3 ms·

Good but old stuff. E.g.: "If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers" http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/News/Item/7c334037d1a9437d9fa6506e2f35eaac http://www.jason

Good but old stuff. E.g.: "If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers" http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/News/Item/7c334037d1a9437d9fa6506e2f35eaac http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/News/Item/7c334037d1a9437d9fa650... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7819413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7819413 The first problem is having people doing the interviewing who don't know much of anything about the work. The second problem is from organizations so dysfunctional with everyone so irrational and afraid of nonsense criticism that they spend most of their effort covering their asses. A third problem is an economy that is far too slow with far too many people looking for jobs. A fourth problem is just a generally sick organization. In a sense, these problems are good news because they give an example of an industry where even a sick-o company can still survive and even hold job interviews. Sure, you don't want to work for such a sick organization, but, if you can, maybe you should get into that industry as a competitor! More generally, when you see an organization that sick, and the OP was a joke but not very far from the truth, the flip side may be an opportunity!

vostok 9y ago
What about if programmers were paid like carpenters?
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  Hmm, what's the programmer equivalent of a carpenter hanging out outside Home Depot hoping to get picked up to do some work that day? Maybe hanging outside the Apple store?
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    Consulting
  - vostok 9y ago
    Maybe hanging out in the Greylock/Accel-KKR parking lot?
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    Going to hackathons?
didibus 9y ago
Wow, is it really so hard? I mean, is it even possible to be a decent programmer and not find work in the US? Isn't the unemployment rate for software developer like 2% ?
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  It's not just possible, it's easy. Getting jobs is a very different skill from doing jobs.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    "Getting jobs is a very different skill from doing jobs." That's right on the money. So true.
- wolco 9y ago
  Depends on where you live, age experience, looks, etc. The unemployment rate is a measure of people activity looking it would not surprise me if 10% or more could not find full time work depending on region and other variables.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- graycat 9y ago
  I'm semi-retired now, but 20+ years ago I was caught in a big internal political fight in IBM's Watson lab. Some long time managers were demoted out of management. A lot of people left. I was walked out the door. My work was in expert systems. I was doing a lot of programming and won an award for some crucial programming work I did -- writing the code all night one night -- saving rule subroutines in our AI language. I published peer-reviewed papers in expert systems, applied math, and mathematical statistics. I was and long had been good at programming and computer science, several operating systems, languages, many algorithms, lots of applied math software, etc. I'd taught computer science in ugrad school at Georgetown and in grad school at Ohio State University. I sent 1000 resumes and got essentially nothing. My location was 70 miles north of Wall Street, and I was willing to move anywhere. In wildly strong contrast, early in my career in software and applied math within 100 miles of the Washington Monument, once a sent a few resume copies and soon in two weeks I went on seven interviews and got five offers, all with nice raises. Soon I was making in annual salary six times what a new, high end Camaro cost. IMHO, the idea that there is a lot of demand for people in computing, software, algorithms, etc. is just hype and hog wash. But I'm still good at applied math and associated software so am doing a startup. I have to please my users and, thus, my advertisers, but no way do I have to please an HR assistant, an HR phone screen person, an HR interviewer, or a hiring manager. I've typed in 100,000 lines of typing with 24,000 programming language statements (lots of internal documentation), nearly all in Visual Basic .NET with ADO.NET and ASP.NET. There is a redundantly reliable and scalable software and server farm architecture with a Web server, a Web session state server (instead of Redis, I wrote my own, just TCP/IP sockets, single threaded, using the TCP/IP queue as the queue of arriving work, object instance de/serialization, and two instances of a standard .NET collection class -- simple, fast, small, works great), two specialized compute servers with my original applied math. It all appears to run as intended. For production I don't like the log file approach I took based on what Microsoft has, so I intend to take my session state server, rip out the collection classes, put in a write to a file, and, presto, get a log server. The servers all communicate with just simple TCP/IP sockets. I identified the problem, designed the Web site, designed the architecture, designed, wrote, debugged, timed, and documented the code, and got it all to appear to work. Alpha test in progress now. I'm a native born US citizen, have held security clearances at least as high as Secret, have never been arrested, have never been charged with any crime except for minor traffic violations, am in excellent health (now for my age), but have to say that for the past 30 years I've been absolutely, positively, totally unemployable for anything having to do with computing. A shortage of people in computing? What a really bad joke.

vostok 9y ago

What about if programmers were paid like carpenters?

Consultant32452 9y ago
Hmm, what's the programmer equivalent of a carpenter hanging out outside Home Depot hoping to get picked up to do some work that day? Maybe hanging outside the Apple store?
- brianwawok 9y ago
  Consulting
- vostok 9y ago
  Maybe hanging out in the Greylock/Accel-KKR parking lot?
- saagarjha 9y ago
  Going to hackathons?

didibus 9y ago

Wow, is it really so hard? I mean, is it even possible to be a decent programmer and not find work in the US? Isn't the unemployment rate for software developer like 2% ?

thaumasiotes 9y ago
It's not just possible, it's easy. Getting jobs is a very different skill from doing jobs.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  "Getting jobs is a very different skill from doing jobs." That's right on the money. So true.
wolco 9y ago
Depends on where you live, age experience, looks, etc. The unemployment rate is a measure of people activity looking it would not surprise me if 10% or more could not find full time work depending on region and other variables.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
graycat 9y ago
I'm semi-retired now, but 20+ years ago I was caught in a big internal political fight in IBM's Watson lab. Some long time managers were demoted out of management. A lot of people left. I was walked out the door. My work was in expert systems. I was doing a lot of programming and won an award for some crucial programming work I did -- writing the code all night one night -- saving rule subroutines in our AI language. I published peer-reviewed papers in expert systems, applied math, and mathematical statistics. I was and long had been good at programming and computer science, several operating systems, languages, many algorithms, lots of applied math software, etc. I'd taught computer science in ugrad school at Georgetown and in grad school at Ohio State University. I sent 1000 resumes and got essentially nothing. My location was 70 miles north of Wall Street, and I was willing to move anywhere. In wildly strong contrast, early in my career in software and applied math within 100 miles of the Washington Monument, once a sent a few resume copies and soon in two weeks I went on seven interviews and got five offers, all with nice raises. Soon I was making in annual salary six times what a new, high end Camaro cost. IMHO, the idea that there is a lot of demand for people in computing, software, algorithms, etc. is just hype and hog wash. But I'm still good at applied math and associated software so am doing a startup. I have to please my users and, thus, my advertisers, but no way do I have to please an HR assistant, an HR phone screen person, an HR interviewer, or a hiring manager. I've typed in 100,000 lines of typing with 24,000 programming language statements (lots of internal documentation), nearly all in Visual Basic .NET with ADO.NET and ASP.NET. There is a redundantly reliable and scalable software and server farm architecture with a Web server, a Web session state server (instead of Redis, I wrote my own, just TCP/IP sockets, single threaded, using the TCP/IP queue as the queue of arriving work, object instance de/serialization, and two instances of a standard .NET collection class -- simple, fast, small, works great), two specialized compute servers with my original applied math. It all appears to run as intended. For production I don't like the log file approach I took based on what Microsoft has, so I intend to take my session state server, rip out the collection classes, put in a write to a file, and, presto, get a log server. The servers all communicate with just simple TCP/IP sockets. I identified the problem, designed the Web site, designed the architecture, designed, wrote, debugged, timed, and documented the code, and got it all to appear to work. Alpha test in progress now. I'm a native born US citizen, have held security clearances at least as high as Secret, have never been arrested, have never been charged with any crime except for minor traffic violations, am in excellent health (now for my age), but have to say that for the past 30 years I've been absolutely, positively, totally unemployable for anything having to do with computing. A shortage of people in computing? What a really bad joke.