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Programming Is a Dead End Job

thecodist.com

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Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#141

Post by parasubvert »

rschmitty wrote: post #70
eternalban wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. Programming is a blue collar trade.

That is a bit of a reach to call it blue collar. I have blue collar friends from high school who envy what programmers do and make and I do what I can to try and persuade/teach them to learn to code and make a better life for themselves.

Blue collar workers can make a lot of money these days, especially if their trade required significant theoretical learning and practical training.

Electricians, mechanics, heavy machinery operators in Alberta can make $150,000 in the oil sands before overtime, plus fly-in/fly-out costs; in the major urban centers, upwards of $100,000. If you're young, add in overtime and you're looking at $150-200k+. Foremen and supervisors can make up to double.

A programmer in the Bay Area will top out around $200k as a senior member of technical staff.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#142

Post by gjm11 »

theorique wrote: post #130
mturmon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cynical take on your observations sometimes occurs to me, and seems pertinent. The managers set the wages. Therefore, they will be well-paid, and their contributions will readily recognized. This is simplistic and does not explain everything, but I think it is a major ingredient.

There's also a flip side of this: a manager of a team of N is responsible for representing the collective results of a team of N. If the team is successful and hits a home run, then the manager benefits a lot. If the team crashes and burns, then the manager is at significant risk of job loss. (Yes, office politics will come into play and managers will do their best in the latter case to diffuse blame, but the point i…

> If the team crashes and burns, then the manager is at significant risk of job loss.

I hear this frequently, but I'm not sure it matches my experience well. Among people I've known and worked with, I haven't noticed that managers get fired at any greater rate than non-managers.

I haven't looked at any actual statistics on this; maybe management really is much riskier. But I can't help suspecting that the idea that management (and especially executive) pay is justified by greater career risk may be mostly a story told by managers to make themselves and others feel better about pay differentials.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#143

Post by 10098 »

tldr; if your program you won't become a CEO with mansions and cars.

I became a programmer not because I wanted nice cars but because it's helping me earn enough money while doing something that doesn't annoy me too much. It helps keep my sanity.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#144

Post by wooter »

School-Cotton wrote: post #133
michaelochurch wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it is expensive, but not enough to offset the insane salaries, at least for devs. If you're going to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for everyone else who lives here. Programmer salaries are not "insane". A half-decent programmer is worth $500,000 to the business and costs about $100,000. A good one is worth over $3 million, and only costs about $150,000. Programmers are actually incredibly fucking cheap…

If that were true, why wouldn't some startup pay the best programmers it could find $2,000,000 a year and put everyone else out of business?

... google.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#145

Post by smsm42 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

I respond really negatively to the notion of 'dead end.' Programming isn't a dead end job any more than welding is a dead end job or painting. But it is a trade . What is more, managing is a different job than programming. Not a lot of programmers really internalize that until they try out being a manager. Architecture, and technical leadership in general, is still another job. It takes the ability to internalize mas…

I think you view (or at least present here) the programming job as pure production measured in KLOCs or something similar, and this is wrong. It is a part of the job, but not the main part. 1 KLOC written by a good programmer may be worth literally orders of magnitude more than 10 KLOC written by 10 poor programmers. The reason is not syntax errors - those are mostly irrelevant as the tools get rid of them pretty quickly. The relevant part is what tools can't do - conceptual build of the code, design, robustness and ability to accommodate change. These terms are very hard to define, especially with rigor that would be convincing to anybody outside of the industry, so there's a lot of hand-waving and "you know what I'm talking about" when we talk about it, but in the essence poor code is poor and great code is great not because the former has tons of obvious errors and the latter does not. It is because you'd spend orders of magnitude more money, time and other efforts supporting and improving poor code than great code. That's where better programmers are providing the edge, not in the KLOC output. If you need KLOC, you don't need great, you don't even need good, you just need "can tie his own shoes" one. But if you need a system that you wouldn't have to throw out and rewrite in 3 years because it became unmaintainable and every fix immediately creates an explosion of new problems - then you need great. That's where 9 women/1 months comes into play.

The problem here is of course as I noted this is very hard to manage and evaluate except way post-factum (and even then there are little of robust tools and methods to do it with any rigor) so it's hard to know for sure. But in many cases, "you know it when you see it".

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#146

Post by smsm42 »

autokad wrote: post #134
bradleyjg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) That's not what the post above says, and b) it's not accurate. Blue collar refers to jobs that involve physical labor. The term arose when people on the factory floor would wear blue coveralls, and people that worked in the offices off the floor would wear white button down shirts. Why exactly every job needs to have a clear path to CEO or be considered a dead end or blue collar job is a mystery to me.

because unless you can work 40 hours a week and spend another 20 learning new techs as they come out for the entirety of your life, you will become obsolete unless you can move onto other roles. If management is not an option, then chances are very likely that person will be unemployable somewhere between ages 40-50. and that's only one problem. you may reach (or ever want to) the top, but if there is a low ceiling t…

"Unemployable beyond 40" has been dead for years in the software industry. Probably for decades. There's nothing in current industry that requires you to be under 30 (actually, there are tons of positions which require extensive experience) and technologies don't die that fast - C programming market is still alive, C++ is over 30 and not going anywhere, Java would be 20 years old next year and not disappearing any time soon. The time where experience from 10 years ago was completely irrelevant is past, now you could have been writing in Java 10 years ago and still be doing it today and continue doing it 10 years from now if you'd like so. Of course, you have to keep current, but any trade has that, especially trade which deals with advanced technologies.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#147

Post by vacri »

kumbasha wrote: post #23
untog wrote: post #17

Programming is hardly unique in this regard. In fact, I'd wager that the vast majority of professions are like this. There's a simple reality at work: when you are programming code there's only so much effect it will have. That effect is greater when the organisation is small (i.e. a startup) but there's a limit. Once you become a manager in charge of five developers you're suddenly able to affect 5x (well, not quite…

On the other hand, without all of the actual programmers you would have no product and no profits at all. Neither group can function without the other, and pay should reflect that rather than the ridiculously unequal spread we just automatically accept as normal.

Pretty much every role in a company these days is essential, thanks to economic rationalism. Fire the janitors, see how much people like working in your offices in a month or two.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#148

Post by ThrustVectoring »

School-Cotton wrote: post #133
michaelochurch wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it is expensive, but not enough to offset the insane salaries, at least for devs. If you're going to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for everyone else who lives here. Programmer salaries are not "insane". A half-decent programmer is worth $500,000 to the business and costs about $100,000. A good one is worth over $3 million, and only costs about $150,000. Programmers are actually incredibly fucking cheap…

If that were true, why wouldn't some startup pay the best programmers it could find $2,000,000 a year and put everyone else out of business?

If you look at it funny, YC itself is doing this. Funding isn't salary, but if you look at it in terms of expected value they're pretty much handing gobs of money to those they think can do the right kind things with computers.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#149

Post by smsm42 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #133
michaelochurch wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it is expensive, but not enough to offset the insane salaries, at least for devs. If you're going to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for everyone else who lives here. Programmer salaries are not "insane". A half-decent programmer is worth $500,000 to the business and costs about $100,000. A good one is worth over $3 million, and only costs about $150,000. Programmers are actually incredibly fucking cheap…

If that were true, why wouldn't some startup pay the best programmers it could find $2,000,000 a year and put everyone else out of business?

Because nobody yet has figured out how to turn programmers into simple machines where you shove money from one end and get even more money from the other end. You need to actually give those programmers something to do and sell the results and make profit on it. Programmers don't do that, that's a different profession. One that can be extremely lucrative if done right, but so far has not submitted to any automation.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#150

Post by theorique »

gjm11 wrote: post #142
theorique wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a flip side of this: a manager of a team of N is responsible for representing the collective results of a team of N. If the team is successful and hits a home run, then the manager benefits a lot. If the team crashes and burns, then the manager is at significant risk of job loss. (Yes, office politics will come into play and managers will do their best in the latter case to diffuse blame, but the point i…

> If the team crashes and burns, then the manager is at significant risk of job loss. I hear this frequently, but I'm not sure it matches my experience well. Among people I've known and worked with, I haven't noticed that managers get fired at any greater rate than non-managers. I haven't looked at any actual statistics on this; maybe management really is much riskier. But I can't help suspecting that the idea that m…

Perhaps it is more accurate to say: "If the team crashes and burns, then the naive, politically confused, disconnected manager is at significant risk of job loss".

Most people don't like firing people they have worked with for months or years. Most people don't like getting fired. The savvy manager who knows organizational jiu-jitsu and can explain with a great story can often come up smelling like roses after disaster. The naive manager who assumes that everything is the way the mission statement says it is ... will be out on his ass.

See: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...

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