5 ms·

> The power balance is so skewed in the direction of the employee in the software industry I really don't think this is nearly as true today as it was say, 20

> The power balance is so skewed in the direction of the employee in the software industry I really don't think this is nearly as true today as it was say, 20 years ago. Anecdotal evidence, sure - but my experience is that developers are crying out for unionisation, but have a bunch of rock-star crap in their heads which tells them that they're somehow going to release a groundbreaking new game or app that changes their lives completely, rather than acknowledging the more likely reality that they'll be constantly getting screwed by an industry that will automate their job away as soon as it becomes even vaguely possible.

gnulinux 8y ago
How do you automate software development?
- hallihax 8y ago
  The same way you automate any other job: break it up into easily-definable processes and then automate those.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    Yeah no, I don't buy that sorry. If a company tries to automate a good SWE's job to save $100k they are just digging their graves. What easily definable parts are there in SWE? From my point of view, the only reason USA tech industry is so much better than EU tech industry is because US companies realized the success of a company is strongly linked to its product's quality which can only be made by hiring better, more educated and more experienced engineers. Going back and trying to reduce engineering cost is backwards and no one will be able to survive like that in this competitive industry.
    - hallihax 8y ago
      > If a company tries to automate a good SWE's job to save $100k they are just digging their graves. Everybody says that about highly skilled work. Humans excel at making skilled jobs obsolete. You don't need a perfect replacement for human skill / creativity. You just need an acceptable basic replacement to which you can attach bells, whistles, and marketing. Nobody is going to hire a rock-star when a session musician will still fill your bar - and you don't hire a session musician if a jukebox satisfies your customers enough to keep buying pints. > What easily definable parts are there in SWE? Most software developers are not software engineers. Most software is not a feat of engineering. > From my point of view, the only reason USA tech industry is so much better than EU tech industry is because US companies realized the success of a company is strongly linked to its product's quality which can only be made by hiring better, more educated and more experienced engineers. If your argument is that EU developers are dumber and less experienced than their US counterparts, then it's not much of an argument. > Going back and trying to reduce engineering cost is backwards and no one will be able to survive like that in this competitive industry. The problem is you're viewing 'software development' as the industry. But that's not how the rest of the world sees or interacts with it. Developers are not interchangeable. Software products are not interchangeable. Within each industry, jobs and processes which can be automated, will be. Most software developers do not work in the games industry. They are not creating new products. They aren't being creative (or at least, not particularly creative). The skills required to implement most software are generally already a few years behind where the technology actually is.
      - gnulinux 8y ago
        > If your argument is that EU developers are dumber and less experienced than their US counterparts, then it's not much of an argument. No the point is that EU engineers are paid peanuts compared to what they could be paid in the US, and this is not an accident, this is a product of European way of organizing companies that favors paying management and not engineers. In Germany et al employing a worker is seen as a favor to this worker whereas in US it's the other way around. In US good companies realize if you employ a good engineer things will just work out, so they make sure they don't underpay their senior engineer, they make sure they're happy and they can be productive, and they see it a great opportunity to be able to work with this great engineer. There is no argument whether American software/hardware industry is doing better than EU software/hardware industry. I mean look at the numbers, EU is not even in the race. I worked in both EU and US as both software and hardware engineer, and in EU companies cannot give 2 shit about their key engineers when in US, some companies are even smart enough to spend a lot of resources keeping their junior engineers happy (benefits, bonus, more fun problems etc) and the difference is day and night. > The problem is you're viewing 'software development' as the industry. But that's not how the rest of the world sees or interacts with it. Developers are not interchangeable. Software products are not interchangeable. Within each industry, jobs and processes which can be automated, will be. Most software developers do not work in the games industry. They are not creating new products. They aren't being creative (or at least, not particularly creative). The skills required to implement most software are generally already a few years behind where the technology actually is. This really doesn't mean anything. Technology doesn't have to be cutting-edge and not being cutting-edge does not imply that it can be automated. You can automate a given task two ways: hire bunch of very cheap people from 3rd world countries to do a similar task, or build a machine that can do a similar task. My point is none of these will ever solve the problems American SWEs are trying to solve. You cannot build an Uber this way. You cannot make rockets go to sky this way. You cannot write Airbus's OS this way. You cannot do these and retain the same, competitive quality required in this industry. You cannot do that unless you spend a lot of resources for R&D how to automate programming. No C programmer ever got fired because GCC suddenly became too good at optimizing C and "their job was automated". If your argument is that a novice coder who just learned how to write javascript frontend might get automated away, then that's just looking at the bottom minority and arguing for the entire multi-trillion dollar industry.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  By sending the jobs to Mumbai?
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    Read my comment above. That's not a fair argument. You can't compete in today's SW industry with rock star SWEs by outsourcing your product to Mumbai.
    - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
      But this discussion is about game dev, where apparently you don't need to hire rock stars? Or I'm missing some important point here?
      - gnulinux 8y ago
        Why is that true? Games can potentially be hard problems and might need very aggressive optimization; as well as your creative staff might need to be creative enough to attract a lot of people to your art. Even if you use a game engine for everything, employing a rock star engineer in something like Blizzard certainly will not make WoW development any worse.
- notSupplied 8y ago
  In a way, software engineers are constantly automating their own jobs each time they improve code-reusability. The reason they haven't driven themselves out of work is because in software and especially in games, as soon as you automate something, your ambitions immediately expand to fill the void. I think the uniquely creative + technical nature of games means the industry will be more resistant to automation...however, it is also the source of crunch.

gnulinux 8y ago

How do you automate software development?

hallihax 8y ago
The same way you automate any other job: break it up into easily-definable processes and then automate those.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Yeah no, I don't buy that sorry. If a company tries to automate a good SWE's job to save $100k they are just digging their graves. What easily definable parts are there in SWE? From my point of view, the only reason USA tech industry is so much better than EU tech industry is because US companies realized the success of a company is strongly linked to its product's quality which can only be made by hiring better, more educated and more experienced engineers. Going back and trying to reduce engineering cost is backwards and no one will be able to survive like that in this competitive industry.
  - hallihax 8y ago
    > If a company tries to automate a good SWE's job to save $100k they are just digging their graves. Everybody says that about highly skilled work. Humans excel at making skilled jobs obsolete. You don't need a perfect replacement for human skill / creativity. You just need an acceptable basic replacement to which you can attach bells, whistles, and marketing. Nobody is going to hire a rock-star when a session musician will still fill your bar - and you don't hire a session musician if a jukebox satisfies your customers enough to keep buying pints. > What easily definable parts are there in SWE? Most software developers are not software engineers. Most software is not a feat of engineering. > From my point of view, the only reason USA tech industry is so much better than EU tech industry is because US companies realized the success of a company is strongly linked to its product's quality which can only be made by hiring better, more educated and more experienced engineers. If your argument is that EU developers are dumber and less experienced than their US counterparts, then it's not much of an argument. > Going back and trying to reduce engineering cost is backwards and no one will be able to survive like that in this competitive industry. The problem is you're viewing 'software development' as the industry. But that's not how the rest of the world sees or interacts with it. Developers are not interchangeable. Software products are not interchangeable. Within each industry, jobs and processes which can be automated, will be. Most software developers do not work in the games industry. They are not creating new products. They aren't being creative (or at least, not particularly creative). The skills required to implement most software are generally already a few years behind where the technology actually is.
    - gnulinux 8y ago
      > If your argument is that EU developers are dumber and less experienced than their US counterparts, then it's not much of an argument. No the point is that EU engineers are paid peanuts compared to what they could be paid in the US, and this is not an accident, this is a product of European way of organizing companies that favors paying management and not engineers. In Germany et al employing a worker is seen as a favor to this worker whereas in US it's the other way around. In US good companies realize if you employ a good engineer things will just work out, so they make sure they don't underpay their senior engineer, they make sure they're happy and they can be productive, and they see it a great opportunity to be able to work with this great engineer. There is no argument whether American software/hardware industry is doing better than EU software/hardware industry. I mean look at the numbers, EU is not even in the race. I worked in both EU and US as both software and hardware engineer, and in EU companies cannot give 2 shit about their key engineers when in US, some companies are even smart enough to spend a lot of resources keeping their junior engineers happy (benefits, bonus, more fun problems etc) and the difference is day and night. > The problem is you're viewing 'software development' as the industry. But that's not how the rest of the world sees or interacts with it. Developers are not interchangeable. Software products are not interchangeable. Within each industry, jobs and processes which can be automated, will be. Most software developers do not work in the games industry. They are not creating new products. They aren't being creative (or at least, not particularly creative). The skills required to implement most software are generally already a few years behind where the technology actually is. This really doesn't mean anything. Technology doesn't have to be cutting-edge and not being cutting-edge does not imply that it can be automated. You can automate a given task two ways: hire bunch of very cheap people from 3rd world countries to do a similar task, or build a machine that can do a similar task. My point is none of these will ever solve the problems American SWEs are trying to solve. You cannot build an Uber this way. You cannot make rockets go to sky this way. You cannot write Airbus's OS this way. You cannot do these and retain the same, competitive quality required in this industry. You cannot do that unless you spend a lot of resources for R&D how to automate programming. No C programmer ever got fired because GCC suddenly became too good at optimizing C and "their job was automated". If your argument is that a novice coder who just learned how to write javascript frontend might get automated away, then that's just looking at the bottom minority and arguing for the entire multi-trillion dollar industry.
AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
By sending the jobs to Mumbai?
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Read my comment above. That's not a fair argument. You can't compete in today's SW industry with rock star SWEs by outsourcing your product to Mumbai.
  - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
    But this discussion is about game dev, where apparently you don't need to hire rock stars? Or I'm missing some important point here?
    - gnulinux 8y ago
      Why is that true? Games can potentially be hard problems and might need very aggressive optimization; as well as your creative staff might need to be creative enough to attract a lot of people to your art. Even if you use a game engine for everything, employing a rock star engineer in something like Blizzard certainly will not make WoW development any worse.
notSupplied 8y ago
In a way, software engineers are constantly automating their own jobs each time they improve code-reusability. The reason they haven't driven themselves out of work is because in software and especially in games, as soon as you automate something, your ambitions immediately expand to fill the void. I think the uniquely creative + technical nature of games means the industry will be more resistant to automation...however, it is also the source of crunch.