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As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change

nytimes.com

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

#71

Post by chadgeidel »

a3voices wrote: post #46
chadgeidel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my opinion "programming" should be generalized to "instructing the computer to do a series of tasks", or "applying the output of one system into the next system". I don't think that's overgeneralizing.

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

#72

Post by duderific »

winter_blue wrote: post #61
cairo140 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Wow, are talented developer really that hard to find? (Especially, considering you're offering 130-150k.) Are you insistent on a developer being "mid-career" (I interpret that as having "years of experience") -- or would you accept a highly talented who has just…

Yes, it is really hard to find talented developers. I am a developer who interviews developer candidates at my company, and we only end up giving an offer to maybe one in five candidates. Our standards are fairly high but not ridiculously so. We are desperate for developers, but not to the point where we want to hire someone who we feel like would be dragging us down.

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

#73

Post by chadgeidel »

thegeomaster wrote: post #60
chadgeidel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but there is a difference between everyone needing to learn to read and write in order to communicate by written word, sign documents etc. and everyone needing to learn to write sufficiently good to write a novel. As I see it, it's the same with computers and coding. Everyone should be able to operate a computer (or smartphone, tablet, whatever) and do tasks efficiently on it, but not everyone should be requir…

Thanks for the well-reasoned opinion. I do think that "learning to direct a computer to do a task" is something that people should know how to do. I'm not talking Java/Python/whatever, I'm talking more about cookbook-style recipes to "get data from here, transform it, and apply it over here".

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

#74

Post by robalfonso »

mooreds wrote: post #48

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.

I think we need more good developers. 100% you can get a great developer from this education channel, but that person would be good whether they came to you via a code school or a more traditional route.

I also think people should be encouraged to better themselves and work towards higher paying careers. That said, as someone who hires engineers the signal to noise ratio continues to go up. It makes it that much harder to find good developers in the forest of bad. I make it a point of seeing almost anyone who is close to fitting the bill so I kiss a lot of frogs, and I could be more harsh weeding out people at earlier stages but I've had absolutely spectacular hires being a bit more flexible (I do tend to fire fast though, no reason for everyone to pretend its not a good fit) Flooding the market with folks though just makes it more challenging for those hiring.

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

#75

Post by juliangregorian »

DeBraid wrote: post #55
woah wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it extremely believable that someone with ambition and drive could do better than many developers who are coasting off a CS degree.

This and tech stacks change so often that someone with 3-6 months of javascript exp could be more effective than 2-5 years with java.

Developers make tech stacks, not the other way around.

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

#76

Post by mooreds »

fweespeech wrote: post #68
cairo140 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If they are that expensive and you are having that kind of trouble...maybe try remote hires? $100k for a remote hire mid-career developer shouldn't be hard to find.

Some companies just aren't set up to handle remote developers. Based on my experience, it takes a certain mindset and tooling to make remote development work.

I don't know about the GP's situation, however.

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

#77

Post by nostrademons »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #44
vorg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's not really a fair comparison: the "rookies" (somehow, I doubt that always applies) are working in an environment where they often don't know the requirements and the only way to find them out is through trial and error, and the fact that the organization can even afford "programming experts" means they must have been somewhat successful. Put a programming expert in a situation where the boss doesn't know what he wants and the only way to find out is to build it 20 times and he'll produce a pile of crud too.

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

#78

Post by jdminhbg »

GuiA wrote: post #18

Somehow I have a hard time believing that if you have a math major, the only difference between you waiting tables and living on the brink of poverty or making bank as a software engineer is a 3 months Ruby course (I have a double math/CS major); I feel like there may be something more going on here. I'm happy for the gentleman's success, but it seems like a poor example to use in any case.

I don't have trouble believing that a short course to learn to use tools that put his previously-acquired math knowledge to good use drastically increases his productivity.

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

#79

Post by hiharryhere »

There are Plumbers, Plasterers and Bricklayers... and there are structural engineers.

There's a need for both kinds of coders. I'm all for it. Not all places need a CS genius, most just need someone with the skills to use established frameworks and tools. Doesn't make you a bad programmer.

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