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We will never have enough software developers (2020)

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Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#171

Post by mettamage »

highwaylights wrote: post #137
Gigachad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cry me a river. Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history. The majority of the population is grinding away in tough physical labor or abusive service jobs getting paid pennies while software devs moan about only making low six figures and getting a few boring jira tickets while they sit in their home office reading hacker news for half the day.

On one hand, I agree with you that on the whole we're a bunch of spoiled crybabies. Totally grant you that. On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true. Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done). Most of us are just doing things for money. Are most people…

We need data for this. More importantly, we need data for how tough it is to get certain jobs. That means stuff like:

* Time spent on finding a job

* Time spent on studying in order to attain a job

* Actual amount of hours worked (hard to get accurate data on it)

* Actual amount of effort per hour (hard to operationalize)

It's a very tough discussion to have, but I have a gut feeling that you're simplifying too much and are partially wrong. But I can't even give evidence that you might be wrong because I don't have data. So at best I feel we're both blind and we don't have a one-eyed king that can see! ;-)

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#172

Post by achenet »

bluGill wrote: post #145
capybara_2020 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm what makes you think software developers are not abused? Maybe in your world they are not, but it regular to hear about devs working 12-14 hours a day. With bosses and clients harassing them even at off hours.

You hear about that in "high status" organizations. Most companies cannot get away with that, and treat their developers much better.

This has not been true in my experience. The shitty small business masquerading as a startup treated me horribly, now I work for OVH and everyone is super nice.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#173

Post by electroly »

BigJ1211 wrote: post #80
Gigachad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cry me a river. Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history. The majority of the population is grinding away in tough physical labor or abusive service jobs getting paid pennies while software devs moan about only making low six figures and getting a few boring jira tickets while they sit in their home office reading hacker news for half the day.

This seems to be a perspective that's exclusively silicon valley (perhaps large parts of the US) based. Not at all true in Europe at the least. Not that it's a bad job by any stretch of the imagination, but even low six figures is really rare in the EU for Software Development. Easiest is also highly subjective, if your job is making wordpress templates/sites then sure. If you're working on complexer systems then thi…

I suspect this was simply so obvious that OP didn't feel it was worth mentioning. If your goal is making a lot of money in software development, you'd be a fool to stay in Europe. You have to move to the US. That's where the money is.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#174

Post by knidoyl »

rootusrootus wrote: post #92
pojzon wrote: post #18

Brother is teaching at the University among other things and from the stories he sometimes tells me: I do not worry about agism or work at all. Lets just say that when we were studing, most ppl were not the brightest tool in the shed. Now its supposedly many many times worse.

Agreed. I hire interns every year, and I am continually astounded at just how incompetent so many people are who are months away from finishing a master's in computer science. On paper, I wouldn't expect a shortage of software developers. But as a practical matter, more than half of everyone I talk to who is about to finish their CS degree is very clearly not going to last long in this field. Not just because they ar…

Where are you from, if you don't mind sharing? I believe it depends on the education system. From my point of view in France new grad need 1 to 2 years to be "work ready". They just have to learn how work life is working.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#175

Post by pkdpic »

highwaylights wrote: post #137
Gigachad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cry me a river. Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history. The majority of the population is grinding away in tough physical labor or abusive service jobs getting paid pennies while software devs moan about only making low six figures and getting a few boring jira tickets while they sit in their home office reading hacker news for half the day.

On one hand, I agree with you that on the whole we're a bunch of spoiled crybabies. Totally grant you that. On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true. Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done). Most of us are just doing things for money. Are most people…

Also, have you all tried making a non-swe career work lately? How about for 5+ years?

In the last two years I've worked with hundreds of bootcamp students who have reached the end of their rope with 20th century career paths that no longer make any f-ing sense. From teachers to construction workers to bartenders to graphic designers. Not all of them have a deep love for writing software, but all of them recognize that its one of the only viable paths available if you don't want to have roommates into your 40s.

As my best friend told me in an abandoned bay area parking lot before I switched careers to swe, there just doesn't seem to be any other reliable way for people in our generation to make a living. Maybe it only applies to california, maybe it only applies to millennials, but having been on both sides of that fence now I 100% agree.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#176

Post by gerhardhaering »

xwdv wrote: post #72
cs137 wrote: post #10

There isn't a shortage of software developers. The pay isn't great--the kids getting $300K packages out of Stanford are an exception; it's a marketing expense. In fact, if you control for the level of intelligence it takes to be any good, SWEs make less (and get far less autonomy--do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?) than any other professional, and they hit a salary/challenge plateau quick... after which, the…

You could work two easy software engineering jobs from home in parallel and double your income though.

Good luck if you spend 40-70 % of your working time in meetings and pair programming sessions, like I do.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#177

Post by mmarq »

trashtester wrote: post #94
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the ethnicity or sex matter when these HR managers would still see the same differences regardless of ethnicity or sex? Either way, I'd think twice about putting HR managers as victims here when they are the main perpetrators of low raise budgets and high hiring budgets.

When people see that some other group of people, with identity traits different from themselves, are doing better than themselves on some metric, it often induces resentment. That's just a fact. Whether its justified or not, varies with circumstances and what ethical system people have. When black people in the 50's felt that way about white people and their privileges, most people today would see those concerns as j…

> When German people in 1922 became angry because most jews had enough money for food, while many Germans went hungry

Even if this were true, and it isn’t, people didn’t start believing in anti-Jewish propaganda because the Jews had more to eat than the average German. People always believed in crazy anti-Jewish propaganda since, at least, the first crusade.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#178

Post by Verdex »

reidjs wrote: post #45
itsmemattchung wrote: post #32

With OpenAi (and other comparable technologies) able to semantically understand "write fast and efficient C code for a prime sieve" and generate fairly impressive C code, I'm no longer sure I agree that we will never have enough software developers (after watching this, made me get just a little nervous as well as excited about the future of our industry): https://youtu.be/k_EF42H2ZC0?t=187

How often in your career has the problem been that well articulated?

Or for that matter, how often in your career has the problem been an example problem that people use to showcase basic examples of their programming language.

Prime sieve is almost definitely in the top 10 of most written and published programs ever.

Interestingly enough at the end of the video he asks the AI to write some code that makes money. And it responds with "maybe try investing or not spending money". This is much more in line with the type of questions I get asked in my career and somehow I doubt I would still be working if I had answered the same way seriously.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#179

Post by commandlinefan »

vsareto wrote: post #142
alexfromapex wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many things I have to disagree with. Not all software engineering is easy, particularly the highly paid variety. The six figure salary is diluted by spending weekends constantly having to learn new technology off the clock. Companies then expect senior engineers to mentor other engineers and give presentations of their technical challenges, debasing the value of the knowledge gained working off the clock. Manual l…

>The six figure salary is diluted by spending weekends constantly having to learn new technology off the clock You don't need to do this forever. Usually you can just focus on a stack and related technologies and do well. Once you have experience and a clearly defined need, ad-hoc research is good enough.

> You don't need to do this forever

The thesis of the linked article is that you do. For the most part, it matches my experience. I'm 30 years in and already wondering how useful the Hadoop/Spark/Scala stuff I spent the last few years mastering is going to be in the next 5 years.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#180

Post by commandlinefan »

rapind wrote: post #95
capableweb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah indeed. Coming from someone who had to work with physical labor before I started programming, software developers don't know how good they have it. "The pay isn't great", "treated far too shabbily", "dealing with bugs and bad decisions", "inadequate processes" and so on, sucks when development is the only thing you've dealt with, but you have no idea how it is to actually have a blue collar job if you're actuall…

Any white collar job looks better than McDonalds. It’s a ridiculous comparison. I could say McDonalds workers don’t know how easy they have it. They should try picking fruit as a seasonal immigrant, because it will make them love working at McDonalds.

> picking fruit as a seasonal immigrant

And those seasonal immigrant fruit pickers don't know how easy the have it. They should try being kidnapping victims chained in a basement, waiting to be tortured to death by an axe-wielding maniac.

That's the problem with "you can't complain, somebody else has it worse" - I can always think of somebody who has it worse.

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