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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)

#151

Post by fjfbsufhdvfy »

fileeditview wrote: post #141
Gigachad wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not need a 5+ year degree. I have no formal qualifications and have no issue securing six figure jobs. And I have seen many others do the same. You also have the ability to get a standing desk and take breaks to walk around.

Yea so maybe that degree thing is a German problem. I do not know the other markets/countries. Here, what I said is certainly true. A standing desk is better than no standing desk but won't correct everything by itself. Taking a break and walking around is fine but I still need to get back to staring into the computer screen to do my work. I don't know your age but for me it started with about ~35 that I realized tha…

The trick for Germans is to find a remote job at an American company. Much better pay - and you don't have to live in America! Win all around.

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

#152

Post by ecmascript »

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.

Username checks out. I laughed so hard and I recognize myself in the description. Just an awesome comment.

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

#153

Post by sarojmoh1 »

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…

What's the alternative though? What other "career" change can a SWE make that will make them even close to what they used to make?

What about escaping corporate swe and working for oneself?

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

#154

Post by bluGill »

zarzavat wrote: post #50
quickthrower2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes up in value. Also interests rates decreasing means more immediate money in lower living costs.

It’s a rather abstract view of making money. Other houses also go up in value. You only make money from the difference between how much houses in your area are going up, and how much houses in the area you want to move to are going up. And that difference may well be negative.

A lot of people are doing a cash our refinance so they can capture the gains from their house value.

I don't recommend it, but many people do.

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

#155

Post by Ekaros »

q-big wrote: post #128
spicymaki wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get on the "It is a hard-knock life for Software developers" train. We are very-very well compensated, and we are insufferable. I do understand the issue. Humans are prone to complain about any slight whether real or imagined. Millionaires will complain about not having enough money, A-list celebrities will complain about not having enough visibility, sports stars will complain about every foul play. Money ju…

> I can't get on the "It is a hard-knock life for Software developers" train. We are very-very well compensated, and we are insufferable. The compensation can be high if you work in Silicon Valley (even though the cost of living is high there). The standard corporate programming job is already paid much worse. Also in a lot of countries that are not the USA, software development is not such a well-paying job.

I don't think there is that many countries were software developers aren't reasonably well compensated compared to local standard of pay. And that is the level that we should really compare to. Is the pay above median or in top 25% for the location? I would guess that it is for most of the world.

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

#156

Post by mathverse »

keewee7 wrote: post #131
bluGill wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company has noticed that good developers in Germany are cheaper than in India. Good is key here, you can get bad developers in India for very cheap (this might be good enough). The highest paid software positions in Germany are non-union jobs and the majority are not willing to leave the union for more money, which means they are refusing to do the work of a senior engineer, and this in turn means we can't use the…

I remember reading Indians on r/DevOps who were surprised they were earning more than Germans in DevOps/Ops positions.

Adjusted for costs of living or TCO? IT pays peanuts in Europe.

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

#157

Post by treis »

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.

I see this a lot at my current job. The tech stack is ridiculously complicated and I think a lot of it is due to this sort of motivation. They let developers run wild and build using whatever tools or new hotness that they wanted. But ultimately we sell Widgets. And the 3rd refactoring of an application to use some immutable data library doesn't do anything to help us sell more Widgets.

So yes, we have happy developers that have good morale. But we also have probably twice the number we need because nobody put their foot down and said "this is work, not play".

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

#158

Post by hellohowareu »

t_mann wrote: post #73

Some really good points on the ultra-fast depreciation of SE tech skills. A relative of mine is a mechanical engineer, well past retirement age and still going strong in his 2-man consulting shop because that's what he loves doing. He works with precision manufacturers, automotive suppliers,... all very cutting-edge stuff, helping them develop new product lines, manufacturing processes,... He says the core skills tha…

I think the skill depreciation concept is a bit exaggerated. Especially in the context of the newness of computers relative to the engineering field in general, the latter which has been around, arguably, for thousands of years.

For example, SQL & Unix have been around since the 1970s.

Linux since late 1991.

Javascript: The end of 1995. NodeJS: 2009.

Sure, there's a ton of churn in the JS Ecosystem, but all it takes is a bit of wisdom, skepticism, and patience to avoid the hype-cycle.

Also, once you learn to build certain things with a programming language you learn the paradigms of the system you build.

For example-- Web Servers. Looking at ExpressJS vs Python Flask documentation, there are many analogous pieces, because they follow the same standards for protocols.

Another example-- data engineering / statistical computing: Checking out R vs Python packages, there are a lot of the same concepts, just in a slightly different format/language.

HTTP/1.0: 1996 (RFC 1945)

TCP: 1974 "In May 1974, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn described an internetworking protocol for sharing resources using packet switching among network nodes."

"TLS is a proposed Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard, first defined in 1999"

Considering all of this... I don't think most major things actually change that much. Sometimes a popular new framework takes the world by storm, but that's pretty rare compared to the output and churn of the ecosystem.

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

#159

Post by Ekaros »

computerex wrote: post #102
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.

Well, I think the parent is comparing software engineering to other white collar professions like lawyer. In my opinion comparing SWE to blue collar work like construction is apples to oranges. Ofc the blue collar work is harder and more demanding physically. It’s better to think about whether software engineers are being compensated fairly relative to other professions like lawyers. I think they are given that wages…

Or even more so compared to other office workers like managers and such. Or marketing, accounting and so on. All in all it is not too bad.

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

#160

Post by mathverse »

vsareto wrote: post #142
alexfromapex wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many things I have to disagree with. Not all software engineering is easy, particularly the highly paid variety. The six figure salary is diluted by spending weekends constantly having to learn new technology off the clock. Companies then expect senior engineers to mentor other engineers and give presentations of their technical challenges, debasing the value of the knowledge gained working off the clock. Manual l…

>The six figure salary is diluted by spending weekends constantly having to learn new technology off the clock You don't need to do this forever. Usually you can just focus on a stack and related technologies and do well. Once you have experience and a clearly defined need, ad-hoc research is good enough.

You dont have to "learn it for the job" you have to learn it for your next interview where you need to have that trendy tech on your resume.
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