Are coders worth it? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are coders worth it?

#271

Post by btilly » Fri, Jun 07, 2013, 12:19 AM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #205

sologoub wrote: post #153

This article seems to be missing a parallel that was drawn previously many times. PG has written on the subject, and so have others. The closest parallel we can draw between "coders" and the distant past, is that with the artisans of the middle ages. Aside from the landowning nobles, the artisan class was probably the closest thing to a true middle class. Many advanced to upper-middle and later became the industrial…

+1 ""Software engineering has not yet gone through a true manufacturing disruption."" I keep expecting this to happen: the disruption. How much more productive is an engineer using something like Meteor compared to an equally talented engineer several years ago for building web apps where users interact (data wise) in some way. Same comment for Rails, even better IDEs, PAAS providers, libraries, etc. When I started p…

I have to wonder how many software engineers will be needed in 20 years if all programmers become much more efficient?

The trend so far has been that when you improve programmer productivity, you increase the value of what we do, which increases the number of things that we can be useful for. This increases demand.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#272

Post by einhverfr » Fri, Jun 07, 2013, 12:57 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #68

einhverfr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm this is a very difficult topic to really do justice to. I don't think that Hayek is necessarily contrary to anything I am saying. The problem though is a definition of virtue. > You line up the list of virtuous things (curing AIDS, feeding poor people) and the list of valuable things (Ruby on Rails programmers, inanimate chunks of metal) and discover that they just don't line up. At all. But the problem here is…

From memory, Hayek also mentions the problem of coming up with the ranking function for virtue. Basically "virtue" here is standing in as an alliterative reference to systems of ethics, morality, justice and justness etc etc. Huge fields of human thought in their own right. That sometimes value and virtue align is inevitable, simply because there's so many combinations available to test. His general point is that try…

FWIW what I understand Hayek as discussing is something different, which is that centrally imposed definitions of "good" have very little to do with local decisions that people make. Hayek is arguing, as I read him, against the idea that "social good" as we culturally construct it through centralized structures (church and state) is the goal of the economy.

There is a way out of this, and that is a 19th century Catholic idea (I am not even a Christian but Catholicism is interesting to me to the extent the Catholic Church is a torchbearer for pagan Greek and Roman phylosophy) called "subsidiarity."

The idea of subsidiarity is that it is theft for a group to accomplish what an individual could accomplish by him or herself, and for the same reason it is theft for a larger, more centralized group to do what a smaller group could do. The goal of larger groups should be to support, not supplant, smaller organizations. This idea of subsidiarity thus seeks to reformulate society and the economy on Aristotelian grounds, with the family household in the center (rather than the multinational corporation of liberal capitalism, or the state). From this view, virtue and economic value are the same to the extent that people seek to live just lives, and to the extent that central authorities only seek to accomplish on their own what are fundamentally impossible for the smaller entities.

I think this is one reason why libertarians have associated the Catholic idea of subsidiarity with the private sector which only makes sense in terms of Hayek (I don't think that equivalence quite works but one can easily see the similarity).

Re: Are coders worth it?

#273

Post by jacques_chester » Fri, Jun 07, 2013, 1:02 AM UTC

bjhoops1 wrote: post #149

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…

Nonsense. Just because "is" will never fully attain to "ought" does not make vain the pursuit of a better, more just world. > Attempts to browbeat the world out of "is" and into "ought" have been universal failures There are so many examples (a single one of which disproves your "universal" claim) of idealists bring "is" more into alignment with "ought" that it would be almost impertinent to even begin enumerating th…

I wasn't speaking of all cases of is/ought. I was referring to the idea that virtuous jobs should be valuable jobs and vice versa -- that the system of production can be turned to produce according to a ranking function of virtue. Civil rights and suffrage aren't jobs or economic production; they're matters of custom and law, which Hayek also discusses as similar but distinct forms of spontaneous order.

You correctly pointed out that the value of labour has been affected by simple economic considerations more completely than any theory of the native goodness of honest toil.

Rand's cardboard aliens all seem very smug and self-assured and basically I think her books have done more harm than good.

Hayek's tone is an exasperated old school master. He just wants people to understand that you can't create -- as in design or ordain ab initio -- a working economic system that aligns to virtuous ends. It will break.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#274

Post by shoyer » Fri, Jun 07, 2013, 1:02 AM UTC

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…

Just because there's a clearly defined path to making a lot of money in a high prestige job doesn't mean it's easy or that everyone can pull it off.

The best way to start an "upper class career" is to be born into the upper class. Good luck getting into finance or consulting if you didn't go to a top tier university. And it's not small matter -- even if you have the right background -- to get that job at McKinsey or into a Harvard MBA. You have to be extremely smart and strategic in your career choices, and not slacking off in college, either. Then, to advance and do well, you have to put in long hours and do very good work.

In this day and age, I think it is hard to argue that there is an easier, faster or more forgiving path to economic success than software engineering and programming. The author of this article wouldn't even have a chance to get started in any the of other lucrative professions you mention with his 2.9 GPA.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#275

Post by jacques_chester » Fri, Jun 07, 2013, 1:05 AM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #133

jacques_chester wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to save him some angst. Trying to reconcile the virtues of what he does with his economic value is pointless. They're just not connected. Demand for Ruby on Rails plumbing is ultimately connected with the current wishes and desires of most of the planet's population and has nothing whatsoever to do with how he, or anyone else, feels about it. In literary terms: he's tilting at windmills.

MOST of the planets population? Really? I think the actions or desires of most of the planets population, who don't have computers or internet-enabled phones, have virtually no impact on the market for rails developers.

You've misread me. I didn't say "everyone in sub-Saharan Africa is hankering for a RoR coder of their own".

My point is that everyone who is connected to the global economy is indirectly connected to everyone else in it. The overall system pushes prices, goods and money around in an impossibly large web of interactions. We can see the local factors, but we can't see the whole picture.

Nevertheless, the price of lettuce at the supermarket, the price of a new laptop, the hourly rate I bill, the cost of bullets for an AK-47 being used in a civil war: these are all, ultimately, connected together.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#276

Post by jacques_chester » Fri, Jun 07, 2013, 1:06 AM UTC

deathcakes wrote: post #229

jacques_chester wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted. But if the existentialists taught us anything, it's that if you stop and look, I mean really look at your life, you'll find how thoroughly inconsequential it is. Which is no comfort at all. Quite the reverse. Ignorance really is bliss. I find the intellectual argument comforting because I can focus on the things I can control, the things that are within my sphere of power. I used to be very interested in pol…

If nothing is worth anything then by definition everything is worth whatever you want it to be worth. My life is inconsequential from the perspective of the universe but from my point of view its pretty important. Also, you certainly do have the ability to actively engage with your world and you have an extremely limited ability to change how certain aspects of that world works. Of course this has to be based on the…

I take the view that I can change the world. But also that what I can change isn't unlimited.

I change my mind about the boundary line pretty frequently.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#277

Post by darrellsilver » Fri, Jun 07, 2013, 1:07 AM UTC

itsybitsycoder wrote: post #124

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…

too large to... accept junior talent that needs to learn on the job. Huh? Being larger should make it easier to do this, not harder. The company I currently work for has done this for its last 3 developer hires, and it's about the same size as yours.

Yeah – This was too quickly worded. What I'm saying is that these middle-size companies are too large to be seen as sexy startups that can make you millions, yet still too small to provide the mentorship needed for jr talent. One or two jr hires can be mentored, but that won't meet the demand, and is super expensive.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#278

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 07, 2013, 1:08 AM UTC

itsybitsycoder wrote: post #124

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…

too large to... accept junior talent that needs to learn on the job. Huh? Being larger should make it easier to do this, not harder. The company I currently work for has done this for its last 3 developer hires, and it's about the same size as yours.

[deleted]

Re: Are coders worth it?

#279

Post by jacques_chester » Fri, Jun 07, 2013, 1:08 AM UTC

einhverfr wrote: post #78

jacques_chester wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From memory, Hayek also mentions the problem of coming up with the ranking function for virtue. Basically "virtue" here is standing in as an alliterative reference to systems of ethics, morality, justice and justness etc etc. Huge fields of human thought in their own right. That sometimes value and virtue align is inevitable, simply because there's so many combinations available to test. His general point is that try…

The problem though is that these are huge fields of thought and also that the very contentious. Ethics for example is usually defined to be asking the question of "what is good?" Obviously defining "what is good" is an undertaking which leads different people in different directions. I take the approach of saying "what is good is what is conducive to human flourishing." This is largely an Aristotelian approach (and s…

Hayek is basically saying that seeing ends or purpose in an emergent system is a mistake.

It's like seeing a purpose in the weather. It just is.

Re: Are coders worth it?

#280

Post by jacques_chester » Fri, Jun 07, 2013, 1:24 AM UTC

einhverfr wrote: post #272

jacques_chester wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From memory, Hayek also mentions the problem of coming up with the ranking function for virtue. Basically "virtue" here is standing in as an alliterative reference to systems of ethics, morality, justice and justness etc etc. Huge fields of human thought in their own right. That sometimes value and virtue align is inevitable, simply because there's so many combinations available to test. His general point is that try…

FWIW what I understand Hayek as discussing is something different, which is that centrally imposed definitions of "good" have very little to do with local decisions that people make. Hayek is arguing, as I read him, against the idea that "social good" as we culturally construct it through centralized structures (church and state) is the goal of the economy. There is a way out of this, and that is a 19th century Catho…

I don't know if Hayek would be on board with it. The main problem is that it introduces a new criterion for arranging production which doesn't emerge from the existing order.

Hayek isn't trying to build the Ideal World. He's taking the world he saw and said "here's how it works", and then, "here's why it wouldn't work if we decided to design a system instead of having it emerge".

So for example, if subsidiarity is imposed, how does that play out? You already create a requirement to deduce what the smallest group capable of producing a thing is. But we already have something like that in the market. It's lumpy and fuzzy, but it does eventually kill off the too large and the too small (modulo endless tinkering by legislators).

Coase explained that firms emerge because of transaction costs. Sometimes it's easier and cheaper to do a thing in existing groups. Sometimes it's not. The tension between these allows firms to emerge from the social order. I'd add that the rise of IT has enabled coordination on a vastly greater scale, which has helped to create the modern corporation.