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It's not a bug it's a feature! LICENSING WON'T INCREASE QUALITY OR SUPPLY Adding licensing to be a software engineer will not produce more or better software d

It's not a bug it's a feature! LICENSING WON'T INCREASE QUALITY OR SUPPLY Adding licensing to be a software engineer will not produce more or better software developers. LICENSING OBSOLETE IN FEW YEAR The software industry changes very fast and that's also because it doesn't have a ton of beuracracy weighting on it (yet). Try standardising exams to be a software developers, then everyone will have to know a language or practice of 10-20 years ago! Already this is happening with universities that are stuck teaching Java while clearly everyone should have moved to Javascript/Typescript/Python/Go/Rust by now. LICENSING ONLY GIVES ADVANTAGE TO SENIOR DEVELOPERS Finally, this type of licensing are also a way for the people already INSIDE to close the gate and allow less younger talent in to compete with them. Don't close the gate, move up in your career as software engineer and become an entrepreneur or manager and help younger developers rise up too.

kqr 5y ago
Yeah, licensing has always seemed to me like a sort of rent-seeking; artificially keeping the supply low to improve the pay of the insiders. It's not like we need that in software right now. Besides, software is a business that's surprisingly low on the bullshitisation that's taking over almost every other "serious" job, where people have ever less time to do their actual job and spend more time documenting how they do their job and justifying their choices with after-the-fact narratives that don't accomplish anything other than make someone look busy while producing nothing of value and increasing consumer costs.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  I think software developers are highly underpaid. The value delivered by solving a problem permanently is worth far more than $5-$10k a week. You end up working for a year at $300k to produce something that yields tens of millions of dollars for the company. Bad fucking deal.
  - giorgioz 5y ago
    I do think so too. Don't work for others than. Boostrap your own B2B SaaS company with Silicon Valley savings while living in cheap places! I worked 1 years in Silicon Valley and with that salary I was able to live for 3 years around Europe and South East Asia while building my company waiterio.com Now after 9 years I finally have the same salary of what I would be paid in Silicon Valley but I created a new company, created jobs and I won't sell to Google/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon to create monster monopoly. A
- erosenbe0 5y ago
  Licensing is untenable for software development outside of space or military. Companies would just offshore all work to somewhere with lesser requirements. On the other hand, things like barbering, teaching, truck driving, blood drawing, supervisory civil engineering, and the like can't be contracted remotely, so they naturally gravitate towards licensure in many cases.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    > Companies would just offshore all work to somewhere with lesser requirements. That didn't work out so great for Boeing.
    - erosenbe0 5y ago
      Airliners are the most complex products the world has to offer so not a good example. And if marketability to airline executives and time to market dunk on the engineering culture then it doesn't matter who does the work and with what credentials -- there will be screw ups.
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  The irony being that it's software that's allowed the massive expansion of bullshitisation and the transformation of society into performative simulation of human life. (this isn't an objection/rant to your post, it's just an opportune point to reply on how this relates to software quality) There are people in the world that create things. Then there are people in the world that take those things, and figure out how to make money. Then they seek to direct those who create. They take software and turn it to inappropriate ends, misuse it, abuse it, make it a panacea, a weapon, then a crutch. They build whole cities and societies around things they neither understand nor appreciate the origins of. And we let them. We build doll houses. They rent them out to a real family. It isn't that software cannot be engineering, but to make it so we'd have to change a whole stack of human relations and the world doesn't seem ready for that. I studied software engineering at the end of my CSEE degree and in 30 years, in all but a few medical/military applications where ISO documents properly govern _what_ is used, and _how_ it's used (not who makes it) I've been laughed at for even suggesting the principles I learned in software engineering. Software is still an experimental rocket burning fuel as fast it can to achieve escape velocity. There is not enough space in a short post to express how ridiculously I think the "software industry" is structured, but the solution is not regulation, which will make almost everything worse and kill innovation stone-dead. The solution lies with us. When programmers have ethics and courage, enough to say "no", it will make a vast difference.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    >The solution lies with us. When programmers have ethics and courage, enough to say "no", it will make a vast difference. In the context of your statement, how are you defining "ethics"? One could argue that it's completely ethical to trade one's information or skills on a subject to the highest bidder. That's how a job works. What someone does with a knife or book doesn't concern a storekeeper after the purchase. Absent any evidence of one's rights being violated, what does it matter what another person chooses to do after one has been compensated? He has his life and you have yours. >They take software and turn it to inappropriate ends, misuse it, abuse it, make it a panacea, a weapon, then a crutch. They build whole cities and societies around things they neither understand nor appreciate the origins of. In this context, who is or should be the arbiter of "inappropriate", "misuse", "abuse", etc. ? I agree with you that many people don't understand the totality or consequences of what they purchase. But is that to be held against them as evidence of "unworthiness" or that they must patronized?

kqr 5y ago

Yeah, licensing has always seemed to me like a sort of rent-seeking; artificially keeping the supply low to improve the pay of the insiders. It's not like we need that in software right now. Besides, software is a business that's surprisingly low on the bullshitisation that's taking over almost every other "serious" job, where people have ever less time to do their actual job and spend more time documenting how they do their job and justifying their choices with after-the-fact narratives that don't accomplish anything other than make someone look busy while producing nothing of value and increasing consumer costs.

datavirtue 5y ago
I think software developers are highly underpaid. The value delivered by solving a problem permanently is worth far more than $5-$10k a week. You end up working for a year at $300k to produce something that yields tens of millions of dollars for the company. Bad fucking deal.
- giorgioz 5y ago
  I do think so too. Don't work for others than. Boostrap your own B2B SaaS company with Silicon Valley savings while living in cheap places! I worked 1 years in Silicon Valley and with that salary I was able to live for 3 years around Europe and South East Asia while building my company waiterio.com Now after 9 years I finally have the same salary of what I would be paid in Silicon Valley but I created a new company, created jobs and I won't sell to Google/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon to create monster monopoly. A
erosenbe0 5y ago
Licensing is untenable for software development outside of space or military. Companies would just offshore all work to somewhere with lesser requirements. On the other hand, things like barbering, teaching, truck driving, blood drawing, supervisory civil engineering, and the like can't be contracted remotely, so they naturally gravitate towards licensure in many cases.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  > Companies would just offshore all work to somewhere with lesser requirements. That didn't work out so great for Boeing.
  - erosenbe0 5y ago
    Airliners are the most complex products the world has to offer so not a good example. And if marketability to airline executives and time to market dunk on the engineering culture then it doesn't matter who does the work and with what credentials -- there will be screw ups.
nonrandomstring 5y ago
The irony being that it's software that's allowed the massive expansion of bullshitisation and the transformation of society into performative simulation of human life. (this isn't an objection/rant to your post, it's just an opportune point to reply on how this relates to software quality) There are people in the world that create things. Then there are people in the world that take those things, and figure out how to make money. Then they seek to direct those who create. They take software and turn it to inappropriate ends, misuse it, abuse it, make it a panacea, a weapon, then a crutch. They build whole cities and societies around things they neither understand nor appreciate the origins of. And we let them. We build doll houses. They rent them out to a real family. It isn't that software cannot be engineering, but to make it so we'd have to change a whole stack of human relations and the world doesn't seem ready for that. I studied software engineering at the end of my CSEE degree and in 30 years, in all but a few medical/military applications where ISO documents properly govern _what_ is used, and _how_ it's used (not who makes it) I've been laughed at for even suggesting the principles I learned in software engineering. Software is still an experimental rocket burning fuel as fast it can to achieve escape velocity. There is not enough space in a short post to express how ridiculously I think the "software industry" is structured, but the solution is not regulation, which will make almost everything worse and kill innovation stone-dead. The solution lies with us. When programmers have ethics and courage, enough to say "no", it will make a vast difference.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  >The solution lies with us. When programmers have ethics and courage, enough to say "no", it will make a vast difference. In the context of your statement, how are you defining "ethics"? One could argue that it's completely ethical to trade one's information or skills on a subject to the highest bidder. That's how a job works. What someone does with a knife or book doesn't concern a storekeeper after the purchase. Absent any evidence of one's rights being violated, what does it matter what another person chooses to do after one has been compensated? He has his life and you have yours. >They take software and turn it to inappropriate ends, misuse it, abuse it, make it a panacea, a weapon, then a crutch. They build whole cities and societies around things they neither understand nor appreciate the origins of. In this context, who is or should be the arbiter of "inappropriate", "misuse", "abuse", etc. ? I agree with you that many people don't understand the totality or consequences of what they purchase. But is that to be held against them as evidence of "unworthiness" or that they must patronized?