Developers are the autoworkers of our generation • Hacker News Board

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#181

Post by angersock » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:31 PM UTC

lgieron wrote: post #168

angersock wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big (hehe) elephant in the room here: At least ditch-digging and carpentry and whatnot resulted in having some exercise in your body. Sitting in front of a screen (or standing, or whatever) doesn't do much to increase health, improve posture, or maintain eyesight. I may be projecting a bit here, but most programming jobs (excluding the magical land of milk and honey and catered lunches and in-house gyms tha…

A few dozens of years of physical labor can wreck your body harder than being sedentary - think about the accumulated damage to the back, joints etc. from the unnatural, repetetive and prolonged strain. Also, in many (most?) climates working outside takes it toll as well.

Oh, I don't mean to completely fetishize that lifestyle--many steelworkers, for example basically just kind of wear out after a couple of decades of hard work.

That said, there are still clearly disadvantages to being coders.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#182

Post by ori_b » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:35 PM UTC

peterjancelis wrote: post #174

ori_b wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that the pie is already unevenly distributed. In the future, it will be even more unevenly distributed, and the skewing of the distribution will outpace the growth of the pie.

No. Wealth will be more volatile. The smart will get richer.

That doesn't contradict what I said. It may be concentrated among the smart, but it will still be concentrated.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#183

Post by Dylan16807 » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:39 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #163

nostrademons wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus Torvalds made millions off the VA Linux and Redhat Linux IPOs, both of whom gifted him with decent stock grants for his role in their corporate success. He's not hurting for money, and in terms of percentiles would easily be in the top 1% among both developers and the general public.

Fair enough, but then it also follows that the youtube founders are significantly better than Linus.

There's always going to be outliers, especially if you allow such messy variables in as 'founding a business'. That doesn't do much to disprove the general metric.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#184

Post by bluedino » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:46 PM UTC

zeteo wrote: post #179

luu wrote: post #22

As usual for HN, all of the most upvoted replies disagree with the article. Let me play devil's advocate and not disagree. Sure, the analogy isn't perfect, but what happens if we take the idea seriously? [1] Isn't it amazing, the lack of sacrifice necessary to make fat stacks of cash writing software? Even when law school was thought of as a golden ticket, it was a lottery, and to win, you had to sacrifice your perso…

>perhaps the answer is that there is no barrier, and we're about to get flooded with supply. One of my earliest memories is listening to my old grandpa give multiple arguments as to why computers were a passing fad. Needless to say, he was somewhat incorrect. Just because something is on the ascendant doesn't mean it will hit the corresponding descendant anytime soon. What killed autoworkers' jobs more than anything…

>> What killed autoworkers' jobs more than anything else was automation.

Many, many things killed autoworkers jobs but automation was the least of their worries. If you want to credit it to one thing, it'd be competition.

The non-American automakers made cars that lasted longer, got better mileage, and were more reliable. The Big Three could just shovel shit onto dealer lots and it was gobbled up. Everyone has getting rich. Then it came to an end.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#185

Post by nvarsj » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:47 PM UTC

pearjuice wrote: post #177

Is it really the golden era of programming in America? In Europe we still get underpaid for what we do yet there is an extreme shortage of good engineers. I have seen a lot of my network move to America and haunt software engineering positions in SV but always thought they were chasing a lottery ticket. People drop out of school here and move to the States because there is so much demand and half of what they learn i…

I'm moving to the UK from the US in a few months. I'm taking a pretty big salary cut, but from my research, salaries have increased quite dramatically in the last 3-5 years. So I'm cautiously optimistic that they'll keep growing.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#186

Post by bluedino » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:54 PM UTC

cellis wrote: post #136

Demiurge wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this also means that developers in this case are evolving, we are technologists. Which is more like the car designers. And these guys are still around and getting payed a lot, and probably will be for a long time, designing spaceships. Software engineering, which also requires original thought, also will never disappear. So I would say the original authors analogy is dead wrong.

I'm sure CAD software made lots of car designers redundant. What most people in our industry seem to not realize is the intense power accumulation laws at work. 1 Designer can now do the work that 50 could in the 50s. All that wealth is now going to one person (or whoever captures the wealth they would otherwise generate -- in this case car co. shareholders and customers).

Once the gas engines become obsolete and everyone's car runs on an electric motor, that's going to make a lot of designers hit the unemployment line. A gasoline engine has thousands and thousands of little parts and associated systems. Electric motors are very, very simple by comparison. Someone needs to design and manufacture all those little parts.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#187

Post by DigitalSea » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 11:44 PM UTC

While it seems many don't agree with the article (as usual) I do. Developers are sitting pretty at the moment because the Internet in the greater scheme of things is brand new. It wasn't really until the early 2000's the Internet exploded in popularity and got a whole lot more complex. There is always some new hot language startups and companies are clamouring to use, every new language or framework seems to create a gold rush of sorts (Rails developers were once white hot property).

But the sad matter of the reality is, more and more people are learning how to create a website. And while little Timmy who knows HTML and a little CSS won't be taking your jobs any time soon, as the supply rises there will always be a plethora of small jobs that Timmy would be able to do leaving the few actual big and complex jobs for the many developers fighting for the job.

I personally think we are a very long way off oversupply in the development sector (especially web). My advice would be to continually learn as many new skills and techniques as possible so if the day ever comes you are at risk of being replaced by a WYSIWYG editor that generates the code for you, you might have a chance of keeping your job.

Software is a lot harder to automate for the moment, but with websites it's at the point where content management systems like Wordpress already make it easy for people from kids to senior adults to make a website without even having to touch a line of HTML, CSS or Javascript. Automated tools can only get you so far, we'll always need designers to design the look and feel of a website, developers with a grasp of modern web technologies and languages to program whatever it is that's creating the website to ensure its output is up-to-date.

I've been preparing myself now for the future. If automation does happen and it will, nothing can truly be 100% automated, but if it does happen, I'll be the guy running the automation stuff, not living out on the street because I was too naive too think it could never happen to a developer like me.

PS. Send some of those recruiters offering six figure salaries my way please...

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#188

Post by malbs » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 11:50 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #157

hershel wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The level of sacrifice required is dropping, and it's dropping like a rock. What have changed , just ruby on rails type frameworks , or something beyond ?

Employers. It was never that difficult to become a novice developer, but convincing anyone to hire you was the hard part. No CS degree (or math, or engineering) was a death sentence to any resume at the vast majority of companies. The new model is to skip the CS fundamentals and instead crash-course you on frameworks and languages that are being used in-industry, then toss you into the deep end. If you float, you've…

Good old vocational education.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#189

Post by michaelochurch » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 11:51 PM UTC

zeteo wrote: post #179

luu wrote: post #22

As usual for HN, all of the most upvoted replies disagree with the article. Let me play devil's advocate and not disagree. Sure, the analogy isn't perfect, but what happens if we take the idea seriously? [1] Isn't it amazing, the lack of sacrifice necessary to make fat stacks of cash writing software? Even when law school was thought of as a golden ticket, it was a lottery, and to win, you had to sacrifice your perso…

>perhaps the answer is that there is no barrier, and we're about to get flooded with supply. One of my earliest memories is listening to my old grandpa give multiple arguments as to why computers were a passing fad. Needless to say, he was somewhat incorrect. Just because something is on the ascendant doesn't mean it will hit the corresponding descendant anytime soon. What killed autoworkers' jobs more than anything…

It costs nothing to write software with software, you don't need big hulking robots to do it. But it's also a job that has lots of variety; each day you have to solve unexpected, frustrating, novel problems. Not a task for the average robot (or even the average person IMHO).

We have software "robots" that write software and many of us use them frequently. They're called compilers. They do the repetitive and detailed stuff, often better than we can, due to pre-programmed knowledge. Programming is still challenging. That won't end in the next 50 years.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#190

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 12:02 AM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #184

zeteo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>perhaps the answer is that there is no barrier, and we're about to get flooded with supply. One of my earliest memories is listening to my old grandpa give multiple arguments as to why computers were a passing fad. Needless to say, he was somewhat incorrect. Just because something is on the ascendant doesn't mean it will hit the corresponding descendant anytime soon. What killed autoworkers' jobs more than anything…

>> What killed autoworkers' jobs more than anything else was automation. Many, many things killed autoworkers jobs but automation was the least of their worries. If you want to credit it to one thing, it'd be competition . The non-American automakers made cars that lasted longer, got better mileage, and were more reliable. The Big Three could just shovel shit onto dealer lots and it was gobbled up. Everyone has getti…

The Japanese car makers are even more into automation than we North Americans and Europeans are. And the results are actually better: people make mistakes, they are not precise; machines on the other hand are very precise.

Automation most definitely was killing the American auto worker...then China comes along and starts killing automation with very cheap labor. But we don't buy cars from China, the same Japanese cars that we laud in the states are derided in China for being unreliable (given that they are made in Chinese factories without automation). There is a lesson somewhere in that.