4 ms·

> However, as coding becomes more commonplace, particularly in developing nations like India, we find a lot of that work is being assigned piecemeal by computer

by freyr 11y ago

> However, as coding becomes more commonplace, particularly in developing nations like India, we find a lot of that work is being assigned piecemeal by computerized services such as Upwork to low-paid workers in digital sweatshops. In the 1990s and 2000s, when I was about to choose a career path, doom-and-gloom journalists predicted complete offshoring of software development and the end of programming as a viable profession. As an impressionable youth, I bought into this narrative and enrolled in a major I enjoyed much less, thinking I was making the right long-term choice for my career. Fast forward fifteen years, and I was in a dead-end job in a declining field while my former CS major schoolmates were earning multiples of my salary. My point being, read articles like this with a grain of salt. The future is unpredictable, and Douglas Rushkoff doesn't have a crystal ball. If you do something you love, you'll likely be good at it. And if you're good at something, you'll likely have opportunities to be rewarded for it. Increasing your skill set won't hurt you.

bfstein 11y ago
Whenever I see an article like this, I think of Michael Crichton's "Why Speculate." [1] It's a fantastic read, and really helps put speculative pieces like this in perspective. [1] http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-speculate/ http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-speculate/
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
I'm nominally a software engineer, but what I really do is form proper questions. Coding is just how the answers to those questions are written down, and sometimes how they are answered. But my cost is a drop in the bucket compared to the things I work on. If you're doing software and said software is not strategic and it's not tactical, then it's nothing but cost and you're a target. And to be fair, programming as a career got oversold between 1990 and 2000. At least my experience in the 1980s was that instructors were careful to signal the downside of it as an activity. Adam Curtis documentaries are pretty careful to express skepticism about technocratic Utopianism and I don't think he's wrong. I lacked the resources ( and probably the talent, frankly ) to obtain a PhD in applied mathematics but I knew that's what I should have striven for. It's still true, probably.
aswanson 11y ago
I take journalist perspectives on technology trends as an anti-signal. They usually don't know what they're talking about, which is why they are journalists rather than technologists.
markbnj 11y ago
I agree, except that I think you need more than a grain of salt with this piece. My take on it after 20 years in the business is that there is a sort of hard cap on the percentage of the population that will be able to, or interested in, creating programs using the current technology for interfacing with and instructing computers. Some future development will almost certainly completely upend this whole economic network, because the economic opportunity is huge, but I feel that is still quite a ways off from any sort of production application.
lloyd-christmas 11y ago
In regards to that quote, what I've seen is a move in quite the opposite direction since the early days of the "I program in rails. What's ruby?" dev shops. With so many non-tech people creating businesses, these prospective business owners have been forced to become more tech-literate to get a piece of the pie. Working in the med-tech space, I interact with doctors who actually can understand what I'm talking about when I discuss client vs. server. I even had a surgeon approach me to discuss difficulties associated with "on-prem deployments" (I shit you not, he used those words). What I hear in their networking events is "don't go offshore", and that advice seems to be sticking. That being said, I honestly don't know if it's industry specific. I realize that the medical industry does have significantly higher regulation, so it might simply be that they want to work with people that have the ability to understand the local regulations (as well as assume some shred of responsibility).

by freyr 11y ago

bfstein 11y ago

Whenever I see an article like this, I think of Michael Crichton's "Why Speculate." [1] It's a fantastic read, and really helps put speculative pieces like this in perspective. [1] http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-speculate/ http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-speculate/

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

I'm nominally a software engineer, but what I really do is form proper questions. Coding is just how the answers to those questions are written down, and sometimes how they are answered. But my cost is a drop in the bucket compared to the things I work on. If you're doing software and said software is not strategic and it's not tactical, then it's nothing but cost and you're a target. And to be fair, programming as a career got oversold between 1990 and 2000. At least my experience in the 1980s was that instructors were careful to signal the downside of it as an activity. Adam Curtis documentaries are pretty careful to express skepticism about technocratic Utopianism and I don't think he's wrong. I lacked the resources ( and probably the talent, frankly ) to obtain a PhD in applied mathematics but I knew that's what I should have striven for. It's still true, probably.

aswanson 11y ago

I take journalist perspectives on technology trends as an anti-signal. They usually don't know what they're talking about, which is why they are journalists rather than technologists.

markbnj 11y ago

I agree, except that I think you need more than a grain of salt with this piece. My take on it after 20 years in the business is that there is a sort of hard cap on the percentage of the population that will be able to, or interested in, creating programs using the current technology for interfacing with and instructing computers. Some future development will almost certainly completely upend this whole economic network, because the economic opportunity is huge, but I feel that is still quite a ways off from any sort of production application.

lloyd-christmas 11y ago

In regards to that quote, what I've seen is a move in quite the opposite direction since the early days of the "I program in rails. What's ruby?" dev shops. With so many non-tech people creating businesses, these prospective business owners have been forced to become more tech-literate to get a piece of the pie. Working in the med-tech space, I interact with doctors who actually can understand what I'm talking about when I discuss client vs. server. I even had a surgeon approach me to discuss difficulties associated with "on-prem deployments" (I shit you not, he used those words). What I hear in their networking events is "don't go offshore", and that advice seems to be sticking. That being said, I honestly don't know if it's industry specific. I realize that the medical industry does have significantly higher regulation, so it might simply be that they want to work with people that have the ability to understand the local regulations (as well as assume some shred of responsibility).