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Are coders worth it?

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Re: Are coders worth it?

#41

Post by thejteam »

jabbernotty wrote: post #38
prollyignored wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in 20-30 ages neither have virtue, nor know the meaning of value. They structure their lives around "fun", which is definable, post-hoc. edit: by post-hoc I mean, facebook was never meant for memes, but it does now. So you say "facbook is about fun memes", "XXXX was fun". Both of them were not in the original idea, but you express the fallacy. The fact is, the 15-30's people doze off in a third rate movie, hav…

Those are some really broad brush strokes.

True, although people have been painting with those brush strokes for thousands of years. Aristotle wrote similarly.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#42

Post by jacques_chester »

jabbernotty wrote: post #38
prollyignored wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in 20-30 ages neither have virtue, nor know the meaning of value. They structure their lives around "fun", which is definable, post-hoc. edit: by post-hoc I mean, facebook was never meant for memes, but it does now. So you say "facbook is about fun memes", "XXXX was fun". Both of them were not in the original idea, but you express the fallacy. The fact is, the 15-30's people doze off in a third rate movie, hav…

Those are some really broad brush strokes.

In fairness to prollyignored, he's fighting broad brush strokes with broad brush strokes.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#43

Post by uokyas »

The question is not if its worth, i'm a programmer, and i do believe that construction workers and lady cleaners should earn more then me, since they are forced to do their job, and generally don't like it. I in the other hand, i like my job. yet i earn more for doing more easy stuff (for me ), seams unfair, this has struck me some time ago. But what we have to accept is that, our income, or the income of a general profession, is based purely on supply and demand, and little more.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#44

Post by omegote »

darrellsilver wrote: post #11

The irony of James' point – that engineers are in such high demand because of how cheap it is to start a startup – is that engineering salaries are actually being prevented from going up as a result. There's too little supply of qualified engineers, but startups can't afford to compete in salary with the big guys (basically Facebook, Google, Amazon and the financial sector). So we compete on cheaper things like nice…

I'm sorry, but a law school student cannot "become an engineer" in only eight months. That's an insult for people that either have studied an engineering degree (like I have) or have earned enough experience through the years to call themselves an engineer, experience that can't be earned in eight months. That's ridiculous.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#45

Post by einhverfr »

jacques_chester wrote: post #16

Virtue is not value. Value is not virtue. What you consider virtuous may produce no economic value. Or maybe it does. There's no rigid formula that connects them and the Just World Hypothesis is an illusion that traps fools and wisemen alike. Attempts to browbeat the world out of "is" and into "ought" have been universal failures and I retain every confidence that it will be ever thus. James Somers might find Hayek's…

I don't know. I do think that without virtue there can be no value, if these are properly defined. (Virtue corresponding to filling human needs, value being economic value.)

Is entertaining people virtuous at least potentially? if so, then there is nothing wrong with selling video games, movies, music, or whatever. If not, however then you have a problem because while the world make seem nice on paper (no money to Hollywood since that would take away from cancer research), it isn't a world any of us would like to live in.

The problem is from where I sit that the expected value (what investors will put in things) is wildly out of proportion to the actual delivered value to customers. I think this is even true of giants like Facebook, so what we get are speculative bubbles because investors are assuming there is more value than there is.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#46

Post by dspillett »

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…

>but does anyone have nice offices?

Ours certainly isn't a beautiful masterpeice of architecture and modern art, but it definitely qualifies as nice.

A little bland and "airport-lounge-y" despite logos on the walls and brightly coloured chairs/sofa in the casual meeting areas (imagine an off-white and less saturated take on the pallet used for Mirror's Edge), but we have perfectly reasonable desks and chairs, plenty of space (I've seen more than twice as many people crammed into similar spaces), a good amount of natural light (though in the middle of the office the artificial lights still need to be on all day), and a useful kitchen area with plenty of space should lots of use want lunch in at the same time.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#47

Post by iaskwhy »

jacques_chester wrote: post #20
leoedin wrote: post #8

I think the real issue is that there's people with lots of money that are willing to fund a lot of different companies in the hope of stumbling across the next facebook. Result? A whole host of well funded but ultimately useless apps and websites. Meanwhile, the people who can make these websites are making lots of money. It's probably a bubble to some extent. Eventually, if the return from all these web apps is less…

People with lots of money have been disappointed by the performance of traditional investment vehicles for the past 5 years; meanwhile a lot of extra money has been put into the financial sector. If you're a fund with $100 billion under management, dropping $2 billion into various venture funds is a reasonable part of the mix. Multiply that by the fact that several hundred funds, banks, trusts and companies collectiv…

(I don't know much about this but) I kind of believe it is a good thing that the traditional investment vehicles are not that good anymore. That was like betting on the outcome of the players of the roulette, right? Money against money against something that may make money. This last bit, investing in something that might make money, brings the world new ideas. It's probably a completely incorrect picture I'm drawing here though.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#48

Post by vinceguidry »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #36
BerislavLopac wrote: post #33

"In today's world, web developers have it all: money, perks, freedom, respect." This might be true only by a VERY narrow definition of "world", specifically Silicon Valley. Or maybe I live in a very peculiar place, but the developers (Web or otherwise) here are in the low to mid income range, regardless of their skills and experience. And don't even get me started on freedom and respect...

You are. Why don't you move? Metaphorically speaking, don't be Steve Jobs in Syria, be Steve Jobs in the USA.

I got a call from a poor recruiter in Chattanooga, TN trying to fill a Rails job. Seemed to be getting a little desperate. Being in Atlanta, I have no trouble finding stuff right here. When he tried to punk me by saying, "Well, if you have roots I can understand," with a tone like I'm hurting my career prospects by not being willing to move, I asked, "Well, just for kicks, what kind of compensation is being offered here?" When he said $60-70K I almost laughed in his face. "Yeah that's not nearly enough to get me to move. Oh well, good luck!"

You don't have to be in a startup hub to find work, just willing to move somewhere. That makes you much more marketable.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#49

Post by iaskwhy »

jumblesale wrote: post #21
spullara wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I live in London.

If you work in finance (City or Canary Wharf) you might get that treatment from recruiters. See, as a contractor, you are going to make a lot of money and a part of it is going directly to the recruiting agency so you're definitely going to get some free coffees.

I imagine you could have that too in Shoreditch if you're like the special one.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#50

Post by grey-area »

Wonderful writing, I loved the way it circled several times around the central issue - the value of work, and I particularly liked this conclusion - much validation and reward in our society is driven by how much people are willing to pay you for your chosen work, and it's very hard to separate your self-worth and confidence from that. It's hard to reconcile when your values don't meet those of the people around you, as expressed in the salaries for various jobs, which vary wildly without much sign of reason or relation to what society ostensibly values. I think what he's trying to get at is why we overvalue these jobs, which on the face of it are not particularly rewarding either to society or the individuals doing them (apart from monetarily). If you ask people in the street whether we need another Facebook, most would say no, and yet we have hundreds of inchoate and uninspiring replacements being worked on and funded right now, so it's hard to see where the demand is coming from, or why this work is valued so highly, and whether it is in fact a bubble which will burst.

Going back to 17C Holland there was probably a huge demand for market traders able to distinguish fine differences in and trade tulip bulbs, until all of a sudden there wasn't - this is the kind of illusory value the writer posits for today's fêted startup web workers. I'm not sure I entirely agree, but it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, because he's not just saying it's unfair, but that it may be unjustified.

The price of a word is being bid to zero.

This sentence near the end cuts to the heart of the matter for me - for writers or other producers of original content like photographers there is a cruel and dismal comparison to be drawn between the wages of those paid to frame content and present it to the world, and the wages of those who produce the content. The creative content (writing, photography, art, travel guides etc) is all in demand, but no-one wants to pay for it, perhaps because it's so easy to produce something yourself, and so hard to distinguish the fine differences in quality which separate a remarkable piece of writing or photography from the mediocre.

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