4 ms·

Traits? What traits? Is the implication here that Americans aren't hard workers? That's the only interpretation that parses.

by kfprt 5y ago

dang_p3n1s 5y ago
americans aren’t particularly hard workers… Does that “parse”…?
closeparen 5y ago
The intelligence and conscientiousness required to do high-end software engineering work may well be uniformly distributed. But I think we're probably at a point where there's more capital looking to hire people like this, than there are Americans like this.
- kfprt 5y ago
  So most Americans are lazy and stupid? Only 7.7% of Americans work in tech, what about the other 92.3%, what are they? Note that's 7.7% of the workforce not population. https://connect.comptia.org/content/research/cyberstates-2020 https://connect.comptia.org/content/research/cyberstates-202...
  - mmarq 5y ago
    We would be lying to ourselves if we pretended that we could turn all the Jobseeker’s Allowance material into software developers with some training, just for the sake of not hiring a Mexican or a Rumanian.
    - kfprt 5y ago
      Do we need everyone to be a software developer or just a few more? I'm sure we could increase the numbers if we actually tried.
      - closeparen 5y ago
        Software engineers today are not just doing ROI positive work, but extremely ROI positive work. Our collective contribution the economy would not be maximized until the point where even the most marginally useful projects could get competently staffed. We are very far from that world.
        kfprt 5y ago
        I'll believe that when you start paying corporate taxes. https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21144291/facebook-irs-lawsuit-9-billion-taxes https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21144291/facebook-irs-law...
      - mmarq 5y ago
        I tend to think that almost everybody who can work in tech, where almost everybody is self-learned, already does so or will do so once they get old enough. It's not law or medicine that have high barriers to enter. I'm not saying you can't train literally anybody, but the bulk of the population of any given country is not fungible, so if you have a large tech industry you will inevitably hire massively abroad.
        kfprt 5y ago
        Tech isn't special, the population is absolutely fungible. There are tons of people who could work in tech but don't, I know many of them.
        mmarq 5y ago
        If anybody could work in tech or law or medicine, programmers and lawyers and doctors would be paid no more than cleaners, which can be replaced by a rando in a matter of days if not hours (read: the population is absolutely fungible). What makes tech special, compared to other high-paying sectors, is that there is almost no barrier to entry. You don't need to spend 10 years in medical school or to pass a bar exam: many tech professionals are self-taught and getting an entry level job takes 2 months of training to a person with the right aptitudes. If somebody is not in tech, it's not because I'm sponsoring a dude from Moldova, which is a pain and I'd really really prefer to hire a local, but more likely because either they don't like to work in tech or they don't have the cognitive ability to pursue a career in tech. Then there's the occasional guy with the right aptitudes and interests who couldn't start a career in tech because they were somehow unlucky, but we are talking about a miniscule fraction of the population that wouldn't be enough to make any difference, we don't have hundreds of thousands of very smart people on the dole because Moldovans stole their tech jobs. This is why we have been making fun of those saying coal miners should learn to code.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - closeparen 5y ago
    I would be surprised if as many as 7% of the people in my high school and undergraduate physics classes had plausible futures as physicists. I certainly didn't. It was maybe three individuals. That doesn't make the rest of us lazy or dumb, it just makes us not physicists. The faculties for software engineering are not quite so rare, but I would argue there's a similar dynamic going on.

Traits? What traits? Is the implication here that Americans aren't hard workers? That's the only interpretation that parses.

by kfprt 5y ago

Traits? What traits? Is the implication here that Americans aren't hard workers? That's the only interpretation that parses.

dang_p3n1s 5y ago

americans aren’t particularly hard workers… Does that “parse”…?

closeparen 5y ago

The intelligence and conscientiousness required to do high-end software engineering work may well be uniformly distributed. But I think we're probably at a point where there's more capital looking to hire people like this, than there are Americans like this.

kfprt 5y ago
So most Americans are lazy and stupid? Only 7.7% of Americans work in tech, what about the other 92.3%, what are they? Note that's 7.7% of the workforce not population. https://connect.comptia.org/content/research/cyberstates-2020 https://connect.comptia.org/content/research/cyberstates-202...
- mmarq 5y ago
  We would be lying to ourselves if we pretended that we could turn all the Jobseeker’s Allowance material into software developers with some training, just for the sake of not hiring a Mexican or a Rumanian.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    Do we need everyone to be a software developer or just a few more? I'm sure we could increase the numbers if we actually tried.
    - closeparen 5y ago
      Software engineers today are not just doing ROI positive work, but extremely ROI positive work. Our collective contribution the economy would not be maximized until the point where even the most marginally useful projects could get competently staffed. We are very far from that world.
      - kfprt 5y ago
        I'll believe that when you start paying corporate taxes. https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21144291/facebook-irs-lawsuit-9-billion-taxes https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21144291/facebook-irs-law...
    - mmarq 5y ago
      I tend to think that almost everybody who can work in tech, where almost everybody is self-learned, already does so or will do so once they get old enough. It's not law or medicine that have high barriers to enter. I'm not saying you can't train literally anybody, but the bulk of the population of any given country is not fungible, so if you have a large tech industry you will inevitably hire massively abroad.
      - kfprt 5y ago
        Tech isn't special, the population is absolutely fungible. There are tons of people who could work in tech but don't, I know many of them.
        mmarq 5y ago
        If anybody could work in tech or law or medicine, programmers and lawyers and doctors would be paid no more than cleaners, which can be replaced by a rando in a matter of days if not hours (read: the population is absolutely fungible). What makes tech special, compared to other high-paying sectors, is that there is almost no barrier to entry. You don't need to spend 10 years in medical school or to pass a bar exam: many tech professionals are self-taught and getting an entry level job takes 2 months of training to a person with the right aptitudes. If somebody is not in tech, it's not because I'm sponsoring a dude from Moldova, which is a pain and I'd really really prefer to hire a local, but more likely because either they don't like to work in tech or they don't have the cognitive ability to pursue a career in tech. Then there's the occasional guy with the right aptitudes and interests who couldn't start a career in tech because they were somehow unlucky, but we are talking about a miniscule fraction of the population that wouldn't be enough to make any difference, we don't have hundreds of thousands of very smart people on the dole because Moldovans stole their tech jobs. This is why we have been making fun of those saying coal miners should learn to code.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- closeparen 5y ago
  I would be surprised if as many as 7% of the people in my high school and undergraduate physics classes had plausible futures as physicists. I certainly didn't. It was maybe three individuals. That doesn't make the rest of us lazy or dumb, it just makes us not physicists. The faculties for software engineering are not quite so rare, but I would argue there's a similar dynamic going on.