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Finding a Tech Job Is Still a Nightmare

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Re: Finding a Tech Job Is Still a Nightmare

#12
post #2

What can people do instead of technology jobs, to make real productive work in the labour market?

Nursing seems to have a shortage basically everywhere. Especially when you factor in the difference in physical strength between men and women.

I personally wouldn't want any job where I didn't feel like I was personally helping push out the Pareto frontier of civilization, though. Everything else feels somehow short-sighted to me.

Re: Finding a Tech Job Is Still a Nightmare

#13
post #2

What can people do instead of technology jobs, to make real productive work in the labour market?

Sometimes I think about this. Things humans need: food, shelter, healthcare, energy, water. Working in one of these industries or improving access/efficiency of these things could be useful. But there are a lot of tech startups, i.e vertical farming that end up wasting capital because the economics don't make sense.

Individually, most startups fail, so most of them are "wasting capital". As wtih any experimentation, they only make sense in the aggregate, where the total value for society delivered by successful experiments makes up for the cost of the failed ones.

Re: Finding a Tech Job Is Still a Nightmare

#15
I'm surprised there is still so much friction about white collar jobs like programming.

One could think that by now, it should be easy for developers to "jump into" a codebase and suggest changes (aka pull requests). Turning the world of developer jobs into a fluid system that adapts instantly to demand and supply.

It works pretty well for Wikipedia, where everyone can jump in and edit articles. And then there is some hierarchical power structure, which assures high quality.

I wonder what the biggest hindrances are for software development to become this way.

Re: Finding a Tech Job Is Still a Nightmare

#17
post #15

I'm surprised there is still so much friction about white collar jobs like programming. One could think that by now, it should be easy for developers to "jump into" a codebase and suggest changes (aka pull requests). Turning the world of developer jobs into a fluid system that adapts instantly to demand and supply. It works pretty well for Wikipedia, where everyone can jump in and edit articles. And then there is som…

Quality: the need for more of it than Wikipedia has.

Coherence: Wikipedia pages are small and loosely-coupled.

Stability: Wikipedia has no external API. Any page can be renamed and restructured at any time.

Re: Finding a Tech Job Is Still a Nightmare

#18
post #15

I'm surprised there is still so much friction about white collar jobs like programming. One could think that by now, it should be easy for developers to "jump into" a codebase and suggest changes (aka pull requests). Turning the world of developer jobs into a fluid system that adapts instantly to demand and supply. It works pretty well for Wikipedia, where everyone can jump in and edit articles. And then there is som…

> I wonder what the biggest hindrances are for software development to become this way.

Context and complexity. Jumping into a codebase and suggesting changes that add value to the company usually require having context of what the company is doing, who are the users, what's the product used for, etc. Not to mention how a lot of codebases are complex and understanding where and how to do changes is not something you can just do straight away.

Re: Finding a Tech Job Is Still a Nightmare

#20
it's really not, if you're the slightest bit strategic about it, and seek employment outside of san francisco.

i suppose that wired's editors know this, but like many publications, they will gleefully sow fear, doubt, and anxiety into people who don't know any better in order to make a small amount of money.

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