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If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

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Re: If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

#211

Post by IsaacL »

thomasgerbe wrote: post #135
Spyro7 wrote: post #123

This is a fantastic post. It is well written, and I agree with many of the authors points. Far from being angry, I think that the majority of people reading here on HN actually appreciate this type of critical analysis, and I think that it is a shame that it had to be posted on a throwaway account. However, I would like to present some alternative viewpoints for a few of the issues brought up in this post. "As a doct…

Funnily enough, many political representatives in China are engineers.

IIRC many political figures in Latin America are doctors.

Re: If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

#212

Post by IsaacL »

thomasgerbe wrote: post #135
Spyro7 wrote: post #123

This is a fantastic post. It is well written, and I agree with many of the authors points. Far from being angry, I think that the majority of people reading here on HN actually appreciate this type of critical analysis, and I think that it is a shame that it had to be posted on a throwaway account. However, I would like to present some alternative viewpoints for a few of the issues brought up in this post. "As a doct…

Funnily enough, many political representatives in China are engineers.

IIRC many political figures in Latin America are doctors.

Re: If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

#213

Post by BasDirks »

dany_dev wrote: post #131
BasDirks wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think programmers who put their skills to use for such purposes should indeed get better pay.

you wrong! in order to you the pay should be proportionally to the good that they do to human? This is a nosense idea....Just pay proportionally to their skills! Is a shame that a nice doctor earn 500k$ and a nice software engineer fight for 100k$

"in order to you the pay should be proportionally to the good that they do to human?"

yes.

"Just pay proportionally to their skills!"

If I'm amazing at flipping burgers do I need to get amazing pay?

Re: If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

#214

Post by roel_v »

pessimizer wrote: post #210
roel_v wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but had never stopped to think about the fact that the other alumni of my school who became doctors are making far more." A CS degree, which many programmers don't even have, takes 4 years. There are quite a few 'programming' jobs for which having a CS degree is being overqualified , but let's say that a CS degree is the baseline. To become an MD, with the specialties that pay the amounts mentioned here, one needs t…

I'd buy this argument if a CS degree qualified you for a programming job. It doesn't. It doesn't even mean you can program. You're expected to learn all of the skills that a programmer uses on the job on your own time . What if instead, you went to university for a pre-programming degree (CS) that was math and theory heavy, then went to a 2-3 year programming school, then went into some established shop for your 3-8…

%| I'm not sure what you're arguing here, or if you're just trolling. Are you seriously suggesting that people complete a 12 year program after which they need to join the 'programmers guild' (APA, if you will) before being allowed to write code? Are you seriously saying that somebody who writes his volleyball's club website at home as a hobby shouldn't be allowed to do so until he completes a 12 year study program? I guess there is some sarcasm in your post that was lost on me.

Re: If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

#215

Post by nosnhojn »

I think there are some good points here but I always find the premise behind posts/articles/arguments like this a little silly. I don't think there's any correlation between respect and salary. And getting too caught up in what others think of you and your work is effort/thought/time wasted. Pick a career you like, do it well and respect yourself. If you get more out of it than that, great, but don't expect any more than that. Setting out on a "quest for respect" is more than likely going to end in disappointment regardless of whether you're a doctor, lawyer, engineer, bricklayer or some poor, poor programmer.

Re: If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

#216

Post by mattm »

Anecdotal but I was recently contracting for a place that was developing web software for the first time. Even though I had pretty much wrote all the code on their system with them having hired and gone through 5 other programmers, the comment that caused me to leave was

"Why are we paying this guy when we could just hire someone from high school for $10/hr?"

Re: If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

#217

Post by crdoconnor »

mnutt wrote: post #47
deleo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that lawyers are overpaid, it's just that they don't compete with the world for prices and they all agree on certain prices in their own market. You can't outsource a lawyer to India because he most likely doesn't know US law. Also we programmer have this extraordinarily poor ability to SELL ourselves. We should try to factor in the time we bill the time it took us to get to that kind of knowledge we have, l…

There's no reason a lawyer in India couldn't learn US law. He probably wouldn't even start very far behind US citizen. The real problem is that he can't set foot in a US courtroom without a visa.

No, the main problem is that he needs a license to practise US law. The most you can get him to do is review or draft documents.

Re: If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

#218

Post by wes-exp »

krschultz wrote: post #203
falcolas wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone wrote the software for the equipment they use. I was recently at the hospital for surgery, and there were scant few pieces of equipment that didn't have some kind of programming in it.

And what % of people writing software write that kind of software ? It's a really small number. What % of doctors have an impact on the health of their patients? Almost all. We are dealing with statistics here.

Maybe a small percent of software is written for life-critical systems. That's because software is a huge market. But a growing percent of life-critical systems rely on software. How many adverse outcomes (even death) are you willing to accept caused by programming failures?

You know, a big part of the prosecution's evidence in the Casey Anthony trial turned out to be false; it was due to faulty software. She could have been imprisoned due to a software bug! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Anthony#Evidence

Now consider that anybody can call themselves a software engineer without even picking up a book. Next time your life hangs on the proper functioning of some computer system, think about that.

Re: If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?

#219

Post by falcolas »

krschultz wrote: post #203
falcolas wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone wrote the software for the equipment they use. I was recently at the hospital for surgery, and there were scant few pieces of equipment that didn't have some kind of programming in it.

And what % of people writing software write that kind of software ? It's a really small number. What % of doctors have an impact on the health of their patients? Almost all. We are dealing with statistics here.

In percentages, sure. In the raw number of people, I imagine the numbers are a lot closer than you imagine.

As for the remaining percentage of people, we may not deal with their physical health, but our work can impact their financial or family's well being fairly easily. Some of the code I have written has touched billions of financial transactions that have decided the future of whether people will be able to buy a house, or a car, or any other line of credit.

Not trivial.

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