Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

#41

Post by redblacktree » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:51 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #14

VLM wrote: post #6

"But that doesn’t explain why people in the Philippines or China aren’t training themselves en masse to be able to soak up the $30-100/hour jobs that would be readily available to them" Rentacoder is readily available, its just that word on the street was most jobs paid about $5/hr. Amazon's Mechanical Turk has some extremely fuzzy stats and not much more than anecdotes but earning around $7/hr has been reported. Hig…

Being a waiter at a tourist restaurant is pretty much an 'on/off' occupation. You need a small amount of specific knowledge to start working (at a specific place), and leaving the job takes almost no knowledge away. Software development is a very slow start, depending on the project. Just try and see how long until a developer has the development environment. Yes, it should be a 'turn key' solution but that's often n…

Check out vagrant[1]. I can have a new developer set up in about 30-60 minutes.

[1] http://www.vagrantup.com/

Re: Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

#42

Post by jshen » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:51 PM UTC

jskulski wrote: post #30

tomkarlo wrote: post #17

Because there’s a longstanding view that since programmers love what they do, they shouldn’t be compensated as highly as other fields with demanding requirements. Employees at large tech firms are as profitable as bankers, yet they get paid a fraction as much compensation. Not to mention that it generally takes years and years of unpaid homework / hobby work to learn how to be a good software developer - just taking…

I see your point but I think "forgo" is a strong word. I have made and will continue to make a great salary with great benefits and be able to choose companies based on cultural fit. That's something that I would never give up for an extra 50k a year.

For an extra $100k a year?

I think a lot of programmers don't realize how much some other programmers get paid once you factor in other incentives outside of salary.

Re: Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

#43

Post by ap22213 » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:51 PM UTC

I think there may be a glut of potentially good software engineers. In fact, I know several high-IQ programmers who are skilled, but sadly, probably unemployable.

I think the problem seems to be (at least) four-fold. 1. They don't have the prerequisite cultural background. 2. They are self-motivated to pursue their own creativity but less interested in others'. 3. They don't have a fondness for excess money. 4. They have a hard time being obedient and subordinate.

Maybe controversial, but the way I see it.

Re: Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

#44

Post by djKianoosh » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

jpatokal wrote: post #16

coldcode wrote: post #2

Why isn't there a glut of baseball players who hit .408 in the major leagues? Because it's a rare person who can hit a ball thrown at nearly 100 MPH 40% of the time. Software engineers are common but people who deliver quality product after product is a rare bird. Programming at a high level is not as easy as this author seems to think.

Philip Greenspun, aka "this person", has a pretty solid resume when it comes to programming. http://philip.greenspun.com/personal/resume

just because "this person" might be solid still doesn't mean anything. quite possibly it might actually delude him from reality if he's way above average

Re: Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

#45

Post by zampano » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

Why wouldn’t the millions of unemployed Americans train themselves to code?

I'd say this is exactly what my friends and I have done. We had been nerds growing up but the majority of us went into liberal arts majors in college. After graduating and finding out that our slips of paper were meaningless, a few of us taught ourselves how to program and a few of us built upon college IT jobs to go into system administration.

When we were younger, I think we generally had some pretty bad misconceptions about the software development as a whole, especially regarding relative difficulty compared to other careers. While the money and job security were the things that drove (most of) us in that direction originally, we've all become completely obsessed with a tech world that we generally misunderstood when we were younger. I've spent a lot of time trying to convince other out-of-work nerds to do what we did but I think most either don't believe you can get work without a CS degree (by assuming that we just got lucky) or think that it is well beyond their mental capacities. I'm not surprised a lot of unemployed americans are scared of trying something intimidating, but I think you'll see more and more young un(der)employed americans start learning code, especially as the learning resources become more and more available and more and more accessible.

Re: Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

#46

Post by sixbrx » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

jpatokal wrote: post #16

coldcode wrote: post #2

Why isn't there a glut of baseball players who hit .408 in the major leagues? Because it's a rare person who can hit a ball thrown at nearly 100 MPH 40% of the time. Software engineers are common but people who deliver quality product after product is a rare bird. Programming at a high level is not as easy as this author seems to think.

Philip Greenspun, aka "this person", has a pretty solid resume when it comes to programming. http://philip.greenspun.com/personal/resume

And like many brilliant and talented people, they're completely clueless that in the real world, many other people just don't have the natural abilities that they themselves have, thus they are repeatedly perplexed that others just can't do the "easy" things they do. Often I've seen instead that they will instead ascribe others' failures as moral failures, which bites doubly against those that are trying hard but can't measure up.

Re: Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

#47

Post by jshen » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

solistice wrote: post #29

sehugg wrote: post #11

by now most of the world’s programming would be happening in low-to-medium-wage countries and that customers wouldn’t have to pay a lot for high quality software. But it hasn’t happened (e.g., see my posting about California’s state government spending $327 million on a straightforward ecommerce site Uh, the reasons government IT projects are typically huge wasteful boondoggles are not because programmer salaries are…

I was puzzeled over that number too, as putting up a site like that, even if you are buying the servers from scratch and hire a first rate web dev, shouldn't cost more than 10-20k$. I went through to the linked artice, and appeareantly, most of it went for consultants. I mean there are consultants out there that are worth their money, and I bet the site is kai-zen optimized very nicely, even though I can't tell, but…

"if you are buying the servers from scratch and hire a first rate web dev, shouldn't cost more than 10-20k$"

this number is just as absurd as the $327 million.

Re: Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

#48

Post by ExpiredLink » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:53 PM UTC

> Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

Because a career in computer programming (still) sucks: http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/why_a_career_in.html

> Programming is easier to learn than a foreign language

Maybe 'coding' but not programming and definitely not software engineering.

Re: Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

#49

Post by cantankerous » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:54 PM UTC

jshen wrote: post #42

jskulski wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point but I think "forgo" is a strong word. I have made and will continue to make a great salary with great benefits and be able to choose companies based on cultural fit. That's something that I would never give up for an extra 50k a year.

For an extra $100k a year? I think a lot of programmers don't realize how much some other programmers get paid once you factor in other incentives outside of salary.

Agree with you there. I have some friends that do the kinda dev I feel is radioactive, but then they tell me about their benefits and wages and I'm like "where's the hazmat suit?"

Re: Why isn’t there a glut of good software engineers?

#50

Post by jdminhbg » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:54 PM UTC

diego wrote: post #28

For the same reason there isn't a glut of NBA players. Anyone can play, few people can become good enough. Next question. Edit: disagree? Downvote if you want, but please counterpoint.

I didn't downvote, but programming is nothing like playing in the NBA. The NBA is zero-sum: There are by definition (15 players per team * 30 teams) NBA players in the world. There exists no such hard limit on "good programmers"; if there were more good programmers people would pay them to solve problems that currently go unsolved.