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So with 15 years of experience as a New York Times editor, you make about 80% as much money as a newly hired software engineer at Google with zero experience. N

by lacker 7y ago

So with 15 years of experience as a New York Times editor, you make about 80% as much money as a newly hired software engineer at Google with zero experience. No wonder traditional media is bitter about the tech companies.

ravenstine 7y ago
Sure, but journalism is a low ROI product, and some say that the news is just a loss leader for the media and the political establishment to have influence. The vast majority of news stories are read for a few hours and are forgotten about. Most news is junk that most people(rightfully) don't want to pay very much for, even when it's not junk. Both the state of journalism as well as what journalists get paid is pretty sad, but they might as well be shouting at the clouds. Here's how I think of it: I have no doubt that anyone could take a room full of software engineers and start a functioning news organization the next day. I doubt that anyone could take a room full of journalists and have them writing production ready code in under a month. (I worked with journalists for over 3 years and only knew of 1 who knew how to code)
- bluedino 7y ago
  Writing is art. It doesn't pay that well for most. But to think you could get good journalists out of random software developers is insulting.
  - gpm 7y ago
    You wouldn't get top quality journalism on day 1, and you wouldn't get as much per person, but you would get something publishable. Lots of real journalism is really low quality, so this means you would have a product that is in some sense competitive.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      You've weakened the claim a lot. Do you mean competitive with the New York Times, or competitive with The Register?
      - ghaff 7y ago
        The Register is pretty good trade journalism. I doubt your average software dev would get anywhere close to that anytime quickly especially in the absence of existing source networks. Probably closer to whatever write up press releases sources there are.
        iudqnolq 7y ago
        I agree it's pretty good, and that the average software dev couldn't do it. However, I have seen a few of their articles in passing and haven't run into any that involved non-public sources. I just went to their website and all four of the top stories have no information that couldn't be found by googling. For 3/4 I'd seen an article closer to the original source on HN.
        ghaff 7y ago
        There's very little about trade journalism that involves true scoops.There used to be more but the economics mostly don't support a lot of trawling for unannounced information. Context is still useful. But if you already have the context, the pub may not be that useful.
        iudqnolq 7y ago
        That makes sense. What makes source networks essential if there aren't any scoops?
        ghaff 7y ago
        Pretty much what I wrote. Providing context, interpreting what was said, providing additional/opposing data points. Reporting on an announcement still has value if you position it relative to other products/market even if there's no secret information. Bringing in other perspectives.
      - gpm 7y ago
        Huh? No I didn't. The claim was never the New York Times. The register is competitive with the times, they compete for clicks on reddit/google news and so on. I expect the quality to start out more akin to the register (or really, more akin to Wired).
    - glofish 7y ago
      Look MA! I doing journalism right now! Writing words - an opinion piece no less - and somebody - THE PUBLIC even - actually reads it. Take that journalist! I bet you can't just write code with the ease I just wrote this very article!
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Writing can be art. Not all writing is art. Plenty of professional work is denominated in writing (expository writing, persuasive writing, contractual writing) that clearly isn't art. We're all writing here. If we're artists, it's in the "Sandwich Artist" sense. There are works of journalism so carefully written that they have artistic value, but most of it has no such pretense.
- busterarm 7y ago
  This exactly. So few people understand this. Even engineers who undervalue salespeople misunderstand this as well. No matter what your job is, at a company you either cost money or you bring in money. You want to be on the "bring in money" side of the business 99 times out of 100. The career path of being "obviously valuable" and a bottom-line employee is difficult. While I've been there and it's rewarding, one change in management where someone comes in who doesn't "get it" and you're screwed (and usually so is the company).
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    You're right about where you want to be, because a lot of managers think like you do. But if a person cost money and provided no value a rational company would fire them. Either almost every company is insanely dumb or you need the employees not directly bringing in wads of cash to support the ones that don't. This isn't an original idea of mine, if you want to see discussion of the issue Google "cost centers and profit centers", the technical terms for those sides. To provide a totally trivial example suppose your business is going to people handing out free money, taking the money, and putting it in the bank. Suppose different people in different locations hand out different amounts of money. Suppose you have a data scientist who predicts the optimal route for your money getters to travel. This person is a cost center, and firing them would be dumb. Now suppose you have a caterer who makes sure they don't need to leave for lunch... Edit: Looking at your last paragraph again I think you might possibly agree with me? I'm not sure if that quote is sarcastic...
    - busterarm 7y ago
      "cost center vs profit center" are the same thing as "bottom-line vs top-line" (as I referred to) just different audience. I'm not saying that people that cost money don't provide value but your compensation will always be minimized by management and bad managers will look for reasons to remove you from the balance sheet, even if they're bad ones. If you're bringing the company money, the company could be literally on fire and you can still command a sizeable salary.
      - 7y ago
- tptacek 7y ago
  I have extreme doubts that anyone could take a room full of software engineers and start a functioning news organization the next day. We're not even good at estimating the amount of effort it takes to get things done in our own field (witness "I could have built Stack Overflow in a weekend"); I think we all need a lot more humility about what it takes to do other people's jobs.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    It would take years for most software engineers to write material up to the questionable standards of journalism, but you could have them writing functional articles in a weekend. You won't have most journalists writing functional code in a weekend, even if you don't hold them to the questionable standards of software development. Practically every field is deeper than a single human can delve in their lifetime, but that doesn't mean that every field has an equally high barrier of entry.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      I'm not sure I have a grasp on what you believe journalism to be. Could a room full of software developers write a bunch of blog posts about random topics? Sure. But, as much as it may seem otherwise from the outside, that's not what a newsroom is doing. In fact, that's not even what the trade press does. We also, as a profession, have a real problem with the rift between our enthusiasm for the work we do and its real world complexity. An enormous chunk of all software development work could be approximated or even substituted entirely with a reasonable set of Excel spreadsheets (spreadsheets, of course, being the world's most popular software development environment); many of us spend entire careers simply plumbing one set of database columns into another set of form fields and tables. Could I teach a bunch of journalists to model a bunch of business processes in Google Sheets? Yes, I think I could. If you think that's a laughable comparison, I'd ask you to consider whether your conception of the work of a journalist isn't akin to my hypothetical conception of the work of a software developer.
      - danso 7y ago
- danso 7y ago
  What would be the coverage area and audience of this software-engineer-staffed news organization? edit: to elaborate on my question, when you imply that, unlike journalists, a room full of software engineers could write "production ready code in under a month" – what are you talking about, exactly? Because most readers of HN are well aware of tech firms pouring venture money into rooms full of software engineers and producing production code that is as ephemeral and lasting value as any blog.
- FabHK 7y ago
  I'm astonished by the sheer ignorance and under-appreciation of journalism. First, good journalism is extraordinarily important. (In case that's not obvious in times of Brexit and Trump I can expand on this. Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg released their documents to journalists.) Sure, most stories are not that important, but they are still an important part of a community. Second, journalism is not trivial. Good writing is hard. Understanding a subject that you're not necessarily an expert in enough to explain it to others is hard. (Have a look at most documentation!) Third, many journalists are not only very well educated, but with an admirable idealism (well, initially) and a desire to make the world a better place (really better, not peddling ads). A friend of mine was science journalist, and he had studied physics, philosophy, and psychology (with a PhD in the philosophy of mind). The decline of journalism is something to lament (and I don't how their coding ability has any bearing on the subject whatsoever). To put it in economic terms: I submit that the good work of journalists has massive positive externalities, while the work of lots of techies has huge negative externalities.
  - gpm 7y ago
    Good journalism is extraordinarily important. If you go read a few random article about a topic that you are an expert on, you will quickly realize that good journalism is not the norm.
    - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
      Also applies to code.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    > many journalists are not only very well educated So then where exactly do you disagree with me? I never said that I don't appreciate journalism. What am I ignorant about?
    - danso 7y ago
      You're ignorant about what journalism actually entails, especially journalism that is consumed and found to be useful (i.e. what anyone will bother reading, nevermind paying for). It's no different than someone arguing they can be a successful software engineer just because they've literally created "production ready code" by incorporating Bootstrap.css and jquery.
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  I've worked with software engineers of various stripes for over 20 years. While more than one knew how to write, a plurality were not very good writers, and very few wrote at a professional level. This has, at least in my experience, been getting steadily worse, as students seem to be receiving ever less meaningful instruction in composition, research, outlining, and even startlingly (to me) basic grammar. Writing is a skill an awful lot of people undervalue in a very Dunning-Kruger Effect fashion, which bluntly can get pretty frustrating at times. The notion that news is something that nobody wants to pay for honestly strikes me as relatively new; people paid for newspapers and weekly newsmagazines for generations, and broadcast nightly news shows -- paid for indirectly through advertisements -- likewise lasted for decades.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    There's also the misconception that journalism is mostly about competent writing, which it is not; news writing has a particular structure, but more importantly, much of the work of a journalist is research and investigation (particularly, in cultivating and corroborating sources).
    - ravenstine 7y ago
      I'm not sure how people read my comment as an implication that journalism is the same thing as writing blog entries. Part of what I'm getting at is that I don't believe that it's that complex for someone to learn about proper story structure, investigation, and the various techniques in effectively getting a reader both interested and informed about the right things. Textbooks on the subject aren't particularly long for a reason. Competent writing may not be all that journalism is about, but it's a large part of it, and you even used it as your first example(a writing structure). Just because I don't believe that journalism is as rigorous a profession as others doesn't mean that I believe that it's worthless, takes no talent, etc.
- abrahamepton 7y ago
  I've worked at Google and a newspaper (Chicago Tribune). I can guarantee you that a room full of Google SWEs could not start producing an edition of the Trib one day later, though they could absolutely put words into articles. There's so much more that I want to say to you but I'll leave it there. You are wildly incorrect.
  - DogOnTheWeb 7y ago
    +1 as a current member of a Big Tech product org and a trained journalist. The basic information gathering skills of a junior reporter would be completely foreign to most engineers. These are real skills like navigating a FOIA request or pulling financial information from public filings. Soft skills like effective interviewing, structuring an article, translating technical topics to non-technical audiences, writing good headlines. If your idea of a functional newsroom is a wordpress instance, sure, but the hubris here is cringeworthy and demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of the work that goes into good reporting.
  - deleted 7y ago
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- escape_goat 7y ago
  I think that what I like the most about this comment is that it involves a professional engineer announcing a time estimate for a complex project with a three word specification.
- glofish 7y ago
  I think the quality of journalism done by a bunch of software engineers will be identical to the quality of the software written by a bunch of journalists.
- matt4077 7y ago
  The amount of hubris and cynical populism in this comment is almost breathtaking. > and some say that the news is just a loss leader for the media a If you use the phrase "some people say..." at the New York Times, you're fired, because it's international shortcode for I-just-pulled-this-theory-from-.... You don't know that, and that's not terrible. But you should at least be aware of how little you know about the profession you're so keen on ridiculing.
- rectang 7y ago
  I wonder how much overlap there is between the group of software engineers who eschew writing documentation and the group of software engineers who believe they could start a functioning news organization the next day.
- nradov 7y ago
  This is a common HN fallacy. The reality is that most software engineers wildly overestimate their own intelligence and are barely even competent at their own jobs. The notion that they could quickly get up to speed on another complex job is ludicrous. For starters most engineers struggle with interviewing people and extracting accurate information from them; that's one key reason why most new software fails to satisfy user requirements.
  - tidepod12 7y ago
    Seriously. It's especially laughable to say that a room of software engineers could become journalists, of all things. The vast majority of the SWEs I know, even the rockstars at FAANG companies, can hardly write coherent emails or give a presentation during a 5-person standup meeting. To think they could write entire news articles is hilarious.
    - deleted 7y ago
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  - alex504 7y ago
    Thanks for saying this. I am sick of software engineers thinking they are smarter and than other people because they make more money. How much money you make does not equate to your worth as a human being. Software engineering is not that difficult. There are lots of things just as difficult if not more difficult than software engineering. The majority of software engineers contribute very little to society if anything. Just because you have a good software engineering job does not make you a successful person or better than other people who are pursuing other ways of living their lives.
    - torgian 7y ago
      Coming from the self-taught perspective, I disagree that software engineering is not difficult. It is difficult. Otherwise everyone would be doing it just for the money. Though I do agree with you on the other points, although it seems like you are bitter about something. That said, I work with a company that makes stuff that does contribute to society in a positive way, and because of that I make less than most. When I started to teach myself, I knew I never wanted to work on something that was involved in ads, data collection for ads, or making junk software, which seems to be the focus of the majority of software companies.
- hos234 7y ago
  Ya right. Try getting your avg software engineer to get out from behind a desk, and go have a conversation with someone they have issues with.
- issa 7y ago
  It's a fallacy to say that Engineering is "harder" than Journalism and expect that to mean anything. They are different skill sets. Is being a Mechanic harder than being a Musician? These are meaningless comparisons.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  I would love - love - to see a room full of software engineers actually attempt this.
- xondono 7y ago
  You should've left it after the first paragraph. The problem of journalism is one of scalability. Your run-of-the-mill software has good returns over periods way larger than the development time. Your average article has a low return over a mean life way shorter than the time it takes to produce it.
- Rapzid 7y ago
  I agree insofar the bread and butter of most "news organizations" is not serious journalism. It's garbage opinion pieces and "analysis"(also opinion pieces). Take scraps of news and figure out how to craft a narrative out of it that appeals to a certain target audience with the least amount of effort. Use clicks to dial it in. Sprinkle a few reuters copy pastas. Maybe a few top 10 lists. Bingo bongo. Isn't this how Buzzfeed got off the ground?!
- cf141q5325 7y ago
  Lets take the argument one step further. You could take the room full of software engineers and automate most writing. Business, sports, not a problem. So the question is, how many journalists work as actual journalists in their field and which are easily replaceable by AI or unskilled humans. Here i think the initial comparison comes back. You could also get the room of software engineers to get a newspaper running. Full of clickbait, chum and all the other psychological tricks to get people hooked over shit content. Producing such content is an organization task like any else. Its not quality content but it doesnt have to be, you only need clicks. You wouldnt have journalists, but how many do we currently have who also work as such in "functioning news organizations"? Unless payed by a benefactor with deep war chest, very few journalists get to do any real journalism, simply because its not a profitable venture to pay all the research that didnt turn into big stories. The few that do have been on their deathbed for a while. So on that level, sure, journalism isnt a profitable career option. The stuff that you do get paid for likely can also be done be anyone else who can handle the advertisement financed industry. Its the basic crux of the problem, journalism isnt profitable. Trying to solve that problem by trusting the market will leave us without professional journalism.
- tlamponi 7y ago
  > Sure, but journalism is a low ROI product What? Journalism can drive whole political landscape. I can bring issues to people they'd never heard of else. This can start such a huge feedback loop that has the power to help changing the world (for better or worse). Journalism has a very high ROI on the long run. High profile and quality Journalism, especially Investigative one, can be worth so much that its hard to comprehend, as it shows..
  - deleted 7y ago
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- Kye 7y ago
  >> "Here's how I think of it: I have no doubt that anyone could take a room full of software engineers and start a functioning news organization the next day." Go ahead. Let's see it.
ashelmire 7y ago
Jeez, are entry-level devs really making 180k at Google?
- a1pulley 7y ago
  Yes. Sometimes more, sometimes a bit less. See https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  ‘Entry level’ at Google means someone who is already top of their field so it’s not surprising.
  - notacoward 7y ago
    Bollocks. I know quite a few Googlers, most of them hired well above entry level but also mostly not top of their field. Entry-level devs at Google, Facebook, etc. really are paid obscene amounts of money. Non-entry-level devs are paid even more, but it's not quite as obscene because at least they've done something to justify it. Don't listen to sour-grapes talk from people who washed out of FAANG interviews.
  - lacker 7y ago
    "Top of their field" isn't the right way to put it. Entry level at Google means roughly, someone with no experience, or maybe one year of experience. Usually a new graduation from college. However, based on all the interviews and so on, Google thinks they are one of the top new graduates. Someone who is the "top of their field" and gets employed at Google, like someone that people in a specific technology would know of, would be making a lot more. It depends a lot on what that field is, but making over a million dollars yearly wouldn't be surprising for an individual contributor. For a more "middle" statistic, someone who is average-quality for a Google engineer, and has five years of experience, would be making around $350,000. My source is https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/ and the verbal descriptions of what exactly the levels mean come from working there. L3 is a new grad, L5 is a solid contributor with some experience, someone "top of their field" would be L6, L7, or more.
pavlov 7y ago
That's not new though. In 1984 a senior editor at the Times was making less than a junior bond trader at Pierce & Pierce.

by lacker 7y ago

ravenstine 7y ago

Sure, but journalism is a low ROI product, and some say that the news is just a loss leader for the media and the political establishment to have influence. The vast majority of news stories are read for a few hours and are forgotten about. Most news is junk that most people(rightfully) don't want to pay very much for, even when it's not junk. Both the state of journalism as well as what journalists get paid is pretty sad, but they might as well be shouting at the clouds. Here's how I think of it: I have no doubt that anyone could take a room full of software engineers and start a functioning news organization the next day. I doubt that anyone could take a room full of journalists and have them writing production ready code in under a month. (I worked with journalists for over 3 years and only knew of 1 who knew how to code)

bluedino 7y ago
Writing is art. It doesn't pay that well for most. But to think you could get good journalists out of random software developers is insulting.
- gpm 7y ago
  You wouldn't get top quality journalism on day 1, and you wouldn't get as much per person, but you would get something publishable. Lots of real journalism is really low quality, so this means you would have a product that is in some sense competitive.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    You've weakened the claim a lot. Do you mean competitive with the New York Times, or competitive with The Register?
    - ghaff 7y ago
      The Register is pretty good trade journalism. I doubt your average software dev would get anywhere close to that anytime quickly especially in the absence of existing source networks. Probably closer to whatever write up press releases sources there are.
      - iudqnolq 7y ago
        I agree it's pretty good, and that the average software dev couldn't do it. However, I have seen a few of their articles in passing and haven't run into any that involved non-public sources. I just went to their website and all four of the top stories have no information that couldn't be found by googling. For 3/4 I'd seen an article closer to the original source on HN.
        ghaff 7y ago
        There's very little about trade journalism that involves true scoops.There used to be more but the economics mostly don't support a lot of trawling for unannounced information. Context is still useful. But if you already have the context, the pub may not be that useful.
        iudqnolq 7y ago
        That makes sense. What makes source networks essential if there aren't any scoops?
        ghaff 7y ago
        Pretty much what I wrote. Providing context, interpreting what was said, providing additional/opposing data points. Reporting on an announcement still has value if you position it relative to other products/market even if there's no secret information. Bringing in other perspectives.
    - gpm 7y ago
      Huh? No I didn't. The claim was never the New York Times. The register is competitive with the times, they compete for clicks on reddit/google news and so on. I expect the quality to start out more akin to the register (or really, more akin to Wired).
  - glofish 7y ago
    Look MA! I doing journalism right now! Writing words - an opinion piece no less - and somebody - THE PUBLIC even - actually reads it. Take that journalist! I bet you can't just write code with the ease I just wrote this very article!
- tptacek 7y ago
  Writing can be art. Not all writing is art. Plenty of professional work is denominated in writing (expository writing, persuasive writing, contractual writing) that clearly isn't art. We're all writing here. If we're artists, it's in the "Sandwich Artist" sense. There are works of journalism so carefully written that they have artistic value, but most of it has no such pretense.
busterarm 7y ago
This exactly. So few people understand this. Even engineers who undervalue salespeople misunderstand this as well. No matter what your job is, at a company you either cost money or you bring in money. You want to be on the "bring in money" side of the business 99 times out of 100. The career path of being "obviously valuable" and a bottom-line employee is difficult. While I've been there and it's rewarding, one change in management where someone comes in who doesn't "get it" and you're screwed (and usually so is the company).
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  You're right about where you want to be, because a lot of managers think like you do. But if a person cost money and provided no value a rational company would fire them. Either almost every company is insanely dumb or you need the employees not directly bringing in wads of cash to support the ones that don't. This isn't an original idea of mine, if you want to see discussion of the issue Google "cost centers and profit centers", the technical terms for those sides. To provide a totally trivial example suppose your business is going to people handing out free money, taking the money, and putting it in the bank. Suppose different people in different locations hand out different amounts of money. Suppose you have a data scientist who predicts the optimal route for your money getters to travel. This person is a cost center, and firing them would be dumb. Now suppose you have a caterer who makes sure they don't need to leave for lunch... Edit: Looking at your last paragraph again I think you might possibly agree with me? I'm not sure if that quote is sarcastic...
  - busterarm 7y ago
    "cost center vs profit center" are the same thing as "bottom-line vs top-line" (as I referred to) just different audience. I'm not saying that people that cost money don't provide value but your compensation will always be minimized by management and bad managers will look for reasons to remove you from the balance sheet, even if they're bad ones. If you're bringing the company money, the company could be literally on fire and you can still command a sizeable salary.
    - 7y ago
tptacek 7y ago
I have extreme doubts that anyone could take a room full of software engineers and start a functioning news organization the next day. We're not even good at estimating the amount of effort it takes to get things done in our own field (witness "I could have built Stack Overflow in a weekend"); I think we all need a lot more humility about what it takes to do other people's jobs.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  It would take years for most software engineers to write material up to the questionable standards of journalism, but you could have them writing functional articles in a weekend. You won't have most journalists writing functional code in a weekend, even if you don't hold them to the questionable standards of software development. Practically every field is deeper than a single human can delve in their lifetime, but that doesn't mean that every field has an equally high barrier of entry.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    I'm not sure I have a grasp on what you believe journalism to be. Could a room full of software developers write a bunch of blog posts about random topics? Sure. But, as much as it may seem otherwise from the outside, that's not what a newsroom is doing. In fact, that's not even what the trade press does. We also, as a profession, have a real problem with the rift between our enthusiasm for the work we do and its real world complexity. An enormous chunk of all software development work could be approximated or even substituted entirely with a reasonable set of Excel spreadsheets (spreadsheets, of course, being the world's most popular software development environment); many of us spend entire careers simply plumbing one set of database columns into another set of form fields and tables. Could I teach a bunch of journalists to model a bunch of business processes in Google Sheets? Yes, I think I could. If you think that's a laughable comparison, I'd ask you to consider whether your conception of the work of a journalist isn't akin to my hypothetical conception of the work of a software developer.
    - danso 7y ago
danso 7y ago
What would be the coverage area and audience of this software-engineer-staffed news organization? edit: to elaborate on my question, when you imply that, unlike journalists, a room full of software engineers could write "production ready code in under a month" – what are you talking about, exactly? Because most readers of HN are well aware of tech firms pouring venture money into rooms full of software engineers and producing production code that is as ephemeral and lasting value as any blog.
FabHK 7y ago
I'm astonished by the sheer ignorance and under-appreciation of journalism. First, good journalism is extraordinarily important. (In case that's not obvious in times of Brexit and Trump I can expand on this. Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg released their documents to journalists.) Sure, most stories are not that important, but they are still an important part of a community. Second, journalism is not trivial. Good writing is hard. Understanding a subject that you're not necessarily an expert in enough to explain it to others is hard. (Have a look at most documentation!) Third, many journalists are not only very well educated, but with an admirable idealism (well, initially) and a desire to make the world a better place (really better, not peddling ads). A friend of mine was science journalist, and he had studied physics, philosophy, and psychology (with a PhD in the philosophy of mind). The decline of journalism is something to lament (and I don't how their coding ability has any bearing on the subject whatsoever). To put it in economic terms: I submit that the good work of journalists has massive positive externalities, while the work of lots of techies has huge negative externalities.
- gpm 7y ago
  Good journalism is extraordinarily important. If you go read a few random article about a topic that you are an expert on, you will quickly realize that good journalism is not the norm.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    Also applies to code.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  > many journalists are not only very well educated So then where exactly do you disagree with me? I never said that I don't appreciate journalism. What am I ignorant about?
  - danso 7y ago
    You're ignorant about what journalism actually entails, especially journalism that is consumed and found to be useful (i.e. what anyone will bother reading, nevermind paying for). It's no different than someone arguing they can be a successful software engineer just because they've literally created "production ready code" by incorporating Bootstrap.css and jquery.
chipotle_coyote 7y ago
I've worked with software engineers of various stripes for over 20 years. While more than one knew how to write, a plurality were not very good writers, and very few wrote at a professional level. This has, at least in my experience, been getting steadily worse, as students seem to be receiving ever less meaningful instruction in composition, research, outlining, and even startlingly (to me) basic grammar. Writing is a skill an awful lot of people undervalue in a very Dunning-Kruger Effect fashion, which bluntly can get pretty frustrating at times. The notion that news is something that nobody wants to pay for honestly strikes me as relatively new; people paid for newspapers and weekly newsmagazines for generations, and broadcast nightly news shows -- paid for indirectly through advertisements -- likewise lasted for decades.
- tptacek 7y ago
  There's also the misconception that journalism is mostly about competent writing, which it is not; news writing has a particular structure, but more importantly, much of the work of a journalist is research and investigation (particularly, in cultivating and corroborating sources).
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    I'm not sure how people read my comment as an implication that journalism is the same thing as writing blog entries. Part of what I'm getting at is that I don't believe that it's that complex for someone to learn about proper story structure, investigation, and the various techniques in effectively getting a reader both interested and informed about the right things. Textbooks on the subject aren't particularly long for a reason. Competent writing may not be all that journalism is about, but it's a large part of it, and you even used it as your first example(a writing structure). Just because I don't believe that journalism is as rigorous a profession as others doesn't mean that I believe that it's worthless, takes no talent, etc.
abrahamepton 7y ago
I've worked at Google and a newspaper (Chicago Tribune). I can guarantee you that a room full of Google SWEs could not start producing an edition of the Trib one day later, though they could absolutely put words into articles. There's so much more that I want to say to you but I'll leave it there. You are wildly incorrect.
- DogOnTheWeb 7y ago
  +1 as a current member of a Big Tech product org and a trained journalist. The basic information gathering skills of a junior reporter would be completely foreign to most engineers. These are real skills like navigating a FOIA request or pulling financial information from public filings. Soft skills like effective interviewing, structuring an article, translating technical topics to non-technical audiences, writing good headlines. If your idea of a functional newsroom is a wordpress instance, sure, but the hubris here is cringeworthy and demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of the work that goes into good reporting.
- deleted 7y ago
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escape_goat 7y ago
I think that what I like the most about this comment is that it involves a professional engineer announcing a time estimate for a complex project with a three word specification.
glofish 7y ago
I think the quality of journalism done by a bunch of software engineers will be identical to the quality of the software written by a bunch of journalists.
matt4077 7y ago
The amount of hubris and cynical populism in this comment is almost breathtaking. > and some say that the news is just a loss leader for the media a If you use the phrase "some people say..." at the New York Times, you're fired, because it's international shortcode for I-just-pulled-this-theory-from-.... You don't know that, and that's not terrible. But you should at least be aware of how little you know about the profession you're so keen on ridiculing.
rectang 7y ago
I wonder how much overlap there is between the group of software engineers who eschew writing documentation and the group of software engineers who believe they could start a functioning news organization the next day.
nradov 7y ago
This is a common HN fallacy. The reality is that most software engineers wildly overestimate their own intelligence and are barely even competent at their own jobs. The notion that they could quickly get up to speed on another complex job is ludicrous. For starters most engineers struggle with interviewing people and extracting accurate information from them; that's one key reason why most new software fails to satisfy user requirements.
- tidepod12 7y ago
  Seriously. It's especially laughable to say that a room of software engineers could become journalists, of all things. The vast majority of the SWEs I know, even the rockstars at FAANG companies, can hardly write coherent emails or give a presentation during a 5-person standup meeting. To think they could write entire news articles is hilarious.
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- alex504 7y ago
  Thanks for saying this. I am sick of software engineers thinking they are smarter and than other people because they make more money. How much money you make does not equate to your worth as a human being. Software engineering is not that difficult. There are lots of things just as difficult if not more difficult than software engineering. The majority of software engineers contribute very little to society if anything. Just because you have a good software engineering job does not make you a successful person or better than other people who are pursuing other ways of living their lives.
  - torgian 7y ago
    Coming from the self-taught perspective, I disagree that software engineering is not difficult. It is difficult. Otherwise everyone would be doing it just for the money. Though I do agree with you on the other points, although it seems like you are bitter about something. That said, I work with a company that makes stuff that does contribute to society in a positive way, and because of that I make less than most. When I started to teach myself, I knew I never wanted to work on something that was involved in ads, data collection for ads, or making junk software, which seems to be the focus of the majority of software companies.
hos234 7y ago
Ya right. Try getting your avg software engineer to get out from behind a desk, and go have a conversation with someone they have issues with.
issa 7y ago
It's a fallacy to say that Engineering is "harder" than Journalism and expect that to mean anything. They are different skill sets. Is being a Mechanic harder than being a Musician? These are meaningless comparisons.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
I would love - love - to see a room full of software engineers actually attempt this.
xondono 7y ago
You should've left it after the first paragraph. The problem of journalism is one of scalability. Your run-of-the-mill software has good returns over periods way larger than the development time. Your average article has a low return over a mean life way shorter than the time it takes to produce it.
Rapzid 7y ago
I agree insofar the bread and butter of most "news organizations" is not serious journalism. It's garbage opinion pieces and "analysis"(also opinion pieces). Take scraps of news and figure out how to craft a narrative out of it that appeals to a certain target audience with the least amount of effort. Use clicks to dial it in. Sprinkle a few reuters copy pastas. Maybe a few top 10 lists. Bingo bongo. Isn't this how Buzzfeed got off the ground?!
cf141q5325 7y ago
Lets take the argument one step further. You could take the room full of software engineers and automate most writing. Business, sports, not a problem. So the question is, how many journalists work as actual journalists in their field and which are easily replaceable by AI or unskilled humans. Here i think the initial comparison comes back. You could also get the room of software engineers to get a newspaper running. Full of clickbait, chum and all the other psychological tricks to get people hooked over shit content. Producing such content is an organization task like any else. Its not quality content but it doesnt have to be, you only need clicks. You wouldnt have journalists, but how many do we currently have who also work as such in "functioning news organizations"? Unless payed by a benefactor with deep war chest, very few journalists get to do any real journalism, simply because its not a profitable venture to pay all the research that didnt turn into big stories. The few that do have been on their deathbed for a while. So on that level, sure, journalism isnt a profitable career option. The stuff that you do get paid for likely can also be done be anyone else who can handle the advertisement financed industry. Its the basic crux of the problem, journalism isnt profitable. Trying to solve that problem by trusting the market will leave us without professional journalism.
tlamponi 7y ago
> Sure, but journalism is a low ROI product What? Journalism can drive whole political landscape. I can bring issues to people they'd never heard of else. This can start such a huge feedback loop that has the power to help changing the world (for better or worse). Journalism has a very high ROI on the long run. High profile and quality Journalism, especially Investigative one, can be worth so much that its hard to comprehend, as it shows..
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Kye 7y ago
>> "Here's how I think of it: I have no doubt that anyone could take a room full of software engineers and start a functioning news organization the next day." Go ahead. Let's see it.

ashelmire 7y ago

Jeez, are entry-level devs really making 180k at Google?

a1pulley 7y ago
Yes. Sometimes more, sometimes a bit less. See https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi
chrisseaton 7y ago
‘Entry level’ at Google means someone who is already top of their field so it’s not surprising.
- notacoward 7y ago
  Bollocks. I know quite a few Googlers, most of them hired well above entry level but also mostly not top of their field. Entry-level devs at Google, Facebook, etc. really are paid obscene amounts of money. Non-entry-level devs are paid even more, but it's not quite as obscene because at least they've done something to justify it. Don't listen to sour-grapes talk from people who washed out of FAANG interviews.
- lacker 7y ago
  "Top of their field" isn't the right way to put it. Entry level at Google means roughly, someone with no experience, or maybe one year of experience. Usually a new graduation from college. However, based on all the interviews and so on, Google thinks they are one of the top new graduates. Someone who is the "top of their field" and gets employed at Google, like someone that people in a specific technology would know of, would be making a lot more. It depends a lot on what that field is, but making over a million dollars yearly wouldn't be surprising for an individual contributor. For a more "middle" statistic, someone who is average-quality for a Google engineer, and has five years of experience, would be making around $350,000. My source is https://www.levels.fyi/ https://www.levels.fyi/ and the verbal descriptions of what exactly the levels mean come from working there. L3 is a new grad, L5 is a solid contributor with some experience, someone "top of their field" would be L6, L7, or more.

pavlov 7y ago

That's not new though. In 1984 a senior editor at the Times was making less than a junior bond trader at Pierce & Pierce.