181–190 of 289 posts
Why are all these posts talking about 50? Retirement in Canada just got pushed to 67, and I think most people expect it will go out to 69 before we actually get to retire (I'm 30 now). All these titles should say " Do you really want to be doing this at 66 "
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As a biologist, I'm going to have to object. No matter what level of talent and competence you have, there are very few opportunities in this field to make a nice living. You're pretty much relegated to becoming a tenured professor (good luck) or working your way up in an established biotech firm doing work many would consider mind-numbing. At best, you're looking at the low-end of six figures for someone with decade…
The point of tenure is that it's well tenure. There is actual value attached to a sinecure. What would it cost right now to buy an investment that would pay you a six figure salary for the rest of your life, no strings attached? That's what tenure is worth. Now tell me profs aren't well rewarded.
My point was mainly that there aren't very many of those high paying positions relative to the number of graduates in the field. The ratio of graduates : professors is not too different than the ratio of CS grads : CS professors, but unlike CS, biology doesn't have nearly as many high paying positions outside of the professorial field. Even within education, many very good life scientists have a hard time obtaining tenure.
Most jobs outside of education pay somewhere around 60k, and there isn't a whole lot of room for growth unless you move up into management at a biotech firm. This is in contrast to CS, where a non-manager software engineer has a pretty decent opportunity to make 6 figures if he works hard enough and has a decent level of talent.
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One piece of the puzzle is that programming education is not very effective. Most computer science programs teach you almost nothing about software engineering, partially because many CS profs know almost nothing about it.
> One piece of the puzzle is that programming education is not very effective. Most computer science programs teach you almost nothing about software engineering, partially because many CS profs know almost nothing about it. And mostly because computer science is not software engineering. If you want to learn software engineering, find a degree or diploma program in software engineering. Being frustrated that your co…
The author is a bit naive in his cheerleading, extrapolating his situation in his location to a nation-wide situation. That is just simply not the case. As a business-owner in my mid-40's, I travel around quite a bit. There are locations where the employment picture is similar to what the author describes. But what he describes is far from the norm in the places I travel to, or from what I hear from friends and old c…
I personally think the mentality is stupid and probably quite inefficient. In my field, law, they don't even let you into the courtroom until you're 5+ years in. Practicing law is an art and people with 20 years of experience are just better at it than people starting out. I never understood why so many people think software development is any different. Companies don't lay off their lawyers and hire fresh graduates when some new major new law goes into effect, so why do people lay off their software developers and hire fresh graduates when some major new technology becomes popular?
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> One piece of the puzzle is that programming education is not very effective. Most computer science programs teach you almost nothing about software engineering, partially because many CS profs know almost nothing about it. And mostly because computer science is not software engineering. If you want to learn software engineering, find a degree or diploma program in software engineering. Being frustrated that your co…
If you want to learn software engineering, get a job as a software engineer after a degree in CS. You will learn far more from the job than from the degree.
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A multi-billion dollar project. I can't really imagine that. Are those ever executed by a single company all on its own? Are they software-only? Do they exist outside NASA?
Probably some medium-sized SAP implementation.
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Programmer talent is sparse worldwide And yet, when I look around at the job postings in Canada, a job with requirements that go on endlessly tops out at about $80,000/year. Expect less if you are an average programmer. Such a low income, relative to what US-based companies are offering, doesn't really speak to a shortage in my mind. I admit, there could be some kind of survivorship bias here: I'm only seeing the low…
> a job with requirements that go on endlessly tops out at about $80,000/year An endless list of job requirements is a sign the company doesn't know what it wants, so it's hardly surprising they don't know how much to pay their programmers, either.
Though your point may still hold true, however I've seen it often enough that I find it surprising that so many companies (many of whom specialize in tech) are that out of touch.
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A multi-billion dollar project. I can't really imagine that. Are those ever executed by a single company all on its own? Are they software-only? Do they exist outside NASA?
I think timescale may be applicable here. Some key programs for large companies will spend several million a year for several years - particularly if you are taking your Mainframe applications and trying to restructure them to have more easily changed business rules and a new infrastructure. That said, I also suspect he may have been exaggerating for effect :-)
Money is about being good at something. I know of lawyers that barely scrape by on insurance law suits because all they know how to do is prey on the fear and pain of injured people. Such lawyers have to buy $500 suits and drive BMWs and belong to country clubs to stay presentable, and thus have to scrape by on 80-100k a year. Similarly, I know carpenters and plumbers who will get the job done - and make a lot more t…
I mean, it makes sense that return on all sorts of investment should be about the same once the respective markets stabilize, but some things aren't investment, they're luck. Being good at something that is in demand is more like sitting on a gold mine than buying stock.