Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The next big blue collar job is coding

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 114 posts

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding

#71

Post by singularity2001 »

gtvwill wrote: post #17

Ok this article actually gripes me quite a lot due to its wrongful interpretation of what a blue and white collar job is. TBH I read it whilst I was on the toilet so I'm going to go as far as to say it gave me the shits. Unless we are going to start referring to or reclassifying typing on a keyboard for 8 hours a day as strenuous physical activity (which it is not), coding will never be a blue collar job. Blue collar…

what really pissed you off is the pejorative stigma of "blue-collar jobs". there is a difference between the art of coding and operating an elevator

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding

#72

Post by douche »

nether wrote: post #23
mywittyname wrote: post #15

Why coding and not mechanical engineering? MEs often have jobs that could be considered blue collar if not for their degree: designing, installing, & building the same equipment that many blue collar workers use or maintain. It's because coding is seen as a trivial job despite requiring the same amount of education as an ME. Society has this imagine of 14 year old hackers that can do it with minimal training. So it's…

Mechanical engineering is not being a "mechanic." They rarely build or install anything with their hands. Usually we sit in cubes running software to analyze physical systems (like air flowing over a wing) and write up the results. We use a lot of math. Technicians, who usually don't have 4-year degrees, handle the actual fabrication and maintenance. (In case you've forgotten, mechanics is a branch of physics dealing…

Except that they often do have to fab up prototypes, at the least, and the better ones have enough familiarity with the realities of the blue-collar Joe or Jane that's going to have to use and maintain the piece of equipment that the engineer designs.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding

#73

Post by drivingmenuts »

gtvwill wrote: post #17

Ok this article actually gripes me quite a lot due to its wrongful interpretation of what a blue and white collar job is. TBH I read it whilst I was on the toilet so I'm going to go as far as to say it gave me the shits. Unless we are going to start referring to or reclassifying typing on a keyboard for 8 hours a day as strenuous physical activity (which it is not), coding will never be a blue collar job. Blue collar…

Perhaps coders should fall under the gray-collar classification.

We don't do heavy lifting (or laundry).

Maybe wrinkled-collar?

(I'm so going to get downvoted for this, I know.)

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding

#74

Post by thehardsphere »

hackuser wrote: post #53
StClaire wrote: post #5

I've had this thought before. What's software development if not a trade? I don't want to say that work gets dumbed down, but one hundred years ago a store clerk was a solidly middle-class job, now it's not. Maybe a more relevant example. My grandfather was an accountant. What he did for most of his career, bookkeepers do now. What he did at the end of his career was basically law and banking. The electronic spreadsh…

What's the difference between a system administrator and a plumber? I don't mean it as the first line in a joke.

One of them has a license.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding

#75

Post by ilaksh »

Most 'blue collar' jobs are probably about 1000% more complex than 'white-collar' workers realize.

This discussion is about social class more than it is about practicalities.

There is a divide between the ownership class and the worker class, just as there has always been. The owners always find ways to justify their unfounded belief in their superiority because that is necessary to rationalize the unequal distribution of profits and unfair burden of work.

The 'coders' are the intelligent and capable hard workers. The owners, managers, 'entrepreneurs' are the ones that happen to have enough money to avoid doing real work.

This article is largely just another caste justification.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding

#76

Post by majewsky »

mathgeek wrote: post #21
gtvwill wrote: post #17

Ok this article actually gripes me quite a lot due to its wrongful interpretation of what a blue and white collar job is. TBH I read it whilst I was on the toilet so I'm going to go as far as to say it gave me the shits. Unless we are going to start referring to or reclassifying typing on a keyboard for 8 hours a day as strenuous physical activity (which it is not), coding will never be a blue collar job. Blue collar…

This is a very excellent point. Blue collar means manual labor, while white color jobs are anything professional. Heck, most of the developers I know rarely even wear a collared shirt to begin with.

Please don't imply that labor that is predominantly manual cannot be professional. A better dichotomy would be: Blue-collar means manual labor, and white-collar means mental labor (with a spectrum between both poles).

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding

#77

Post by thehardsphere »

hackuser wrote: post #50

A presumption of this article, and many like it, is a backwards-looking and somewhat elitist view of the economy and the workforce. Consider these quotes: * "What if we regarded code not as a high-stakes, sexy affair, but the equivalent of skilled work at a Chrysler plant?" * "teachers and businesses would spend less time urging kids to do expensive four-year computer-­science degrees and instead introduce more code…

> Sanders proposed college for all, arguing that high school was sufficient a century ago but now college is needed. Clinton proposed something similar, free college for families making I would be careful here drawing conclusions like this. Voting for a candidate or party is an extremely imprecise way of determining public support for any one policy, because they're effectively an aggregation of various policy ideas and other issues. Those other things are usually not easily deconvolved from each other.

It's like going to a supermarket and only being able to pick from two baskets that were loaded for you by the staff, that you can't rifle through to find out exactly what the quality of the food is. Are you buying the cart on the left because it has sweet ice cream or because the one on the right smells like it's got rotten milk in it?

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding

#78

Post by dozzie »

flukus wrote: post #25
jasonmp85 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: shell scripting is programming.

Technically true, but it is also very different to what most programmers do.

Depends on the scale of the shell script. And SQL is also very different from what most programmers usually do, especially the ones that use ORM.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding

#79

Post by dozzie »

flukus wrote: post #64
hackuser wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between a system administrator and a plumber? I don't mean it as the first line in a joke.

The plumber can't execute change-washer.sh and have his job done in 1 second. The plumber can't use "down time" to proactively solve future issues. A sysadmin does have a higher level of abstraction available to them.

> The plumber can't use "down time" to proactively solve future issues.

Oh, but he surely can, replacing a valve that is known for going to break in near future for instance, or putting a different one with additional safety features.

> A sysadmin does have a higher level of abstraction available to them.

Mainly because sysadmin works with immaterial things (software) (and some of sysadmins also work with hardware).

Sysadmins really have similarities with plumbers.

Re: The next big blue collar job is coding

#80

Post by thehardsphere »

hackuser wrote: post #50

A presumption of this article, and many like it, is a backwards-looking and somewhat elitist view of the economy and the workforce. Consider these quotes: * "What if we regarded code not as a high-stakes, sexy affair, but the equivalent of skilled work at a Chrysler plant?" * "teachers and businesses would spend less time urging kids to do expensive four-year computer-­science degrees and instead introduce more code…

>The idea that 'college isn't for everyone' is elitist. It really means that 'college isn't for the children of the working class, only those of the wealthy'.

I actually think you're right that it's elitist, but I don't think this "college is not for everyone" attitude is about money, but about intelligence and personality characteristics. These things happen to also correlate with "wealthy," for values of wealthy above "working class."

Some people just aren't going to be able to make it through college no matter how many resources you give them. And college as we do it now is not right for everyone either. For evidence of this, go to your local state run university and observe how many students are failing out of school because they prefer to smoke weed every day to studying. I think something like 70% of people I met in my freshman year failed out of school in this particular way. Free college wouldn't have helped them.

Post reply on HN