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Every employee of every modern company is dependent upon software built by developers of that company or integrated/managed by developers. Most of the producti

by z9znz 4y ago

Every employee of every modern company is dependent upon software built by developers of that company or integrated/managed by developers. Most of the productivity gains of the last 20 years can be attributed to software, and the only employees writing software are software developers.

yummypaint 4y ago
This seems like saying that because all modern businesses depend on electricity, working in the utilities sector will always be lucrative. It's true that developers are necessary, but it doesn't mean they are important, or that they will always be in high demand.
- sdenton4 4y ago
  Electricity is a commodity, though, and software is very much not.
  - JamesianP 4y ago
    Indeed this is the whole game. Turn everyone else's contribution into a commodity and eat their lunch. Not just the energy, but the hardware (e.g. Microsoft vs IBM) and even the libraries they provide (e.g. app developers versus apple). I think software has gained a disproportionate advantage because tech has been changing so fast and software can adapt the easiest (which matters more than it should perhaps due to software patents).
rileymat2 4y ago
Every modern company is dependent on a lot of things due to interconnections in the economy, that is nearly irrelevant. Pay is about supply and demand in the labor force. Necessity will help hold up one side of the equation, but not the other.
closewith 4y ago
> Most of the productivity gains of the last 20 years can be attributed to software, and the only employees writing software are software developers. While I agree with this, I think it's also true that most of the software responsible for those productivity gains were written by a relatively small subset of developers.
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  My conspiracy theory is that less than 100 people in the US actually know what they're doing and wrote the important code doing all the work and/or are keeping all of global IT sort of running. I am not one of those 100.
  - closewith 4y ago
    That's probably uncomfortably close to the truth. For sure, of all the code I've ever written, 124 lines I wrote for a previous startup that was acquired is responsible for 99.99% of the revenue that code I've written ever "earned".
  - z9znz 4y ago
    I think you are just feeling impostor syndrome or attributing it to the general developer population. In reality, there's a lot of boring software which does its job and has meaningful value in companies. I am not a great developer; I get bogged down by needs for perfection or distaste of inelegant solutions (when I know the _must_ be a proper solution to be found). Even still, I get things done, and I periodically hear about old code I've written that is still valuable to the companies I wrote it for. So imagine what the good devs are doing! Also don't underestimate the immense developer effort that goes into making enormous, complex systems "work". These systems, and the developers working on them, are essential cogs in a big machine. That is not to say that hardly any software is correct or reliable. But on average, at least as we see evidenced by software failures only being periodic rather than constant, the many people behind most software must be doing a halfway decent job.
JamesianP 4y ago
This is somewhat like saying the person who pulls the levers is responsible for the productivity of a factory. Have productive gains in the last 20 years been that high? It seems like mostly a roll out of productivity gains from the digital computing/processing and communications hardware which came in a rush 20 years ago and has been incrementally improving since then. They just did a poor job of capturing the benefits from their new hardware. Other than Apple and a few others perhaps. Maybe Qualcomm? This is why it's good to go vertical like Amazon.

by z9znz 4y ago

yummypaint 4y ago

This seems like saying that because all modern businesses depend on electricity, working in the utilities sector will always be lucrative. It's true that developers are necessary, but it doesn't mean they are important, or that they will always be in high demand.

sdenton4 4y ago
Electricity is a commodity, though, and software is very much not.
- JamesianP 4y ago
  Indeed this is the whole game. Turn everyone else's contribution into a commodity and eat their lunch. Not just the energy, but the hardware (e.g. Microsoft vs IBM) and even the libraries they provide (e.g. app developers versus apple). I think software has gained a disproportionate advantage because tech has been changing so fast and software can adapt the easiest (which matters more than it should perhaps due to software patents).

rileymat2 4y ago

Every modern company is dependent on a lot of things due to interconnections in the economy, that is nearly irrelevant. Pay is about supply and demand in the labor force. Necessity will help hold up one side of the equation, but not the other.

closewith 4y ago

> Most of the productivity gains of the last 20 years can be attributed to software, and the only employees writing software are software developers. While I agree with this, I think it's also true that most of the software responsible for those productivity gains were written by a relatively small subset of developers.

Consultant32452 4y ago
My conspiracy theory is that less than 100 people in the US actually know what they're doing and wrote the important code doing all the work and/or are keeping all of global IT sort of running. I am not one of those 100.
- closewith 4y ago
  That's probably uncomfortably close to the truth. For sure, of all the code I've ever written, 124 lines I wrote for a previous startup that was acquired is responsible for 99.99% of the revenue that code I've written ever "earned".
- z9znz 4y ago
  I think you are just feeling impostor syndrome or attributing it to the general developer population. In reality, there's a lot of boring software which does its job and has meaningful value in companies. I am not a great developer; I get bogged down by needs for perfection or distaste of inelegant solutions (when I know the _must_ be a proper solution to be found). Even still, I get things done, and I periodically hear about old code I've written that is still valuable to the companies I wrote it for. So imagine what the good devs are doing! Also don't underestimate the immense developer effort that goes into making enormous, complex systems "work". These systems, and the developers working on them, are essential cogs in a big machine. That is not to say that hardly any software is correct or reliable. But on average, at least as we see evidenced by software failures only being periodic rather than constant, the many people behind most software must be doing a halfway decent job.

JamesianP 4y ago

This is somewhat like saying the person who pulls the levers is responsible for the productivity of a factory. Have productive gains in the last 20 years been that high? It seems like mostly a roll out of productivity gains from the digital computing/processing and communications hardware which came in a rush 20 years ago and has been incrementally improving since then. They just did a poor job of capturing the benefits from their new hardware. Other than Apple and a few others perhaps. Maybe Qualcomm? This is why it's good to go vertical like Amazon.