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What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

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Re: What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

#31

Post by jeffdavis »

maxxxxx wrote: post #10

In Germany there is the word "Schweinezyklus". Pig cycle. It's mostly prevalent in engineering. It works like this: 1. Companies complain about not having enough qualified engineers 2. Everybody gets told to get into engineering in college 3. Boom crashes. Companies lay off engineers. The new engineering graduates don't get hired and are unemployed 4. Everybody flees engineering 5. Back to step 1. I think we are at t…

Anything with delayed results will have cycles. You express cynicism, but there's no great evil behind it. Predicting the number and type of people that should study engineering today for work ten years from now is no easy task. It will always be a little bit wrong.

And at least you end up with educated people and the fruits of engineering work. The alternative is giving up: "I might as well not learn anything very useful, because there might be a period in the future where it's not so useful for a while."

Re: What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

#32

Post by pagekalisedown »

vondur wrote: post #19

I'm sure if the economy continues its downward spiral, these software jobs will evaporate just like many of the others.

That reminds me of how people use to think that games were recession-proof before 2008 or so. Then the numbers came in. Quite a reality check when your sales drop by a third in a very short amount of time. All the big publishers took note.

Re: What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

#33

Post by mahyarm »

rdouble wrote: post #22

It's pretty region and skill specific. If you live somewhere outside of about 4 or 5 locations in the USA, getting a programming job can be hard. Also, skills that are hot in a place like NYC or Silicon Valley are often next to useless in other areas. (learning this the hard way)

It's ok to move, many will pay for relocation!

Re: What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

#34

Post by achille »

rdouble wrote: post #22

It's pretty region and skill specific. If you live somewhere outside of about 4 or 5 locations in the USA, getting a programming job can be hard. Also, skills that are hot in a place like NYC or Silicon Valley are often next to useless in other areas. (learning this the hard way)

Would you mind expanding on your last sentence. What was your personal experience? I'm guessing you have Rails/NoSQL experience while the jobs at your current market tend to be Java/Oracle type?

Re: What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

#35

Post by rdouble »

achille wrote: post #34
rdouble wrote: post #22

It's pretty region and skill specific. If you live somewhere outside of about 4 or 5 locations in the USA, getting a programming job can be hard. Also, skills that are hot in a place like NYC or Silicon Valley are often next to useless in other areas. (learning this the hard way)

Would you mind expanding on your last sentence. What was your personal experience? I'm guessing you have Rails/NoSQL experience while the jobs at your current market tend to be Java/Oracle type?

Yes, that is pretty much exactly what I meant.

Re: What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

#36

Post by geebee »

kabdib wrote: post #23
geebee wrote: post #8

To become a software developer (especially the kind with a CS related degree), you need: -A highly analytical mindset -The ability to handle tough math -The ability to read dense material and process it quickly -The mindset to persevere, test, investigate, and find obscure problems in complex systems -The ability to see a project through to its finish -The ability to explain complex logic and design, verbally and in…

Disagree on "tough math". Strongly disagree. Be analytical, practical and tenacious. Know how to abstract, design, program. Know tools, know platforms. Know how to triage and actually ship stuff. Be good to work with. Keep learning, constantly. Read tons of code. But "tough math"? Honestly, haven't needed anything more than simple statistics for most problems. "Tough math" seems more like an ego thing. I'd watch out…

I agree. Even as a math major myself, I have only needed formal math when math was part of the domain knowledge. Math is a great major, but I think you can be an absolutely top programmer with a degree in a different subject or no degree at all.

I mentioned this because if you want to be the kind of programmer with a CS or related degree, you'll need to be very good at math.

Re: What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

#37

Post by Helianthus »

watty wrote: post #27
onemoreact wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematical literacy is more than just writing down complex equations. for (a = 0; a How many times is do_something called? If you can say n^2 in under 15 seconds you are now better at math than the average American.

That isn't considered "tough math" though. Surely basic math is needed but most developers won't actually use high level math (except to get the degree).

There's an argument to be made that learning tough math is necessary to make basic math effortless.

Re: What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

#38

Post by astrec »

ootachi wrote: post #9
pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we're talking about people who have never programmed before; we're talking about maybe COBOL and Fortran experts, or people who write low-level C but can only find Python and Ruby jobs.

Are we really at the point where engineers can't find jobs because they only know C++ instead of Python and Ruby web stacks? This is a bit concerning, if so.

No, and COBOL and Fortran experts are being handed blank cheques if they truly are expert (and sometimes even if they're not... how fast can you read? ;))

Re: What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

#39

Post by geebee »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #14
geebee wrote: post #8

To become a software developer (especially the kind with a CS related degree), you need: -A highly analytical mindset -The ability to handle tough math -The ability to read dense material and process it quickly -The mindset to persevere, test, investigate, and find obscure problems in complex systems -The ability to see a project through to its finish -The ability to explain complex logic and design, verbally and in…

I don't think that math is universally necessary - it's actually rare that I need to sit down and write equations and think about something mathematically. (Unless I'm a genius who does it in his head, and trust me, I'm not.) And a 25-hour-a-week job doesn't seem that overwhelming. I think I worked 20 hours a week with a 30 minute commute each way - unless you're having a truly difficult time with the core concepts,…

I knew very smart guy who worked over 30 hours a week on compilers alone. He got an A-. Maybe he could have gotten away with less work.

This was a notoriously difficult prof at a notoriously tough program, though. So maybe not typical.

Re: What unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

#40

Post by cgopalan »

ootachi wrote: post #9
pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we're talking about people who have never programmed before; we're talking about maybe COBOL and Fortran experts, or people who write low-level C but can only find Python and Ruby jobs.

Are we really at the point where engineers can't find jobs because they only know C++ instead of Python and Ruby web stacks? This is a bit concerning, if so.

I hope not. I have worked quite a bit on Python/Django but I am considering diving into C++ due my recent exposure of the wonderful world of graphics programming (not game development but simulation and visualization).
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