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The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

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Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#491

Post by GeoAtreides »

mirekrusin wrote: post #418
jedberg wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8:30 to 5 was required, but also never working at home was required, so what I was trying to (poorly) say is that they basically expected you to live in the office and never see your family. I'll update accordingly. And the comp package I turned down was about $700k at the time, which was 10 years ago. Nowadays it would be a $1M+ job easy. But not seeing my family is not worth any amount of money to me, since there a…

Is cleaning lady also abused because she can't work from home?

Yes. She should be with her family, enjoying together their short time on Earth as much as possible, not spend 1/3+ of her life away from them.

In this day and age, in this day of robotics, AI and 1% of population in agriculture, to have to work just to eat and be sheltered is abuse.

It's a radical idea, I get that. Maybe one day it will be seen as a truism, or common sense.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#492

Post by saagarjha »

isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: post #392
saagarjha wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not something that drives obvious value for people.

Don't throw rocks in a glass house, a lot of shit software engineers do does not stove obvious value for people.

Hey, I'm not giving software engineers a free pass either.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#493

Post by Luc »

jiggawatts wrote: post #455
jedberg wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not rational at all. It shows a complete distrust for the employee. National security is different because the rules are imposed from the outside. These are self imposed rules. Also most defense contractor employees don't work that much overtime and many can take the non-classified parts of their work home.

Let me get this straight... you turned down a nearly seven-figure income because you would be required to not work at home and you were asked to stick to the same office hours as cubible farm workers making a tenth of that income? Umm... wat!?

I think you misunderstood. The job pressures you into overtime.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#494

Post by mirekrusin »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #491
mirekrusin wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is cleaning lady also abused because she can't work from home?

Yes. She should be with her family, enjoying together their short time on Earth as much as possible, not spend 1/3+ of her life away from them. In this day and age, in this day of robotics, AI and 1% of population in agriculture, to have to work just to eat and be sheltered is abuse. It's a radical idea, I get that. Maybe one day it will be seen as a truism, or common sense.

If we're talking about distant future then any form of work is abuse and access to levitating transport falls under basic human needs obviously.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#495

Post by GeoAtreides »

mirekrusin wrote: post #494
GeoAtreides wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. She should be with her family, enjoying together their short time on Earth as much as possible, not spend 1/3+ of her life away from them. In this day and age, in this day of robotics, AI and 1% of population in agriculture, to have to work just to eat and be sheltered is abuse. It's a radical idea, I get that. Maybe one day it will be seen as a truism, or common sense.

If we're talking about distant future then any form of work is abuse and access to levitating transport falls under basic human needs obviously.

No, I'm talking about right now. Or as soon as possible. There is no need, in 2023 AD, to work as hard as in the 1900 just to survive. Absolutely no need. Food and shelter could be easily provided for everyone. And if we can't "easily" provided it, then we should strive to do so. We have to shift from old patterns of thinking to new ways, we have to realize that the only thing holding us down is an outdated view of the world, more and more obsolete.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#496

Post by jeffreygoesto »

perlgeek wrote: post #228
nostrademons wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW most of the folks who work with C++ in the financial industry are not really "messing with people's money" except in the sense of trying to exploit market inefficiencies to take it. In a typical quant hedge fund no actual money changes hands; instead, the C++ parts are there to perform analytics extremely quickly, which then feeds into an execution engine (usually also in C++, or sometimes Rust or assembly) that…

> except in the sense of trying to exploit market inefficiencies to take it that's precisely the bad part about it

Exploiting information asymmetries to funnel other people's money into your pocket before or without them knowing it. No value had been generated, it's just extraction.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#497

Post by andirk »

jiggawatts wrote: post #458
jack_pp wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you know for certain you'd be required to do overtime consistently? you've never worked in the field. I haven't either but I'm not assuming crazy stuff like being required to work 16h a day. your stance is completely unreasonable. There are other commenters who have worked in the field and said no one was expected to be in the office after normal working hours

Not to mention that programmers consistently doing 16 hour days would get exhausted and burnt out within a week , making their productivity plummet. No manager in their right mind would trust code from utterly exhausted people written after midnight to manage billions of dollars of capital.

I think it's safe to say that software development drains the brain fairly quickly. We've all slept under our desks a couple times and worked crazy hours for a few weeks, but anything beyond that doesn't sound humane or even possible. I straight up have difficulty conversing with people after those stints. Brain just shuts off. Stare at wall. Then again, there's astronauts and brain surgeons. Apparently trading desks need freaks.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#498

Post by varispeed »

bombolo wrote: post #441
varispeed wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair all engineering positions are paid poorly if you compare to the profits corporations are making.

software companies often don't make any money at all.By that logic paying them at all is too much.

Big companies don't post profits for tax avoidance reasons. They use various strategies to minimise profits - or ideally operating at a loss, so that they don't pay tax or very little. They also use this as an argument "look we don't make any money so we can't pay you any more", while at the same time you hear CEO buying themselves another supercar or a beach house.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#499

Post by andirk »

tjpnz wrote: post #440
jedberg wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not at all. You didn't have to be a top performer at Netflix , you had to be a top performer industrywide. Netflix basically tried to keep only people who would be rated as top performers at other companies. Think of it like a sports team (which is how Netflix always described it). They wanted the best people in the league.

Didn't it make you feel as though there was a target on your back constantly? What happens if something in your personal life results in you having a bad quarter?

Yeah that sounds like a nightmare. Then again, I'm only a solid B+ (grading scale, not language) engineer and I'm happy with that. I'll let the gunners take the target-on-back jobs.

Btw, can Netflix please put some of that capital in to better programming, or at least in to adding a "Delete + never show me this or anything like this every again" button. Platform is a pile at this point. No offense

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#500

Post by andirk »

jedberg wrote: post #142

There are plenty of talented C++ programmers. They just don't want to be abused by trading firms or work in that culture. Even paying them more won't work, because no amount of money is worth that abuse. I interviewed at a trading firm once, while I was working at Netflix (because Netflix encouraged us to interview for outside jobs at least once a year). The comp would have been double my Netflix salary. But I would…

This is one of the best threads yet!

- Guy says he turned down a bunch of money for work/life balance reasons

- Nah

- Guy has to respond to dozens of nay-sayers telling them he was perfectly happy with his current dump truck of money thank you very much

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