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Demand for programmers is at an all-time high, and grows every year. There are no signs of a slowdown I know about. Someone has to write the cloud SAAS and buil

Demand for programmers is at an all-time high, and grows every year. There are no signs of a slowdown I know about. Someone has to write the cloud SAAS and build the infrastructure and integration around those. Companies grow, requirements change, technologies evolve. I’ve been hearing predictions about demand for programming skills decreasing for 4 decades, it has yet to happen.

iExploder 5y ago
it may grow, however isnt it because of lot of BS work like maintain our webpage or ancient billing SW, glue stuff together for our "startup"?
- gregjor 5y ago
  BS stuff like getting paid a lot of money to write code? Your BS may be my bread and butter. It’s possible some segment of programmers will obsolete themselves by calling actual business requirements BS, or insisting that they will only work in Clojure on new development with a custom standing desk from home and never have to attend a meeting or engage with the rest of the company. But the work is there, more of it every day, and it’s only boring BS if you perceive it that way.
  - travisporter 5y ago
    Same boat as you very grateful for my job but pwrent may have a point that such old systems may be phased out.
  - iExploder 5y ago
    BS jobs must be automated or deprecated. you may find a short term security in being a doorman for someone but for both of our sake I hope soon we will be freed from such toil.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      LOL. My GPS recently tried to route my car through a pedestrian-only plaza on GWU campus. I don’t think it’s been open to vehicles for 30 years. We have no prospect at this time (without some unexpected and unpredictable breakthrough in science) of automating even simple programming jobs.
    - ChrisLTD 5y ago
      You can find dignity in all kinds of work. You may not want to be a doorman, but someone else might love it.
    - gregjor 5y ago
      Working on legacy code, doing work that isn’t the fad of the month, is not the same as a BS job. That kind of work is the least likely to get automated or deprecated. Right now data science and ML are increasingly automated and commoditized. Cookie-cutter web sites are easy to build with SAAS off-the-shelf. It’s the niche custom domains and legacy code maintenance that are not commodity work or the target of “no-code/low-code” tools.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Being responsible for your work includes maintaining legacy code. And more importantly, when required code that ain't yours, plenty of people that don't do and don't like it unfortunately. But it's useful to know which mistakes were made so you don't need to repeat them.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>I’ve been hearing predictions about demand for programming skills decreasing for 4 decades, it has yet to happen. The market was definitely down after the dot com bust. If interest rates rise substantially then I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of the VC money disappearing followed by a drop in demand.
- gregjor 5y ago
  I survived the dot-com bust. At that time I had 20 years of experience programming. I worked at a cool hip marketing/multimedia company when the bottom dropped out. The programmers who only had experience doing .com startup nonsense and very little tech background ended up working at Borders and Starbucks (actual examples). I went to a logistics company working on an Oracle code base. Lesson: don’t over-specialize, don’t self-limit your career. I have worked steadily as a programmer for 40 years, always plenty of demand even if it shifts around business domains. Watch out for fads. Old things like relational databases and Unix/Linux hang on for a reason. Younger less-experienced programmers I worked with who got laid off in 2000 when their startup tanked struggled for a long time to get back to their pre-bust salaries. They were probably overpaid in the first place, hired in as fresh talent in an overheated VC-driven job market that was not sustainable. When that happens it’s disillusioning and depressing. I see that happening again, kids fresh out of college hired at Facebook/Meta at crazy salaries that no other employer will match if/when Meta tanks.

iExploder 5y ago

it may grow, however isnt it because of lot of BS work like maintain our webpage or ancient billing SW, glue stuff together for our "startup"?

gregjor 5y ago
BS stuff like getting paid a lot of money to write code? Your BS may be my bread and butter. It’s possible some segment of programmers will obsolete themselves by calling actual business requirements BS, or insisting that they will only work in Clojure on new development with a custom standing desk from home and never have to attend a meeting or engage with the rest of the company. But the work is there, more of it every day, and it’s only boring BS if you perceive it that way.
- travisporter 5y ago
  Same boat as you very grateful for my job but pwrent may have a point that such old systems may be phased out.
- iExploder 5y ago
  BS jobs must be automated or deprecated. you may find a short term security in being a doorman for someone but for both of our sake I hope soon we will be freed from such toil.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    LOL. My GPS recently tried to route my car through a pedestrian-only plaza on GWU campus. I don’t think it’s been open to vehicles for 30 years. We have no prospect at this time (without some unexpected and unpredictable breakthrough in science) of automating even simple programming jobs.
  - ChrisLTD 5y ago
    You can find dignity in all kinds of work. You may not want to be a doorman, but someone else might love it.
  - gregjor 5y ago
    Working on legacy code, doing work that isn’t the fad of the month, is not the same as a BS job. That kind of work is the least likely to get automated or deprecated. Right now data science and ML are increasingly automated and commoditized. Cookie-cutter web sites are easy to build with SAAS off-the-shelf. It’s the niche custom domains and legacy code maintenance that are not commodity work or the target of “no-code/low-code” tools.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
Being responsible for your work includes maintaining legacy code. And more importantly, when required code that ain't yours, plenty of people that don't do and don't like it unfortunately. But it's useful to know which mistakes were made so you don't need to repeat them.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

>I’ve been hearing predictions about demand for programming skills decreasing for 4 decades, it has yet to happen. The market was definitely down after the dot com bust. If interest rates rise substantially then I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of the VC money disappearing followed by a drop in demand.

gregjor 5y ago
I survived the dot-com bust. At that time I had 20 years of experience programming. I worked at a cool hip marketing/multimedia company when the bottom dropped out. The programmers who only had experience doing .com startup nonsense and very little tech background ended up working at Borders and Starbucks (actual examples). I went to a logistics company working on an Oracle code base. Lesson: don’t over-specialize, don’t self-limit your career. I have worked steadily as a programmer for 40 years, always plenty of demand even if it shifts around business domains. Watch out for fads. Old things like relational databases and Unix/Linux hang on for a reason. Younger less-experienced programmers I worked with who got laid off in 2000 when their startup tanked struggled for a long time to get back to their pre-bust salaries. They were probably overpaid in the first place, hired in as fresh talent in an overheated VC-driven job market that was not sustainable. When that happens it’s disillusioning and depressing. I see that happening again, kids fresh out of college hired at Facebook/Meta at crazy salaries that no other employer will match if/when Meta tanks.