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Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

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Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#51

Post by GFischer »

The article states: "A large technology company might typically pay new law-school graduates and MBAs salaries and compensation approaching double what they give new master’s degree grads in computer science. "

But, from what I've read, those high-paying law school jobs are very few, only for the elite of the elite, and requires the new employee to work insane hours. Same for those MBAs.

I'm pretty sure that, on average, a new master's degree grad in Computer Science outperforms a typical law school graduate, and should be close or better than an MBA.

Let's Google:

http://www.nalp.org/classof2010_salpressrel

Law graduates:

"The national median salary for the Class of 2010, based on those working full-time and reporting a salary, was $63,000"

and only because of those few outliers making $160,000.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/06/06/paying.jobs.2011.gr...

"Computer science -- Average annual salary offer to 2011 grads: $63,017"

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/sep2009/bs20090...

"PayScale's average (for starting salary MBAs) clicks in at a much more modest $66,300"

So, basically, he's wrong.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#52

Post by johngalt »

Max career length depends on how the young engineer sets himself up. Early in your career you want to bootstrap yourself with some hot new technology to get your foot in the door. Once you are about 3-4 years in, you need to switch gears and focus on learning the things that change slowly. Such as:

1. How to work with people (technical/non-technical)

2. More about math and general concepts of your craft, not just new language X.

3. Measuring the business effects of your work.

People are more apt to deal with a 20 something nerd with a bad attitude because he's cheap and fits the stereotype. An expensive 40 something with the same attributes will be seen as a weirdo.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#53

Post by hkarthik »

GFischer wrote: post #37
nirvana wrote: post #24

There's a persistent myth that needs to be put down: It doesn't get at all harder to learn new technologies when you get older. In fact, it gets a whole lot easier. There's an old saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", and this is true, to the extent that any cliche can be, when referring to people becoming set in their ways. For many professions, where the technology doesn't' change, this is true. For progr…

I'm 31, and I have coworkers in their late 30s and early 40s, working in a large multinational with legacy systems. The truth is, while it doesn't get that much mentally harder to learn new technologies, it is very hard psychologically. For someone used to a large paycheck, to being the go-to guy in the technology and set in their 9-to-5 ways, to get out of their comfort zone, and admit that what they know is no long…

I was in a similar boat, and I decided to take the pay cut and spend a few years building my way back up.

I'm much happier this way than I ever would have been in a managerial role that I never wanted.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#54

Post by jiggy2011 »

GFischer wrote: post #37
nirvana wrote: post #24

There's a persistent myth that needs to be put down: It doesn't get at all harder to learn new technologies when you get older. In fact, it gets a whole lot easier. There's an old saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", and this is true, to the extent that any cliche can be, when referring to people becoming set in their ways. For many professions, where the technology doesn't' change, this is true. For progr…

I'm 31, and I have coworkers in their late 30s and early 40s, working in a large multinational with legacy systems. The truth is, while it doesn't get that much mentally harder to learn new technologies, it is very hard psychologically. For someone used to a large paycheck, to being the go-to guy in the technology and set in their 9-to-5 ways, to get out of their comfort zone, and admit that what they know is no long…

To be fair far more programmers today (even new ones) will be familiar with .Net than they will be with Ruby (and complex JS probably).

I can see .Net sticking around for a while in one form or anther. Also AWS really isn't that complicated (at least from what I have used which is only really S3). Just think of it as another layer of abstraction around your Filesystem (FTP/Rsync with bells). You can figure S3 out in a few hours and I can't imagine EC2 being much more difficult if you're already familiar with Unix.

I think the crux of the problem here though is that you take a risk whenever you devote any significant time to learning a specific technology as to whether it will still be relevant in a few years.

This problem is made worse by the fact that often your employer will make that choice for you. Imagine being a young hire at your first coding job with ambitions of moving on to a career at Google after a couple of years to then be told that you are to be transferred to the COBOL/FORTRAN team where you will spend the next 2 years.

I think this is probably part of the reason that many developers are so keen to re-implement perfectly working systems in new languages. They will try and sell their boss on the benefits of technology XYZ and how it will be good for the business when really in the back of their mind they are thinking "I desperately want out of this job and XYZ would look great on my CV".

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#55

Post by mmurph211 »

In 20 years we'll see how right he is. My guess is he's dead wrong. If you look at the software development industry it's relatively new (mid 90s really) and expanding rapidly into every industry. That's producing a lot of heavy demand for software developers and if you think about it on a meta level it makes sense with so many things becoming digitized. With all this demand building up for a job that requires a certain mindset (hindering supply) I don't see this becoming a problem so long as the workforce keeps up its marketability.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#56

Post by silverbax88 »

nirvana wrote: post #8

He seems to have missed making the point in the title. Why would software engineers work for english majors? He thinks that a 20 something english major is a better manager for a software engineer than a 40 something software engineer? Plus he seems to completely miss a separate alternative for software engineers over 35-- start their own businesses. I think the perception that 40 year olds are not up to date on tech…

Me, at 20 years old: "Man, young people are so much quicker and smarter than older people."

Me, at 40 years old: "Just wait. You'll see."

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#57

Post by whimsy »

cowholio4 wrote: post #27
jroseattle wrote: post #18

Wow, what hogwash. I still don't see where the article connects the dots -- why, exactly, would I end up working for an English major? As for the balance of the article, most of the finger-pointing to dead-end oblivion for 40+ programmers is that they're priced out of the market. While that may be true in some cases, it's certainly not a trend I'm seeing -- rather, the opposite. Mostly, this article was written by so…

Eh... I wouldn't write off the author that easily. I had him as a professor at UC Davis. http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html

Perhaps, but he's no English major - didn't support his thesis.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#58

Post by jhspaybar »

This whole idea that the wisdom of an older experienced programmer isn't somehow hugely useful mystifies me. I'm at the top of my CS class in the UC system and spending this summer interning at one of the biggest Intenet companies. I'm also very comfortable in C++, Objective-C, Java, and a host of "hot" web languages.

With that said, I'm aware I truly "don't know jack" despite being one of the best in my degree program. If given the choice of hiring a new CS grad at $75k a year or an experienced developer at $150k for a startup, I'd choose the experienced developer every time. Maybe it's a product of my self education supplementary to school, but someone who has done it before(even if using something as ancient as COBOL) is the person I want to be my superstar.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#59

Post by PhrosTT »

tgflynn wrote: post #2

Maybe this is why so much software these days looks like it was written by unsupervised youngsters. I just wasted a day trying to get ListView's to work in Android only to find out that, well, they don't work, so you need to use something else. Then it took me a couple of hours to essentially duplicate the ListView functionality, except a working version. The thing is developing a GUI framework isn't rocket science,…

You will be hopeless without watching this:

http://www.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/world-of-listv...

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#60

Post by jiggy2011 »

nirvana wrote: post #8

He seems to have missed making the point in the title. Why would software engineers work for english majors? He thinks that a 20 something english major is a better manager for a software engineer than a 40 something software engineer? Plus he seems to completely miss a separate alternative for software engineers over 35-- start their own businesses. I think the perception that 40 year olds are not up to date on tech…

Another point to bear in mind is that us programmers can be a vain lot and since it is possible to be highly successful in software very early in your career. This can mean you will be put in a position of doing the hiring early on.

We will naturally prefer someone younger and greener than us that we can mentor rather than hire someone 10 years our senior who's experience we might find threatening.

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