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

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

#71

Post by ahlatimer »

solistice wrote: post #62
willholloway wrote: post #21

The author of this would have his answer if he understood the IQ floor necessary to be a good engineer, access to computers at a young age and willingness to troubleshoot obscure problems is relatively rare in the population. There are far less high IQ individuals in the world than the world needs right now. We can teach coding to young people, but as of now we can't reliably increase IQ. We have studies that prove a…

Isn't Silicon Valled allready hooked on a constant supply of aderall and modafil? Now add Hydergine, Piracetam and Deprenyl into school lunches, and you've got your super children. Or hack whatever is broken with the educational systems around the world. I'm still in school (technical highschool, programming focus), and none of my friends that is worth his salt in programming is good in school, and that puzzles me be…

Speaking as the only person in my office who was a degree in CS (one has a geology degree, the other dropped out half-way through his graphic design degree, both make more than I do), no, you don't need a degree to get a job as a software engineer. The job I had previously wasn't altogether different, either. I think less than half of us had degrees in CS.

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

#72

Post by solistice »

jbcurtin2 wrote: post #4

It just irks me when people come to me and offer me an idea, then say they'll give me 1% of a company that I build all the software to it. Either I don't understand why that happens or it's just plan greedy. I'd rather work in a company that pays me well now while playing with my own ideas in parallel.

And likely, they'll want you to take over the financing and distribution, as well as the marketing and accounting as well, because those are all hard things they don't want to deal with. They just want to have the idea. And they stay blissfully unaware that with just the idea (and maybe a patent pending), it's be 3-10%....of wholesale price for them.

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

#73

Post by tomkarlo »

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.

Yes, but you're also hanging around on HN. :) I'm thinking more of the other guy, who was just as smart as you but perhaps not in love with tech, and had to decide if he wants to give up 50K to be an engineer. (I think you're referring to choosing between engineering jobs - I meant choosing between career paths.)

Also: it's sad that beyond the comp issue, they're often sacrificing prestige, at least in the US. It's just as hard to become a qualified engineer at top firm, but the general public just doesn't find that as impressive as being a lawyer, doctor or banker. I know lots of lawyers and bankers for whom a big reason they're in that job was the prestige and ego-boost associated with it.

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

#74

Post by solistice »

ahlatimer wrote: post #71
solistice wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Silicon Valled allready hooked on a constant supply of aderall and modafil? Now add Hydergine, Piracetam and Deprenyl into school lunches, and you've got your super children. Or hack whatever is broken with the educational systems around the world. I'm still in school (technical highschool, programming focus), and none of my friends that is worth his salt in programming is good in school, and that puzzles me be…

Speaking as the only person in my office who was a degree in CS (one has a geology degree, the other dropped out half-way through his graphic design degree, both make more than I do), no, you don't need a degree to get a job as a software engineer. The job I had previously wasn't altogether different, either. I think less than half of us had degrees in CS.

At least that leaves me with a spark of hope, but it's still quite discouraging that you could be the best programmer in your entire school, and still not be admitted for a CS degree. It kinda defeats the whole point of school, degree, job.

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

#75

Post by svachalek »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #31
paulbaumgart wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you located? Geography is still a big factor in hiring decisions, so demand is not evenly distributed. In Silicon Valley, $88k is what good-but-not-great fresh college graduates get paid.

The point still stands, unless you work for the handful (or less) of companies that pay FU money to their engineers, you're still paid equivalent of what a Dentist makes, and much less than what a good salesperson makes in a much much smaller city. I think the answer is that the demand isn't actually very high. Programming is still considered a cost center for most companies, the quality of the product is determined…

I think you may be underestimating dentist pay:

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/dentist/salary

There are a lot of cities listed with low cost of living and $250k median salaries.

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

#76

Post by beat »

sixbrx wrote: post #46
jpatokal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I struggle with that myself. My attitude toward people who aren't accomplishing much with their lives is "Well, work harder!" But while much of my own success is due to hard, focused work, much of it is also due to raw intelligence and talent. Not everyone has that.

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

#77

Post by marcbarros »

I"m not a software engineer, but I wish I had learned it in college instead of studying business. Now as a startup founder I'm at a disadvantage because I can't just start building products I see, I need a team just to start.

As the CEO of Contour it wasn't about pay for great engineers. It was about having an interesting problem to work on and a company culture they wanted to be a part of. Yes you compete on pay, but for a start-up, everything else you offer is as important.

Growing up I didn't even know what you could do with engineering. I loved math, but had no idea what you could do by being an engineer. I think a lot of kids don't realize the creativity you can harness with engineering and how you can "build" real things. It was always presented to me in terms of math and being nerdy. Just like writing, I hated it because it was about "grammar" and not about expressing yourself. Now I love to write.

For kids I think it is framed up wrong and until more engineers have kids and teach their kids just what you can do, we will be short software engineers.

I'm now trying to teach myself with codeacademy and it's hard.

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

#78

Post by numo16 »

zampano wrote: post #45

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 administratio…

I don't know about how other schools approached programming careers, but I know my school tried to make it out like you had to be some crazy math genius in order to do basic programming. Compound that with the fact that my school didn't offer any programming classes for people to even see if it was something they would be interested in, and we're left with me being the lone software engineer in from my school for the past several years. They scared everyone else away.

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

#79

Post by ripter »

solistice wrote: post #62
willholloway wrote: post #21

The author of this would have his answer if he understood the IQ floor necessary to be a good engineer, access to computers at a young age and willingness to troubleshoot obscure problems is relatively rare in the population. There are far less high IQ individuals in the world than the world needs right now. We can teach coding to young people, but as of now we can't reliably increase IQ. We have studies that prove a…

Isn't Silicon Valled allready hooked on a constant supply of aderall and modafil? Now add Hydergine, Piracetam and Deprenyl into school lunches, and you've got your super children. Or hack whatever is broken with the educational systems around the world. I'm still in school (technical highschool, programming focus), and none of my friends that is worth his salt in programming is good in school, and that puzzles me be…

When I'm interviewing developers, I don't care about degrees. I don't even look at schooling on resumes. You might need it for the recruiters, but not for the actual job.

Can you code and are you at the level we need for the position? There are too many programmers that can't pass FizzBuzz but have CS degrees.

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

#80

Post by willholloway »

xSwag wrote: post #70
willholloway wrote: post #21

The author of this would have his answer if he understood the IQ floor necessary to be a good engineer, access to computers at a young age and willingness to troubleshoot obscure problems is relatively rare in the population. There are far less high IQ individuals in the world than the world needs right now. We can teach coding to young people, but as of now we can't reliably increase IQ. We have studies that prove a…

>We can teach coding to young people, but as of now we can't reliably increase IQ. IQ is relative. If everybody's intelligence went up 10 points, they would all still have the same IQ

Yes, I am using IQ as stand in for an unchanging benchmark of cognitive ability, which it is not. Perhaps it would be better to say the world needs an increase in human crystallized and fluid intelligence.
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