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This comes up regularly here and I always feel that I need to point out the elephant in the room each time. From a previous post... "The fact that most enginee

by jmfldn 5y ago

This comes up regularly here and I always feel that I need to point out the elephant in the room each time. From a previous post... "The fact that most engineers are young is much more to do with the numbers in the profession doubling every five years in the last twenty years imho. If you were an engineer twenty years ago, there are now sixteen times more engineers. Your peer group is going to look pretty small therefore. All of these younger engineers are going to get older too of course, and the demand won't keep on growing at this rate, so inevitably the ratio of young vs old devs will even out." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28294734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28294734 I don't deny that there are other factors but this simple numerical fact accounts for a lot. The vast numbers of 20 and 30 something developers around now are not all going to become consultants, managers, founders.

cottsak 5y ago
This is a good point and is one possible explanation for the apparently lack of movement in the SO poll 10 years on
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  The other one being who is being asked; do 30+ year olds still frequent SO and participate in the surveys? And the other one is, do the SO polls mention how many people replied?
- pw6hv 5y ago
  Exactly. Especially considering that the plot shows only percentages. For the author of the blog post it would be better to draw conclusions about 'developers disappearance' from a plot showing absolute numbers.
- ChrisRR 5y ago
  The SO survey is an absolutely awful representation of the community, because it mainly represents the young inexperienced engineer and students who can't do much without googling. The longer you are in the industry, the less time you spend googling stuff. I'd say I probably end up on SO once every 2 months. There's probably huge swathes of devs who didn't even know there was a survey or never visit SO because they can generally get on with their job
  - ThereIsNoWorry 5y ago
    I super rarely use SO and even googling is relatively limited. Am in my first year out of University as a Software Engineer in a reputable conpany and get nothing but praise in my performance reviews. I have no idea what these memes about copy&pasting code from SO mean? Like, are they serious?
  - garren 5y ago
    I think you’re probably right. I’d bet that most of the survey respondents are relatively new, or frequent and established contributors. The data are likely skewed towards these individuals and not representative. I may end up on the site if I’m googling something, but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve asked a question, posted a reply, or voted on an answer in the past 5-6 years. SO is still a valuable resource, but, and I realize this is selfish, community participation stopped being interesting or useful a long time ago.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
    For my day-to-day job, I've visited SO under a dozen times in the last few years. Too much of what I deal with is some proprietary vendor SDK or chip where the data sheet is only released under NDA for SO to be of much use. I'm an embedded C developer. Right now, there are 366,183 questions tagged "c", 9,312 questions tagged "embedded", and 2,282,444 questions tagged "javascript". I don't use JS. Not that many embedded C developers are using SO. So I tend not to bother with SO.
    - ChrisRR 5y ago
      I'm an embedded dev too and I just barely use SO. Too often the questions are either out of date, not relevant or questions get flagged as duplicates because a tangentially related question has been answered for a different architecture and compiler
  - zarzavat 5y ago
    > The longer you are in the industry, the less time you spend googling stuff. Only if you stay in your comfort zone. Memorising all the symbols in Framework X isn't going to help when you have to use Framework Y.
jltsiren 5y ago
I don't know if I buy that argument. The number of new developers isn't much higher today than it was already in the 90s. I know plenty of former developers in a wide variety of jobs, and it looks like most people simply drop out in the first 10-15 years. Being a developer is not a good long-term career option, unless you really like the job. It demands much, but the pay isn't competitive, except for a small minority.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Does a software job at some government contractor that pays 90k really demand much more than a civil engineering job at some government contractor that pays 80k?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- luka-birsa 5y ago
  "Being a developer is not a good long-term career option, unless you really like the job. It demands much, but the pay isn't competitive, except for a small minority." 1. Being X is not a good long-term option, unless you like the job. 2. Not sure where you base you viewpoint, but I have a hard time finding a more competitive and global job market that favours candidates. 3. All high paying jobs demand much. Otherwise they wouldn't be high-paying.
  - jltsiren 5y ago
    My impression is that the top 20% of the job market pays competitively, while the bottom 80% doesn't. The average developer writes and maintains custom software for large organizations. While that kind of secretarial work is useful and necessary, it's not particularly valuable and doesn't pay that well.
    - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
      "Not competitive" for a software developer is still a pretty high paying job by most peoples' standards.

by jmfldn 5y ago

cottsak 5y ago

This is a good point and is one possible explanation for the apparently lack of movement in the SO poll 10 years on

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
The other one being who is being asked; do 30+ year olds still frequent SO and participate in the surveys? And the other one is, do the SO polls mention how many people replied?
pw6hv 5y ago
Exactly. Especially considering that the plot shows only percentages. For the author of the blog post it would be better to draw conclusions about 'developers disappearance' from a plot showing absolute numbers.
ChrisRR 5y ago
The SO survey is an absolutely awful representation of the community, because it mainly represents the young inexperienced engineer and students who can't do much without googling. The longer you are in the industry, the less time you spend googling stuff. I'd say I probably end up on SO once every 2 months. There's probably huge swathes of devs who didn't even know there was a survey or never visit SO because they can generally get on with their job
- ThereIsNoWorry 5y ago
  I super rarely use SO and even googling is relatively limited. Am in my first year out of University as a Software Engineer in a reputable conpany and get nothing but praise in my performance reviews. I have no idea what these memes about copy&pasting code from SO mean? Like, are they serious?
- garren 5y ago
  I think you’re probably right. I’d bet that most of the survey respondents are relatively new, or frequent and established contributors. The data are likely skewed towards these individuals and not representative. I may end up on the site if I’m googling something, but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve asked a question, posted a reply, or voted on an answer in the past 5-6 years. SO is still a valuable resource, but, and I realize this is selfish, community participation stopped being interesting or useful a long time ago.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
  For my day-to-day job, I've visited SO under a dozen times in the last few years. Too much of what I deal with is some proprietary vendor SDK or chip where the data sheet is only released under NDA for SO to be of much use. I'm an embedded C developer. Right now, there are 366,183 questions tagged "c", 9,312 questions tagged "embedded", and 2,282,444 questions tagged "javascript". I don't use JS. Not that many embedded C developers are using SO. So I tend not to bother with SO.
  - ChrisRR 5y ago
    I'm an embedded dev too and I just barely use SO. Too often the questions are either out of date, not relevant or questions get flagged as duplicates because a tangentially related question has been answered for a different architecture and compiler
- zarzavat 5y ago
  > The longer you are in the industry, the less time you spend googling stuff. Only if you stay in your comfort zone. Memorising all the symbols in Framework X isn't going to help when you have to use Framework Y.

jltsiren 5y ago

I don't know if I buy that argument. The number of new developers isn't much higher today than it was already in the 90s. I know plenty of former developers in a wide variety of jobs, and it looks like most people simply drop out in the first 10-15 years. Being a developer is not a good long-term career option, unless you really like the job. It demands much, but the pay isn't competitive, except for a small minority.

UncleMeat 5y ago
Does a software job at some government contractor that pays 90k really demand much more than a civil engineering job at some government contractor that pays 80k?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
luka-birsa 5y ago
"Being a developer is not a good long-term career option, unless you really like the job. It demands much, but the pay isn't competitive, except for a small minority." 1. Being X is not a good long-term option, unless you like the job. 2. Not sure where you base you viewpoint, but I have a hard time finding a more competitive and global job market that favours candidates. 3. All high paying jobs demand much. Otherwise they wouldn't be high-paying.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  My impression is that the top 20% of the job market pays competitively, while the bottom 80% doesn't. The average developer writes and maintains custom software for large organizations. While that kind of secretarial work is useful and necessary, it's not particularly valuable and doesn't pay that well.
  - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    "Not competitive" for a software developer is still a pretty high paying job by most peoples' standards.