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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)

#211

Post by groby_b »

mettamage wrote: post #171
highwaylights wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, I agree with you that on the whole we're a bunch of spoiled crybabies. Totally grant you that. On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true. Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done). Most of us are just doing things for money. Are most people…

We need data for this. More importantly, we need data for how tough it is to get certain jobs. That means stuff like: * Time spent on finding a job * Time spent on studying in order to attain a job * Actual amount of hours worked (hard to get accurate data on it) * Actual amount of effort per hour (hard to operationalize) It's a very tough discussion to have, but I have a gut feeling that you're simplifying too much…

Or, you know, you could just listen to people.

Qualitative evidence is just fine. We might want to stop exclusively fetishizing numbers, and instead of complaining how hard it is to find data, do something to fix the problems right in front of our face.

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

#212

Post by lukas099 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #179
vsareto wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 don't need to do this forever The thesis of the linked article is that you do. For the most part, it matches my experience. I'm 30 years in and already wondering how useful the Hadoop/Spark/Scala stuff I spent the last few years mastering is going to be in the next 5 years.

On the other hand, a C or Java engineer can probably be pretty confident that there will be jobs for the foreseeable future. Pretty much the Lindy effect in action.

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

#213

Post by nso »

voxic11 wrote: post #196
dubswithus wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if you do it anyway and don't put it on the board?

In my company it depends on the repo but worst case is you get arrested for making unapproved changes to regulated sports betting systems.

This made me laugh out loud because it was so unexpected but also makes perfect sense.

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

#214

Post by max51 »

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…

>SWEs make less than any other professional

Except for almost all of them. Aside from a few exceptions (doctors, laywers), everyone else makes significantly less. A structural engineer with a master's degree for exemple will makes less than half (closer to 3 - 4x in my region).

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

#215

Post by dfsegoat »

voxic11 wrote: post #196
dubswithus wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if you do it anyway and don't put it on the board?

In my company it depends on the repo but worst case is you get arrested for making unapproved changes to regulated sports betting systems.

Ouch. Out of curiosity, are those local or federal regulations?

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

#216

Post by chociej »

rootusrootus wrote: post #67
dt3ft wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can’t even push to a git repo unless it has a linked work item/story/task/bug. So, in order to say, upgrade packages or refactor difficult to read code, the work item needs to be approved by a non-tech PO. Guess how much gets done outside of planned/micromanaged? Answer: next to nothing.

That definitely sounds broken. I have a hard rule with my PO: 30% of the sprint is mine (read: the team's). He only gets to schedule 70% of the stories according to his priorities. I use that 30% for tech debt, primarily, but sometimes for spike projects and other things that interest us.

I like this in a certain light. It's not so much a problem that PRs should be associated with tickets, it just sounds like the gatekeeping involved in getting tickets into an iteration is horribly overbearing. There _should_ be work happening that is driven by technical wants and needs, and the PO should be amenable to that.

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

#217

Post by whimsicalism »

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.

The Hadoop ecosystem is still very much ongoing. You must work in small tech/startups if you think that these are being replaced by managed services.

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

#218

Post by bluedino »

irrational wrote: post #144
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…

Yeah, but in trades you have to climb in hot attics, deal with sewers, work outside, etc. And you have to put in a full days work. How many of us developers actually put in a full 8+ hours? I know that I don’t. I can usually get my assigned work done in about four hours. Can you imagine an electrician or plumber or doctor or lawyer only working 4 hours a day? It’s insane how much I get paid for what I actually do.

Don't forget starting your day at 5am, driving an hour and half to and from the job site, or living at a Holiday Inn for weeks at a time.

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

#219

Post by fmakunbound »

dt3ft wrote: post #24
cabraca wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We can’t even push to a git repo unless it has a linked work item/story/task/bug. So, in order to say, upgrade packages or refactor difficult to read code, the work item needs to be approved by a non-tech PO. Guess how much gets done outside of planned/micromanaged? Answer: next to nothing.

> We can’t even push to a git repo unless it has a linked work item/story/task/bug

Exactly the same where I work. The pace of getting things done is absolutely glacial compared to what you know you could achieve if you had any agency. I think the only reason this organization I'm temporarily a part of can even compete is that all its competitors must be equally inefficient.

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

#220

Post by _fat_santa »

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…

> The pay isn't great--the kids getting $300K packages out of Stanford are an exception; it's a marketing expense.

You don't have to make 300k for the pay to be great. Even if you fall short of that and land at a company that only pays you $120k, you're still making a killing compared to most other professions.

> Corporate SWE is pretty awful

Then get out of Corporate. I work for an SMB, make about as much as I used to in Corporate, but the stress level and workload makes is much easier. Everyone want's one of those SWE jobs for a company that is in the news, but in fact you want the exact opposite. You want a low profile job at a company no one outside your niche has heard of. The pay is about the same, work is 10x less crazy, and if you disagree with a decision, usually you know the person that made it because the company is only about 200 employees.

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