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The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

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Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#561

Post by iancmceachern »

stagger87 wrote: post #250
jedberg wrote: post #142

There are plenty of talented C++ programmers. They just don't want to be abused by trading firms or work in that culture. Even paying them more won't work, because no amount of money is worth that abuse. I interviewed at a trading firm once, while I was working at Netflix (because Netflix encouraged us to interview for outside jobs at least once a year). The comp would have been double my Netflix salary. But I would…

Just to clarify, you used the word "abuse" several times to describe a job where you would have to work in office between 8:30 to 5 and pull (I'm safely assuming) half a million dollars a year?

Abuse comes in many forms. Just because they're paying "well" doesn't mean it's not an abusive environment. In fact, they are paying so well precisely because it'd abusive.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#562

Post by iancmceachern »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #351
jedberg wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8:30 to 5 was required, but also never working at home was required, so what I was trying to (poorly) say is that they basically expected you to live in the office and never see your family. I'll update accordingly. And the comp package I turned down was about $700k at the time, which was 10 years ago. Nowadays it would be a $1M+ job easy. But not seeing my family is not worth any amount of money to me, since there a…

That's not abusive. That's a rational security posture. Defense contractor employees can't take their work home either. It's nice when you can't be pressured to work off hours.

Not true, I personally know many defense contractors who effectively have no offices and work out of their homes or vehicle.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#563

Post by iancmceachern »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #385
jedberg wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8:30 to 5 was required, but also never working at home was required, so what I was trying to (poorly) say is that they basically expected you to live in the office and never see your family. I'll update accordingly. And the comp package I turned down was about $700k at the time, which was 10 years ago. Nowadays it would be a $1M+ job easy. But not seeing my family is not worth any amount of money to me, since there a…

First job 8:30 - 5 in office for $35k/y and the word abuse didn’t cross my mind Edit: saw your comment it was actually 80h/w onsite. That is abuse but hey the pay is great.

My first job too. And mine was in Manhattan as well.

But now I have choices, and wouldn't choose that choice again.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#564

Post by GeoAtreides »

mardifoufs wrote: post #541
GeoAtreides wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm talking about right now. Or as soon as possible. There is no need, in 2023 AD, to work as hard as in the 1900 just to survive. Absolutely no need. Food and shelter could be easily provided for everyone. And if we can't "easily" provided it, then we should strive to do so. We have to shift from old patterns of thinking to new ways, we have to realize that the only thing holding us down is an outdated view of t…

You are only saying that because you come from a position of privilege, where your work is loosely correlated with your actual survival. I don't understand how you could think food and shelter could be provided for everyone, easily, withiur ignoring all the people who work super hard to provide you just that. Unless you just mean that it could be provided easily for some people, as long as the lower stratas keep work…

1 to 10% of population works in agriculture. This can be lowered even further with robotics and AI (sure, not in 2023, but in 2030, if efforts are made). They will then give us food and society in exchange gives them everything: schooling, medical care, holidays in nice places, maybe even housing in nice places (near a beach or a mountain). But I think at that point most people would work in agriculture for fun and for wanting to do something, and I honestly believe ag-jobs will be subjected to lottery, for there would be too many applicants.

Once food is taken care of, a great pressure would ease off and people would find themselves with more money, which then might be exchanged to less work.

Same reasoning can be apply to housing or even to medical care. The people who build houses would get the best spots for new houses, or the rarest food, or social recognition and status. And so the medics, teachers, etc.

This can't and won't happen in a day. There are many gotchas and unforeseen problems. But we can start working on it and planning and taking small steps towards this goal. It doesn't have to be all or nothing: it can be, for example, 1 hour off the working day every 5 years, for example.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#565

Post by nvarsj »

mvuksano wrote: post #354
jedberg wrote: post #142

There are plenty of talented C++ programmers. They just don't want to be abused by trading firms or work in that culture. Even paying them more won't work, because no amount of money is worth that abuse. I interviewed at a trading firm once, while I was working at Netflix (because Netflix encouraged us to interview for outside jobs at least once a year). The comp would have been double my Netflix salary. But I would…

I worked in a high frequency trading company before. They had similar concerns about secrecy but I loved it. Even today I think it was the best job ever. Now I moved to the States and thinking of going back down the high frequency trading route again. I learned so much about computers - probably more then in any uni. By the way, work life balance was way better then in any FAANG company (I worked for two FAANG compan…

I kind of agree with you. Having worked at HFT and now FAANG, I found HFT more satisfying and challenging overall - although it did have its issues, which is why I left.

It's like a start up / small company culture with great compensation - you have a direct impact very easily and it's obvious when others aren't pulling their weight. The one I joined had 10 hours a day (8-6) in the contract, but no one worked more than 8 hours in the office and they actually had very flexible hours as long as you delivered.

FAANG pays well but it is plagued with big company issues which can be very frustrating to talented engineers who just want to get stuff done.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#566

Post by WorldMaker »

lelanthran wrote: post #400
WorldMaker wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to age factors: so long as the "primary" development language for videogames remains C++ there's always going to be a multi-generational talent pool for C++. Young naive programmers get into videogames until they burn out or are laid off due to ageism then there's "always" "fresh" new C++ talent for other industries too immediately following those videogame roles (assuming the burnout isn't total, such as str…

> Related to age factors: so long as the "primary" development language for videogames remains C++ there's always going to be a multi-generational talent pool for C++. Young naive programmers get into videogames until they burn out or are laid off due to ageism then there's "always" "fresh" new C++ talent for other industries too immediately following those videogame roles (assuming the burnout isn't total, such as s…

Yes, C# is definitely getting a leg up these days (nearly a decade later than Microsoft's and Mono/Xamarin's separate big attempts to make it happen), but it is still seen as more of a "scripting language" than source or engine language. Unity itself is still built in C/C++. Godot is written in C/C++ and its default scripting language is the odd GDScript with some unique C/C++-isms and it takes extra effort to use C# with Godot (though a lot of post-Unity devs seem to be growing happy with C# in Godot these days). Unity is semi-closed/proprietary source so doesn't get a lot of indie dev contributions, but Godot is open source and I have heard of indie devs needing to contribute C/C++ upstream.

(As an aside: I've got my eyes on FNA which just hit some milestones with using .NET 7 AOT for pure C# games on the major consoles. That's pretty exciting.)

Unreal is the truly wild one because to my understanding Unreal Engine Blueprints are a terrible half-baked not-quite-scripting language and most Unreal developers have to do most of their "proper" scripting in C/C++ directly. (With some statistical anomalies allegedly doing things like bolting in Lua interpreters.)

But yeah, outside of indies and small game companies my impression is that C/C++ is still king and there's some consternation that developers learning from the indie side are sometimes, if interviewing for AAA teams, getting shuttled to "tools" positions because that's where AAA's only C# code lives (in non-critical tools outside of the games). (Though that's mostly anecdata from reading similar gamedev forums.)

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#567

Post by selfmodruntime »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #437
fxtentacle wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree. I've also seen my fair share of very restrictive no-remote work offers, but they didn't even offer exceptional pay in exchange. And those C++ automotive jobs in Germany? Sorry, I'm not even going to interview for 70k€ annually.

> And those C++ automotive jobs in Germany? Sorry, I'm not even going to interview for 70k€ annually. I'd take that job in a heartbeat. Working on cars? Check. Nice European country? Check. Work-life balance? Double-check. What's not to like? Maybe it's because I'm looking for fresh graduate jobs, and 70000€ looks very attractive to me, even with a 35% tax.

Tax is closer to 40% at that bracket and that is without obscene rent.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#568

Post by lordnacho »

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #512
lordnacho wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply put cpp gives you ultimate control. If you want to be absolutely economical with the CPU/memory, you need to do things likely preallocate memory and making sure you don't get cache misses and branch mispredicts. For most software, the hardware has already run away to the point where you can just sort of tell the machine roughly what to do and it will do it for you in a way that doesn't affect your task, so you…

So Rust can’t do that quite as well?

I think it gets close. Certainly close enough that if you're a small team doing similar things, use Rust. If you have time to fiddle with the little things, go with cpp.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#569

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

conductr wrote: post #401
dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any programmer worth their salt can march into a nasty codebase of whatever language, Correct, I wonder why people both technical and non-technical focus on this aspect a lot. ( my guess is that they are incompetent themselves). Agreed, if you want someone for two or three months you probably want someone who knows the language and it's ecosystem pretty well. Any work that is more than six months should be nearly l…

> Any work that is more than six months should be nearly language independent. I'm not sure this is true in finance. Speed matters. A lot. It's called high frequency trading for a reason. These firms will spend a million bucks just to make their fiber optic cables 1 foot shorter.

>I'm not sure this is true in finance.

So if it's not 6 months, how much will it take for a seasoned programmer to learn the stuff?

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#570

Post by boshalfoshal »

908B64B197 wrote: post #46
joezydeco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are financial firms griping about the lack of developers. They're some of the highest paid developers in the world. But working for these companies is also insanely stressful. Long hours, high pressure. Maybe that reputation has caught up to them.

> Maybe that reputation has caught up to them. It did. Comp is nowhere near FAANG and the work culture is still stuck in the 90's. Go to any college and talk to students looking for internships. Finance firms are nowhere near the top of their list.

Lol, couldn't be further from the truth. Ive gotten multiple offers at FAANG and Trading firms (thinkCitadel Jump, Optiver, HRT, IMC, etc.). Trading comp blew my FAANG offers out of the water. And if you went to MIT, CMU, or Berkeley right now I would guarantee you the top students are gunning for an internship at one of those firms.

Perhaps "prestige" may be lower from an external perspective (Your parents will brag about you being at Google, but probably not Jane Street), and Id also agree with the fact that the top 0.01% probably either make their own startup or join as a founding engineer at a startup, but the top 0.1% of students are definitely going for Prop trading/hedge fund jobs.

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