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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)

#531

Post by vcolano »

fleddr wrote: post #462

An unsolvable problem. The rapid deterioration of skill will not stop, it is accelerating instead. People's desire for stability as they grow older will not change either. The only attraction in software development is the relatively good pay. The job itself sucks. You'll spent your life sitting in a chair looking at a text editor, and that's the best part of your day as about 50% of it is distractions. You're quite…

Go ask people installing solar panels and heat pumps if the idea of working a "cognitively taxing" job where they could make more money, work from anywhere and not be dead physically tired at the end of the day sounds appealing... I don't think you'll hear them all say "screw that, I love installing solar panels". The grass is always greener for sure, but none-the-less software engineering and tech offers a very high quality of life with significant earning potential and a ton of flexibility.

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

#532

Post by sirsinsalot »

Chris2048 wrote: post #526
sirsinsalot wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the issue What issue? My projects are delivered on time, on budget and to the customers expectations without undue risk or unpredictability. That's my job. Nobody on my teams would say I micromanage them, everyone has a large degree of autonomy within a framework of shared goals and shared values that keeps efforts working towards cohesive results. With autonomy comes responsibility to the team, business, c…

> Nobody on my teams would say I micromanage them Perhaps that's b/c you are apparently in a position to get rid of people who "go AWOL" despite maintaining "a large degree of autonomy". If autonomy is prefixed on "within a framework of shared goals and shared values" then why do you think individuals can't do work based on their own conception of those shared goals/values, rather than requiring signoff first? Autono…

There really shouldn't be an issue getting work approved and visible to the whole team (if anything for team input, collaboration, opportunities for others to object).

If you're working for the benefit of the product/team I don't see why you would need to, or have an issue with this.

Strange.

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

#533

Post by Chris2048 »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #532
Chris2048 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody on my teams would say I micromanage them Perhaps that's b/c you are apparently in a position to get rid of people who "go AWOL" despite maintaining "a large degree of autonomy". If autonomy is prefixed on "within a framework of shared goals and shared values" then why do you think individuals can't do work based on their own conception of those shared goals/values, rather than requiring signoff first? Autono…

There really shouldn't be an issue getting work approved and visible to the whole team (if anything for team input, collaboration, opportunities for others to object). If you're working for the benefit of the product/team I don't see why you would need to, or have an issue with this. Strange.

> team input, collaboration, opportunities for others to object

You don't always need a ticket for this, if it applies at all. I'm not unaware of these benefits, but the burden lies with you to demonstrate devs cannot be trusted to be autonomous, or choose the appropriate mode of collaboration.

> getting work approved

Why is this always needed?

> If you're working for the benefit

This is a strawman, you can do this without the overhead.

Who do the approvers seek approval from, for the same reason(s), and who do they seek approval from?

> visible to the whole team

This is what standup / status updates are for. It takes all of a few seconds, no approvals needed.

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

#534

Post by anonporridge »

kcplate wrote: post #470
fleddr wrote: post #462

An unsolvable problem. The rapid deterioration of skill will not stop, it is accelerating instead. People's desire for stability as they grow older will not change either. The only attraction in software development is the relatively good pay. The job itself sucks. You'll spent your life sitting in a chair looking at a text editor, and that's the best part of your day as about 50% of it is distractions. You're quite…

> If I would be young now, I'd say fuck it and go install solar panels or heat pumps Amen. For me the advice I give the young—-go for a trade. HVAC (especially if you live where it’s hot) and plumbing to me are the most future and recession proof jobs there are. Literally by the time other folks are graduating with CS degrees and massive college debt, you have been making 70k a year for 3 years and are about to clip…

Unfortunately, this is also a low cost skill to acquire, so the barrier to entry is low.

As all the mid level white collar jobs keep getting automated away, there's going to be a glut of people in need of income who are more than capable of learning a trade if their ego can handle it.

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

#535

Post by nradov »

usrn wrote: post #412
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, industry is routinely bashing on CS degrees because they don't turn people into framework X-ready candidates. It's getting a little tiring just how little credit is given to the idea of "maybe these tools can be learned in a reasonable amount of time by people with a degree showing they can pick things up rather quickly".

TBH CS degrees don't really produce people who can code in general either. As far as I can tell they take people who already understand the basics and teach them to formally communicate.

Computer Science degrees aren't intended to produce people who can code. The CS field is literally the science of computation, a branch of applied mathematics. Complaining about lack of coding skills in CS graduates is sort of like complaining that Chemistry graduates aren't good at washing test tubes.

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

#536

Post by atleta »

fleddr wrote: post #462

An unsolvable problem. The rapid deterioration of skill will not stop, it is accelerating instead. People's desire for stability as they grow older will not change either. The only attraction in software development is the relatively good pay. The job itself sucks. You'll spent your life sitting in a chair looking at a text editor, and that's the best part of your day as about 50% of it is distractions. You're quite…

It's not so much a desire for stability in general rather than the depreciation. I found that piece in the post rather convincing. I don't think most people have a problem with learning new skills in this field. But having to throw away old ones sure feels like a waste and given the model in the post limits how good you can ever get.

Also, sitting and staring at a text editor should not sound that awful for anyone who likes to create via writing code. Because that's how you do it. But that's not what you experience, obviously. It's about what goes on in your head.

I remember the feeling after taking a new job as a fresh graduate. It felt ridiculous that I know get paid for doing the thing I've wanted to do most of the time in the past ~12 years but I was told that you can't do that all day because you have duties. (Now the pay was actually pretty bad, even for local standards, as my first job was in an academic research institute.)

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

#537

Post by mettamage »

highwaylights wrote: post #438
mettamage wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Am I to assume you're not happy to trust ma gut?

I've met many people in life that trust their gut. Without anything else, from what I've seen, people trusting their gut is a net negative. With that said, that's mostly because it's a bit of a cultural thing that trusting your intuition is a smart thing to do. However, there are enough people out there who's intuition will kill themselves, if they would only trust their intuition (e.g. drug addicts, not limited to only them though). There are also less dramatic examples that I've seen (women and men consistently finding the wrong partner). So on average, a net negative. Since you're a random person on Hacker News making some bold claims, yea I need something stronger than just your intuition.

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

#538

Post by atleta »

goldenshale wrote: post #240

I think this article hits on some truths and gets a handful of things wrong. First, they are correct that we are in a dynamic profession that requires constant learning and expanding. No doubt the people who choose to stay in software are likely to be people who are curious, life-long learners where this is a benefit of the profession rather than a drawback. That said, one thing I noticed from teaching computer scien…

I actually find the model in the article pretty convincing despite agreeing with you on that it's a profession for people who like to learn knew things and that university/grad school should teach more generic, theoretical knowledge that depreciate slower.

However, these still don't invalidate the main point of the article, that a faster rate depreciation means that your max knowledge level, given your specific rate of learning, will be lower. I.e. your advantage over a less skilled, younger professional will be lower.

And you may say that learning a new 3D library shouldn't be counted as learning a new skill, but it doesn't make the problem go away. If anything, it underlines it: if you have to start working with a new 3D library then you will have to spend time and effort on learning it (to become efficient at using it) while if you were able to keep using it, you could spend that time and effort on learning something that we could count as a new skill.

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

#539

Post by glouwbug »

Chris2048 wrote: post #527
glouwbug wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's AWS is known for long hard sink or swim overtime, and they're the first letter in FAANG

Second letter? Unless you meant to say Facebook.

You're right, almost gottem good

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

#540

Post by z3t4 »

selcuka wrote: post #484
xwolfi wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends of the level of maturity of the system. I d agree you need to be a C genius to accelerate the linux kernel a bit, maybe. But most software aren't the linux kernel, they're small systems solving a class of specific problems as fast as possible with rotating teams, so it sometimes is just a matter of profiling this stupid hashcode function or asking why the mouse is freezing during high trading volume on the C#…

Agreed. I once "optimised" an in-house software that took minutes to process a single report, down to seconds, just by adding an index to the database (Microsoft Access, mind you) table. Not all developers know what they are doing [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296339

Had a coworker that just indexed everything, and it worked too.
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