3 ms·

imho american programmers are in for a world of hurt. Day of reckoning is coming. Its just not today. So if you say its today, you naturally get the derision an

by dxbydt 6y ago

imho american programmers are in for a world of hurt. Day of reckoning is coming. Its just not today. So if you say its today, you naturally get the derision and downvotes. But that doesn’t mean there is no such day. Just 2-3 days ago we sent 2 chaps into space. 50 years ago with far more primitive software we sent them to the moon. And you are bitching about how your software profession is so fragile it’ll be messed up because of culture, because of time zones, because of skillset, because people “over there” don’t look like you think like you talk like you walk like you. How long can you put up with this farce ? For a long time, thats for sure. But not for ever. This stuff aint particularly hard, people. Yes not everyone can do it. And yet, its also true that wasting the best years of your life trying to design a 10mb facebook page isn’t perhaps the best use of your brain cells. Perhaps if you are truly that smart, why not work on something more worthwhile ? Go solve cancer or robotics or self driving or....not this agile webcrap for christs sake. Is this truly what you want to stake your future on , that someone in a different part of the planet can’t write javascript as good as the L5 sitting in Menlo Park ? It doesn’t even sound good on paper. Next you’ll tell me you believe in the tooth fairy.Jesus.

sgt 6y ago
You'll be downvoted, but there is some refreshing truth in your statements.
thewarrior 6y ago
The day is closer than most here on HN think. TikTok is doing extremely well and rapidly gaining users. They demonstrate a good knowledge of everything that SV typically does and are based entirely out of China. These arguments about culture are laughable. TikTok is basically the engine of culture now among teens and is playing a big part in the current protests. Zoom has its engineering based in China. This means two of the fastest growing consumer products today are built by Chinese software engineers. The Chinese are also at the bleeding edge of Machine Learning and are taking baby steps in building cloud services. With the elimination of Huawei from Western tech ecosystem they will be forced to build an entire stack from Silicon => Pixels and its well within their reach in the next decade. IntelliJ which everyone here swears by is built entirely out of Russia. All FANGs are rapidly scaling up their presence outside the US in locations like Europe/Canada to hedge US visa issues which will intensify over time. The only way to employ non US software engineers along with western ones might be to have offices in non US western countries.
- datavirtue 6y ago
  Yeah...but the Chinese are going to demand just as much as Americans and the costs/salaries are not likely to go down for the other points made in this thread (language/culture barrier, time zone, etc).
- titanomachy 6y ago
  | IntelliJ ... is built entirely out of Russia. While they do have offices in Russia, JetBrains is a Czech company. Overall though, I agree... there are a lot of people with their heads in the sand.
lordlic 6y ago
Well, the cultural chauvinists elsewhere in this discussion are certainly in for a rude awakening but I don't know how much pain American programmers will feel. We have a lot of really first-rate engineers and product people, and we won't stop making our own breakthroughs just because new countries are emerging in the global tech scene. And, in the medium term at least, we have the inertia of several trillion dollars worth of tech behemoths having strong ties to the US. Also, this isn't a zero-sum game; American tech companies generally don't have great penetration in markets like China and India with home-grown competitors, and those competitors generally don't have notable penetration outside of their home markets. There's plenty of growth to be realized without anyone being in a world of hurt.

by dxbydt 6y ago

sgt 6y ago

You'll be downvoted, but there is some refreshing truth in your statements.

thewarrior 6y ago

The day is closer than most here on HN think. TikTok is doing extremely well and rapidly gaining users. They demonstrate a good knowledge of everything that SV typically does and are based entirely out of China. These arguments about culture are laughable. TikTok is basically the engine of culture now among teens and is playing a big part in the current protests. Zoom has its engineering based in China. This means two of the fastest growing consumer products today are built by Chinese software engineers. The Chinese are also at the bleeding edge of Machine Learning and are taking baby steps in building cloud services. With the elimination of Huawei from Western tech ecosystem they will be forced to build an entire stack from Silicon => Pixels and its well within their reach in the next decade. IntelliJ which everyone here swears by is built entirely out of Russia. All FANGs are rapidly scaling up their presence outside the US in locations like Europe/Canada to hedge US visa issues which will intensify over time. The only way to employ non US software engineers along with western ones might be to have offices in non US western countries.

datavirtue 6y ago
Yeah...but the Chinese are going to demand just as much as Americans and the costs/salaries are not likely to go down for the other points made in this thread (language/culture barrier, time zone, etc).
titanomachy 6y ago
| IntelliJ ... is built entirely out of Russia. While they do have offices in Russia, JetBrains is a Czech company. Overall though, I agree... there are a lot of people with their heads in the sand.

lordlic 6y ago

Well, the cultural chauvinists elsewhere in this discussion are certainly in for a rude awakening but I don't know how much pain American programmers will feel. We have a lot of really first-rate engineers and product people, and we won't stop making our own breakthroughs just because new countries are emerging in the global tech scene. And, in the medium term at least, we have the inertia of several trillion dollars worth of tech behemoths having strong ties to the US. Also, this isn't a zero-sum game; American tech companies generally don't have great penetration in markets like China and India with home-grown competitors, and those competitors generally don't have notable penetration outside of their home markets. There's plenty of growth to be realized without anyone being in a world of hurt.