31–40 of 115 posts
Are developers the new blue-collar workers? I haven’t seen a similar program for aspiring lawyers, doctors or accountants. Aren’t we too eager to commoditize the profession?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
what's wrong with blue-collar work? tech elitism never fails to amuse me. anyway, there is a push to do the same for doctors [1] and lawyers [2], so your point is moot anyway. the problem is that with credentialed backgrounds it will never be as easy so it will always seem like tech is more accessible, which it is inherently. finally, with respect to incarceration and being a part of a profession, unfortunately many…
You literally directly contradict yourself. You link to two pages that have absolutely nothing to do with getting formerly incarcerated people into law/medicine, then immediately concede that there isn’t an effort to do so because they’re not welcome in those fields. Your failure to keep two paragraphs of texts consistent and coherent badly undermines your overall point. It’s pretty clear tech as a whole is a lot les…
>You literally directly contradict yourself. You link to two pages that have absolutely nothing to do with getting formerly incarcerated people into law/medicine, then immediately concede that there isn’t an effort to do so because they’re not welcome in those fields.
I linked to the two respective institutions that lobby for physicians and lawyers respectively. They cannot be compared to some crappy random website for ex-felons going to tech. If that's what you're looking for I can find those for you, too.
Furthermore, it's disadvantaged or incarcerated. Or do you believe that people with disabilities (as referred to by both organizations explicitly) are not disadvantaged?
> People are “elitist” because there is non stop pressure to drive down wages of engineers and it’s often disguised as progressivism. It can also undermine the professional and political power of engineers if the field is constantly portrayed as easy for anyone to enter. The AMA knows this better than anyone as they’ve tightly restricted the number of new doctors for decades, so it’s highly ironic you’d even link to them at all.
there's a lot of problems with the AMA and medicine in general but it's a profession that inherently needs to be credentialed, as is law, due to the fact that failure to perform leads to more severe consequences as compared to tech.
finally you cannot compare doctors specifically to all of tech. if you're talking about health in general there has been a huge push to get more nurse practitioners and physicians assistants in the field to replace many of the doctors that PCPs have.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
what's wrong with blue-collar work? tech elitism never fails to amuse me. anyway, there is a push to do the same for doctors [1] and lawyers [2], so your point is moot anyway. the problem is that with credentialed backgrounds it will never be as easy so it will always seem like tech is more accessible, which it is inherently. finally, with respect to incarceration and being a part of a profession, unfortunately many…
There is nothing wrong, except that, usually in a blue collar job, everyone is replaceable and the salaries are low to average. Yes, all of this come from fear of not being able to make a living as a programmer in 10 years
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you can get surprisingly far in the field without being a good programmer.
Incompetent people sliding by is hardly limited to programming
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incompetent people sliding by is hardly limited to programming
Yeah but look at the ease of breaking in + how much it pays (even in worse jobs). Its probably the best value.
Are developers the new blue-collar workers? I haven’t seen a similar program for aspiring lawyers, doctors or accountants. Aren’t we too eager to commoditize the profession?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
what's wrong with blue-collar work? tech elitism never fails to amuse me. anyway, there is a push to do the same for doctors [1] and lawyers [2], so your point is moot anyway. the problem is that with credentialed backgrounds it will never be as easy so it will always seem like tech is more accessible, which it is inherently. finally, with respect to incarceration and being a part of a profession, unfortunately many…
There is nothing wrong, except that, usually in a blue collar job, everyone is replaceable and the salaries are low to average. Yes, all of this come from fear of not being able to make a living as a programmer in 10 years
Caveat: I'm in the USA, so what I'm about to say may only apply here. I don't know the market for software engineers outside the USA.
In 10 years, you and I will have 10 more years of experience than we do now. We will probably be twice as valuable to a company. Anyone who joins the field today will forever be behind us in years of experience. Years of experience means nothing if the experience isn't valuable, so we need to continue improving. That's a good thing.
I don't know the exact distribution, but not everyone who joins the field today will even be able to compete with us for jobs in 10 years. I'm just guessing here, but I think the majority of people, or at least a very large minority, don't make it to senior level. Some quit and change careers, others don't want to or can't get there.
I'm in no way concerned about job security in 10 years. I see AI being a larger threat to our jobs than other developers. But I doubt it will be a threat to my career. I have about 30 years left, and each year I have more experience than before. So AI would have to overtake me at some point in the next 30 years, and in the meantime also overtake /lots/ of others. The software engineering field would be fairly decimated by AI before it took my job.
Are developers the new blue-collar workers? I haven’t seen a similar program for aspiring lawyers, doctors or accountants. Aren’t we too eager to commoditize the profession?
There aren't similar programs for other professions you listed because (1) all of them are highly regulated and have significant education requirements as well as additional certifications/licenses/board approvals, and (2) tech is in general more progressive and liberal when it comes to social issues.
For the last part, I feel like tech has actually proven that you don't need to artificially gatekeep your profession in order to make your members more valuable. If tech was commoditized then wages would be coming down, but in reality it's the opposite.