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This is my nightmare. My current delusion that keeps me stable - is that since I know the fundamentals straight, like what makes a processor better, what makes

This is my nightmare. My current delusion that keeps me stable - is that since I know the fundamentals straight, like what makes a processor better, what makes a language better and what makes a framework/library better I should be able float and proactively sense incoming waves. But only time can tell what happens to current generation software engineers who get old.

kleiba 5y ago
Right. There's also an amazing influx of new competition from countries where wages are a lot cheaper than in the West. Give it 10, 20 more years, and programmers might be the new factory workers: easy to replace, and hence not a valuable asset any more. You might think "But hey! Factory work is mostly manual labor that almost anyone can do. Programming needs intellectual acumen.", and watch kids with AI-powered tools eat your lunch.
- bakuninsbart 5y ago
  This is one of the few big disadvantages of being from an English-speaking country. Here in Germany, being fluent in German is still a major plus in job interviews that the vast majority of global talent doesn't have. It gets less relevant as business gets ever more international, but for now at least it definetely made it easier to get my career started and progress.
  - kleiba 5y ago
    Agreed. It's also a fact often ignored by politics and administration: my local university now offers all CS lectures in English to attract international students. Consequently, there are lots of them, and there's little incentive for them to learn the local language as they can get along in every day life pretty well, given that they stay mostly amongst themselves. But once they graduate and start looking for jobs in the same area that they've become acquainted with over the course of three years or so, and where by now their center of life really is, they find out the same thing you report about Germany: outside the university circles, you won't get very far with English. So the majority will go back home again after a while, often times not so much by choice but just because they're forced to. I imagine this is double tragic for a place like Germany where studying is (almost) free: you give international students a high-quality, free education which is then promptly taken out of the country again.
    - bakuninsbart 5y ago
      That's very true, and now that you mention it, my Bachelor's degree had 30 points reserved for "General job market skills", I took some courses in project management and Chinese, but I don't think there were any for learning German as a foreign language. That's actually a surprisingly big oversight, and I might ask around in my party about plans to account for that. On the last point I'd say though that they are of course welcome to stay, but also welcome to take their skills back home. I made a lot of friends from developing nations, or wartorn places like Syria, that will hopefully make a real difference there. Giving free education to talented people is probably one of the most effective ways to help the world become a better place.
ilaksh 5y ago
You should be more worried about AI in the future. And that will affect the young programmers just as much as the old ones. And just to clarify, this concern is not about the current programming-related AI technologies, which have nothing like human abilities. It's about anticipating advances that have not yet occurred.

kleiba 5y ago

Right. There's also an amazing influx of new competition from countries where wages are a lot cheaper than in the West. Give it 10, 20 more years, and programmers might be the new factory workers: easy to replace, and hence not a valuable asset any more. You might think "But hey! Factory work is mostly manual labor that almost anyone can do. Programming needs intellectual acumen.", and watch kids with AI-powered tools eat your lunch.

bakuninsbart 5y ago
This is one of the few big disadvantages of being from an English-speaking country. Here in Germany, being fluent in German is still a major plus in job interviews that the vast majority of global talent doesn't have. It gets less relevant as business gets ever more international, but for now at least it definetely made it easier to get my career started and progress.
- kleiba 5y ago
  Agreed. It's also a fact often ignored by politics and administration: my local university now offers all CS lectures in English to attract international students. Consequently, there are lots of them, and there's little incentive for them to learn the local language as they can get along in every day life pretty well, given that they stay mostly amongst themselves. But once they graduate and start looking for jobs in the same area that they've become acquainted with over the course of three years or so, and where by now their center of life really is, they find out the same thing you report about Germany: outside the university circles, you won't get very far with English. So the majority will go back home again after a while, often times not so much by choice but just because they're forced to. I imagine this is double tragic for a place like Germany where studying is (almost) free: you give international students a high-quality, free education which is then promptly taken out of the country again.
  - bakuninsbart 5y ago
    That's very true, and now that you mention it, my Bachelor's degree had 30 points reserved for "General job market skills", I took some courses in project management and Chinese, but I don't think there were any for learning German as a foreign language. That's actually a surprisingly big oversight, and I might ask around in my party about plans to account for that. On the last point I'd say though that they are of course welcome to stay, but also welcome to take their skills back home. I made a lot of friends from developing nations, or wartorn places like Syria, that will hopefully make a real difference there. Giving free education to talented people is probably one of the most effective ways to help the world become a better place.

ilaksh 5y ago

You should be more worried about AI in the future. And that will affect the young programmers just as much as the old ones. And just to clarify, this concern is not about the current programming-related AI technologies, which have nothing like human abilities. It's about anticipating advances that have not yet occurred.