3 ms·

>We have a shortage on one side of the market. It will be relatively short lived. Can you support the latter claim?

• wwalser 9y ago
  Good call. I can't. I feel unreasonably lucky and make this claim to myself in an effort to engender urgency and grace — I have what many want and few have and it is fleeting. The other two shortage that I was aware of during my primary education seem to have been filled at this point. I was told regularly that the best paths toward success was to study law or accounting. At the time law firms were experiencing a lack of supply similar to the current state of software that has since been filled. You can still make great money but you're going to need crazy hours + prestigious education or unreasonable amounts of proof-of-awesome. Similarly, after SOX there was an immense need for accountants but that demand was filled rapidly when higher ed was successful in pushing huge numbers of degrees out the door. Education in practical skills for software development has been slower to fill demand. I see three reasons, I'm sure there are many more: Software doesn't have the same social prestige as law or accounting — the first dot-com crash scared people — demand has grown more quickly than any other field.
  • monaghanboy 9y ago
    Thanks for elaborating, was genuinely curious.
• richardknop 9y ago
  Well, nothing lasts forever. Given enough time the hidden hand of free market will cause developer salaries to get so high that more people will study CS eventually increasing the supply and lowering salaries. However this is very slow process and I personally think shortage of engineers will continue for quite a long time (next 10 years easily). So "short lived" can mean a decade or perhaps two. We should be fine.