Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987) • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by vmception » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #221

rejectedandsad wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. At a hedge fund (ostensibly one like HRT given the pedigree you mentioned) geofft makes on the order of $500-700k or more, unlike mere mortals like me that went to a state school that make just $200k. Of course, I didn’t take any embedded classes and got an A- in my C class so perhaps I deserve nothing to begin with.

Speaking of hedgefunds. Those are unlikely to hire embedded software developers but they may need a lot of "basic coders" and they can afford to pay them a lot even if the job is simple.

hedge funds are not uniform enough to have any predictable set of skill requirements

some need a node js script, some swear by python because an area of computational finance has gathered around it, some swear by languages closer to the metal, some have use cases that are better off with low latency stacks, others dont

some are modifying FPGAs, others have simply negotiated a payout from a court case and will teach you F to analyze a dataset faster

if they need coders at all, they all mostly need some level of quicker analysis but not possible to predict what kind of coder a hedge fund will need

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

#322

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

Dumblydorr wrote: post #303

qmmmur wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving how technologically grounded most music degrees are now I don't think it's that unusual that positions often move into programming for work

I don't think most music degrees are technologically grounded. I have a degree and courses in music from 2 major universities and both of them were reticent to teach about music software. Music is a traditional field, there's a lot of older professors hanging on to tenure who listen, write by hand, and generally rely on their ears and aural sense, rather than tech. These folks could definitely use software, but why?…

[deleted]

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

#323

Post by ideamotor » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

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…

Yes and this thinking still pervades the engineers that came of age in that era and did avoid programming. One of my coworkers is obsessed with outsourcing and thinks of any programming task as being something that should be done in India. He asks why I should do something when we should hire a team in India, which is a ridiculous thing to say for so many reasons.

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

#324

Post by exdsq » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #204

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they handle things like payroll taxes, benefits and such?

Make a UK company and they pay that as a contractor, you sort it out with HMRC yourself. The Americans seem to be much higher paying, greater variety of roles, happy to let you remote. Now is the time by the way, I was blown away by how hot the market is. Maybe jump in there before WFH starts to get retracted, you can do more interviews before you're back in the office.

Are you contracting as a quant dev in the US? Can't imagine how much that lands you!

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

#325

Post by analog31 » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

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 have some hypotheses. Note my degree is in physics, perhaps a similar situation though not as widespread. There are a number of things happening.

Most engineers in all disciplines lose their math ability after graduating. The workplace itself allows this to happen: They get so busy with regular design work that they forget their math and theory. A lot of the analysis work is handled by their CAD tools. The work that does need math or deep domain knowledge is handled by one or two experts within the department.

There are some practical limits to the size and complexity of hardware, that limit the amount of hardware work. An electronic board might be designed and tested once, and then a million copies made. The software for supporting that board is maintained constantly. This is partly due to a conscious choice to move functionality from hardware to software. When hardware is obsolete, it's abandoned. When software is obsolete, it's augmented with new software on top of the old software.

There's a strong message from above that software is more important than hardware. Sparkly software is what management sees when they are shown the product. The people who find that they can program well enough to do it for money, have moved into software development.

It's harder for an individual hardware person to capitalize on their own innovation, because they need the infrastructure to test and manufacture new hardware. So we can only move at the pace of the businesses that employ us.

Programming can inflate its own demand through technical debt, and can organize itself to a level just short of full blown collective bargaining.

Note that I'm not talking about pure software businesses, but those businesses don't need hardware engineers at all. ;-)

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

#326

Post by Redoubts » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

liquidpele wrote: post #289

Tycho wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Market shrank as it matured and software generally took over most workloads.

Yeah, when I took my Analog EE class, most people’s projects ended up being a race to the microcontroller

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

#327

Post by the_only_law » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

hughrr wrote: post #149

momento wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> I burned 5 years in industry being paid crap and then discovered it was actually a fairly low paying profession in the UK

I was absolutely dumbfounded when I looked up engineering salaries in the UK. I mean, even in the US, I don't consider most engineering fields particularly high paying, but the UK is something else.

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

#328

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

murgindrag wrote: post #261

Tycho wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An EE degree IS awesome. It gives a generalizable mathematical foundation which applies in just about any other field of work. It gives a huge competitive edge. For example: * Circuits are physical implementations of differential equations, and EE gives a unique way to intuitively think about dynamics, which applies to finance, epidemiology, and just a really diverse range of domains. * With a rigorous EE background,…

[deleted]

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

#329

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

sersi wrote: post #140

hellbannedguy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ageism. Sorry for being so blunt, but I know to many people who were just uninteresting to human resourses after hitting 45-50. I know more than a few homeless people in my life, and over half were once Programmers. It makes me sick. I do know this, if you are in tech, save up that money. (I have never understood this industry's way of hiring. Long drawn out interviews, and candidates whom are just average that…

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…

Cue for resume-driven development, and people asking "why do we hype so much that new worse-than-useless tool that is costing that much people's time and reducing our software quality?"

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

#330

Post by the_only_law » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

foxfired wrote: post #152

It was 2011, a childhood friend visited me after 10 years. We talk about the old days, we laugh, I even tease her husband sitting next to me, smiling politely. She excuses herself leaving the men alone to bond. "So, what do you do?" He asks after a long 5 second. "Oh, I'm a programmer." I say with pride. To be sure I add, "A computer programmer." I make it a habit to add this because regular people have a hard time u…

> Nursing, my friend. Nursing. That's the future." He went on to explain why nursing was not only one of the most important jobs, but it was also one of the fastest growing. And then he told me something that I still can't believe I heard correctly.

Actually, I still see stuff like this these days, in regards to automation FUD. Something about the only jobs that will be left will be those that require human emotion and empathy.