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Are coders worth it?

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Re: Are coders worth it?

#261

Post by canadiancreed »

resu wrote: post #140
canadiancreed wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you are. Toronto? Definitely. I get recruiters every day asking if I want a job (always onsite though, never contracts). Anywhere else I've found salary and perks drop quickly. Case in point, my last location (PEI) the salary was barely above minimum wage (35-50k/year), even though they keep complaining about shortages in skilled IT folks

Out of curiosity, how do the numbers in Toronto compare to PEI? Do the jobs you've seen offer some mix of in-office/remote schedule? -Canadian working overseas

Well I put it this way to friends of mine out in the Maritimes. Back in 2012 I was laid off due to government cutbacks (the company I worked for did the Tourism site), and in the three months afterwards I had three interviews across the maritimes. In a week visit to Toronto, I had twenty five interviews.

And salary is like night and day. The highest PHP salary I heard of out there in my interviews and travels was 55k. Toronto PHP jobs start at 60k and many are in the 70's and 80's. I've heard an even larger gulf for Java devs, especialy as you get up to the senior ranks. I don't know about salarys for other languages, but if you don't know Java, .Net, or PHP in the maritimes, you'll be waiting a long time to be employed. There's the occasional C++ or Python gig, but youd' make twice as much in Toronto.

And remote jobs, in Canada, in my experience, do not exist. I've seen maybe five in the last five years. Meanwhile I see remote gigs in the States daily. Basically if your'e looking for remote work, you're looking in the US. Canadian employers I've found are leery to openly hostile about folks working remotely.

Now things could have changed in the last year, and that's just my own experience, but if your'e looking for solid work, and good pay, and in Canada, it's effectively Toronto or bust.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#262

Post by [deleted] »

resu wrote: post #140
canadiancreed wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you are. Toronto? Definitely. I get recruiters every day asking if I want a job (always onsite though, never contracts). Anywhere else I've found salary and perks drop quickly. Case in point, my last location (PEI) the salary was barely above minimum wage (35-50k/year), even though they keep complaining about shortages in skilled IT folks

Out of curiosity, how do the numbers in Toronto compare to PEI? Do the jobs you've seen offer some mix of in-office/remote schedule? -Canadian working overseas

[deleted]

Re: Are coders worth it?

#263

Post by [deleted] »

resu wrote: post #140
canadiancreed wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you are. Toronto? Definitely. I get recruiters every day asking if I want a job (always onsite though, never contracts). Anywhere else I've found salary and perks drop quickly. Case in point, my last location (PEI) the salary was barely above minimum wage (35-50k/year), even though they keep complaining about shortages in skilled IT folks

Out of curiosity, how do the numbers in Toronto compare to PEI? Do the jobs you've seen offer some mix of in-office/remote schedule? -Canadian working overseas

[deleted]

Re: Are coders worth it?

#264

Post by kcorbitt »

henrik_w wrote: post #237
bennyg wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure some parts of software will become manufactured and mass produced - I mean that's the case today. How many libraries do you use? However, software is still an intellectual, out of thin air, endeavor. It requires thought to create new and make work with existing circumstances. You aren't melting metal into a mold to make a tangible object. You are literally fusing thoughts and intellectual processes together to d…

Creating the library presumably took a long time - it wasn't "mass produced". Using it is not the same as creating it. But leveraging already existing SW (OS, stacks, web tools etc) is what makes us much more productive today compared to 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

Depends on your metaphor. If you think of software distribution like manufacturing, then writing the library is more like re-tooling an assembly line for production. This metaphor makes sense to me because both are significant one-time investments that (potentially) keep paying dividends far into the future.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#265

Post by skybrian »

nilkn wrote: post #258

Oh boy, I have a lot of comments here, most of them in agreement with the article but not all. According to all the anecdotal knowledge I have, my conclusion has been that currently software engineering and chemical engineering are tied for the locally optimal career choice for those with a four year degree or less. While some college graduates (or dropouts) will go become billionaires, as a general rule, it is quite…

It's true that there's always someone richer, younger, and better looking (and if not, wait a few years). But if that's what you pay attention to then you'll always be unhappy. Get a more diverse set of friends and you might realize what you have is already is pretty good.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#266

Post by drewcoo »

sillysaurus wrote: post #254
jseliger wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineering has not yet gone through a true manufacturing disruption. We cannot put software on the kind of assembly line/stamping process we can with say door hinges or other metal works that used to require a skilled blacksmith. That doesn't mean it won't happen some day. We also can't do this with writing. Is software more like writing prose, or more like manufacturing? That's the heart of the issue as I…

Software is design. We can't put design on any kind of assembly line / stamping process. This seems like it will remain true for a long time.

Every kind of engineering is design and can't be put on an assembly line. Engineers design assembly lines. They don't work on them.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#267

Post by nilkn »

skybrian wrote: post #265
nilkn wrote: post #258

Oh boy, I have a lot of comments here, most of them in agreement with the article but not all. According to all the anecdotal knowledge I have, my conclusion has been that currently software engineering and chemical engineering are tied for the locally optimal career choice for those with a four year degree or less. While some college graduates (or dropouts) will go become billionaires, as a general rule, it is quite…

It's true that there's always someone richer, younger, and better looking (and if not, wait a few years). But if that's what you pay attention to then you'll always be unhappy. Get a more diverse set of friends and you might realize what you have is already is pretty good.

I don't contest any of that (in fact I agree completely), but that's all a different topic. This is about whether software developers are overpaid, not about happiness or social circles.

All I'm saying is a developer getting $150k/year in one of the most expensive cities in the world working for a company with tens, hundreds, or thousands of millions of dollars in funding or revenue should not feel guilty or overpaid.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#268

Post by resu »

canadiancreed wrote: post #261
resu wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, how do the numbers in Toronto compare to PEI? Do the jobs you've seen offer some mix of in-office/remote schedule? -Canadian working overseas

Well I put it this way to friends of mine out in the Maritimes. Back in 2012 I was laid off due to government cutbacks (the company I worked for did the Tourism site), and in the three months afterwards I had three interviews across the maritimes. In a week visit to Toronto, I had twenty five interviews. And salary is like night and day. The highest PHP salary I heard of out there in my interviews and travels was 55k…

Yeah, it is really too bad that there are such few jobs in the GTA that allow for more flexible working conditions. Guess things haven`t changed much since I left. I hope employers` attitudes will change once more and more startups mature, or do they not even allow a flexible schedule?

Thanks for the info, appreciate it!

Re: Are coders worth it?

#269

Post by einhverfr »

nfoz wrote: post #103
einhverfr wrote: post #39

There is a lot to this piece. I do think good coders are worth it, but I also think the current social/mobile bubble will burst (not that there aren't important gains to be had in those spaces but that the gains do not live up to investors' expectations). It seems to me so many businesses are chasing playthings because solving the real problems of the day are hard. To be sure not one of us can solve any of them, but…

> It seems to me so many businesses are chasing playthings because solving the real problems of the day are hard Not only are they hard, it's that they're not obviously monetizable.

Monetizable to whom?

Too much corporate control over our lives as individuals is a problem a small family business can monetize a small piece of a solution for, but is not a problem a VC can, because the problem goes contrary to any VC exit strategy.

Now the second point though is that corporations may end up doing some of that anyway. The movement towards open source/free software and open data is helping establish that in at least some cases this problem is monetizable even on a corporate level if one realizes that the corporation is subject to the same restrictions as an individual. If we look at software or data as potential means of production, then this is a welcome way in which the industry is moving towards spreading around control over means of production.

But what I am advocating is not solving the important problems but building business with the important problems in mind, seeing what one can do to help with them in one way or another, either through operations or through product development. They don't need to be the primary focus (and maybe shouldn't be the primary focus) but the idea that we are living in a new world where virtue is not a prerequisite to value suggests two words to me "speculative bubble."

Re: Are coders worth it?

#270

Post by einhverfr »

nfoz wrote: post #103
einhverfr wrote: post #39

There is a lot to this piece. I do think good coders are worth it, but I also think the current social/mobile bubble will burst (not that there aren't important gains to be had in those spaces but that the gains do not live up to investors' expectations). It seems to me so many businesses are chasing playthings because solving the real problems of the day are hard. To be sure not one of us can solve any of them, but…

> It seems to me so many businesses are chasing playthings because solving the real problems of the day are hard Not only are they hard, it's that they're not obviously monetizable.

Monetizable to whom?

Too much corporate control over our lives as individuals is a problem a small family business can monetize a small piece of a solution for, but is not a problem a VC can, because the problem goes contrary to any VC exit strategy.

Now the second point though is that corporations may end up doing some of that anyway. The movement towards open source/free software and open data is helping establish that in at least some cases this problem is monetizable even on a corporate level if one realizes that the corporation is subject to the same restrictions as an individual. If we look at software or data as potential means of production, then this is a welcome way in which the industry is moving towards spreading around control over means of production.

But what I am advocating is not solving the important problems but building business with the important problems in mind, seeing what one can do to help with them in one way or another, either through operations or through product development. They don't need to be the primary focus (and maybe shouldn't be the primary focus) but the idea that we are living in a new world where virtue is not a prerequisite to value suggests two words to me "speculative bubble."

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