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Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

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161–170 of 231 posts

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#161
post #2

Maybe this is why so much software these days looks like it was written by unsupervised youngsters. I just wasted a day trying to get ListView's to work in Android only to find out that, well, they don't work, so you need to use something else. Then it took me a couple of hours to essentially duplicate the ListView functionality, except a working version. The thing is developing a GUI framework isn't rocket science,…

What were you trying to do, exactly? I won't jump up on the barricades to defend the honor of the Android SDK, but ListView is a tool in my belt that I use to get real work done. It's certainly not perfect, but sometimes I miss it when I'm working with UITableView over in iOS land. Cursor management is pretty gross, but ListView itself is usually fine.

I have worked with some genius older developers. If I could point to a flaw in myself as I've grown older, though, it is that I fail to integrate and use working code in the larger ecosystem as quickly as my younger colleagues. More often than not, that shows up as blaming the tool or library because I failed to understand how it works, then falling back on something I already know well. Even if that means rewriting something unnecessarily.

Finally, look - as imperfect as software continues to be, you can't tell me that there weren't awful libraries in common usage ten or fifteen years ago. That doesn't pass the laugh test. You may only remember the good ones, but that's the luxury of memory.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#162
post #8

He seems to have missed making the point in the title. Why would software engineers work for english majors? He thinks that a 20 something english major is a better manager for a software engineer than a 40 something software engineer? Plus he seems to completely miss a separate alternative for software engineers over 35-- start their own businesses. I think the perception that 40 year olds are not up to date on tech…

My suspicion is that the "young" developers they speak of (not all of them, obviously) are faster in the same way not writing tests is "faster". You're taking on a lot of debt that you'll have to pay off sooner or later. For most startups, the bad technical decisions younger developers will make won't bite them in the ass until much later - maybe never if they go out of business for not finding product/market fit - and so getting somewhere, anywhere as quickly as possible is perhaps better than having expertise at writing "great" software.

Also, Moore's law helps folks ignorant of Big-O, algorithm design, memory management, indexing, etc. push off needing to know that knowledge until much later - if ever. When you can spin up thousands of Amazon servers for pennies it really "doesn't matter" (to biz people) if you improve your search algorithm memory footprint (or performance) by 100%.

I think it's possible to have both - older developers that know when to take on debt and how to responsibly manage it can be just as fast as the cowboy younger kids, but that's even harder to find.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#163
post #7
post #4

Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40. If this is really true then where do they all go? There's only so many seats for managers and architects.

How many 40 year old software programmers could there be the area of science has only been around 40 years.

Hmm... My first job as developer was in 1978. My college major was math, but a CS minor. Still coding everyday.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think that the first computer was invented in 1972?

Sure, computers were around back then. But I don't think there was much of an industry around them outside of academia. There are quantum computers now, but not many "quantum programmers" :P. (It's not a perfect parallel; I'm just being a little glib.) Edit: My point was that there won't be very many programmers with 40 years' experience. Turns out the OP meant 40 year old programmers, which is a different story.

Sure, computers were around back then. But I don't think there was much of an industry around them outside of academia

And the banks. And defence. And aerospace. And factories. And.... well... lots of other places. IBM started selling the 1400 series in 1960 for Pete's sake!

The industry was obviously a lot smaller then - but it was well past the pure academic/military phase by that point.

The first home console game - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey was launched in 1972 - although I guess the Magnavox wouldn't really classify as a computer :-)

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#165
post #114

I hate it when places like Bloomberg purport to tell me what is going to happen with the rest of my career. I will be 32 at the end of this week, and you know what? I am not stopping this programming thing anytime soon. This article is written for the people that would get into our craft based on the fact that Software Engineer was just named the top job. If you love to build, if you love to create, if you love to pr…

Funny part is that Bloomberg employs many software developers over 40+

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#166
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think newer programmer's just work for less. There really isn't that much new under the sun in software engineering.

Really? And here I was thinking that my discipline was one of the most rapidly evolving on the planet...

Nah, go read some of the academic papers from the 70s. We haven't moved very far in software. The hardware shininess obscures that though.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#167
post #33

How many English majors are still in "English" at age 40? Many of them will have exited the workforce , started their own business, changed careers, or leveled up high enough that their occupational classification the government uses changes. Programmers do all these things, too. I love programming. I didn't even make it to thirty as a "programmer"! (P.S. There exist lots of benefits to not calling yourself a program…

I doubt many 40+ programmers are going to come out in support of this article. In cases of discrimination, you are labeled a crybaby so it's better to just stay quite. HN is mostly young and the only 40+ ones here are the type who like puzzles or in top 1 percentile of programming (e.g. patio11). For a vast majority of 40+ programmers, the reality is as grim as painted in this article. If you are not in top 1 percent…

Given that there isn't a puzzle/test type of way to rank managers

False. The test is: how much money did your team make? (For the truly crafty, the test is: how much money did your team make relative to the initial investment and risk?)

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#168
post #156
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and mchurch should start a YouTube sitcom or something, where you rant about all your horrible experiences.ike a Curb Your Enthusiasm for techies. It would be entertaining and more profitable than just posting on HN. Larry David should love to invest, you've nailed his technique of railing against the firstworldproblems facing people who can't be happy in the most rewarding and comfortable niche around, and broug…

[deleted]

Huh? Looks like a compliment to me...

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 15% is not taking into account base salary (I'm including bonus + 401k matching)... it's more like 25% if you look at it that way ;). And this is a pretty entry level rate... in a year from now I know I'll be able to command at least 50-70% more. Health insurance can be had for barely more than the cost of fuel I was using in my daily commute, which is $200/mo. Yes, I have to do my own taxes, and yes they'll be…

The starting point for your contract rate should be the thousands number of your salary multiplied by 1.5 i.e., if you make $50k a year, charge $75/hr. If you make $100k/year, charge $150. How much do you think an associate attorney at a law firm that makes $150k per year is billed out at? CPA? Management consultant? All of these professionals are generally billed out at a median rate of nearly $200/hr. And the top e…

According to this rule I should be charging around $200 / hour. I would love to be able to do that, but I think your logic is flawed. I've found that multiplying by 1 or even less actually nets you more overall income after expenses (considering you get to expense some toys like that brand new macbook pro / air, ipad, etc.) for the year.

This is in Canada though, so I'm not taking the requirement to pay for your own medical insurance into consideration.

Re: Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this all the time, and I think it's the least useful way to further your own career. Sure, I understand that notion of the power grab, but why? What real world benefit will you see by asserting unearned power over a new hire. Much better to hire someone who you can learn from, someone who perhaps can mentor you, and help you actually achieve more in your career.

Objectively that may well be true, however if you hire someone more experienced than you then perhaps they should be supervising you and not the other way around. Also I think most geeks like to think of themselves as Jedi Masters. There is also the fear of someone tearing you a new one for the quality of your codebase.

I'd like to think in an ideal world we only ever hire colleagues, and our teams are, for the most part, meritocracies without hierarchy. Technical Leads guide development and mentor those less experienced, instead of directing it and passing down tasks. Management should be isolated from the team you work with daily, and should be there only to help long term progress (and other hands off management things).

Working with closely on a day to day basis with someone up the management chain from you is miserable.

Working with closely on a day to day basis with someone up the technical competence / experience scale from you is fantastic.

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