Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50? • Hacker News Board

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#191

Post by LnxPrgr3 » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 9:01 PM UTC

suby wrote: post #161

LnxPrgr3 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to school with people who went into CS because they thought they were pretty good with computers and they saw money in programming. Some of them made it; others dropped out or changed majors. "Despite the enormous changes which have taken place since electronic computing was invented in the 1950s, some things remain stubbornly the same. In particular, most people can’t learn to program: between 30% and 60% of…

I don't understand how anyone can be a working programmer and fail the FizzBuzz test. What are these individuals working on that allows them to contribute enough to the company to not get fired?

It doesn't hurt that a lot of managers have no idea what to expect from programmers and no idea how to find and attract good programmers. They seem to learn to cope with whatever they can get and learn not to expect much.

And I have a theory: there's a group of people who have picked up patterns from a bunch of examples they've found on the Internet, or in code they've managed to be allowed to work on, and they've never grown past that. They're fine as long as you're asking them to do something they've seen or done before (for generous definitions of fine), but completely screwed the moment you venture out of that zone and consulting the Internet draws a blank. They can memorize patterns, but haven't learned to think through anything more complicated than that.

These people can appear productive to the right people, yet be completely stumped by FizzBuzz.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#192

Post by ivany » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 9:04 PM UTC

One reason I'm not confident that the supply problem will be solved anytime soon:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/col...

Given that college has been incredibly (over)promoted over the past 20 years and that CS jobs have become more lucrative if anything, the conclusion I drew from this is that there just aren't very many engineers on the margin.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#193

Post by dmorgan » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 9:07 PM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #101

dmorgan wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programmer is like the modern villager. Villagers grew food and made stuff and that's what you ever needed. The programmer writes code and everything in our civilization is already code or it will be. That's an extremely short-sighted way to look at it. In fact, take out the non-programmers, and all programming will collapse -- literally come to a halt. You know, guys like those that grow and transport out food, cl…

There would be computerized food transport, real world garbage collectors, pizza machines, miner droids and 3D plotters handling bricks for building. There is no reason you can't replace most of those human tasks with machines. And while we gradually do that, we'll need more and more programmers. Or maybe we will fail horribly, but not because it could not be done; and somebody will do this a few centuries later.

>There would be computerized food transport, real world garbage collectors, pizza machines, miner droids and 3D plotters handling bricks for building.

This is sci-fi as for now, and for the foreseeable future. It's like someone in 1800 saying that the mailman is not needed anymore, because we could use electronic mail. Possible, but far off in the future. See the factories that make iPhones for example: some prefer manual to robotic labor, because it is cheaper.

>There is no reason you can't replace most of those human tasks with machines.

There are several reasons. One of them is that such technology and in such scale has not been invented yet (or has not been "engineered for widespread actual use"). Another is the power needed for all this, especially in a global scale.

And there are lots of social reasons too: what will you do with the BILLIONS of people whose work is not needed anymore? Unless you come up with some equal pay for all scheme, there will be blood.

As for programmers, by the same logic you dismissed manual labour in favor of robotic labour, we could have program writing programs, or trivial "connect the dots" programming solutions for non programmers, that would make the demand for programmers even less, not more.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#194

Post by mamoswined » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 9:16 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #81

Evbn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farming :-)

Farming is undergoing a similar talent crunch right now. If you are in the right parts of the world and have a little skill behind your name, you can easily make $50/hr as a farmhand. Food and tech is where investors are piling all their money right now. As both a software developer and farmer, I do fear what will happen when investments start going elsewhere.

I am a software developer and farmer too. I wish I could say I get most of my money from farming, but not yet. However, the fact I can do both is a testament to the flexibility of my career in software dev. And if investments start going elsewhere, I'll always at least have an excellent source of food.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#195

Post by eavc » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 9:22 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #170

jkimmel wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a bit of a reach to say that a tenure position amounts to a sinecure.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#196

Post by eru » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 9:24 PM UTC

tkl wrote: post #168

encoderer wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When companies that are large enough to spend "multi billion" dollars on a software project blow up "within 4 years" it makes the news. Like Enron. And Worldcom. And Lehman. Etc. And in those cases it's usually a very deep systemic rot. So I don't know how much all of that matters. I also echo the concerns below about the "multi-billion" comment. Did somebody just mention sometime that it's that expensive? Because th…

I'm curious, which company is that that did the largest electronic medical record rollout in the country? Sounds interesting.

He's probably talking about the NHS.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#197

Post by veb » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 9:25 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #81

Evbn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farming :-)

Farming is undergoing a similar talent crunch right now. If you are in the right parts of the world and have a little skill behind your name, you can easily make $50/hr as a farmhand. Food and tech is where investors are piling all their money right now. As both a software developer and farmer, I do fear what will happen when investments start going elsewhere.

I don't know what to make of this. In New Zealand, a farm hand will probably earn a bit more than someone working at McDonalds, and they'll work a lot more too.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#198

Post by eru » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 9:27 PM UTC

suby wrote: post #163

rsaarelm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely more you could do with education. A lot of professional programmers are people who started doing programming as a hobby as kids. Attempting to teach programming to 20-year-olds entering an university seems to not work terribly well, while the basics can be picked by a 10-year old. If you waited until people are 20 to start teaching them to read and write, you would probably also get poor results, w…

On the other side of the coin, people who picked up programming as a hobby while they were 10 might have picked up some rather nasty habits that need to be unlearned, where as someone who is learning in school at age 20 won't have those problems.

Depends on the schooling, too.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#199

Post by petercooper » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 9:29 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #64

colinb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the problems with software engineering is that [almost] no one knows anything about it. I've been a working programmer [or software engineer if I've just met you at a party and I think you're cute] for long enough to work on >5 multi-billion dollar projects. Of these, one was delivered on time and according to spec. That company went down the toilet within four years. I've read fairly widely in the sof…

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?

The NHS (Britain's state healthcare provider) famously had a project with a budget of £12.7bn (about $20bn). It wasn't entirely software although that was the main part. It famously fell apart, but billion-sized parts were handed off to companies like Accenture, British Telecom and Fujitsu: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/21/nhs-national-...

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#200

Post by eru » Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 9:33 PM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #93

Just a few comments on a well-written article that makes some good points: > No health or legal risks On the contrary -- the health risk arises primarily because of the sedentary lifestyle. It's hard to imagine anything so hard on one's health and longevity prospects as sitting and typing all day. As to legal risks, they're certainly on the upswing, as people who can't program try to steal the work of those who can,…

> On the contrary -- the health risk arises primarily because of the sedentary lifestyle. It's hard to imagine anything so hard on one's health and longevity prospects as sitting and typing all day.

Who says you have to do that? At the very least you can demand a standing desk.