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If you live in the US and are advocating for this be careful what you wish for. It could lead to your 100-200K per year salary being cut to well below 100K to e

If you live in the US and are advocating for this be careful what you wish for. It could lead to your 100-200K per year salary being cut to well below 100K to equalize across all engineers including those in low cost areas such as China and India.

Loughla 6y ago
Learn a lesson from the manufacturing fields. The jobs left because they could be cheaper somewhere else. It was a greater good for a much larger number of people, but for those at the top of the pay scale, it was a severe reduction in quality of life. Shooting for a higher average has the effect of bringing up a ton of folks' incomes, while negatively impacting a few. You, too, could be the few.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
sremani 6y ago
The Software Developers will follow the path of the Autoworkers of the 60s, once a high paid and esteemed profession which becomes a menial job with average pay. It is not that far either, I bet Software Developers do not have beyond 7 years for this to take shape and of course, those massive layoffs are just around the corner when remote works becomes the standard.
- kome 6y ago
  > The Software Developers will follow the path of the Autoworkers of the 60s, once a high paid and esteemed profession which becomes a menial job with average pay. yeah... but the choice here is political, it's not the natural forces of the market (it's rarely the natural forces of the market). Working in Germany as autoworkers, you still get a more than decent wage. Sure, work is hard. But money is good. America instead, decided to get cheap till the point to move plants to Mexico or Asia. It was a political choice.
  - internet_user 6y ago
    offshoring has been happening for a long time. Why would this be an issue now all of a sudden?
    - kome 6y ago
      Offshoring was a political decision. a decision that needed political consensus, action and supervision (to open capital markets, to set standards, to trade deals, to keep exchange rate stable, etc., etc.) Offshoring doesn't happen in a vacuum. And in some countries, offshoring hit harder than in others. For instance, Germany and Italy are still export powerhouses. This, again, was a political decision. In the US the decision was to privilege financial and tech industry, more than production industry. It was a strategy, and like every strategy it created some winner and some losers. Americans have to decide if keeping this strategy or trying something else.
- macinjosh 6y ago
  Were auto workers considered skilled laborers? The value of a software engineer is that there is a skill there that takes significant time and effort to learn before you can be useful. Not sure if there is an equivalence there.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    Having worked at a US automotive plant as a SWE: yes, they were and they still should be. I don't consider them any less skilled because their work is merely different than mine as an engineer whose primary tool is a keyboard versus a high-pressure water jet. Their skills are just different.
    - chillacy 6y ago
      I don’t think the tool is as important as the what you’re doing with it. QA is done with a keyboard but is considered less skilled. Sculpting statues may use a water jet but would be considered more skilled. So the question seems to me: what are people doing with these water jets in US automotive plants? How long does it take to learn? How much variance is there in ability? (We talk about 10x programmers, are there 10x machinists?)
      - dvtrn 6y ago
        (We talk about 10x programmers, are there 10x machinists?) Yes. Why wouldn't there be? Asking honestly? A story, if you will-because I have a very intimate relationship with industrial machinists: My father was a certified industrial welder, pipe fitter and metallurgist for General Electric's gas turbine division for 32 years (he was also a licensed master electrician) He was the only individual in his functional team with the number of licenses and depth of mechanical engineering background to his name. He oversaw several manufacturing retrofits in their plant, and lead a team of 10 other engineers, all of whom through his time and tenure became family friends. I know all of their stories and backgrounds intimately. When he left GE due to layoffs in the early 1990's, he opened his own shop and hired several of those machinists to come work for him. Despite getting to see this work daily, up close, and learn for myself the family trade of metal smithing (both of my brothers, my father, two of his brothers and my grandfather were all metal workers and passed down the trade through to my generation), I was the first to cross over the digital divide and go white collar as a full-time career, but I still have a strong appreciation for mechanized labor and I took this with me into automotive. So, all of that said, to answer the question, I think yes, there absolutely are 10x machinists (I don't personally buy into the "10x" thing generally-at least not the way it is sometimes applied, but in alignment with your question, yes) and I remain firm in my objection that these people are less skilled because their skills are different or differently applied than ours as SWEs.
- Ekaros 6y ago
  I don't think Software Developers or related fields will do too badly. It's still skilled and specialised work just like trades. What I imagine will be hit much harder is more average positions that don't really need skills outside just having a degree...
- haspok 6y ago
  > Software development (...) becomes a menial job with average pay. If I had a cent for every time I heard this in the past 25 years... it started with the 4GL craze, at least that's when I started. And look where we are now. The truth is that software development is an inherently complex process. You can automate the menial parts of it (and you probably should), but can never tackle the core of its complexity. Writing performant programs is hard and always will be. Writing correct concurrent programs is hard and always will be. Constructing easily understandable and refactorable business logic implementations is hard and always will be. And there is no silver bullet.
  - WJW 6y ago
    That is also true of automaking though. There are some parts that are just hard and can't be automated away. The argument GP made was that someone in the EU can write correct concurrent programs for ~60k/year (and feel they are makng great money) instead of the 100k+ you need to pay someone in the US. Software jobs are even easier to offshore than car manufacturing plants.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bluedino 6y ago
  The lower to mid-skill positions already have been. The IT jobs that were like assembly line jobs (support, helpdesk, CRUD programming) has been outsourced like crazy to the rest of the world.
- proverbialbunny 6y ago
  Kids today are being taught to program in elementary school.
  - wkearney99 6y ago
    Mmmm, not all kids, and not all 'kinds' of programming. Yes, they're being made more aware that programming exists and is necessary, but that's not the same as "being taught to program".
    - proverbialbunny 6y ago
      It definitely depends on the school. I learned how to program in 3rd grade and it worked out quite well.
- silveroriole 6y ago
  Outside the big US tech jobs, software is already a menial job. Currently for quite a lot of money, but not even in the same order of magnitude as Silicon Valley pay.
- ukoki 6y ago
  > The Software Developers will follow the path of the Autoworkers of the 60s, once a high paid and esteemed profession which becomes a menial job with average pay. Not if we keep raising the barrier to entry by developing and making fashionable ever more complicated programming languages , libraries and concepts! /s
ghaff 6y ago
Even if you leave other countries out of the equation, equalized salaries across the country is far more likely to everyone being paid medium cost of living salaries (say, Chicago), rather than Bay Area.
satyrnein 6y ago
Imagine how much more software would be written, how it might change the world.
nivenkos 6y ago
Even low cost areas like Western Europe. Tech salaries in Europe are about 1/3 of the US salaries, even for exactly the same job (in enterprises).
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
  You mean high cost areas like Western Europe?

Loughla 6y ago

Learn a lesson from the manufacturing fields. The jobs left because they could be cheaper somewhere else. It was a greater good for a much larger number of people, but for those at the top of the pay scale, it was a severe reduction in quality of life. Shooting for a higher average has the effect of bringing up a ton of folks' incomes, while negatively impacting a few. You, too, could be the few.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

sremani 6y ago

The Software Developers will follow the path of the Autoworkers of the 60s, once a high paid and esteemed profession which becomes a menial job with average pay. It is not that far either, I bet Software Developers do not have beyond 7 years for this to take shape and of course, those massive layoffs are just around the corner when remote works becomes the standard.

kome 6y ago
> The Software Developers will follow the path of the Autoworkers of the 60s, once a high paid and esteemed profession which becomes a menial job with average pay. yeah... but the choice here is political, it's not the natural forces of the market (it's rarely the natural forces of the market). Working in Germany as autoworkers, you still get a more than decent wage. Sure, work is hard. But money is good. America instead, decided to get cheap till the point to move plants to Mexico or Asia. It was a political choice.
- internet_user 6y ago
  offshoring has been happening for a long time. Why would this be an issue now all of a sudden?
  - kome 6y ago
    Offshoring was a political decision. a decision that needed political consensus, action and supervision (to open capital markets, to set standards, to trade deals, to keep exchange rate stable, etc., etc.) Offshoring doesn't happen in a vacuum. And in some countries, offshoring hit harder than in others. For instance, Germany and Italy are still export powerhouses. This, again, was a political decision. In the US the decision was to privilege financial and tech industry, more than production industry. It was a strategy, and like every strategy it created some winner and some losers. Americans have to decide if keeping this strategy or trying something else.
macinjosh 6y ago
Were auto workers considered skilled laborers? The value of a software engineer is that there is a skill there that takes significant time and effort to learn before you can be useful. Not sure if there is an equivalence there.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  Having worked at a US automotive plant as a SWE: yes, they were and they still should be. I don't consider them any less skilled because their work is merely different than mine as an engineer whose primary tool is a keyboard versus a high-pressure water jet. Their skills are just different.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    I don’t think the tool is as important as the what you’re doing with it. QA is done with a keyboard but is considered less skilled. Sculpting statues may use a water jet but would be considered more skilled. So the question seems to me: what are people doing with these water jets in US automotive plants? How long does it take to learn? How much variance is there in ability? (We talk about 10x programmers, are there 10x machinists?)
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      (We talk about 10x programmers, are there 10x machinists?) Yes. Why wouldn't there be? Asking honestly? A story, if you will-because I have a very intimate relationship with industrial machinists: My father was a certified industrial welder, pipe fitter and metallurgist for General Electric's gas turbine division for 32 years (he was also a licensed master electrician) He was the only individual in his functional team with the number of licenses and depth of mechanical engineering background to his name. He oversaw several manufacturing retrofits in their plant, and lead a team of 10 other engineers, all of whom through his time and tenure became family friends. I know all of their stories and backgrounds intimately. When he left GE due to layoffs in the early 1990's, he opened his own shop and hired several of those machinists to come work for him. Despite getting to see this work daily, up close, and learn for myself the family trade of metal smithing (both of my brothers, my father, two of his brothers and my grandfather were all metal workers and passed down the trade through to my generation), I was the first to cross over the digital divide and go white collar as a full-time career, but I still have a strong appreciation for mechanized labor and I took this with me into automotive. So, all of that said, to answer the question, I think yes, there absolutely are 10x machinists (I don't personally buy into the "10x" thing generally-at least not the way it is sometimes applied, but in alignment with your question, yes) and I remain firm in my objection that these people are less skilled because their skills are different or differently applied than ours as SWEs.
Ekaros 6y ago
I don't think Software Developers or related fields will do too badly. It's still skilled and specialised work just like trades. What I imagine will be hit much harder is more average positions that don't really need skills outside just having a degree...
haspok 6y ago
> Software development (...) becomes a menial job with average pay. If I had a cent for every time I heard this in the past 25 years... it started with the 4GL craze, at least that's when I started. And look where we are now. The truth is that software development is an inherently complex process. You can automate the menial parts of it (and you probably should), but can never tackle the core of its complexity. Writing performant programs is hard and always will be. Writing correct concurrent programs is hard and always will be. Constructing easily understandable and refactorable business logic implementations is hard and always will be. And there is no silver bullet.
- WJW 6y ago
  That is also true of automaking though. There are some parts that are just hard and can't be automated away. The argument GP made was that someone in the EU can write correct concurrent programs for ~60k/year (and feel they are makng great money) instead of the 100k+ you need to pay someone in the US. Software jobs are even easier to offshore than car manufacturing plants.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bluedino 6y ago
The lower to mid-skill positions already have been. The IT jobs that were like assembly line jobs (support, helpdesk, CRUD programming) has been outsourced like crazy to the rest of the world.
proverbialbunny 6y ago
Kids today are being taught to program in elementary school.
- wkearney99 6y ago
  Mmmm, not all kids, and not all 'kinds' of programming. Yes, they're being made more aware that programming exists and is necessary, but that's not the same as "being taught to program".
  - proverbialbunny 6y ago
    It definitely depends on the school. I learned how to program in 3rd grade and it worked out quite well.
silveroriole 6y ago
Outside the big US tech jobs, software is already a menial job. Currently for quite a lot of money, but not even in the same order of magnitude as Silicon Valley pay.
ukoki 6y ago
> The Software Developers will follow the path of the Autoworkers of the 60s, once a high paid and esteemed profession which becomes a menial job with average pay. Not if we keep raising the barrier to entry by developing and making fashionable ever more complicated programming languages , libraries and concepts! /s

ghaff 6y ago

Even if you leave other countries out of the equation, equalized salaries across the country is far more likely to everyone being paid medium cost of living salaries (say, Chicago), rather than Bay Area.

satyrnein 6y ago

Imagine how much more software would be written, how it might change the world.

nivenkos 6y ago

Even low cost areas like Western Europe. Tech salaries in Europe are about 1/3 of the US salaries, even for exactly the same job (in enterprises).

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
You mean high cost areas like Western Europe?