17 ms·

What happens to tech workers when their skills become obsolete?

138 points by seagullz 7y ago

sparrc 7y ago
tldr: highly educated and well-off engineers are able to adapt.
- shard972 7y ago
  And what about the ones we convinced to learn to code after losing their job mining coal? Probably just deafening silence.
- neogodless 7y ago
  The article alludes to education, but doesn't connect any dots. I'm not sure where "well-off" is coming from, though.
  - LanceH 7y ago
    If you are paycheck to paycheck, the immediacy of needing work can drive you to do something else. Then it just gets harder and harder to get back into the industry.
    - neogodless 7y ago
      That's almost certainly a valid point. I just don't believe the article really addressed it, so it's an inaccurate summary above.
tsycho 7y ago
Flash developers were fine since the tech market was still expanding rapidly, so they could learn new skills. What happens when the market is no longer growing, and workers become obsolete since their job is automated away?
- a3n 7y ago
  If a person truly becomes unemployable in their career, for whatever reason, then they do something else. I'm driving a semi truck.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Truck driver is a dying industry. Jobs are scarcer every day.
    - a3n 7y ago
      That may or may not be true. The two threats are a possible recession, which is near, somewhat predictable and temporary by definition. And automation, which is "real soon now," and permanent whenever it happens. In the mean time, trucking is hiring. Not that I would recommend it to most people, it's just what I did when I realized I wouldn't be working in software anymore. I ended up liking it.
      - biohax2015 7y ago
        That's a pretty interesting transition. Got a link to your story?
        a3n 7y ago
        Sorry, no. Overly simple summary: I was a B player, I failed to stay relevant, and I got old.
    - mikhailfranco 7y ago
      4,500 US Truckers Lose Their Jobs In August Amid Freight Recession https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/4500-us-truckers-lose-their-jobs-august-amid-freight-recession https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/4500-us-truckers-lose-th... Loadsmart And Starsky Make First Start-to-Finish Autonomous Truck Delivery https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/loadsmart-and-starsky-make-first-start-finish-autonomous-truck-delivery https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/loadsmart-and-star... UPS Quietly Using Self-Driving Trucks For Months https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-19/ups-quietly-using-self-driving-trucks-months https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-19/ups-quietly-using-...
hannibalhorn 7y ago
> Lambda School co-founder Austen Allred envisions students coming back to his coding school every eight years or so to learn new skills. Eh... While that might be a good story to sell to his investors, most anybody worth their salt won't need to go back to a "bootcamp coding school" every 8 years to learn a new language.
- track_me_now 7y ago
  you're right - it's kinda funny that boot camps are promoted because "university is a terrible way to learn programming", but they then try and sell boot camps as an effective way to learn the framework de jour. Maybe if you finished an undergrad you'd be well equipped to stay on top of an ever-changing tech landscape?
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    What is magical about undergrad that makes it exactly the correct amount of time to spend in school?
    - krapht 7y ago
      It's exactly difficult enough and requires enough work that for many people it's an effective sorting tool for general intelligence and work ethic. If bootcamps take off it will be because they replace this function of university.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      It’s the standard way to do things so doing it signals conformity and employers don’t generally want non-conformists because they’re boat rockers.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Why even have school at all if everyone can just learn everything on their own with a teacher or lab mates?
jld 7y ago
I was Flash developer from 2006-2010. Flash used ActionScript which is/was based on the ECMAScript standard. Since then, I develop primarily in Javascript, based on the ECMAScript standard. Looking back, I don't even think anyone could find the seam in my career.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  This makes the article somewhat silly because the demand shifted over to JS, HTML5, Canvas, etc., and because ActionScript is in the same family as Javascript, people are already halfway there. It was very evolutionary.
  - j45 7y ago
    To be polite, the article shows how little they understand the topic they are writing about.
- woutr_be 7y ago
  Same here, I switched from ActionScript to JavaScript fairly easily, and now almost 10 years later I'm well rounded in both front-end and back-end.
- reportgunner 7y ago
  thank you. The article is really silly because it fails to understand that Flash was not one-of-a-kind work assignment on a computer, whereas it was just a tool to do web animation. It is not like web animation has become obsolete.
codesushi42 7y ago
Flash was one of the first tools I ever started programming for. Today I work in AI. This article is a thinly veiled advertisement for bootcamps, spouting this nonsense: The “learning-by-doing” approach in the Flash workers’ scenario highlights the value of coding schools and boot camps designed to teach students in-demand skills in as little as eight weeks. And whereas traditional educational environments tend to view their curriculum as having an end date (generally aligned with their students’ graduation), Lambda School co-founder Austen Allred envisions students coming back to his coding school every eight years or so to learn new skills. No. What will give you longevity is a degree in CS. Frameworks and technologies change, but CS concepts stay consistent. If you have a good grounding in CS, you have longevity. Couple that with a good math background, and then you have even more possibilities. Bootcamps are rubbish in the long term. They try to lure you in with quick results from little time investment by teaching you how to hack with the hip framework of the week. I have been there, done that, having gone to a polytechnic school where I learned Flash + web dev. I later made the switch to a university to study CS. One of the best decisions I ever made. Don't fall for the trap of instant gratification. Learn CS (and math) with a formal education, and you will thank yourself years from now.
- austenallred 7y ago
  Lambda School is 9 months long full-time (~2000 programming hours) and includes CS fundamentals. The assertion that those things must be taught/learned within the confines of a CS degree is a little silly.
  - codingdave 7y ago
    True, but the assertion that 9 months of a bootcamp that includes "CS fundamentals" is the same depth as 4 years of CS study is also a little silly. They are different beasts, for different purposes.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      An undergrad degree is only 18months (2 yetas minus summer) in a major, not 4years. And some of that is not-particularly-relevant electives. And if you already have a college degree you might have some overlap with the major.
codingdave 7y ago
Flash is hardly the only tech to have become obsolete. Anyone who has been around this industry more than a decade can list off multiple technologies we don't work with anymore. The article was right that ongoing learning is the key. And while formal higher education is not for everyone, it does well at teaching people new techniques for learning and research. It isn't the only path, especially in today's reality. Its current failings are one reason that bootcamps exist... But the idea that people are going to let their skills stagnate for 8 years, then return to a bootcamp to get the latest tech... Sorry, but that is simply absurd.
- tracker1 7y ago
  Completely agree... I don't even remember enough Perl or Ruby to be effective with it at all. It all changes over time. I do miss parts of Flash/Flex though.
  - collyw 7y ago
    I still pull Perl out when I get a chance. Its nice for small scripts that people might use bash for. I do Python most of the time, but Perl's syntactic sugar makes it so much nicer for something like looking up a set of files matching a regex, moving and renaming them.
- Ambele 7y ago
  I'll be the first in this thread to start listing off technologies other than Flash. We're at the point now where if you include JQuery on your resume, recruiters are less likely to hire you. Ruby used to be trendy for startups, Python 2.7 used to be popular. Angular 1.x beat off BackboneJS, MeteorJS, and EmberJS but even Angular was completely rewritten in Angular 2.x and superseded with React.
esotericn 7y ago
I'll take the "no true scotsman". If you know how to program, that skill does not simply "go obsolete". The sort of "skill" that this article is talking about seems to be on par with like, the time I thought I knew how to write C as a teenager. The local market going to shit, you developing medical issues, ageism, etc are all far more of a worry than "oops, I've been doing QBASIC for 10 yea.....[NO CARRIER]"
tracker1 7y ago
I am self taught. Never went to a bootcamp or any schooling past High School. I fell into it starting out doing design work... What has it meant over the past couple decades? A lot of constant reading and learning. It never stops. I spend an average of 2 hours a day reading and learning, every day. Some I tuck away, some I explore. In the end, I've seen things shift multiple times. When Flash was at it's peak, I worked in eLearning writing simulations in flash, and supporting backends in VB/VB.Net, some C# and ASP/ASP.Net with SQL. From there, much more web/js, and various other database backends (cassandra, mongo, redis, etc). Currently working with C# and Node.js in web apps still. Learning Rust. In the end, progress doesn't stop and wait for you. I tend to push for things faster than my workplaces want to adopt. In the end, it's a struggle, and it doesn't end. I will continue to do so until I die. I have absolutely no plans to retire. Formal CS knowledge and education can help. Understanding and learning multiple platforms and languages helps more. If you want to settle in a rest on your laurels you won't last forever. You're best off understanding various ideas, workflows and patterns and how to recognize when one is a better fit. I have my preferences but am under no illusions that it will stay the same. In the end, you have to commit to spending time each month/year learning and working on new things. It's the only way to keep up or get ahead.
logotype 7y ago
Started with web, was impressed by what flash could do and learned that. Worked in advertising and we really pushed Flash to the limit (FWA, etc). I mean actual Flash apps, close to the structure of today’s React apps. Software 3D back then, but Stage3D arrived too late. Adobe AIR had potential but Adobe didn’t push enough for this tech. Then I went back to web app development and today I work at an investment bank making trading apps.
hsod 7y ago
This article doesn’t resonate with me (~10 years in industry). Familiarity with or “knowledge of” a particular piece of technology is not a significant factor in the way I choose jobs or the way employers choose me, nor my success on the job.
i_am_proteus 7y ago
Primer (2004) said it best: You know what they do with engineers when they turn 40? They take them out and shoot them.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  It's not true though. It's based on a misunderstanding of the mathematics of an exponentially growing industry.
  - draw_down 7y ago
    There is truth to it.
    - collyw 7y ago
      As some that is 44, I think older devs just get sick of the industry. The constant churn while valuing little of the things I feel that I am actually skilled at - good code design, keeping things as simple as possible but no simpler. Instead we need experience trendy framework of the month, and interviews on algorithms that you will never need in your job. Oh, and please spend the weekend completing our pointless technical test before you get to speak to anyone technical about the job we want to interview you for.
      - j45 7y ago
        There is a real lack of mentoring and apprenticeship in software so new developers relearn the lessons of the past.
        collyw 7y ago
        I wouldn't even say that new developers do that. We just keep encouraging chasing fads. Database query is slow. Switch to NoSQL instead of learning how to add an index.
      - scarface74 7y ago
ilaksh 7y ago
Reminds me of the HiSOFT guy who used to build assemblers and compilers etc. for ZX Spectrum, back in 1980, and is still programming. I thought it was interesting to contrast that older work with his current line of work. http://www.hisoft.co.uk/ http://www.hisoft.co.uk/ "HiSOFT has been in existence since 1980, founded by David Link and Dave Nutkins. Originally we created software for the NASCOM 1 kit-built microcomputer but swiftly moved on to the ZX Spectrum, for which we created many esoteric items such as HiSOFT Devpac, HiSOFT C, HiSOFT BASIC, HiSOFT Pascal, UltraKit, Colt and much more. After great success with the various incarnations of the Spectrum we ported our core titles (Devpac, C++ and Pascal) to many other Z80-based computers; Tatung Einstein, Newbrain, Memotech 512, Amstrad CPC& PCW, Elan Enterprise and more! 'Twas a lot of fun and, undoubtedly, this list will stir as much excitement in some people as David's favourite band since 1971, Genesis, do in him! After the Z80 processor began to flag (shame!), we moved on to the 68000 which meant moving stuff over to the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. This, along with many hardware projects (such as Megalosound, Replay 16, Clarity 16, Squirrel SCSI, VideoMaster etc.) kept us going through the 90s until, reluctantly, we were forced to take the PC seriously. Having forged a close relationship with MAXON Computer in Germany throughout the Amiga and Atari years, it was natural for us to take on the UK mantle for their flagship product, CINEMA 4D, an exciting and now rather important 3D product. HiSOFT promoted, distributed and sold CINEMA 4D from 1997 until 2001, at which point David Link formed MAXON Computer Ltd and moved all things CINEMA 4D under the MAXON umbrella. David worked at MAXON UK as CEO until resigning for personal reasons in early 2003. David Link continues to work at HiSOFT, as you will see from this website, while also trying to earn some money running the odd pub, café and seaside bar/restaurant/guest house!"
- teddyh 7y ago
  For an older person who was a programmer long ago, it’s completely normal for that person to still be programming. It’s just that for a programmer, it’s unusual for that person to be old. Don’t confuse the two concepts.
  - ilaksh 7y ago
    I'm not confusing anything. I am 41 myself and have been programming for a long time myself. I don't think its unusual for him to still be programming. I just thought it was a good example of how people evolve. And also interesting that they used to make development tools and now does websites. As well as the rest of the career is just an interesting evolution.
whatever_dude 7y ago
Two things: Flash is not the first tech to die and it won't be the last. Hell, I spent almost a decade of my career focused in Flash dev... and even when I was learning Flash and ActionScript there were 3 or 4 main platforms I used to work with that I had already abandoned. This is a constant. Also. Even a long time after Flash was already on the way out, the demand for good Flash devs was absurd, made worse because it wasn't a "hot" platform anymore. I remember we had a Flash project that needed to be maintained at the company I was working at and we needed to hire an external developer to do it. A lucky guy with the skills ended up being paid top dollar for a super easy job for years because it seemed no one else could do it. He was smart and kept his skills up to date, so he had no problem getting out of that scene later, but he surely used this "outdated" knowledge to his advantage. This also happens all the time.
chaseha 7y ago
Well, the easy answer is to go work for IT in a non-tech industry shop
dutchrapley 7y ago
They go work for a mid-sized insurance company in the midwest.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  Or government! Uncle Sam is still hiring people to write MUMPS and VMS.
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
They learn new skill. Or suffer and switch political parties.
floki999 7y ago
They spend too much time on HN.
fencepost 7y ago
Programming language knowledge overlaps with skills in that different languages affect the ways you think about problems, but knowledge, skills and intelligence are different things. Only having knowledge is probably the hardest place to be, and those are the least desired staff ("paper $CERTIFICATION"), but if you have the others then knowledge is (arguably) the easiest thing to add. If you have programming skills then you can extend from that base into front end, back end, etc. It's going to be harder to jump to sales, because you don't have the skills or the knowledge. Similarly if you've only ever done sales, or accounting, or cooking, or whatever then it'll be harder to develop the skills and knowledge for programming.
Clubber 7y ago
Let's see. Commodore Basic, Borland Pascal, Borland C++, MS Access, Delphi/Oracle, Java/MUMPS (don't ask), C#/.Net/MSSQL, C#/Net Core, Postgres. Those are the big chunks, Postgres being the newest. Across DOS, Windows, Solaris, HPUX and Linux. I get bored with stuff after a few years and just want to build systems with something different. I personally don't go for the new hotness, I go for the hotness that has been around a while. This was the same discussion around 2001. You had people who got into tech for the money and people who just like it. Many people who did it for the money didn't survive past the dot bomb in 2001.
rakamotog 7y ago
They become managers?
- jethro_tell 7y ago
  That could use a 9mo boot camp. Just because you're good at code and even manage a project with some tech parts doesn't mean you'll be a great manager. Not usually from aptitude but because the thinking akillset is often different. It becomes less about how to solve a problem and more about should you solve the problem.
  - ry_ry 7y ago
    Realistically for companies rolling their own managers, it should be a gradual multi-year process. Initially mentoring less experienced developers, then into running a small team, scaling up the managerial aspects and learning to let go of the code, hire great people and trust them to deliver over time. The modern industry moves faster than that, new roles are machine gunned into our inboxes, we are told you can't stand still or you're hurting your own career. Those aren't mutually exclusive situations, but it's certainly made more difficult by their orthogonality.
Railsify 7y ago
This reinforces what I tell new devs: "Don't rest on your laurels". You have to always be learning new languages and technologies, developing new hobbies and interests. A friend of mine constantly trots out her masters degree; she works at a greenhouse and spends most of the time planting and weeding, she loves it and seems happy, but the fact that she earned the masters then stopped learning marketable skills scares me.
nicky19890202 7y ago
Nothing is impossible.
- jethro_tell 7y ago
  Not on zombocom
  - self_awareness 7y ago
    The only limit is yourself
mjcohen 7y ago
I used to be quite good with 026 and 029. Probably not much demand now.
throwaway146 7y ago
Try being a Java developer in a modern world. In my non-Bay Area city, the majority of jobs are Node or RoR. Been struggling to find a job, especially since Java is synonymous with big data, which I have no experience in. No Spark? Sorry. No ML? Next! Ageism in tech is real.
- badpun 7y ago
  > Java is synonymous with big data Most Java jobs are not big data. There may be a skew in the openings, as people with java/scala big data skills are hard to get, but there are probably millions of people doing non-big data Java development right now, and it's not going to change.
  - throwaway146 7y ago
    Sadly, that is not the case where I live. Mostly new companies, where the Java stack is not prevalent. No jobs to apply to, no one willing to even look at someone with experience in stacks other than their own. Not everyone lives in SF.
    - badpun 7y ago
      That's not SF situation. Probably 90%+ of boring big corps have millions and millions of lines of Java code to maintain and develop further. You just need to be in a city big enough to have some of those big companies. At least in Poland, it's hard to hire a generic senior Java dev. One possible explanation for what you're seeing (except not being in a right kind of city) is that maybe the offshoring has hit the US enough to affect the Java market? There tens/hundreds of thousands of Java developers working in Poland are doing offshore development for US/global corporations. The whole Central/Eastern Europe is like that.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I learned new skills (or more accurately improved my minor skills to become major ones) and make more money now. I wouldn't even say my skills became obsolete, I just needed to add other skills to them that I wasn't eager to add - so I found another way. I've done that twice now - hopefully I can do it a third.
- pm90 7y ago
  Good experience and perspective + a curiosity to learn == lots of fun + lots of money. I came into CS expecting a cushy job which was well paid. What I found was a challenging job that placed extraordinary premium on agility and the capacity to build useful products. I love being a "tech worker".
cosmodisk 7y ago
The article itself is a bit weak and,as suggested by others,looks like an ad for a bootcamp. One of the reasons why tech workers had little to no problem to change the course while they started seeing that their skillset is dated is because it takes years to happen.For instance someone comes up with some new language called SnakeScript and it starts taking over the world,while at the same time reducing the number of Python jobs.Well those python devs would simply start learning SnakeScript and eventually completely transition to it.
tiben_ 7y ago
Does anybody knows the artist who made the "slamm" phone poster on the article illustration ? or where can i find it ? I really like it.
- punchclockhero 7y ago
  The artist is Deborah Azzopardi (https://deborahazzopardi.co.uk/ https://deborahazzopardi.co.uk/)
  - tiben_ 7y ago
    Thank you very much
kissgyorgy 7y ago
If your skills become obsolete, you are not a tech worker. The only thing you should have accepted is that this is a fast moving industry and you should learn new technologies all the time. It's just the nature of it.
wfbarks 7y ago
They evolve into birds and fly away outside
reportgunner 7y ago
I can't understand which part of this article was upvoted. There is very little information in it and it doesn't answer the question it is asking in the title.
mangecoeur 7y ago
What do you think Soylent is made of? Obsolete tech workers are a valuable source of protein! :P
infosecdude64 7y ago
One thing I've asked just about everyone who I've managed lately is if they have a job or a career? Folks with jobs normally have few skills that they do 9 - 5 Mon - Fri. They don't learn new skills, nor take on different work, they just come in do what's asked then leave. These are the folks who have the most problems when there is a shift in tech and some stack become obsolete. Folks with a career know they have to stay current in their skills as well as anticipate what coming down the pipe in their field. This is more of an observation than a criticism, btw.
j45 7y ago
In the context of this article choosing to focus on Flash.. Flash uses actionscript.. Which is ecmascript, which today we know as Javascript. It's not a stretch to imagine having Flash skills is one thing but building digital experiences in js, or js friendly/inspired syntaxes likely has plenty of transferable skills. In another way of looking at it, today's js developers share some kinship with actions riot developers.
_bxg1 7y ago
When I was in college I lamented the fact that my school didn't teach any "modern" technologies. Forget mobile or web; we even used Java Swing at one point (this was 2013!). Now I appreciate how much focus they placed on fundamentals instead of literally anything else. I couldn't sign up for a class on iOS development like you can at some other institutions, but the things I learned were the things that won't go away.
john_horton 7y ago
I'm one of the authors of the original paper the article is based on. Here's a link to the actual research: https://www.john-joseph-horton.com/papers/schumpeter.pdf https://www.john-joseph-horton.com/papers/schumpeter.pdf
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
I know one flash programmer who suddenly found herself without a job and in a tough situation. She had to completely learn a new skillset: HTML5 and javascript and the Front end web. It took a whole year for her to get up to speed and get a new job. To prevent this from happening to me, I like to keep an eye on which technologies and programming languages are in highest demand, and which direction they're moving in terms of job demand. So, I created this app that measure programming language demand based on job postings and analyzes on a city by city basis, cross-referencing with salaries posted: https://skilldime.com/ https://skilldime.com/
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- enjoyyourlife 7y ago
  >HTML5 and javascript and the Front end web. It took a whole year for her to get up to speed and get a new job. It took her a year to learn HTML and Javascript?
- ubu7737 7y ago
  There is no such thing as a "Flash programmer" and there never was. You are either a practitioner or you are a programmer. A year to learn a different stack and put it into practice to satisfy the prior art? She was no programmer. She was applying rote patterns and had no programming ability. Stop conflating practice with programming ability. It's like saying she was a doctor, but it took her a year to learn to use a different stethoscope. In 2000 during the dot-com boom we learned to talk about IT "tourists", and the tourism did not end with the crash in 2001. If you direct your career by keeping a close eye on job postings, you are definitely a tourist. The bootcamp culture and the emphasis on teaching young people to "code" is nothing better than the travel agency encouraging people to spend their vacation dollars on a trip to the Caribbean. Creating more tourists to satisfy the demands of an expanding industry does less than nothing to satisfy the real technology needs of a growing sector. Nurses are not doctors.
thewileyone 7y ago
What happens to tech workers when their skills become obsolete? 1. Learn new skills 2. Move into management 3. Leave the industry

138 points by seagullz 7y ago

sparrc 7y ago

tldr: highly educated and well-off engineers are able to adapt.

shard972 7y ago
And what about the ones we convinced to learn to code after losing their job mining coal? Probably just deafening silence.
neogodless 7y ago
The article alludes to education, but doesn't connect any dots. I'm not sure where "well-off" is coming from, though.
- LanceH 7y ago
  If you are paycheck to paycheck, the immediacy of needing work can drive you to do something else. Then it just gets harder and harder to get back into the industry.
  - neogodless 7y ago
    That's almost certainly a valid point. I just don't believe the article really addressed it, so it's an inaccurate summary above.

tsycho 7y ago

Flash developers were fine since the tech market was still expanding rapidly, so they could learn new skills. What happens when the market is no longer growing, and workers become obsolete since their job is automated away?

a3n 7y ago
If a person truly becomes unemployable in their career, for whatever reason, then they do something else. I'm driving a semi truck.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Truck driver is a dying industry. Jobs are scarcer every day.
  - a3n 7y ago
    That may or may not be true. The two threats are a possible recession, which is near, somewhat predictable and temporary by definition. And automation, which is "real soon now," and permanent whenever it happens. In the mean time, trucking is hiring. Not that I would recommend it to most people, it's just what I did when I realized I wouldn't be working in software anymore. I ended up liking it.
    - biohax2015 7y ago
      That's a pretty interesting transition. Got a link to your story?
      - a3n 7y ago
        Sorry, no. Overly simple summary: I was a B player, I failed to stay relevant, and I got old.
  - mikhailfranco 7y ago
    4,500 US Truckers Lose Their Jobs In August Amid Freight Recession https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/4500-us-truckers-lose-their-jobs-august-amid-freight-recession https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/4500-us-truckers-lose-th... Loadsmart And Starsky Make First Start-to-Finish Autonomous Truck Delivery https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/loadsmart-and-starsky-make-first-start-finish-autonomous-truck-delivery https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-12/loadsmart-and-star... UPS Quietly Using Self-Driving Trucks For Months https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-19/ups-quietly-using-self-driving-trucks-months https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-19/ups-quietly-using-...

hannibalhorn 7y ago

> Lambda School co-founder Austen Allred envisions students coming back to his coding school every eight years or so to learn new skills. Eh... While that might be a good story to sell to his investors, most anybody worth their salt won't need to go back to a "bootcamp coding school" every 8 years to learn a new language.

track_me_now 7y ago
you're right - it's kinda funny that boot camps are promoted because "university is a terrible way to learn programming", but they then try and sell boot camps as an effective way to learn the framework de jour. Maybe if you finished an undergrad you'd be well equipped to stay on top of an ever-changing tech landscape?
- lonelappde 7y ago
  What is magical about undergrad that makes it exactly the correct amount of time to spend in school?
  - krapht 7y ago
    It's exactly difficult enough and requires enough work that for many people it's an effective sorting tool for general intelligence and work ethic. If bootcamps take off it will be because they replace this function of university.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    It’s the standard way to do things so doing it signals conformity and employers don’t generally want non-conformists because they’re boat rockers.
lonelappde 7y ago
Why even have school at all if everyone can just learn everything on their own with a teacher or lab mates?

jld 7y ago

I was Flash developer from 2006-2010. Flash used ActionScript which is/was based on the ECMAScript standard. Since then, I develop primarily in Javascript, based on the ECMAScript standard. Looking back, I don't even think anyone could find the seam in my career.

dehrmann 7y ago
This makes the article somewhat silly because the demand shifted over to JS, HTML5, Canvas, etc., and because ActionScript is in the same family as Javascript, people are already halfway there. It was very evolutionary.
- j45 7y ago
  To be polite, the article shows how little they understand the topic they are writing about.
woutr_be 7y ago
Same here, I switched from ActionScript to JavaScript fairly easily, and now almost 10 years later I'm well rounded in both front-end and back-end.
reportgunner 7y ago
thank you. The article is really silly because it fails to understand that Flash was not one-of-a-kind work assignment on a computer, whereas it was just a tool to do web animation. It is not like web animation has become obsolete.

codesushi42 7y ago

Flash was one of the first tools I ever started programming for. Today I work in AI. This article is a thinly veiled advertisement for bootcamps, spouting this nonsense: The “learning-by-doing” approach in the Flash workers’ scenario highlights the value of coding schools and boot camps designed to teach students in-demand skills in as little as eight weeks. And whereas traditional educational environments tend to view their curriculum as having an end date (generally aligned with their students’ graduation), Lambda School co-founder Austen Allred envisions students coming back to his coding school every eight years or so to learn new skills. No. What will give you longevity is a degree in CS. Frameworks and technologies change, but CS concepts stay consistent. If you have a good grounding in CS, you have longevity. Couple that with a good math background, and then you have even more possibilities. Bootcamps are rubbish in the long term. They try to lure you in with quick results from little time investment by teaching you how to hack with the hip framework of the week. I have been there, done that, having gone to a polytechnic school where I learned Flash + web dev. I later made the switch to a university to study CS. One of the best decisions I ever made. Don't fall for the trap of instant gratification. Learn CS (and math) with a formal education, and you will thank yourself years from now.

austenallred 7y ago
Lambda School is 9 months long full-time (~2000 programming hours) and includes CS fundamentals. The assertion that those things must be taught/learned within the confines of a CS degree is a little silly.
- codingdave 7y ago
  True, but the assertion that 9 months of a bootcamp that includes "CS fundamentals" is the same depth as 4 years of CS study is also a little silly. They are different beasts, for different purposes.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    An undergrad degree is only 18months (2 yetas minus summer) in a major, not 4years. And some of that is not-particularly-relevant electives. And if you already have a college degree you might have some overlap with the major.

codingdave 7y ago

Flash is hardly the only tech to have become obsolete. Anyone who has been around this industry more than a decade can list off multiple technologies we don't work with anymore. The article was right that ongoing learning is the key. And while formal higher education is not for everyone, it does well at teaching people new techniques for learning and research. It isn't the only path, especially in today's reality. Its current failings are one reason that bootcamps exist... But the idea that people are going to let their skills stagnate for 8 years, then return to a bootcamp to get the latest tech... Sorry, but that is simply absurd.

tracker1 7y ago
Completely agree... I don't even remember enough Perl or Ruby to be effective with it at all. It all changes over time. I do miss parts of Flash/Flex though.
- collyw 7y ago
  I still pull Perl out when I get a chance. Its nice for small scripts that people might use bash for. I do Python most of the time, but Perl's syntactic sugar makes it so much nicer for something like looking up a set of files matching a regex, moving and renaming them.
Ambele 7y ago
I'll be the first in this thread to start listing off technologies other than Flash. We're at the point now where if you include JQuery on your resume, recruiters are less likely to hire you. Ruby used to be trendy for startups, Python 2.7 used to be popular. Angular 1.x beat off BackboneJS, MeteorJS, and EmberJS but even Angular was completely rewritten in Angular 2.x and superseded with React.

esotericn 7y ago

I'll take the "no true scotsman". If you know how to program, that skill does not simply "go obsolete". The sort of "skill" that this article is talking about seems to be on par with like, the time I thought I knew how to write C as a teenager. The local market going to shit, you developing medical issues, ageism, etc are all far more of a worry than "oops, I've been doing QBASIC for 10 yea.....[NO CARRIER]"

tracker1 7y ago

I am self taught. Never went to a bootcamp or any schooling past High School. I fell into it starting out doing design work... What has it meant over the past couple decades? A lot of constant reading and learning. It never stops. I spend an average of 2 hours a day reading and learning, every day. Some I tuck away, some I explore. In the end, I've seen things shift multiple times. When Flash was at it's peak, I worked in eLearning writing simulations in flash, and supporting backends in VB/VB.Net, some C# and ASP/ASP.Net with SQL. From there, much more web/js, and various other database backends (cassandra, mongo, redis, etc). Currently working with C# and Node.js in web apps still. Learning Rust. In the end, progress doesn't stop and wait for you. I tend to push for things faster than my workplaces want to adopt. In the end, it's a struggle, and it doesn't end. I will continue to do so until I die. I have absolutely no plans to retire. Formal CS knowledge and education can help. Understanding and learning multiple platforms and languages helps more. If you want to settle in a rest on your laurels you won't last forever. You're best off understanding various ideas, workflows and patterns and how to recognize when one is a better fit. I have my preferences but am under no illusions that it will stay the same. In the end, you have to commit to spending time each month/year learning and working on new things. It's the only way to keep up or get ahead.

logotype 7y ago

Started with web, was impressed by what flash could do and learned that. Worked in advertising and we really pushed Flash to the limit (FWA, etc). I mean actual Flash apps, close to the structure of today’s React apps. Software 3D back then, but Stage3D arrived too late. Adobe AIR had potential but Adobe didn’t push enough for this tech. Then I went back to web app development and today I work at an investment bank making trading apps.

hsod 7y ago

This article doesn’t resonate with me (~10 years in industry). Familiarity with or “knowledge of” a particular piece of technology is not a significant factor in the way I choose jobs or the way employers choose me, nor my success on the job.

i_am_proteus 7y ago

Primer (2004) said it best: You know what they do with engineers when they turn 40? They take them out and shoot them.

lonelappde 7y ago
It's not true though. It's based on a misunderstanding of the mathematics of an exponentially growing industry.
- draw_down 7y ago
  There is truth to it.
  - collyw 7y ago
    As some that is 44, I think older devs just get sick of the industry. The constant churn while valuing little of the things I feel that I am actually skilled at - good code design, keeping things as simple as possible but no simpler. Instead we need experience trendy framework of the month, and interviews on algorithms that you will never need in your job. Oh, and please spend the weekend completing our pointless technical test before you get to speak to anyone technical about the job we want to interview you for.
    - j45 7y ago
      There is a real lack of mentoring and apprenticeship in software so new developers relearn the lessons of the past.
      - collyw 7y ago
        I wouldn't even say that new developers do that. We just keep encouraging chasing fads. Database query is slow. Switch to NoSQL instead of learning how to add an index.
    - scarface74 7y ago

ilaksh 7y ago

Reminds me of the HiSOFT guy who used to build assemblers and compilers etc. for ZX Spectrum, back in 1980, and is still programming. I thought it was interesting to contrast that older work with his current line of work. http://www.hisoft.co.uk/ http://www.hisoft.co.uk/ "HiSOFT has been in existence since 1980, founded by David Link and Dave Nutkins. Originally we created software for the NASCOM 1 kit-built microcomputer but swiftly moved on to the ZX Spectrum, for which we created many esoteric items such as HiSOFT Devpac, HiSOFT C, HiSOFT BASIC, HiSOFT Pascal, UltraKit, Colt and much more. After great success with the various incarnations of the Spectrum we ported our core titles (Devpac, C++ and Pascal) to many other Z80-based computers; Tatung Einstein, Newbrain, Memotech 512, Amstrad CPC& PCW, Elan Enterprise and more! 'Twas a lot of fun and, undoubtedly, this list will stir as much excitement in some people as David's favourite band since 1971, Genesis, do in him! After the Z80 processor began to flag (shame!), we moved on to the 68000 which meant moving stuff over to the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. This, along with many hardware projects (such as Megalosound, Replay 16, Clarity 16, Squirrel SCSI, VideoMaster etc.) kept us going through the 90s until, reluctantly, we were forced to take the PC seriously. Having forged a close relationship with MAXON Computer in Germany throughout the Amiga and Atari years, it was natural for us to take on the UK mantle for their flagship product, CINEMA 4D, an exciting and now rather important 3D product. HiSOFT promoted, distributed and sold CINEMA 4D from 1997 until 2001, at which point David Link formed MAXON Computer Ltd and moved all things CINEMA 4D under the MAXON umbrella. David worked at MAXON UK as CEO until resigning for personal reasons in early 2003. David Link continues to work at HiSOFT, as you will see from this website, while also trying to earn some money running the odd pub, café and seaside bar/restaurant/guest house!"

teddyh 7y ago
For an older person who was a programmer long ago, it’s completely normal for that person to still be programming. It’s just that for a programmer, it’s unusual for that person to be old. Don’t confuse the two concepts.
- ilaksh 7y ago
  I'm not confusing anything. I am 41 myself and have been programming for a long time myself. I don't think its unusual for him to still be programming. I just thought it was a good example of how people evolve. And also interesting that they used to make development tools and now does websites. As well as the rest of the career is just an interesting evolution.

whatever_dude 7y ago

Two things: Flash is not the first tech to die and it won't be the last. Hell, I spent almost a decade of my career focused in Flash dev... and even when I was learning Flash and ActionScript there were 3 or 4 main platforms I used to work with that I had already abandoned. This is a constant. Also. Even a long time after Flash was already on the way out, the demand for good Flash devs was absurd, made worse because it wasn't a "hot" platform anymore. I remember we had a Flash project that needed to be maintained at the company I was working at and we needed to hire an external developer to do it. A lucky guy with the skills ended up being paid top dollar for a super easy job for years because it seemed no one else could do it. He was smart and kept his skills up to date, so he had no problem getting out of that scene later, but he surely used this "outdated" knowledge to his advantage. This also happens all the time.

chaseha 7y ago

Well, the easy answer is to go work for IT in a non-tech industry shop

dutchrapley 7y ago

They go work for a mid-sized insurance company in the midwest.

killjoywashere 7y ago
Or government! Uncle Sam is still hiring people to write MUMPS and VMS.

NotSammyHagar 7y ago

They learn new skill. Or suffer and switch political parties.

floki999 7y ago

They spend too much time on HN.

fencepost 7y ago

Programming language knowledge overlaps with skills in that different languages affect the ways you think about problems, but knowledge, skills and intelligence are different things. Only having knowledge is probably the hardest place to be, and those are the least desired staff ("paper $CERTIFICATION"), but if you have the others then knowledge is (arguably) the easiest thing to add. If you have programming skills then you can extend from that base into front end, back end, etc. It's going to be harder to jump to sales, because you don't have the skills or the knowledge. Similarly if you've only ever done sales, or accounting, or cooking, or whatever then it'll be harder to develop the skills and knowledge for programming.

Clubber 7y ago

Let's see. Commodore Basic, Borland Pascal, Borland C++, MS Access, Delphi/Oracle, Java/MUMPS (don't ask), C#/.Net/MSSQL, C#/Net Core, Postgres. Those are the big chunks, Postgres being the newest. Across DOS, Windows, Solaris, HPUX and Linux. I get bored with stuff after a few years and just want to build systems with something different. I personally don't go for the new hotness, I go for the hotness that has been around a while. This was the same discussion around 2001. You had people who got into tech for the money and people who just like it. Many people who did it for the money didn't survive past the dot bomb in 2001.

rakamotog 7y ago

They become managers?

jethro_tell 7y ago
That could use a 9mo boot camp. Just because you're good at code and even manage a project with some tech parts doesn't mean you'll be a great manager. Not usually from aptitude but because the thinking akillset is often different. It becomes less about how to solve a problem and more about should you solve the problem.
- ry_ry 7y ago
  Realistically for companies rolling their own managers, it should be a gradual multi-year process. Initially mentoring less experienced developers, then into running a small team, scaling up the managerial aspects and learning to let go of the code, hire great people and trust them to deliver over time. The modern industry moves faster than that, new roles are machine gunned into our inboxes, we are told you can't stand still or you're hurting your own career. Those aren't mutually exclusive situations, but it's certainly made more difficult by their orthogonality.

Railsify 7y ago

This reinforces what I tell new devs: "Don't rest on your laurels". You have to always be learning new languages and technologies, developing new hobbies and interests. A friend of mine constantly trots out her masters degree; she works at a greenhouse and spends most of the time planting and weeding, she loves it and seems happy, but the fact that she earned the masters then stopped learning marketable skills scares me.

nicky19890202 7y ago

Nothing is impossible.

jethro_tell 7y ago
Not on zombocom
- self_awareness 7y ago
  The only limit is yourself

mjcohen 7y ago

I used to be quite good with 026 and 029. Probably not much demand now.

throwaway146 7y ago

Try being a Java developer in a modern world. In my non-Bay Area city, the majority of jobs are Node or RoR. Been struggling to find a job, especially since Java is synonymous with big data, which I have no experience in. No Spark? Sorry. No ML? Next! Ageism in tech is real.

badpun 7y ago
> Java is synonymous with big data Most Java jobs are not big data. There may be a skew in the openings, as people with java/scala big data skills are hard to get, but there are probably millions of people doing non-big data Java development right now, and it's not going to change.
- throwaway146 7y ago
  Sadly, that is not the case where I live. Mostly new companies, where the Java stack is not prevalent. No jobs to apply to, no one willing to even look at someone with experience in stacks other than their own. Not everyone lives in SF.
  - badpun 7y ago
    That's not SF situation. Probably 90%+ of boring big corps have millions and millions of lines of Java code to maintain and develop further. You just need to be in a city big enough to have some of those big companies. At least in Poland, it's hard to hire a generic senior Java dev. One possible explanation for what you're seeing (except not being in a right kind of city) is that maybe the offshoring has hit the US enough to affect the Java market? There tens/hundreds of thousands of Java developers working in Poland are doing offshore development for US/global corporations. The whole Central/Eastern Europe is like that.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

I learned new skills (or more accurately improved my minor skills to become major ones) and make more money now. I wouldn't even say my skills became obsolete, I just needed to add other skills to them that I wasn't eager to add - so I found another way. I've done that twice now - hopefully I can do it a third.

pm90 7y ago
Good experience and perspective + a curiosity to learn == lots of fun + lots of money. I came into CS expecting a cushy job which was well paid. What I found was a challenging job that placed extraordinary premium on agility and the capacity to build useful products. I love being a "tech worker".

cosmodisk 7y ago

The article itself is a bit weak and,as suggested by others,looks like an ad for a bootcamp. One of the reasons why tech workers had little to no problem to change the course while they started seeing that their skillset is dated is because it takes years to happen.For instance someone comes up with some new language called SnakeScript and it starts taking over the world,while at the same time reducing the number of Python jobs.Well those python devs would simply start learning SnakeScript and eventually completely transition to it.

tiben_ 7y ago

Does anybody knows the artist who made the "slamm" phone poster on the article illustration ? or where can i find it ? I really like it.

punchclockhero 7y ago
The artist is Deborah Azzopardi (https://deborahazzopardi.co.uk/ https://deborahazzopardi.co.uk/)
- tiben_ 7y ago
  Thank you very much

kissgyorgy 7y ago

If your skills become obsolete, you are not a tech worker. The only thing you should have accepted is that this is a fast moving industry and you should learn new technologies all the time. It's just the nature of it.

wfbarks 7y ago

They evolve into birds and fly away outside

reportgunner 7y ago

I can't understand which part of this article was upvoted. There is very little information in it and it doesn't answer the question it is asking in the title.

mangecoeur 7y ago

What do you think Soylent is made of? Obsolete tech workers are a valuable source of protein! :P

infosecdude64 7y ago

One thing I've asked just about everyone who I've managed lately is if they have a job or a career? Folks with jobs normally have few skills that they do 9 - 5 Mon - Fri. They don't learn new skills, nor take on different work, they just come in do what's asked then leave. These are the folks who have the most problems when there is a shift in tech and some stack become obsolete. Folks with a career know they have to stay current in their skills as well as anticipate what coming down the pipe in their field. This is more of an observation than a criticism, btw.

j45 7y ago

In the context of this article choosing to focus on Flash.. Flash uses actionscript.. Which is ecmascript, which today we know as Javascript. It's not a stretch to imagine having Flash skills is one thing but building digital experiences in js, or js friendly/inspired syntaxes likely has plenty of transferable skills. In another way of looking at it, today's js developers share some kinship with actions riot developers.

_bxg1 7y ago

When I was in college I lamented the fact that my school didn't teach any "modern" technologies. Forget mobile or web; we even used Java Swing at one point (this was 2013!). Now I appreciate how much focus they placed on fundamentals instead of literally anything else. I couldn't sign up for a class on iOS development like you can at some other institutions, but the things I learned were the things that won't go away.

john_horton 7y ago

I'm one of the authors of the original paper the article is based on. Here's a link to the actual research: https://www.john-joseph-horton.com/papers/schumpeter.pdf https://www.john-joseph-horton.com/papers/schumpeter.pdf

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

I know one flash programmer who suddenly found herself without a job and in a tough situation. She had to completely learn a new skillset: HTML5 and javascript and the Front end web. It took a whole year for her to get up to speed and get a new job. To prevent this from happening to me, I like to keep an eye on which technologies and programming languages are in highest demand, and which direction they're moving in terms of job demand. So, I created this app that measure programming language demand based on job postings and analyzes on a city by city basis, cross-referencing with salaries posted: https://skilldime.com/ https://skilldime.com/

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
enjoyyourlife 7y ago
>HTML5 and javascript and the Front end web. It took a whole year for her to get up to speed and get a new job. It took her a year to learn HTML and Javascript?
ubu7737 7y ago
There is no such thing as a "Flash programmer" and there never was. You are either a practitioner or you are a programmer. A year to learn a different stack and put it into practice to satisfy the prior art? She was no programmer. She was applying rote patterns and had no programming ability. Stop conflating practice with programming ability. It's like saying she was a doctor, but it took her a year to learn to use a different stethoscope. In 2000 during the dot-com boom we learned to talk about IT "tourists", and the tourism did not end with the crash in 2001. If you direct your career by keeping a close eye on job postings, you are definitely a tourist. The bootcamp culture and the emphasis on teaching young people to "code" is nothing better than the travel agency encouraging people to spend their vacation dollars on a trip to the Caribbean. Creating more tourists to satisfy the demands of an expanding industry does less than nothing to satisfy the real technology needs of a growing sector. Nurses are not doctors.

thewileyone 7y ago

What happens to tech workers when their skills become obsolete? 1. Learn new skills 2. Move into management 3. Leave the industry