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Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

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Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#201

Post by karlkatzke »

grandalf wrote: post #93
karlkatzke wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define "best" for a software developer? Lines of code written? Products shipped? Bugs fixed? Tickets closed? For both, it's a softer metric. Lawyers are also a good example because a large number of them work in independent consulting practice (where the "best" ones are the most profitable), but there's also a decent population in corporate law where they are paid on a salaried basis and have a less measur…

I am not the one trying to define (or use) the concept of productivity in this discussion. So I don't think it's remotely straightforward. I'm not sure how useful it is either. A career in law is largely dominated by the "partner track", which in modern software circles is equivalent to getting hired by Google or Microsoft. The bar is pretty high to get in, few ever get fired, and the pay is good.

I would certainly say that a career in IT is defined by which track you choose. Are you familiar with the growing body of evidence that shows not many people are employed in a fashion commensurate with their experience after the age of 40 to 45? That's equivalent to the partner track.

To review it slightly -- You either become a greybeard (partner), you become a manager (could also be considered a type of partner), you become a highly paid consultant but don't achieve your previous salary-equivalent. If you miss your mark and don't achieve one of those, either you wash out of the field, or you have a difficult time finding a place and when you do you accept one that is not in line with your experience. (ex: You were an AIX admin paid $120k/yr, now you are a contractor for Dell making 4-hour response service calls on server hardware.)

And I would also not say that a job at Google or Microsoft is for life (you get stack ranked out pretty fast at Microsoft as you age), nor would I say that the pay's that good unless you're really awesome. I've gotten SF Bay offers, and after you factor for cost of living changes, they're much less than I make for my current company telecommuting from central Texas.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#202

Post by VLM »

tomjen3 wrote: post #165
VLM wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Given the high dropout rate of anyone attempting to learn programming Its about the same as any other major. I googled around and found the 1999 cohort for Southeast Louisiana University (no particular reason, just google found it easily...) and they tracked freshmen's declared major and what they actually graduated with, if anything, after six years. In comp sci, it is true that 93% of self declared freshman comp s…

No, the CS isn't just a couple points higher. CS compared to nursing is 7 graduates vs 12 = meaning that you have almost 50% more nursing graduates out of an equal sized group of incoming freshmen than CS graduates. You have 17 accounting graduates for each 7 CS graduates, almost 150% more. Even psychology has 10 graduates for ever 7 CS graduates, which is roughly 50% more. I hope I did the math correctly, but at clo…

"but at close to 100% small differences in the percent points means a huge difference in outcome."

Close, but the actual effect is if you subtract one large number with modest error bars from another almost equally sized number with modest error bars you get a small number that is smaller than either error bar aka meaningless.

This is based on the assumption that class sizes of 70 students and 7 grads from a small southern school is going to result in pretty big error bars if I somehow got data for the whole country, for more than one year. I'm not motivated enough to do it, but I did gather enough information to conclude that regardless of major, virtually all freshmen change their major before graduation (if they graduate at all...)

Upon reconsideration, it doesn't even matter if this one uni for one year is a perfect sampling of the whole country for many years, the verbal conclusion stands, almost everybody switches majors and the dropout rate for CS isn't stunningly higher than other fields. When the dropout rate for all fields is about 80% to 90% its hard to increase that by a relevant percentage to "prove" CS is harder. To be stunning or interesting or noteworthy you'd need the CS dropout rate to be, perhaps, triple the rate of .edu majors or history majors. Or at least some small integer multiple. However at 80% dropout rate a mere doubling would already be mathematically impossible at 160%.

Now if I found stats that 75% of incoming declared freshman geology majors graduated with a geology degree, and this was about the same percentage across all majors like .edu and nursing and art, except CS where it drops to a mere 10% or so because CS is so hard compared to the other majors, LOL, then the original poster would have made an accurate point with possibly actionable outcomes (maybe CS needs more tutors or better english speaking profs or, or pre-reqs to declare it as a major, or the graduation reqs are ridiculous, who knows). But it turns out there is no relative numerical problem with CS dropout rates, at least not noticeably worse than any other major, and certainly nothing actionable in the real world.

That would tend to indicate the original conclusion that CS is so much harder than other majors is simply false, or if it is true, its certainly not true because of the dropout rate claimed as the cause.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#203

Post by mkr-hn »

ori_b wrote: post #182
peterjancelis wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More importantly, the people at the top need the people lower on the ladder to pay their salary, either through companies that advertise or by paying directly. There may be an implosion at the top if they automate too many jobs away before magic market forces create replacements.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#204

Post by vectorpush »

ritchiea wrote: post #176
vectorpush wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the lack of sacrifice necessary to make fat stacks of cash writing software? I don't know about you, but I've sacrificed an incalculable amount of positive social interaction sitting in front of these damned screens. My programming skills weren't spontaneously conferred upon me, as a kid I'd spend weeks at time building foolishly impossible-to-complete applications that I'd eventually leave to rot as I hopped onto th…

You're making the wrong comparison. The comparison shouldn't be "sitting in front of a screen" vs socializing. It should be "sitting in front of a screen" vs the amount of work it takes to achieve a similar career in another field vs the amount of work it has historically required to achieve a similar career.

The comparison is apt with regard to unemployed individuals seeking to break into the software industry. My point is that a non-trivial amount of sacrifice is required to hone these skills; no, it's not back breaking labor, but most people aren't inclined to spend 6-10 hours a day sitting at a PC working through fake problems in an effort to understand how one authors software. That's the world we live in now. This doesn't mean those inclined to do so are smarter, excluding the outliers, they simply fall into a category of individual that is comfortable banging their head against a compiler for hours. These people read code, they ask questions, they scour google, they devour books, blogs, mailing lists and error logs and in time a solid understanding inevitably ensues.

Most people aren't inclined or cannot afford to work on something for extended periods of time without the explicit promise of compensation. There are a lot of dreamers who aspire to the rockstar lifestyle but for most of them guitar hero is about as far as it goes.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#205

Post by jessedhillon »

karlkatzke wrote: post #201
grandalf wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not the one trying to define (or use) the concept of productivity in this discussion. So I don't think it's remotely straightforward. I'm not sure how useful it is either. A career in law is largely dominated by the "partner track", which in modern software circles is equivalent to getting hired by Google or Microsoft. The bar is pretty high to get in, few ever get fired, and the pay is good.

I would certainly say that a career in IT is defined by which track you choose. Are you familiar with the growing body of evidence that shows not many people are employed in a fashion commensurate with their experience after the age of 40 to 45? That's equivalent to the partner track. To review it slightly -- You either become a greybeard (partner), you become a manager (could also be considered a type of partner), y…

Yes, valid points. You should consider that most people who live in metro areas would consider it a significant degradation in quality of life to live in central TX. I would consider it similar to a decrease in pay.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#206

Post by karlkatzke »

jessedhillon wrote: post #205
karlkatzke wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would certainly say that a career in IT is defined by which track you choose. Are you familiar with the growing body of evidence that shows not many people are employed in a fashion commensurate with their experience after the age of 40 to 45? That's equivalent to the partner track. To review it slightly -- You either become a greybeard (partner), you become a manager (could also be considered a type of partner), y…

Yes, valid points. You should consider that most people who live in metro areas would consider it a significant degradation in quality of life to live in central TX. I would consider it similar to a decrease in pay.

Heh. It depends. For my lifestyle, it fits perfectly. Living in large cities or places where waiting in line is a frequent occurrence drives my blood pressure up. I'm only about an hour and a half from Austin if I want anything trendy (and my wristbands for ACL just arrived!); everything else comes in by Amazon.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#207

Post by mercer »

kamaal wrote: post #198
michaelochurch wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>Programming is still challenging. That won't end in the next 50 years. So is building cars. Or anything for that matter. Problems in every profession have just gone to a whole new level. When automation kicks in, you won't need humans to go and solve trivial issues. And there fore what will be left is jobs for people who would like to work on things that can't be automated. Stuff like solving problems no one else h…

Not sure if I'm agreeing or disagreeing with you, but I'd say this is exactly why programmers will do fine for a long time to come.

What we do, assuming we're not cranking out wordpress sites with existing templates, is solve problems. And so when we find ways to automate particular common scenarios for, say, certain types of websites (which I suppose Rails and the many CMS' do), we have probably already moved on because we were bored cranking out these things in favor of solving problems.

Contrast that with the auto industry. Car building may be hard, but much of the job loss in this industry consisted of work that was easily automated, and not solving problems.

Furthermore, part of this 'problem solving', in my experience, involves a lot of interaction with other people. This is not easily replaced by outsourcing to skilled programmers who are 1) non-native culturally and linguistically, and 2) far away.

In a way, we are better compared to plumbers or mechanics, 'full-stack problem solvers'.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#208

Post by mercer »

rmk2 wrote: post #54
gnaritas wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm told that CS enrollments are now at record highs Given the high dropout rate of anyone attempting to learn programming, I don't think enrollment rate is good metric. > What's the barrier to entry that's keeping us from being flooded with supply? Programming is hard; really f'ing hard, for most people because it requires critical thinking continually and learning continually.

Stop patting yourself on the back. Seriously . Because obviously, no other job requires critical thinking and learning continually . These are "skills" that are in no way related to programming, and do not explain an inclination towards CS rather than any other science or the myriad of other academic disciplines. And even outside academia, not every job is just that of the "sheeple" who "mindlessly" "slug away" in th…

I do not disagree with you entirely, but I think what nuances the statement that 'programming is hard' is that this doesn't mean that other jobs aren't hard in other ways.

I believe programming does require above-average critical/logical thinking and continuous learning. On the other hand, it often requires less social thinking or management.

I have no problem saying that I'm a better programmer because most people are just sloppy and not as inherently curious and inclined to love clear, discrete problems and solving them. It doesn't make me arrogant, because I have huge amounts of respect for (some of) the project managers above me who have to deal with complicated schedules, higher-ups fucking up their shit, and managing prissy developers, designers, and whatnots who suck at communicating and collaborating.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#209

Post by dclowd9901 »

vectorpush wrote: post #204
ritchiea wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the wrong comparison. The comparison shouldn't be "sitting in front of a screen" vs socializing. It should be "sitting in front of a screen" vs the amount of work it takes to achieve a similar career in another field vs the amount of work it has historically required to achieve a similar career.

The comparison is apt with regard to unemployed individuals seeking to break into the software industry. My point is that a non-trivial amount of sacrifice is required to hone these skills; no, it's not back breaking labor, but most people aren't inclined to spend 6-10 hours a day sitting at a PC working through fake problems in an effort to understand how one authors software. That's the world we live in now. This d…

You are exactly right.

My boss is one of these self-loathing software developers that constantly sees it fit to remind me that we're all privileged sissies who get to play on computers and get paid obscenely well for it.

I don't buy that. He may feel that way, but I didn't start off in software development. I worked my way into it before there was ever a coursera or any other "become a developer quick" program. I did this by working a full time job to pay bills, then coming home and spending another 8 hours a day (and entire weekends) learning and honing. It would take 2 years of these 100-hour weeks to get to a point where I could actually begin doing this work at a professional level.

So I don't buy it. I hit a lot of walls and wanted to give up many times. And I've always loved computers! It still takes a special person to do the work we do. It wasn't like that for auto manufacturing.

Re: Developers are the autoworkers of our generation

#210

Post by [deleted] »

vectorpush wrote: post #204
ritchiea wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the wrong comparison. The comparison shouldn't be "sitting in front of a screen" vs socializing. It should be "sitting in front of a screen" vs the amount of work it takes to achieve a similar career in another field vs the amount of work it has historically required to achieve a similar career.

The comparison is apt with regard to unemployed individuals seeking to break into the software industry. My point is that a non-trivial amount of sacrifice is required to hone these skills; no, it's not back breaking labor, but most people aren't inclined to spend 6-10 hours a day sitting at a PC working through fake problems in an effort to understand how one authors software. That's the world we live in now. This d…

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