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We will never have enough software developers (2020)

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Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#81

Post by adriand »

I feel like the need to continuously learn new things is a feature of the profession, not a bug. It is certainly a difficult challenge, but I've always felt that the most important trait in a software developer is an eagerness to learn new things.

I think the overall premise of the article makes sense, but where I differ from the writer is in how I view the need for constant learning and self-development. The author writes,

> Like a fast, expensive car that quickly loses value as it's driven around town, the skills and human capital of software engineers fall apart without constant, expensive maintenance.

What the author is talking about, however, is not a material object with transient importance to one's life (i.e. a vehicle), it is your mind. Learning new things doesn't just mean you retain your relevance as a software developer, it also helps stave off cognitive decline. It keeps you sharp, relevant, mentally agile. That may not be the case in every job, but the field as a whole certainly has that attribute.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#82

Post by TexanFeller »

trashtester wrote: post #23
cs137 wrote: post #10

There isn't a shortage of software developers. The pay isn't great--the kids getting $300K packages out of Stanford are an exception; it's a marketing expense. In fact, if you control for the level of intelligence it takes to be any good, SWEs make less (and get far less autonomy--do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?) than any other professional, and they hit a salary/challenge plateau quick... after which, the…

SWE's are not the only ones that think that their pay is low compared to their intelligence level, their education level, how tough, inconvenient or important their work is or what they feel they deserve for some other reason. For instance, I'm sure there are plenty of HR managers in various companies that are secretly furious about all the young young mostly males, mostly white or asian, still in their 20s, join the…

HR managers are rarely ever intelligent. The work they do doesn’t require it and intelligent people don’t want to do a job where they’ll be surrounded by lower intelligence people.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#83

Post by doctor_lollipop »

leoedin wrote: post #36
willjp wrote: post #15

Re: skill churn I got the impression that there is much less of this in lower level languages. It seems like there is a fairly stable foundation of C, Cpp that everything else is built on top of. I wonder if embedded programmers have this problem.

In my experience it's the opposite problem. Advocating for modern development practices or languages (even unit testing, let alone Rust) for embedded projects is hard work. Most new embedded projects, even today, are written in C or C++.

How does the language matter? I write software (mostly) in C for a living (the simple man's "embedded" as in "Linux on an ARM board", not the "bits on a micro controller" kind) and I made sure we use test-driven development with proper version control and CI.

We have been trying to use Rust for some new projects but cross-compiling is still much more hit-and-miss with Rust (i.e. third-party libraries) than it is with C. I imagine it would be worse for proper embedded projects.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#84

Post by capableweb »

emptyfile wrote: post #78
Gigachad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cry me a river. Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history. The majority of the population is grinding away in tough physical labor or abusive service jobs getting paid pennies while software devs moan about only making low six figures and getting a few boring jira tickets while they sit in their home office reading hacker news for half the day.

Oh yeah, every dev in the world makes $100 000 minimum per year, sure. And it's boring and easy with reasonable deadlines and appropriate vacations and time off work.

Even if you make something like $20000 per year, you have it better than most in the world. People spend their body (the one we only have one of) doing way more intense (and vital for the world) labor than software engineers do, and earn much less.

If you think unreasonable deadlines are a big issue, then you're in for a rough awakening if you spend any time with the rest of the workforce that doesn't sit in front of a computer all day.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#85

Post by bryanrasmussen »

thrwawy283 wrote: post #34
cs137 wrote: post #10

There isn't a shortage of software developers. The pay isn't great--the kids getting $300K packages out of Stanford are an exception; it's a marketing expense. In fact, if you control for the level of intelligence it takes to be any good, SWEs make less (and get far less autonomy--do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?) than any other professional, and they hit a salary/challenge plateau quick... after which, the…

I'm optimistic growing remote work means extending the working life of an SWE (counter to ageism).

so, de-aging video call filter?

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#86

Post by rapind »

Gigachad wrote: post #59
cs137 wrote: post #10

There isn't a shortage of software developers. The pay isn't great--the kids getting $300K packages out of Stanford are an exception; it's a marketing expense. In fact, if you control for the level of intelligence it takes to be any good, SWEs make less (and get far less autonomy--do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?) than any other professional, and they hit a salary/challenge plateau quick... after which, the…

Cry me a river. Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history. The majority of the population is grinding away in tough physical labor or abusive service jobs getting paid pennies while software devs moan about only making low six figures and getting a few boring jira tickets while they sit in their home office reading hacker news for half the day.

> Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history.

Nope this is an outdated opinion. You can do just as well or better in trades (source: my electrician buddy). If you’re referring to the FAANG salaries (sub 1%) you’re comparing to doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs in terms of opportunity cost. Your average joe programmer isn’t killing it like you seem to think, and they’d do just as well in trades or middle management.

The cynic in me thinks this is an opinion promoted by employers, just like the BS “labour shortage” headline.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#87

Post by grvdrm »

bruce343434 wrote: post #58
adrianN wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shit that bugged them for a long time might have a lot less value to the business than a tedious task that nobody wants.

So you'd rather have bugged out people which decreases morale which decreases productivity? See it as an investment. Yes, motor oil is more expensive than no motor oil, but it makes the engine run a lot better.

You're both right, unfortunately - which makes it hard to ever consistently choose a path. Many people are stuck in the middle of the two sides in lots of orgs.

Your tedious tasks are important. But some of your research/autonomous work is important as well. But both are sometimes hugely wasteful as well. I'm regularly reminded that someone more senior can ascribe "business value" to something and push that to the top of your priority list even when that thing isn't valuable.

To me, as a manager, it's worth thinking about it from the perspective of praise. People might feel better if you're reminding them that the tedious stuff IS actually important, IS actually valuable (and why), and etc. And it's important to tell folks to share their side/research efforts as well. I've neglected to share so many of these little efforts over the years, but feel that they're almost always well received.

Last part said a different way. Share something, get the response, and then do what you can to connect and make it more relevant to a real problem or issue if it's not already.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#88

Post by II2II »

willjp wrote: post #15

Re: skill churn I got the impression that there is much less of this in lower level languages. It seems like there is a fairly stable foundation of C, Cpp that everything else is built on top of. I wonder if embedded programmers have this problem.

From an outside perspective, as someone who does embedded development as a hobby rather than a profession, the answer is both yes and no. The stability of C and C++ helps, but you still have some churn in libraries and you almost certainly have to deal with vendor specific libraries (which makes moving between vendors difficult). Trying to bypass libraries doesn't really help on that front, since you are simply trading of churn in libraries with churn in microcontrollers.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#89

Post by capybara_2020 »

Gigachad wrote: post #59
cs137 wrote: post #10

There isn't a shortage of software developers. The pay isn't great--the kids getting $300K packages out of Stanford are an exception; it's a marketing expense. In fact, if you control for the level of intelligence it takes to be any good, SWEs make less (and get far less autonomy--do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?) than any other professional, and they hit a salary/challenge plateau quick... after which, the…

Cry me a river. Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history. The majority of the population is grinding away in tough physical labor or abusive service jobs getting paid pennies while software devs moan about only making low six figures and getting a few boring jira tickets while they sit in their home office reading hacker news for half the day.

Hmm what makes you think software developers are not abused? Maybe in your world they are not, but it regular to hear about devs working 12-14 hours a day. With bosses and clients harassing them even at off hours.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#90

Post by wes-k »

cabraca wrote: post #7
JackMorgan wrote: post #5

A fascinating premise, and matches what I saw as an engineering director. The best just get bored and move on. I think many teams are unaware how much extra value is possible by retaining existing employees vs hiring new ones. Each year I'd try to make sure I was "making them an offer they couldn't refuse" with new interesting challenges, new tech, plenty of personal research time, as much pay increase as I could pos…

its not just the best ones. If you remove people from the grind for 1-2 days a week, give them a small budget and enough autonomy to do what they want, most people will fix shit that bugged them for a long time. The main problem is how micromanage-y the current development processes are. Everything has to be a ticket/user story and has to be planned and approved by some people that never even wrote a single line of c…

I've dreamed about a 20% policy like google had, except it's where you can work on anything, including code debt.

I've tried to stress to managers in the past that developers feel the pain of code debt. It makes us slower! Enable us to spend time sharpening our tools and managing our codebase.

One problem of course is, not all SWE can do this well. I wouldn't necessarily trust a junior hire to recognize and execute a proper refactor.

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