Programming Is a Dead End Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#181

Post by nostrademons » Mon, May 05, 2014, 10:11 PM UTC

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?

This is basically the startup business model - get a bunch of guys together, split equity, write something cool, get aquihired for a few million apiece.

The reason it has to be done with equity instead of salary is because there's a principal-agent problem with salary. People collect their salary regardless of whether their contributions actually are worth a few million. And so they have every incentive to sit on their butt - or at least, not take any risks and just do what got them the initial salary grant - in the meantime.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#182

Post by godzilla82 » Tue, May 06, 2014, 7:24 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #145

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 qui…

Why are you assuming that the 10 programmers are less skilled than you are. Take this scenario: You(good programmer) write 1 kloc. 10 other (equally good) programmers write 1/10 kloc but each of them is willing to work for less than 1/10 your pay!* Isn't this a possibility in free market? So may be you dont have any intrinsic value. Your value is a function of how many similarly skilled programmers are out there. Since this applies to all trades, I guess the solution is to move to trades where the supply of "good" labour is less than your current trade. May be that is why the author's friends who moved to management get paid more.

*assume: (communication/coordination overheads) + their pay < your pay

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#183

Post by chrisbennet » Tue, May 06, 2014, 11:32 AM UTC

It should be noted that life is a dead end as well.

It seems the author equates the accumulation of "things" with success. If your goal is own more stuff, I guess that would constitute success.

Happiness has always been my goal. By that metric, I'm wildly successful.

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#184

Post by lrryy » Tue, May 06, 2014, 5:05 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #39

nostrademons wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to combine programming with communication, sales, and analysis skills can be incredibly valuable, though. That 1000 line/day programmer, if he looks around and observes the functioning of the org, could probably easily find several areas where those 10 programmers are writing 100 lines/day that could easily be automated away. If he can then write a solution that does this and sell it to upper management, h…

Agreed, but if she can observe the "functioning of the org" then she probably will try management at some point. There is an old quote my Grandfather had which went something like "soldiers control battlefields, generals control objectives, and kings control countries." The gist of it was that if you could see the path to success you rose to the level where you could use that vision to make that level of change happe…

"she"?

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#185

Post by nostrademons » Tue, May 06, 2014, 5:52 PM UTC

lrryy wrote: post #184

ChuckMcM wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but if she can observe the "functioning of the org" then she probably will try management at some point. There is an old quote my Grandfather had which went something like "soldiers control battlefields, generals control objectives, and kings control countries." The gist of it was that if you could see the path to success you rose to the level where you could use that vision to make that level of change happe…

"she"?

Several tech bloggers/writers (Ben Horowitz of a16z is probably the most prominent) have taken to using female pronouns when referring to unspecified tech leaders (CEOs, founders, high-level engineers). This is a way to combat sexism and unconscious bias in the tech community - by sorta jarring you out of your expectations of what gender a prominent tech person is, you're made to consciously think "Why wouldn't a woman be in this position? Why is my default assumption that a high-performing engineer is male?" Much like your post.

Anyway, I support this trend and I've been known to do it myself sometimes. It's a little disorienting when the hypothetical subject of a thread flips genders halfway through, but the person is only hypothetical anyway, so why not?

Re: Programming Is a Dead End Job

#186

Post by joshdance » Fri, May 09, 2014, 10:08 PM UTC

BugBrother wrote: post #108

rschmitty wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most everyone has forgotten the 2000 dot com crash, when all the computer jobs disappeared. This "learn to code" is just how it was then. I would bet money that in less than five years, a lot of software people will be unemployed -- again. (If I win, good. If not, good. :-) )

"This "learn to code" is just how it was then." - really? I don't remember it that way. Sure there was lots of people who wanted to get in, and lots of books printed but nothing like the sustained push that there is now.