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While I agree, as someone who is effectively self-taught, it's really troubling to me what we get paid for the quality and quantity we produce collectively. I

While I agree, as someone who is effectively self-taught, it's really troubling to me what we get paid for the quality and quantity we produce collectively. I bet a lot of folks here won't want to hear this, but we really are vastly overpaid for what we do. Everywhere I've worked, and I mean everywhere, there's a lot of frankly bad practices that are bad for users and create bullshit work for everyone involved. Just because you've installed a bunch of linters, have 80%+ coverage, and use Code Climate does not mean that your code isn't fundamentally flawed and a liability. I do think this stems largely from there being effectively no credentials required to be a software engineer. Whether or not your code is "good" mostly depends on your title, seniority, and social clout. If the software breaks, you just keep fixing it and you look like a hero because you're constantly opening and closing Jira tickets. Junior developers learn to code without bothering to consider the philosophy, history, and discipline of code. It's all just to "get shit done", and there's consequences to this. Things are written to not be accessible, and if they are written poorly then it can be difficult to implement accessibility, thus many are cut out of participation. People's account data and credentials get exposed. Countless millions of $ are spent deciphering code written by people who believe their shit doesn't stink (the code documents itself bruh), and countless hours of lifetime are depleted. People are outright ripped off when companies release software, namely games, that are written atrociously. Do we really need this many engineers to write GUIs around databases? I seriously question this. Should we really get paid this much for a job where we can be inefficient with almost no consequence? I argue that we should have standardized accreditation. How we would implement it, I don't really know. The obvious counterargument is how bass-ackwards many college computer science and programming courses are.

yourapostasy 5y ago
This is the typical “just world” rant of the junior to mid-range devs. Did this exact rant back in my day. I’ve been in those shops that “consider the philosophy, history and discipline of code”. Your counterparts in those organizations? They’re ranting against the waste they see going on. The reality is more nuanced. If you were handed a multi-thousand developer organization, business goals, and a fixed budget by the BoD via the CEO and CIO, your theories of “how it should be” won’t make it past the first fiscal quarter. This is the next level awareness of what Brooks meant by “no silver bullet”. He wasn’t just talking about coding tooling, he also meant these kinds of diatribes we all evolve through in our career. We aren’t paid to only cut code. We’re paid to help deliver an outcome. Outcomes at the business level are not evaluated by the same criteria you personally use, despite what your immediate business liaisons tell you; you need the C-to-upper-management perspective to start to understand the real decision factors. Before you make assumptions about companies not knowing at industry aggregates level how to pay developers, first go manage a multi-hundred to multi-thousand person engineering organization with balance sheet and P/L LOB insight into their real impact as crunched by the finance wonks. Then you’d know the real cost benefit you currently assume the finance people in aggregate don’t know. We absolutely can and must do better as an industry, and I see us every month making incremental progress (this is much more difficult to see in the first half of your career because you struggle to get a feel for what is and isn’t progress that business cares about). That doesn’t preclude us from obtaining useful outcomes given prevailing conditions (including pay as a very small factor).
pydry 5y ago
>I bet a lot of folks here won't want to hear this, but we really are vastly overpaid for what we do. Yeah, coz this view is driven largely by the just world fallacy. Either that or the perplexing idea that quality of life is driven by iphone ownership and cheap clothes rather than availability of medical care, education and a roof over your head. The fact that education, home ownership and medical care are still reasonably priced compared to our incomes but almost nobody else's while wealth inequality has taken off like a rocket suggests that it is most other professions that are underpaid - not us who are overpaid. The fact that our incomes kept up with productivity while median incomes decoupled in 1981 suggests likewise. I'm shopping for houses not quite as good as what my teacher parents were 40 years ago and I'm in the top 2% of incomes while they were a bit above average.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  > Yeah, this view is horribly toxic. Yeah, how dare I have a viewpoint. Goodness gracious. > The fact that education, home ownership and medical care are reasonably priced compared to our incomes but nobody else's while wealth inequality has taken off like a rocket suggests that it is most other professions that are underpaid - not us who are overpaid. Both can be true at the same time. In my personal opinion, if a lot of common practices seen in the software industry went away, the cushiness of our jobs would be glaringly obvious. Did you not see that my point is that I witness us creating busywork for ourselves? If it could be measured and validated that my experience matches reality, what would be the argument for being paid this much? And yes, I know that different parts of the world pay engineers differently. I can only really comment on how engineers in much of the United States are paid. If I can't call out work for being shoddy and excessive, then that kind of proves my point. Why should I get paid more than other jobs that require more skill despite if my work is garbage? > The fact that education, home ownership and medical care are reasonably priced compared to our incomes Come again? I wouldn't call any of those things reasonably priced even at my income.
  - pydry 5y ago
    >Come again? I wouldn't call any of those things reasonably priced even at my income. To me that says underpaid. Personally, I can afford them. I'd say that makes me middle class. Most of my friends cannot. They are assuredly not. In the 1950s these things were available on a non-college degree wage.
sureglymop 5y ago
> we are vastly overpaid for what we do. I highly disagree. I think everyone else is underpaid. Will not explain further because i don't think discussions are allowed to get more political than that here.
- azemetre 5y ago
  I agree. It's hard to argue software developers are overpaid when the executive leadership are making hundreds of millions (some even billions). Seems absolutely terrible to attack the smaller fish compared to the truly 0.01%. Especially when the billionaires are directly influencing the country. Let me know when a staff engineer at Twilio or Square is able to influence the media people consume, and I might feign worry.
bGl2YW5j 5y ago
The "high tech illusion" concept spoken about by the book "Peopleware" relates to this. It's the idea that software engineering is viewed as a high-tech profession on par with something like rocket engineering. In reality, software engineering is closer to an assembly line process wherein we simply arrange and connect pre-made components (e.g. APIs).

yourapostasy 5y ago

This is the typical “just world” rant of the junior to mid-range devs. Did this exact rant back in my day. I’ve been in those shops that “consider the philosophy, history and discipline of code”. Your counterparts in those organizations? They’re ranting against the waste they see going on. The reality is more nuanced. If you were handed a multi-thousand developer organization, business goals, and a fixed budget by the BoD via the CEO and CIO, your theories of “how it should be” won’t make it past the first fiscal quarter. This is the next level awareness of what Brooks meant by “no silver bullet”. He wasn’t just talking about coding tooling, he also meant these kinds of diatribes we all evolve through in our career. We aren’t paid to only cut code. We’re paid to help deliver an outcome. Outcomes at the business level are not evaluated by the same criteria you personally use, despite what your immediate business liaisons tell you; you need the C-to-upper-management perspective to start to understand the real decision factors. Before you make assumptions about companies not knowing at industry aggregates level how to pay developers, first go manage a multi-hundred to multi-thousand person engineering organization with balance sheet and P/L LOB insight into their real impact as crunched by the finance wonks. Then you’d know the real cost benefit you currently assume the finance people in aggregate don’t know. We absolutely can and must do better as an industry, and I see us every month making incremental progress (this is much more difficult to see in the first half of your career because you struggle to get a feel for what is and isn’t progress that business cares about). That doesn’t preclude us from obtaining useful outcomes given prevailing conditions (including pay as a very small factor).

pydry 5y ago

>I bet a lot of folks here won't want to hear this, but we really are vastly overpaid for what we do. Yeah, coz this view is driven largely by the just world fallacy. Either that or the perplexing idea that quality of life is driven by iphone ownership and cheap clothes rather than availability of medical care, education and a roof over your head. The fact that education, home ownership and medical care are still reasonably priced compared to our incomes but almost nobody else's while wealth inequality has taken off like a rocket suggests that it is most other professions that are underpaid - not us who are overpaid. The fact that our incomes kept up with productivity while median incomes decoupled in 1981 suggests likewise. I'm shopping for houses not quite as good as what my teacher parents were 40 years ago and I'm in the top 2% of incomes while they were a bit above average.

ravenstine 5y ago
> Yeah, this view is horribly toxic. Yeah, how dare I have a viewpoint. Goodness gracious. > The fact that education, home ownership and medical care are reasonably priced compared to our incomes but nobody else's while wealth inequality has taken off like a rocket suggests that it is most other professions that are underpaid - not us who are overpaid. Both can be true at the same time. In my personal opinion, if a lot of common practices seen in the software industry went away, the cushiness of our jobs would be glaringly obvious. Did you not see that my point is that I witness us creating busywork for ourselves? If it could be measured and validated that my experience matches reality, what would be the argument for being paid this much? And yes, I know that different parts of the world pay engineers differently. I can only really comment on how engineers in much of the United States are paid. If I can't call out work for being shoddy and excessive, then that kind of proves my point. Why should I get paid more than other jobs that require more skill despite if my work is garbage? > The fact that education, home ownership and medical care are reasonably priced compared to our incomes Come again? I wouldn't call any of those things reasonably priced even at my income.
- pydry 5y ago
  >Come again? I wouldn't call any of those things reasonably priced even at my income. To me that says underpaid. Personally, I can afford them. I'd say that makes me middle class. Most of my friends cannot. They are assuredly not. In the 1950s these things were available on a non-college degree wage.

sureglymop 5y ago

> we are vastly overpaid for what we do. I highly disagree. I think everyone else is underpaid. Will not explain further because i don't think discussions are allowed to get more political than that here.

azemetre 5y ago
I agree. It's hard to argue software developers are overpaid when the executive leadership are making hundreds of millions (some even billions). Seems absolutely terrible to attack the smaller fish compared to the truly 0.01%. Especially when the billionaires are directly influencing the country. Let me know when a staff engineer at Twilio or Square is able to influence the media people consume, and I might feign worry.

bGl2YW5j 5y ago

The "high tech illusion" concept spoken about by the book "Peopleware" relates to this. It's the idea that software engineering is viewed as a high-tech profession on par with something like rocket engineering. In reality, software engineering is closer to an assembly line process wherein we simply arrange and connect pre-made components (e.g. APIs).