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Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

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Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#231

Post by jasonkester »

me_me_me wrote: post #228
sersi wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's been in charge of recruitment, I've made an effort in hiring people who are less likely to get a chance at other places (minorities, older candidates) One thing that stood out to me though is that a lot of the older candidates I interviewed that had been struggling had deep knowledge of a technology that's no longer used and had had very little interest during their career in learning new things outs…

And thats the reason I would stop my yonger-self from doing software. When compared to other careers after, say, 15 years of experience you are not well established high paying position as a lawyer or an engineer (the actual kind :) ) After 15 years you are out-of-date dev that didn't find a time to do their job, manage family and friend and have a side projects to keep up to date with technology. This is a bit overd…

What about the half million total comp and the part where you can retire in your thirties? If anything, I bet younger me would do even better than I did if he were to start today.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#232

Post by schwartzworld »

pattusk wrote: post #178
danuker wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what is your degree in?

History (BA/MA/PhD)

I have a music degree, and when people ask me why I do web development, the answer is a combination of "I enjoy it" and "I have children and therefore need to be able to afford things".

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#233

Post by plif »

donatj wrote: post #49

I don’t hear much about it these days, but circa 2004 when I was going into computer science I had multiple teachers and a guidance counselor warn me that all the jobs would be going to India and tell me I should pursue something else. This seemed to be very much the prevailing wisdom of the time. I pursued it anyway as it was my passion. I was one of five students in my program that had been a huge multi-campus prog…

I had a very similar experience around the same timeframe. I was also heavily discouraged by relatives in the field.

How wrong they ended up being...

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#234

Post by matwood »

mavhc wrote: post #209
Netcob wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My boss loves to play with the idea of outsourcing, but he seems to be aware of the issues to some degree. In our situation, the idea is pretty hilarious - we as developers have to make sure our products don't become unmaintainable, product management doesn't like to think things through when specifying new features, and we already don't get time for refactoring. I think outsourcing (especially when done to save mone…

Programming used to be getting a computer to do something. Now it's refining the idea someone has until it's code. People think they know what they want, but have no clue about the masses of details required. If the person with the idea and the programmer are far apart (in space, time, or culturally), it's pointless. Most ideas don't require 100s of programmers, so the cost saving is minimal

> Now it's refining the idea someone has until it's code.

This is one of the most succinct ways I've seen this said. Thank you.

For the most part the days of handing a programmer a spec who then codes it up are gone. For many problems, programming itself is the easy part. Figuring out what to program, and the complete solution is where the majority of the work resides.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#235

Post by ivanbakel »

happyhardcore wrote: post #97
quickthrower2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah 2001! 6 months and dozens of applications to get a job offer. I would have done 100s of applications had their been that many to apply to. Low points was being rejected from a job maintaining access databases in a small town. Being rejected from another job because I hadn’t suggested manually unrolling a loop as an alternative solution to a problem and I said “oh yeah you could do that I guess” (feedback: bad…

FWIW £18k in 2001 is ~£30k in today's money which is on the upper end of graduate starting salaries even for today

>which is on the upper end of graduate starting salaries even for today

Do you have a source for this? Anecdotally, my impression is that graduates in any degree can reach £30k with reasonable effort. Specifically for graduates in tech, the top end is something like £100k nowadays, and the average would be more like £45k.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#236

Post by matwood »

snapetom wrote: post #74
donatj wrote: post #49

I don’t hear much about it these days, but circa 2004 when I was going into computer science I had multiple teachers and a guidance counselor warn me that all the jobs would be going to India and tell me I should pursue something else. This seemed to be very much the prevailing wisdom of the time. I pursued it anyway as it was my passion. I was one of five students in my program that had been a huge multi-campus prog…

Yep. And everyone was afraid of all these drag and drop tools that generated Java code. "You just have to know UML!" was the promise. I'm reminded of that today in the rare instance when I run into the decision makers that are convinced GUI data engineering tools are the future.

The missing piece is people forget that the bar for software also rises with the ease of creation.

We do have very capable drag and drop CRUD generators now (not quite the same, but I still have a soft spot for VB5). But, what's expected, even out of a simple CRUD form, has risen.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#237

Post by lelanthran »

quicklime wrote: post #224
lelanthran wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is being "closer to business problems" really the sole reason? Or even a big reason? It's got to do with visibility. Those people more visible to the holders of the purse strings get paid more than those who aren't. The closer you are to the business side of things, the more visible you are to the profit line. Compensation is very closely tied to how visible the role is to the company profits and/or leaders. A high…

I get what you’re trying to say, but then how come frontend developers tend to get paid less than backend devs, who in turn get paid less than devops engineers?

Because front-end developers are the least visible to the CEO (the furthest away from the business data).

Backend developers are a little bit closer to the business data than backend developers.

Devops are even closer to the data that the CEO wants.

The "visibility" is not "visibility relative to the product" but "visibility relative to the profit".

If you draw the entire business as a series of concentric circles, with the circles representing the business, the centre of the circle (the heart of the business) is Accounting, the next layer would be HR, the next would be sales, then marketing, then maybe advertising, then product development...

The only people less visible (further away from the business data) than the front-end devs are the data entry people.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#238

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

Tycho wrote: post #210
hughrr wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there’s anything I’ve learned it is that you should always make your own mistakes. Your parent’s mistakes don’t even make sense any more 30-40 years down the line. My father pushed me into EE. I burned 5 years in industry being paid crap and then discovered it was actually a fairly low paying profession in the UK. Ended up supporting a bunch of Sun machines for other EEs which was more fun. So i learned Perl one w…

Why is EE so bad? On the surface it looks like a degree with a strong grounding in mathematics, exposure to programming, the discipline of engineering, and a diverse range of applications across industry. It kind of seems like the ideal degree if you want to hire someone. I'm always baffled when I hear stories like this.

I think some of it must be 'sticky' culture. I'm another former EE who left the field to develop with much better pay so the inter-discipline competition does exist in some form. What I saw of EE jobs didn't have the dress codes and comfortable offices.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#239

Post by matwood »

schwartzworld wrote: post #232
pattusk wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History (BA/MA/PhD)

I have a music degree, and when people ask me why I do web development, the answer is a combination of "I enjoy it" and "I have children and therefore need to be able to afford things".

Music is one of those degrees I think naturally translates to programming. My first programming boss many years ago, was a classically trained professional musician. He ended up starting a software company with another person (who was crazy so we all moved on) to create some kind of management software. Eventually he retired as the CTO of a large privately held company.

Re: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

#240

Post by phendrenad2 »

momento wrote: post #124
donatj wrote: post #49

I don’t hear much about it these days, but circa 2004 when I was going into computer science I had multiple teachers and a guidance counselor warn me that all the jobs would be going to India and tell me I should pursue something else. This seemed to be very much the prevailing wisdom of the time. I pursued it anyway as it was my passion. I was one of five students in my program that had been a huge multi-campus prog…

My father was very strongly against my decision to get into web development (2012) and he echoed this sentiment heavily. I distinctly remember him yelling at me as a teenager; "you'll be living under a bridge in 5 years if you do this! India has this market!". He eventually kicked me out for not listening, forcing me to to borrow money from a friend to pay tuition in my final semester. Needless to say he was complete…

Could be worse, he could NOT refuse to talk to you after all of that.
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