5 ms·

>>"Programmer" sounds like "anomalously high-cost peon who types some mumbo-jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo." If you call yourself a programmer, someone is a

by credo 15y ago

>>"Programmer" sounds like "anomalously high-cost peon who types some mumbo-jumbo into some other mumbo-jumbo." If you call yourself a programmer, someone is already working on a way to get you fired. I call myself as a programmer because I enjoy programming and do a lot of programming as part of my job. It is unlikely that I'll get fired because I run the (tiny) company I work for :). and customers seem to like the products we sell in the app stores. Prior to starting this company, I was a Principal Development Manager,SDE Lead and Software Design Engineer at Microsoft. Describing myself as a programmer or a developer didn't hurt me there either. This is not to say that Patio doesn't make a good case about the need to focus on value created. Regardless of profession, you have to focus on the value you create. A doctor saves lives, a construction worker builds homes, a pilot takes people home etc. It is definitely possible for all of them to use MBA-speak mumbo-jumbo job-titles to describe what they do. Alternately, one could be a bit more of a plain-speaking, straight-talking person and just say that you're a doctor or a programmer or a pilot etc.

kennywinker 15y ago
It's a very business oriented article. E.g. "You’re in the business of unemploying people. If you think that is unfair, go back to school and study something that doesn’t matter.)" I for one have created more jobs than I've destroyed in my coding career. By building a business, as you've done, you're going in the opposite direction of this kind of sentiment.
- angusland 15y ago
  I think he was merely responding to the idea of unfairness by pointing out much software automates jobs away.
- emmett 15y ago
  Don't take this the wrong way, but ... really? I find that hard to believe. Pretty much all programming is in the short term unemployment producing, since pretty much all programming is automation. Automating a job means that no one does it anymore, hence one fewer job. In the long run those people are usually repurposed into productive work, and there are occasional moments where a programmer will create a massive number of jobs (see: whoever implemented adwords, creating an entire industry of professionals to optimize purchasing them). But that's the exception, not the rule.
  - scottschulthess 15y ago
    There are types of programming that create jobs, but you're right, most of them eliminate jobs while making the rich (owners of our companies) richer. Which kind of sucks if you think about it. The programming that creates job is the kind that sells to consumers. Pretty much any consumer product will create jobs. B2B will eliminate jobs. Most programming is B2B (I think...) because it's easier to take money from other companies. Examples of programming that creates jobs: Games Iphone Apps Todo lists Products that make money by showing advertising
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      If you work for a publicly-traded company, then you aren't really "making the rich richer", or at least not totally. Some of the biggest investors are pension and mutual funds, so it's quite likely that the success of your company is being shared by many fairly ordinary people.
    - mseebach 15y ago
      > Which kind of sucks if you think about it. Yeah, it totally sucked that the tractor came along and eliminated all those coveted farm hand jobs. Software is the tractor of our time. > Pretty much any consumer product will create jobs. Such as the iTunes store that overnight closed pretty much every single brick-and-mortar music store in the world (mild, but only mild, hyperbole)? > Examples of programming that creates jobs: Games doesn't automate a physical task, but it's silly to assume that they haven't displaced other kinds of entertainment, say, perhaps, comic books. (I consume neither games nor comic books, so I'm speculating) Whether an iPhone app has destroyed or created jobs depends on the app, after all it's just a computer program like any other. Take magazines and newspapers: There is NOTHING these businesses would like better than to shut down their printers and distribution divisions. Those are, if anything ever was, pure cost centres. Also, any app that lets you do something from your phone that you otherwise had to call a call centre to do probably isn't exactly a job creator. I don't know how todo-lists earned a spot on the list, but there is no reason to believe that they (and any other "productivity" app, say, a good e-mail client or calendar app) don't, on the margin, raise the barrier to needing a personal assistant/secretary. Advertising online is just one example of the lower-barriers-to-everything that the Internet has facilitated. Whether the Internet is a job creator probably depends on who you ask: A self-taught Rails dev or a Borders employee. EDIT: My point, which took a little while to crystallise, is that at businesses the things being automated away are larger and have individual accounts, so savings/consequences are very visible. When you download NYT to your iPad, they don't fire three guys in the printshop, they need a small fraction of one of them less. When you send an e-mail to your mother, a fraction of a person in the mail- or greeting cards industry is less needed. Etc.
- maaku 15y ago
  Either you're in a Cost Center or a Profit Center. As nearly all day-to-day programming is automation of some kind, costs are cut by eliminating menial labor. Revenues are increased by selling that automation to customers and clients. The sad sorry truth: your software puts people--somewhere--out of a job, thus saving money for that person's employer/customer. That's your value proposition. Now of course, the economy on the whole is not a zero-sum game. But you don't see that at the micro-economic level. It is rare indeed that a programmer creates new jobs without negative consequences somewhere else in the world...
mechanical_fish 15y ago
Once you run the company it doesn't matter what you call yourself. That is probably a great topic for another essay, assuming PG hasn't written it already. It might matter what you call the company or the product, however, since that is the brand that the people who pay you are seeing. Programmers are so literal. Let me try and translate: When Patrick says "don't call yourself a programmer" he isn't necessarily saying "never use the word 'programmer' in the same sentence as your own name". What he's saying is: When someone asks you what you do all day, don't just say "I program... stuff" or "I program in Lisp". What do you program? Why? What value do you create thereby?
- angelbob 15y ago
  Right. I might say "I'm a computer programmer", but I usually say it right after "me and five other guys track everything about all video plays for ESPN.com" or a rough equivalent.
  - mechanical_fish 15y ago
    See, there you go, that is awesome.
- Jach 15y ago
  I'm a programmer. I program things. What, specifically, changes pretty frequently still. Going into detail can be useful when trying to score social points from the smalltalk question of "So, what do you do?" But depending on what you program, I think for most people "programming" is sufficient compared to "I currently write software to manage an elastic computer server farm running data analysis jobs for people." In fact I think the former "programming" can give you more social cred--if you program things the other person can't comprehend an immediate use for, it may hurt you. "Oh you're one of those people that don't do anything useful." If they really want to know, they'll ask, and ask for more details if they care. Of course, I agree in general that when whoring yourself out to the corporate world it's best to make yourself sound as important as possible as long as possible, which is basically what I got from Patrick's post. "Programmer" doesn't contain enough information to make you seem important enough in BigCo. It's fine for scoring social points.

by credo 15y ago

kennywinker 15y ago

It's a very business oriented article. E.g. "You’re in the business of unemploying people. If you think that is unfair, go back to school and study something that doesn’t matter.)" I for one have created more jobs than I've destroyed in my coding career. By building a business, as you've done, you're going in the opposite direction of this kind of sentiment.

angusland 15y ago
I think he was merely responding to the idea of unfairness by pointing out much software automates jobs away.
emmett 15y ago
Don't take this the wrong way, but ... really? I find that hard to believe. Pretty much all programming is in the short term unemployment producing, since pretty much all programming is automation. Automating a job means that no one does it anymore, hence one fewer job. In the long run those people are usually repurposed into productive work, and there are occasional moments where a programmer will create a massive number of jobs (see: whoever implemented adwords, creating an entire industry of professionals to optimize purchasing them). But that's the exception, not the rule.
- scottschulthess 15y ago
  There are types of programming that create jobs, but you're right, most of them eliminate jobs while making the rich (owners of our companies) richer. Which kind of sucks if you think about it. The programming that creates job is the kind that sells to consumers. Pretty much any consumer product will create jobs. B2B will eliminate jobs. Most programming is B2B (I think...) because it's easier to take money from other companies. Examples of programming that creates jobs: Games Iphone Apps Todo lists Products that make money by showing advertising
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    If you work for a publicly-traded company, then you aren't really "making the rich richer", or at least not totally. Some of the biggest investors are pension and mutual funds, so it's quite likely that the success of your company is being shared by many fairly ordinary people.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    > Which kind of sucks if you think about it. Yeah, it totally sucked that the tractor came along and eliminated all those coveted farm hand jobs. Software is the tractor of our time. > Pretty much any consumer product will create jobs. Such as the iTunes store that overnight closed pretty much every single brick-and-mortar music store in the world (mild, but only mild, hyperbole)? > Examples of programming that creates jobs: Games doesn't automate a physical task, but it's silly to assume that they haven't displaced other kinds of entertainment, say, perhaps, comic books. (I consume neither games nor comic books, so I'm speculating) Whether an iPhone app has destroyed or created jobs depends on the app, after all it's just a computer program like any other. Take magazines and newspapers: There is NOTHING these businesses would like better than to shut down their printers and distribution divisions. Those are, if anything ever was, pure cost centres. Also, any app that lets you do something from your phone that you otherwise had to call a call centre to do probably isn't exactly a job creator. I don't know how todo-lists earned a spot on the list, but there is no reason to believe that they (and any other "productivity" app, say, a good e-mail client or calendar app) don't, on the margin, raise the barrier to needing a personal assistant/secretary. Advertising online is just one example of the lower-barriers-to-everything that the Internet has facilitated. Whether the Internet is a job creator probably depends on who you ask: A self-taught Rails dev or a Borders employee. EDIT: My point, which took a little while to crystallise, is that at businesses the things being automated away are larger and have individual accounts, so savings/consequences are very visible. When you download NYT to your iPad, they don't fire three guys in the printshop, they need a small fraction of one of them less. When you send an e-mail to your mother, a fraction of a person in the mail- or greeting cards industry is less needed. Etc.
maaku 15y ago
Either you're in a Cost Center or a Profit Center. As nearly all day-to-day programming is automation of some kind, costs are cut by eliminating menial labor. Revenues are increased by selling that automation to customers and clients. The sad sorry truth: your software puts people--somewhere--out of a job, thus saving money for that person's employer/customer. That's your value proposition. Now of course, the economy on the whole is not a zero-sum game. But you don't see that at the micro-economic level. It is rare indeed that a programmer creates new jobs without negative consequences somewhere else in the world...

mechanical_fish 15y ago

Once you run the company it doesn't matter what you call yourself. That is probably a great topic for another essay, assuming PG hasn't written it already. It might matter what you call the company or the product, however, since that is the brand that the people who pay you are seeing. Programmers are so literal. Let me try and translate: When Patrick says "don't call yourself a programmer" he isn't necessarily saying "never use the word 'programmer' in the same sentence as your own name". What he's saying is: When someone asks you what you do all day, don't just say "I program... stuff" or "I program in Lisp". What do you program? Why? What value do you create thereby?

angelbob 15y ago
Right. I might say "I'm a computer programmer", but I usually say it right after "me and five other guys track everything about all video plays for ESPN.com" or a rough equivalent.
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  See, there you go, that is awesome.
Jach 15y ago
I'm a programmer. I program things. What, specifically, changes pretty frequently still. Going into detail can be useful when trying to score social points from the smalltalk question of "So, what do you do?" But depending on what you program, I think for most people "programming" is sufficient compared to "I currently write software to manage an elastic computer server farm running data analysis jobs for people." In fact I think the former "programming" can give you more social cred--if you program things the other person can't comprehend an immediate use for, it may hurt you. "Oh you're one of those people that don't do anything useful." If they really want to know, they'll ask, and ask for more details if they care. Of course, I agree in general that when whoring yourself out to the corporate world it's best to make yourself sound as important as possible as long as possible, which is basically what I got from Patrick's post. "Programmer" doesn't contain enough information to make you seem important enough in BigCo. It's fine for scoring social points.