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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)

#161

Post by agent281 »

Victerius wrote: post #47
tialaramex wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many lawyers have to religiously time track everything. Because hours attributable to a specific client are billed and billable hours are where the revenue comes from.

On the other hand, lawyers knowledge of the law and legal procedures doesn't become stale after a few years. "Requires 20 years experience in the Affordable Care Act" - Said no law firm ever

It does get stale and changes per jurisdiction. Just look at how GDPR and CCPA changed the privacy landscape. At least programmers don’t have to deal with linked lists having different time complexities in California.

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

#162

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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).

Most companies with good pay have a decently high median age for senior SWEs.

I'm not sure why anyone 50+ would want to work at the vast majority of startups...

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

#163

Post by djvdq »

Gigachad wrote: post #97
BigJ1211 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a perspective that's exclusively silicon valley (perhaps large parts of the US) based. Not at all true in Europe at the least. Not that it's a bad job by any stretch of the imagination, but even low six figures is really rare in the EU for Software Development. Easiest is also highly subjective, if your job is making wordpress templates/sites then sure. If you're working on complexer systems then thi…

I’m from a small Australian city. I earn in the top 5% of the country with 8 years experience and no degree. And I see all my friends who picked software in the same situation. It’s probably the most privileged position possible.

Same here. I'm from Poland, I've 6 YOE, no degree, and also top 5% of earners. No other job will let me achieve this in such short time. You can earn similar money as a doctor, lawyer or let's say plumber BUT ypu have to do at least one of: a) work 80 a week instead of 40 (and let's be honest, none of us work 8h a day). b) do hard physical work instead of sitting in a chair c) be responsible for people lifes (and face jail in case of failure) etc

In short: I'm privileged AF

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

#164

Post by djvdq »

fileeditview wrote: post #120
Gigachad wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m from a small Australian city. I earn in the top 5% of the country with 8 years experience and no degree. And I see all my friends who picked software in the same situation. It’s probably the most privileged position possible.

Maybe it's true in Australia.. however here in Germany e.g. your chance of being a top earner if you have no degree is near nil. Usually you are expected to have university degrees for tech jobs. There are also some without but it's the minority and their promotion prospects are a lot worse.

I was thinking about moving to Germany from Poland. I was surprised that devs there has such low wages in comparison to cost of living. I abandoned the idea after it turned out my QoL will decrease quite a lot even I'd get more money than I've now

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

#165

Post by johnatwork »

dionidium wrote: post #126
rapind wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Have you seen the way somebody who has been in the trades for 20 years walks? They have a very particular kind of gait. You can easily tell them apart from the weekend-warriors walking into Home Depot just by their stride. It's the walk of a body that's been absolutely wrecked by physical labor.

Man this is the truth.

They all have some combination of: odd posture, odd gait, a dry cough, or bad skin. You can talk about ageism in the Tech world, but I've worked as a tradesman for a bit of time when I was young, and there were not many past 50 much less 50 and healthy. Over lunch they each all recounted their health issues, which made me quit that summer and get an office job.

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

#166

Post by commandlinefan »

BigJ1211 wrote: post #80
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.

This seems to be a perspective that's exclusively silicon valley (perhaps large parts of the US) based. Not at all true in Europe at the least. Not that it's a bad job by any stretch of the imagination, but even low six figures is really rare in the EU for Software Development. Easiest is also highly subjective, if your job is making wordpress templates/sites then sure. If you're working on complexer systems then thi…

> Easiest is also highly subjective

Anecdotally, I've observed (over a 30-year career) that less than half of the people who have the qualifications can actually produce halfway decent code (as in code that doesn't crash the first time it's used or introduce new problems).

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

#167

Post by erellsworth »

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…

Average salary for a software developer in the US is over $100k/year. For a 30 year old, that would put them in the 95% income percentile, or 87% for a 40 year old.

The comparison to other lawyers is weak because becoming a lawyer requires a hell of a lot more education. You can become a software developer without even a having a college degree.

You are also ignoring other professions like nursing. Nurses make far less than software developers and work a hell of a lot harder. Same with teachers.

As far as barely making a middle-class salary while rich people get richer off your work? Welcome to capitalism.

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

#168

Post by ed_elliott_asc »

spicymaki wrote: post #118
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.

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…

The thing that really crystallises how spoilt we are is: https://nohello.club/

We take ourselves so seriously we cannot afford the time for someone to be polite!

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

#169

Post by adamsmith143 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #124
Patrol8394 wrote: post #110

There is no shortage of swe. What I see and what I have experienced first hand is that companies, especially the more hyped/small ones, pretend to be FAANG and gets very picky when interviewing. They often employ FAANG style interview. Now, if I really have to spend that much time prepping to interview at your unprofitable company (that most likely will go under) don’t you think that I would try my best to work at fa…

I definitely think "we do not do leetcode interviews" and maybe "we only have three interviews total" would be selling points on a job posting. People who are experienced in the field don't want to go through the same hoops that newbies do just to prove they know how to write basic algorithms.

http://they.whiteboarded.me/companies-that-dont-whiteboard.h...

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

#170

Post by weatherlite »

rainboOow9 wrote: post #134
weatherlite wrote: post #61

I think the problem of ageism wasn't mentioned at all and it should be. People who love the field have no problems keeping up to date. Sure some job posts will mention Hadoop or Kafka but whatever, a good dev will have no problem learning these in a few days. Does he get a chance though if he's 50?

Ironic thing here is that Hadoop is mostly already outdated. Which is btw one of the depressing thing for a lot of data engineers: we used to play with those cool distributed processing frameworks, and now? We are mostly writing some terraform to deploy cloud resources, most of the distributed part being handled by those cloud providers.

> Which is btw one of the depressing thing for a lot of data engineers: we used to play with those cool distributed processing frameworks, and now? We are mostly writing some terraform to deploy cloud resources, most of the distributed part being handled by those cloud providers.

Sounds to me like switching one provider/tool by another - or are data engineers feeling bummed because the job has become too trivial / less fun?

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