Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 276 posts

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

#241

Post by wes-exp »

noarchy wrote: post #239
wes-exp wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the market does care about long schooling when it is a requirement to practice the profession. That's why it drives up wages in Medicine and Law.

It only cares a little bit in some professions, such as humanities professors. They almost certainly went to school for longer than the lawyer did, but make far less. So the market value in this case is closely related to the work that is being done.

I agree with what you're saying. I was just trying to point out that strict education requirements (e.g. state regulation of the profession) do influence wages within the profession. Parent made a point about PhD waiters being paid the same as non-PhD waiters. But that is only true because restaurants have no requirement to employ advanced degree holders. By contrast, in Law and Medicine, you are legally required to have that education. The pay difference there is huge: a lawyer with a JD makes much more than lawyer without a JD. Because you can't even be a lawyer without a JD (under most state law).

My point is about the relative pay within a profession, rather than a profession relative to other professions.

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

#242

Post by sofal »

vorg wrote: post #72
benmmurphy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he does have a point. lawyers and doctors both work in industries that are protected. anybody can come off the street and start slinging code. you can't come off the street and start lawyering and doing surgery even if you were more capable than the average doctor or lawyer.

Consider this quote from http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html about the Space Shuttle software (which has been on Hacker News before)... """But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have a…

Reminds me of a quote from Yossi Kreinin:

CMM has 5 levels. CMM level 1 is where you operate right now: it denotes the ability to ship something. CMM level 5, the one mentioned in the interview from Kent Beck's book, denotes complete paralysis. To do anything, you have to write or update so many documents, have so many meetings with "relevant stakeholders", and to perform so many pointless measurements of the defects/LOC kind, that it's much more productive to just go postal and at least remove a CMM auditor or two from the face of the Earth in the process.

Levels 2 to 4 indicate various intermediate stages where paralysis is spreading, but you can still ship. For example, level 2 is called "Managed Process". "Managed Process is distinguished by the degree to which the process is Managed". I'm not making this up. There's a book called Capability Maturity Model Integration, and this book, heavy enough to kill a human, is full of this sort of stuff. Reading it is impossible.

http://www.yosefk.com/blog/extreme-programming-explained.htm...

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

#243

Post by timcederman »

timcederman wrote: post #31
bignoggins wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

150K right out of school? I've never heard of anyone making that much in the valley, maybe 100K tops.

I've heard $130k for top students is not uncommon.

Downvoting me doesn't change the fact that I've seen offers for top CS Stanford grads for $120k for undergrad and $130k for master's, and that was a few years ago.

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

#244

Post by analyst74 »

rcfox wrote: post #189
bluekeybox wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also go through a lot of school for a very long time And that school is very expensive. Also, many highly-paid positions carry the risk of getting sued by the patient's side for having made a silly mistake (can happen to anyone) or even for things that were unavoidable but which the patient's side believes otherwise.

People should be paid according to the value they provide, not their need. (Correcting for basic necessities.)

That'll be ideal. But realistically most people are paid based on market/political factor.

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

#245

Post by analyst74 »

Aside from the many good points being raised here. I'd like to add 2 more:

1, in terms of making money, there is a mis-match within programmer world. You earn respect from other programmers by being great programmer, not by making a lot of money. So you are in a hard-spot if you strive to be a great programmer and rich.

While on the other hand, most dentists, lawyers, bankers's status within their own circles are highly related to their financial success.

2, the world of programming does have barrier of entry, not to the general run-of-the-mill programming jobs, but to programming jobs creating high values. You can come off the street and make a website, which don't make you rich, but you can't just start doing financial programming, or work for Google without some proven track record.

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

#246

Post by jbarmash »

mahyarm wrote: post #226
cmhamill wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to add another point to this: in the case of doctors, you've also got to include the various types of doctors. (As the son of a general practitioner, I'm particularly sensitive about this.) General practitioners make wildly less than the various specialists which abound in the medical profession. Now, GPs can certainly make a good living; in rich areas >$200,000 a year isn't uncommon. At the same time, for,…

Why does medicine have the hazing ritual known as residency?

My wife is a physician, so let me chime in. It's not so much a hazing ritual but a very carefully constructed mentorship program. It's intense, and in some cases maybe overly so, but the goal is to immerse them into the environment, and to provide a lot of experience, while being carefully supervised by more experienced doctors. After three years of this, you come out really knowing you stuff.

In software, we don't really have structured learning like this, which is unfortunate. Something that would be great to have to really make us into a true profession.

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

#248

Post by pessimizer »

roel_v wrote: post #214
pessimizer wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

To the extent that people have to do a 12 year study program to do first aid or put on a band-aid, I'm suggesting that people should do a 12 year study program to put up their volleyball club's website or turn on their computers.

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

#249

Post by vorg »

sofal wrote: post #242
vorg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider this quote from http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html about the Space Shuttle software (which has been on Hacker News before)... """But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have a…

Reminds me of a quote from Yossi Kreinin: CMM has 5 levels. CMM level 1 is where you operate right now: it denotes the ability to ship something. CMM level 5, the one mentioned in the interview from Kent Beck's book, denotes complete paralysis. To do anything, you have to write or update so many documents, have so many meetings with "relevant stakeholders", and to perform so many pointless measurements of the defects…

But wouldn't salaries for software workers eventually rise? Accounting and legal rules are also books heavy enough to kill a human. My point is that government intervention is the reason solicitors and accountants salaries are so high. Exams are the reason teachers salaries are high. The same would be needed (e.g legislated and enforced CMM levels) for programmer salaries to rise.

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

#250

Post by mattm »

noarchy wrote: post #236
mattm wrote: post #216

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?"

You can also outsource the task to India for a similar amount, or even less, and get someone who will be better than a high schooler. That's the thing that should make some North American developers nervous.

I don't know about that. I've been approached a number of times by people who tried to outsource cheaply to India or China and then realised half-way through the project it was a mess and now they needed someone to try and salvage it.

It doesn't make me nervous at all. If someone wants to hire developers to build a complex system at $10/hr then I encourage them to do it and see how it goes.

Post reply on HN