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Are coders worth it?

aeonmagazine.com

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Re: Are coders worth it?

#21

Post by jumblesale »

spullara wrote: post #19
jumblesale wrote: post #6

Very well written article, I always enjoy reading stuff from the intersection of writers and coders. What I found startling was how different my experience has been to that of the author's at the start of the article. I've put up with some horrific jobs paying miserable money in some of the most uninspiring industrial parks you could imagine. I've taken work in dingy Victorian offices so cold that I've had to program…

Sounds like you live somewhere where there isn't much development going on.

I live in London.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#22

Post by dhimes »

jezclaremurugan wrote: post #3

Not all web developers are "plumbers". If you are working on websites with heavy traffic, then you need to use complex algorithms to scale. That needs someone who is comfortable with algorithms, and that needs a quite lot of thought. The author describes simple CRUD websites and then equates all of web development to trivial tasks like that. Even scaling simple CRUD needs a lot skills, intelligence and ingenuity. And…

I agree. There are some that are worth a lot of money. But to be worth that kind of money you need deep domain knowledge. I won't pay $120/hr for someone to tinker with jQuery. I will pay that for a machine learning specialist.

The fact is that 'coders' are today's version of auto mechanics in the 70s. The barrier to entry is low- an old box, a linux distro, google- and off you go. So everybody who can't do something else can give it a try. Some will fail; some will succeed at a low level, and a few may find their calling. And a lot of people will pay for it because they don't know the difference.

But the one's who are truly good- who obtain that domain knowledge- are valuable. In their domain.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#23

Post by fhd2 »

Is it just me, or is the photo a rather unlucky pick?

I'm seeing roughly 20 people, sitting in what is essentially a dark cellar. It would be completely colourless, if it wasn't for a handful of bizarre, childish gadgets here and there. I couldn't imagine working in such a crowded, depressing environment, let alone feel relaxed.

And from what I've seen, that's one reality for many programmers: The offices are often quite bad.

Open plan offices are popular (it's not like developers need to phone or anything, right?), developers are put in basements, under the roof, or into an unattractive second building. And home office is generally more difficult to pull off for programmers than for other knowledge workers, which I think is mostly caused by a general lack of trust.

Sure, the salaries are pretty good lately (although it's pretty much at the level of other professions requiring degrees, isn't it?), but I don't see much appreciation of programmers in most settings. The startup world is different (from my experience), but it's a very small part of our industry.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#25

Post by chrisbennet »

mseebach wrote: post #14
chrisbennet wrote: post #13

What wonderful writing. This is a great reminder that the "just world" fallacy [successful people deserve their success because they worked hard and that the less fortunate/unemployed somehow deserve their failure] is just that, a fallacy.

> This is a great reminder that the "just world" fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Where do you see that? He specifically concludes that he's making the right (ie "just") amount of money for writing and coding, and that it's "just" that the CFO makes more money than the coal-miner because his skills are more specialised and in higher demand.

He points out that he got lucky in his choice of professions (or one of his professions) and that it's easy for people to conflate that sort of luck (being in the right profession at the right time) with somehow being deserving of all the rewards associated with it. I know I don't work any harder than say a mechanical or chemical engineer, I'm just better paid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Re: Are coders worth it?

#26

Post by dschiptsov »

Bad programming (coding) is easy. Idiots can learn it in 21 days, even if they are Dummies.

-- HtDP2

btw, 5 opening paragraphs with so many Is and numbers hardly could be considered a good writing. I guess that the word for this (writing style and the content) is hipsterism.)

Re: Are coders worth it?

#27

Post by rdouble »

fhd2 wrote: post #23

Is it just me, or is the photo a rather unlucky pick? I'm seeing roughly 20 people, sitting in what is essentially a dark cellar. It would be completely colourless, if it wasn't for a handful of bizarre, childish gadgets here and there. I couldn't imagine working in such a crowded, depressing environment, let alone feel relaxed. And from what I've seen, that's one reality for many programmers: The offices are often q…

It's a valid observation, but does anyone have nice offices?

My parents are medical professionals, their offices were terrible. My sister runs a government org in Australia, has horrible office. One of my old bosses was the head of a department at Harvard, also had a disgusting office. I personally am not a fan of the open space bullpen, but almost every other professional I have met had an office that was worse. The only people I know with legitimately cool offices are interior designers.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#29

Post by fhd2 »

rdouble wrote: post #27
fhd2 wrote: post #23

Is it just me, or is the photo a rather unlucky pick? I'm seeing roughly 20 people, sitting in what is essentially a dark cellar. It would be completely colourless, if it wasn't for a handful of bizarre, childish gadgets here and there. I couldn't imagine working in such a crowded, depressing environment, let alone feel relaxed. And from what I've seen, that's one reality for many programmers: The offices are often q…

It's a valid observation, but does anyone have nice offices? My parents are medical professionals, their offices were terrible. My sister runs a government org in Australia, has horrible office. One of my old bosses was the head of a department at Harvard, also had a disgusting office. I personally am not a fan of the open space bullpen, but almost every other professional I have met had an office that was worse. The…

It's not really about the office, more about appreciation and respect.

I've been in only one big company so far, but anecdotal evidence suggests many are similar.

It was a software company. Software was it's core business. Yet the programmers, about 10% of the employees, where kind of the lowest in the food chain. Sales got all the money and a lot of attention. Professional services and product management got a lot of attention, shiny offices and regular praisings. The developers were all but ignored.

I stuck to smaller software companies (mostly startups) again ever since. I always felt valued there, and that's important for my overall job satisfaction.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#30

Post by alexjeffrey »

interestingly in my experience in the north of England this culture is much more applicable to designers - web development doesn't pay very many standard deviations above the average wage, where designers can command high freelancing rates and comfortable working conditions.
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