As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change • Hacker News Board

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#41

Post by sjg007 » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:21 PM UTC

sarwechshar wrote: post #21

jboggan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salary is not a monotonic mapping of developer productivity. Besides, given the general increase of salaries across the board and the poor raise-negotiating skills of coders in general, it isn't hard to imagine the 25% of salaries under hers were mostly of an older un-altered vintage for underperforming programmers.

I'm just curious, why is there a perception that coders are poor raise-negotiators in general?

Probably a lot, also there is a tendency to switch jobs if an employer won't raise.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#42

Post by JustSomeNobody » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:21 PM UTC

chadgeidel wrote: post #34

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #19

Once everyone is a programmer, then what?

Once everyone can read and write, then what? We live in a computer age. Knowing how to program is no longer a "specialized skill", it's mandatory (on some level) to effectively interact with ever more complex systems that run our lives.

Yeah, no. Those things are not the same thing. Try again.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#43

Post by eastbayjake » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:21 PM UTC

I knew as soon as I checked the comments on this article there would be a barrage of negativity. I just wasn't prepared for it to be unanimous.

I've made similar comments on HN in the past but much of this griping seems to boil down to "I was interested in [thing] way before all these johnny-come-latelys just bum-rushed it for a paycheck!" It's an irritatingly hipster thing to do -- I did X before X was cool, but now X is sooooo over.

I also wish people who complain in these comments would name the schools when they complain. Who are you worried about offending? Will you help everyone else by identifying degree-mill schools that turn out low-quality people? I hate that great programs like Hack Reactor or MakerSquare -- which never have people on the job market for more than a couple weeks and continue to have ridiculous industry demand -- get lumped in with fly-by-night HTML/CSS bootcamps in third-tier tech markets like Atlanta.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#44

Post by JustSomeNobody » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

vorg wrote: post #39

civilframe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as these rookies aren't writing nuclear reactor firmware, who cares? Most of programming is mundane. Have them make CRUD apps while we experts work on something interesting ;)

> Have the[se rookies] make CRUD apps while we experts work on something interesting The reality is the opposite: the smooth-talking aptitudeless "rookies" with a years experience 7 times get themselves onto teams designing "interesting" stuff from scratch, then the programming experts are put on the team to clean up the many bugs for years to come.

This happens way more often than it should.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#45

Post by cairo140 » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

ennuihenry wrote: post #32

seibelj wrote: post #22

We made a conscious decision to try and hire someone from these camps as an experiment. I went to their demo day and winnowed the graduating class of 40 down to 6. Of the 6 we interviewed we decided to give 6 month internships to 3 of them, 2 developer and 1 qa. Despite being hourly with minimal benefits, they were making the yearly equivalent of 50k a year which I found more than reasonable given the fact they had n…

What area are you in? 75k in NY or SF for an inexperienced developer seems high.

Just sharing my experience here: I've been hiring in SF and found some boot camp grads, usually stronger but still far from mid-career, with expectations around 90-115k. Most of these folks got hired (some of them to us/away from us with offers all in that range).

These were folks who were months to years away from hitting the ground running, and the value of the offer was entirely on their future potential. I found great difficulty finding a mid-career developer for the 130-150k range that it started making an "investment hire" feel like a viable alternative.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#46

Post by a3voices » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

chadgeidel wrote: post #34

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #19

Once everyone is a programmer, then what?

Once everyone can read and write, then what? We live in a computer age. Knowing how to program is no longer a "specialized skill", it's mandatory (on some level) to effectively interact with ever more complex systems that run our lives.

Mandatory in what sense? Most people get by without having to code anything more complex than an Excel formula.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#47

Post by danso » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

chadgeidel wrote: post #34

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #19

Once everyone is a programmer, then what?

Once everyone can read and write, then what? We live in a computer age. Knowing how to program is no longer a "specialized skill", it's mandatory (on some level) to effectively interact with ever more complex systems that run our lives.

Thanks for providing my reflexive comeback...Programming, to me, is as expressive and essential as reading and writing, and those who think all the coding problems/jobs are going to end when everyone learns programming...I just don't understand what they perceive to be the scope of programming.

I think people are too hung up on how programming seems to be newly ushered in by technology, despite its theoretical origins more than a century ago (very conservatively speaking). Well, writing and reading existed long before Gutenberg...but before he made mass media possible, it would have been very reasonable to argue that writing and reading were not essential to being productive members of society.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#48

Post by mooreds » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

I for one think this trend is great. We need more developers.

But... I lived through the last boom when it seemed anyone who could spell 'java' was hired as a developer. (OK, it wasn't that bad, but there was definitely a giant sucking sound as folks were pulled into technology for the money.)

I hope this time is different.

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#49

Post by JustSomeNobody » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

browles wrote: post #36

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't a math degree already have at least a little programming? Matlab? Python? Something?

Should? Maybe. But plenty of math graduates have little to no programming experience, even from top schools.

Interesting. I did not know that. So do math majors do any numerical analysis?

Re: As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

#50

Post by npalli » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 9:25 PM UTC

So, everyone knows that Software is eating the world and coding is hot. However, something about this article seems off to me

1. All persons quoted are coding camp organizers/owners. Could it be they have some vested interest in pushing forward the idea that you can go from zero to hero in a few weeks of coding bootcamp.

2. The 'hot' areas that have been listed - mobile, analytics, cloud are actually a very tiny percent of jobs!. A quick Glassdoor search showed 25/1 ratio for software engineer/mobile engineer. In fact, if you go away from SF and NY, the number of jobs in these areas are even rarer. Which calls into question the whole premise of what is being taught.

Paul Graham's submarine article is spot on about these PR stunts.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html