We will never have enough software developers (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#351

Post by Retric » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:12 PM UTC

xwolfi wrote: post #331

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, industry is routinely bashing on CS degrees because they don't turn people into framework X-ready candidates. It's getting a little tiring just how little credit is given to the idea of "maybe these tools can be learned in a reasonable amount of time by people with a degree showing they can pick things up rather quickly".

Yes but I interview for a role where we dont have set languages: we're a small optimisation team working across system when they reach capacity bottleneck and we do JS, C#, Java, C++, PL/SQL fixes completely transparently, we've slowly learned that languages really dont matter all that much for performance tuning as much as programmers mishandling which are identical in all of them (hash map loops, abusive recursion,…

I think both sides of the argument have reasonable points. There are advantages to having deep experience with a tool, but I have also solved bugs in languages I didn’t know.

What I think is missing is there are serious diminishing returns with more experience in a specific language or framework. 10 years of experience split 3 in Java and 7 in C# is very similar to 7 in Java and 3 in C#.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#352

Post by mathverse » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:21 PM UTC

qgin wrote: post #189

mathverse wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adjusted for costs of living or TCO? IT pays peanuts in Europe.

It doesn’t make sense to me why pay is so low in Europe. Is there actually that much less demand relative to supply?

Taxes.

You are not getting that much in net salary above certain amount.

Europe is a hellhole if you are a young ambitious individual.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#353

Post by y-c-o-m-b » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

itsmemattchung wrote: post #37

JackMorgan wrote: post #5

A fascinating premise, and matches what I saw as an engineering director. The best just get bored and move on. I think many teams are unaware how much extra value is possible by retaining existing employees vs hiring new ones. Each year I'd try to make sure I was "making them an offer they couldn't refuse" with new interesting challenges, new tech, plenty of personal research time, as much pay increase as I could pos…

> The best just get bored and move on. Or a reorg happens and you land a shitty manager. To be fair, almost all my managers were amazing, people who truly cared about their staff: at professional level as well as a personal level. I've only had one absolute psychopath as a manager ... but I should thank him because he was the last straw and gave me enough courage (and anger) to leave AWS and start my journey as a sol…

Oddly enough I joined AWS not too long ago and while the job itself sucks, my manager is exceptionally awesome. In fact I only interviewed with AWS as kind of a half-joke, but he was so likeable that it convinced me to take it seriously. He has a healthy "fuck em" attitude when it comes to pressure from outside the team, so he's constantly protecting us in a multitude of ways (e.g. during on-call rotations or deadlines being imposed on us). He has yet to do a single thing that I would consider micro-management.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#354

Post by Goronmon » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #318

Goronmon wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...explain to me how a hash map works. For get about explaining the finer points of sorting algorithms I've been in software development for 15 years and being able to explain either of these things has never come up and I probably wouldn't be able to give a decent answer without reviewing the topics specifically.

Yes, companies are hiring for competency not tenure or years of life lived while holding job. If you want the latter, I have heard it is more structured that way in Japan and much of Europe. I would expect most people I hire to be able to explain how a hash map works.

Yes, companies are hiring for competency not tenure or years of life lived while holding job.

Oh I wasn't trying to say that this knowledge was valuable or not. I was just pointing out that you seem surprised that experienced people wouldn't be able to provide a good answer to that question. And the answer is that in many jobs, its not useful knowledge.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#355

Post by solatic » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

teucris wrote: post #231

Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like SOC2 compliance requirements unfortunately. Plus process overhead on who can raise tickets. I've found compliance makes it harder to write good code. If you get a PR approval with optional suggestions you're heavily disincentivised from actually addressing those comments since if you push those changes you now need to wait for review again. Like everything process and compliance it's designed by low-co…

As a product manager I appreciate this take. Lots of bureaucracy is caused by a few base requirements for compliance/governance required by laws or customer need. It’s a huge time suck for PM and engineering, but I don’t know if this is avoidable. Maybe more automated verification systems?

> Lots of bureaucracy is caused by a few base requirements for compliance/governance required by laws or customer need.

Read the underlying compliance requirements carefully. In the case of e.g. SOC2, the regulation requires visibility but does not say who may open tickets or who needs to approve them. You can do a lot by making processes more open, and so long as they are still visible, you can still pass.

If specific customers tell you how to run your business, either write process that isolates their requirements to a bare corner of the business (e.g. a completely separate environment for FedRAMP) or consider firing those customers.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#356

Post by prewett » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #171

highwaylights wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, I agree with you that on the whole we're a bunch of spoiled crybabies. Totally grant you that. On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true. Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done). Most of us are just doing things for money. Are most people…

We need data for this. More importantly, we need data for how tough it is to get certain jobs. That means stuff like: * Time spent on finding a job * Time spent on studying in order to attain a job * Actual amount of hours worked (hard to get accurate data on it) * Actual amount of effort per hour (hard to operationalize) It's a very tough discussion to have, but I have a gut feeling that you're simplifying too much…

We can get statistics for some of the parent's claims:

> On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true.

10.3% of US jobs are classified as "physically demanding". [1] (I didn't see parent said "labour" until after my research, but I expect figures in the UK are similar). Assertion is TRUE, the majority is not doing "grinding" labor.

> Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done).

Hard to say about the parenthetical, and it is impossible to say if the jobs don't need to be done without running an experiment, but some research has been done on whether people think their job needs to be done. A study of the European Work Commission Survey [2] showed that in 2005 only 7.8% of people responded that they were not doing useful work. In 2015 even fewer, 4.8% felt they where not doing useful work. (The UK reported slightly higher at 5.6%). A "recent poll" from an article dated 2017 which links to a 404 for the poll claims that poll said that 37% of Brits felt their jobs were useless. [3] Even the originator of the "bullshit jobs" book thought that 20 - 50%--maybe as high as 60%--were useless. Assertion is probably FALSE, most jobs have some utility.

> Most of us are just doing things for money.

Yes, and so what? Does that make it not worthwhile?

According to a Pew study from 2016, 49% of Americans are "very satisfied" with their job (59% of people whose family incomes were over $75k), and about half said they viewed their job as a career. 51% said their job gave them some sense of identity (higher percent as with more education), while 47% percent say the job is just what they do for a living. However, those working in non-profits, government, or self-employed were about 62% likely to say their job gives them a sense of identity, while only 44% of those working at a company said the same) Assertion is PROBABLY FALSE, depending on the definition of "most" and the intent of the claim, but the statistics certainly do not make it a definition-true assertion.

[1] https://dc.citybizlist.com/article/639055/dc-has-the-2nd-sma... (scroll to the bottom for the US figures)

[2] https://phys.org/news/2021-06-workers-useless-jobs-previousl...

[3] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/why-its-time-to-rethi...

[4] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/10/06/3-how-a...

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#357

Post by hiq » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

Patrol8394 wrote: post #269

whimsicalism wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider solving technical challenges in interview the "LC style" interview as compared with talking about your past experience or language trivia grab bag. I am not saying literally ask questions found on leetcode.com I think it is easier to know the shit to do LC interviews than somehow memorizing the question bank. I haven't seen many people succeed who were unskilled but managed to just memorize the questions.

so how come that I find a good chunk of swe at FAANG are not that smart, and barely get anything done. Plus the quality of their work (generally speaking) is very low compared to what one would expect. And this is true across the board, it is a recurring theme when talking with peers. I think LC style interview have ruined the interview process in the tech industry. Note: I do ask candidates to code during the interv…

> so how come that I find a good chunk of swe at FAANG are not that smart

You put the bar wherever you want. A company can decide to set it lower than what you would expect or like, but it could still make business sense, e.g. if 99%+ of hires still perform well with this bar and the company would like to hire faster.

This is related to:

> and barely get anything done. Plus the quality of their work (generally speaking) is very low

That's a problem of the performance review process. If everybody considers that someone is not delivering, that could be for multiple reasons, and even with a very high hiring bar that could still happen, so you can't rely solely on interviews.

If you don't have a good performance review process, you'll end up with worse hiring because you can't measure the impact of your changes.

> I passed candidates that did not do well on coding, but I was convinced they had potential. Whereas I did not pass candidate that did very well on coding, but did not show any interest or passion at all.

Can you do that objectively? It's very easy to introduce bias if you try to evaluate whether candidates show passion.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#358

Post by walleeee » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

pkdpic wrote: post #175

highwaylights wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, I agree with you that on the whole we're a bunch of spoiled crybabies. Totally grant you that. On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true. Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done). Most of us are just doing things for money. Are most people…

Also, have you all tried making a non-swe career work lately? How about for 5+ years? In the last two years I've worked with hundreds of bootcamp students who have reached the end of their rope with 20th century career paths that no longer make any f-ing sense. From teachers to construction workers to bartenders to graphic designers. Not all of them have a deep love for writing software, but all of them recognize tha…

> there just doesn't seem to be any other reliable way for people in our generation to make a living

I suspect this may be exaggerated, in that there is still demand in other career paths, they just aren't as appealing for various reasons, e.g. manual/technical trades with reasonable pay but some physical labor involved or a long apprenticeship period

I do worry we might be flooding the field and siphoning talent from sectors that matter, even as the proportion of software jobs that don't really need to exist balloons

this seems like a recipe for a lot of disappointed people in need of retraining once we realize code can't eat the entire world, and in the meantime it feeds the bubble cycle, pointless or abusive "innovation", and speculative nonsense software is plagued by

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#359

Post by hiq » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

Patrol8394 wrote: post #316

whimsicalism wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they keep all bad people out? No. But I have never encountered a company that doesn't have a on-the-spot technical interview (involving coding or math) that has had more success keeping bad engineers out than FAANG.

You can implement all kind of interview processes, you will always end up hiring candidates that turns out to be not a good fit. I am arguing that LC/FAANG interview does not do a better job at filtering them out. The solution: accept that you will do bad hiring, but that you will let them go as well. Instead, everyone want to be politically correct and the play safe. So people are hardly let go. Also working at FAAN…

> I am arguing that LC/FAANG interview does not do a better job at filtering them out.

You're talking of gigantic tech companies that actually have a business interest in getting that right and you just assume that haven't done any studies about that. If you want to argue they're wrong, fine, but the money is against you on this, so more proof and arguments would be welcome.

I think we all agree that no interview process is perfect, but you're basically claiming that they're all equally bad.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#360

Post by DantesKite » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

goldenshale wrote: post #240

I think this article hits on some truths and gets a handful of things wrong. First, they are correct that we are in a dynamic profession that requires constant learning and expanding. No doubt the people who choose to stay in software are likely to be people who are curious, life-long learners where this is a benefit of the profession rather than a drawback. That said, one thing I noticed from teaching computer scien…

> No doubt the people who choose to stay in software are likely to be people who are curious, life-long learners

The article showed the opposite effect though. Curious, life-long learners stop working in software development because they have to constantly learn new skills and believe they can get more bang for their buck when they can invest in skills that don’t lose their value over time.