. In my experience standuos are best for encouraging accidental knowledge sharing - "oh I know what the issue with that is", "oh I think Dave in the other team has done that before", "I was planning on changing that" etc.

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

#550

Post by blindmute »

sage76 wrote: post #390
jd115 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have NO university degree and ZERO affiliation with anything remotely FAANG (I'm based in Europe, where relatively few people work for FAANG). There are no globally recognisable names on my CV. I am still the highest paid person I personally know - by a rather high margin, because of my experience as a software engineer. Since I dropped out of university almost 20 years ago, I have been consulting and contracting,…

Good for you. I have experience with all 3 of those technologies and it's nearly impossible to even get an interview.

There's something wrong with your resume or other personal information then. I was in the job market recently, I live in the boonies, and there is nothing impressive on my resume. There were literally not enough waking hours to schedule a call with every recruiter flooding me through LinkedIn. I had at least 5 interviews per week. I don't know what you're doing wrong, but it's something.
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