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I mostly agree with you (and made a similar comment), but there is something more going on I think... since developers are so valuable, shouldn't more and more

I mostly agree with you (and made a similar comment), but there is something more going on I think... since developers are so valuable, shouldn't more and more people become developers until the cost for paying a developer goes way down? Like you said, we don't pay people based on how hard they work. However, we also don't pay people based on how much value they create... we pay people the lowest amount we can that is enough to keep them from going to another job. The value they create just sets a ceiling on the wages (you can't pay someone more than the value they create or you will soon go out of business) So there are two possibilities as I see it... either there are simply so many possible business opportunities that the number of developer jobs is practically infinite (new jobs are created as soon as a new developer is ready), or there is something that limits the number of new developers. I think it is a bit of both. I think there are fewer people who have the capability to be developers than we like to admit, and there are a lot more possible jobs than we have currently.

Der_Einzige 4y ago
A lot of potential developers opt out of CS for social reasons. Large swaths of women won't want to do a 4 year major with a 5-9 to 1 ratio of men to women, especially when the men skew so unkempt. This is just one example. In CS, you trade social skills and social value to escape the worst of capital exploitation. Go to a bar, tell someone you make 300K, and watch their face the moment you mention to tech worker part. Where and how you got your money matters. People don't respect us computer touchers.
- borski 4y ago
  This is a pretty cynical view of things, and definitely isn’t nearly as true anymore. Software engineers, depending on where in the country you are, are often extremely well respected now.
- ativzzz 4y ago
  Luckily tech is one of the few fields where having the corresponding degree is not necessary and you can make a good life for yourself without following a traditional path to upper middle class (like law, medicine, finance etc) > go to a bar, tell someone you make 300K you must be having way different bar conversations than I've ever had - maybe they just don't like you as a person lol
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  I love how you found a way to blame men for womens choices. Those darned smelly CS grads with their non-matching clothes, if not for them more women would be in CS!
  - Der_Einzige 4y ago
    Except that's exactly what it is. BO in CS classrooms is the worst. Every other department had less of this problem at my large public university.
    - throwaway1492 4y ago
      Not just the BO, a big part of it is the personalities; aggressive know it all nerds are the worst. This is anecdotabl buy my now wife has always said she felt like she was taking a chance on me due to my job in software. And judging from the people I've worked with over the years, I have to agree. One of the worst things about software development is other software developers.
      - throwaway675309 4y ago
        Well if we're providing anecdotal counterpoints I would argue that software development has the least number of "type a personalities" especially when compared to other engineering fields such as mechanical and electrical - just by virtue of the fact that it encompasses such a wide swath of careers, for example you've got lots of people who would fall under the umbrella of software development that mostly just do web design and WordPress, they're about the least engineer-type people you can have.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
        What's hilarious is what you're actually saying (and don't realize it). You're describing many of those who are what we would call "non-normative", if you will. aspergers, autism, and the like. Yes, it's statistically understood those who choose this career are more likely to fall into that category. So what's really being said here is that women are being chased out of well paying STEM field because they're too judgemental to deal with those who are non-normative. Is that really the fault of men, or maybe we should blame these self-same non-normative folks? ---- Can you imagine if someone were to claim the reason so many men choose not to go into nursing is because of the smell that happens roughly once/month? Think about why one is acceptable and the other is not.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  I have no idea where you live, but in my 15 years as a professional software developer, I have never experienced a single instance of someone not respecting my career.
  - plutonorm 4y ago
    In the UK it isn't respected at all. It's about the same as being a taxi driver.
  - throwaway675309 4y ago
    Agreed I've been a software engineer for 20 years and not once in my professional career have I felt like the industry was disrespected. This is in the United States.
  - vbezhenar 4y ago
    In KZ I feel like people think that I'm getting money unfairly. Sometimes I think the same. Like I can get $2k per month sitting in the office meanwhile road worker will wake up at 3AM, work 12 hours in rain and winter, trading his health for $300 per month. Anyway I avoid mentioning my profession unless asked directly. It's not a question of respect, but rather question of envy which i don't like to be target of.
  - TristanBall 4y ago
    I'm not sure it's so much "respecting the career", as the stereotype of the nerd with poor social skills is still strong enough to raise red flags for many. Not all of course, and it probably depends a lot on how you interact with others before they learn what you do. I can't say if that's fair or not, but it doesn't seem any less so than any of the other ways people choose partners or friends.
  - rurban 4y ago
    Well, reporters do disrespect us. When I had TV appearances they were calling me "Pulli Traeger" (wearing casual outfit). In publicity you are respected how you look, not what you can. Experts are frequently looked down, as they rarely can express themselves to a TV audience. On smaller private TV it was fine though. Also upper management in Europe used to disrespect us as overpaid "coders" or code monkeys.
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  I am genuinely curious. Where and when did you go to school?
- samarthr1 4y ago
  My university actually has a near 1:1 ratio in its CS course. It helps that we are in the middle of a large metropolis...
godelski 4y ago
> we pay people the lowest amount we can that is enough to keep them from going to another job. First off, what a terrible system. Why would we want to support that. Second off, this clearly isn't happening when you look at those taking in 8+ figures.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  I am not making a moral argument, just explaining how things work currently.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  If you have a better idea than supply and demand to determine price and hence allocation of resources, the world is all ears. Until then, it will be like democracy. The worst system, except for all the others.
  - godelski 4y ago
    The problem with this comment is that you're making it a binary option. That we keep the cronyism we have or nothing. It is like how people divide things into socialism vs capitalism. There's a lot of nuance and complexity here. Government regulation matters because we want high competition. There's ways to have supply and demand price determinations without them being wildly out of control and without plutocrats. There's a continuous spectrum of things you can do, not discrete, and definitely not binary. So my suggestion is, and I'm far from being alone, is reign in the plutocrats. No one cares about them while the average person's life is getting better, but boy do we care when that stops happening. Especially when we see their lives continue to get better while the quality of our lives decrease.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I do not see how >Government regulation matters because we want high competition. There's ways to have supply and demand price determinations without them being wildly out of control and without plutocrats. is mutually exclusive to >we pay people the lowest amount we can that is enough to keep them from going to another job. This system is the same as shopping at a store that sells you the same goods at a lower price than another store. I do not see what this has to do with a “plutocrat”. Buyers have been buying goods and services at the lowest prices they can find for at least thousands of years.
smiley1437 4y ago
There are limitless free resources available on the web such that pretty much anyone who wants to be a software developer, COULD be a software developer. So why aren't there more people for these highly compensated jobs? I remember seeing someone say 'Running is free, but not everyone can be Usain Bolt'. A bit elitist to be sure, but being a good developer requires a certain type of thinking that simply isn't common in the general population.
- thecoppinger 4y ago
  I’d disagree — I think most folks are too busy and stressed to learn to code. Access to quality, free information isn’t enough, sadly. The average person the world over isn’t in a position to make the jump due to economic factors over intellectual limits.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - steve1977 4y ago
    But there are many many people at least in the western world who absolutely would be in a position to make the jump. And yet they choose not to.
    - thecoppinger 4y ago
      I'd argue that having the confidence and ambition to make the jump is also a function of privilege to some degree.
      - steve1977 4y ago
        Well, you could argue that having any kind of talent or ability (inherent or or not) is a privilege then.
- ZephyrBlu 4y ago
  Completely agree. Most people are just not cut out to be developers. Not in a "you're not smart enough" sense, but in a "your mind does not operate this way" / "you won't enjoy the work" sense.
cercatrova 4y ago
> since developers are so valuable, shouldn't more and more people become developers until the cost for paying a developer goes way down? There is a natural ceiling of the number of SWEs due to aptitude for programming. Some people simply don't have the grit, tenacity, persistence, or even intelligence for being able to learn to program, much less do it in a professional environment. I've taught many people and of those, perhaps 80% just can't handle it. They see the money, start trying to learn programming, and they give up after a few lessons because they couldn't understand for-loops for example, or they just get bored and conclude it's not worth the effort. I've seen this firsthand.
- imtringued 4y ago
  I think math and programming are the same in terms of difficulty in logical thinking. The hardest part isn't actually intelligence, it is tenacity and endurance. You must be prepared to sit a whole eight hours in front of a computer to solve a nerve wrecking problem no matter how trivial it's end result is.

Der_Einzige 4y ago

A lot of potential developers opt out of CS for social reasons. Large swaths of women won't want to do a 4 year major with a 5-9 to 1 ratio of men to women, especially when the men skew so unkempt. This is just one example. In CS, you trade social skills and social value to escape the worst of capital exploitation. Go to a bar, tell someone you make 300K, and watch their face the moment you mention to tech worker part. Where and how you got your money matters. People don't respect us computer touchers.

borski 4y ago
This is a pretty cynical view of things, and definitely isn’t nearly as true anymore. Software engineers, depending on where in the country you are, are often extremely well respected now.
ativzzz 4y ago
Luckily tech is one of the few fields where having the corresponding degree is not necessary and you can make a good life for yourself without following a traditional path to upper middle class (like law, medicine, finance etc) > go to a bar, tell someone you make 300K you must be having way different bar conversations than I've ever had - maybe they just don't like you as a person lol
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
I love how you found a way to blame men for womens choices. Those darned smelly CS grads with their non-matching clothes, if not for them more women would be in CS!
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  Except that's exactly what it is. BO in CS classrooms is the worst. Every other department had less of this problem at my large public university.
  - throwaway1492 4y ago
    Not just the BO, a big part of it is the personalities; aggressive know it all nerds are the worst. This is anecdotabl buy my now wife has always said she felt like she was taking a chance on me due to my job in software. And judging from the people I've worked with over the years, I have to agree. One of the worst things about software development is other software developers.
    - throwaway675309 4y ago
      Well if we're providing anecdotal counterpoints I would argue that software development has the least number of "type a personalities" especially when compared to other engineering fields such as mechanical and electrical - just by virtue of the fact that it encompasses such a wide swath of careers, for example you've got lots of people who would fall under the umbrella of software development that mostly just do web design and WordPress, they're about the least engineer-type people you can have.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      What's hilarious is what you're actually saying (and don't realize it). You're describing many of those who are what we would call "non-normative", if you will. aspergers, autism, and the like. Yes, it's statistically understood those who choose this career are more likely to fall into that category. So what's really being said here is that women are being chased out of well paying STEM field because they're too judgemental to deal with those who are non-normative. Is that really the fault of men, or maybe we should blame these self-same non-normative folks? ---- Can you imagine if someone were to claim the reason so many men choose not to go into nursing is because of the smell that happens roughly once/month? Think about why one is acceptable and the other is not.
cortesoft 4y ago
I have no idea where you live, but in my 15 years as a professional software developer, I have never experienced a single instance of someone not respecting my career.
- plutonorm 4y ago
  In the UK it isn't respected at all. It's about the same as being a taxi driver.
- throwaway675309 4y ago
  Agreed I've been a software engineer for 20 years and not once in my professional career have I felt like the industry was disrespected. This is in the United States.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  In KZ I feel like people think that I'm getting money unfairly. Sometimes I think the same. Like I can get $2k per month sitting in the office meanwhile road worker will wake up at 3AM, work 12 hours in rain and winter, trading his health for $300 per month. Anyway I avoid mentioning my profession unless asked directly. It's not a question of respect, but rather question of envy which i don't like to be target of.
- TristanBall 4y ago
  I'm not sure it's so much "respecting the career", as the stereotype of the nerd with poor social skills is still strong enough to raise red flags for many. Not all of course, and it probably depends a lot on how you interact with others before they learn what you do. I can't say if that's fair or not, but it doesn't seem any less so than any of the other ways people choose partners or friends.
- rurban 4y ago
  Well, reporters do disrespect us. When I had TV appearances they were calling me "Pulli Traeger" (wearing casual outfit). In publicity you are respected how you look, not what you can. Experts are frequently looked down, as they rarely can express themselves to a TV audience. On smaller private TV it was fine though. Also upper management in Europe used to disrespect us as overpaid "coders" or code monkeys.
stephc_int13 4y ago
I am genuinely curious. Where and when did you go to school?
samarthr1 4y ago
My university actually has a near 1:1 ratio in its CS course. It helps that we are in the middle of a large metropolis...

godelski 4y ago

> we pay people the lowest amount we can that is enough to keep them from going to another job. First off, what a terrible system. Why would we want to support that. Second off, this clearly isn't happening when you look at those taking in 8+ figures.

cortesoft 4y ago
I am not making a moral argument, just explaining how things work currently.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
If you have a better idea than supply and demand to determine price and hence allocation of resources, the world is all ears. Until then, it will be like democracy. The worst system, except for all the others.
- godelski 4y ago
  The problem with this comment is that you're making it a binary option. That we keep the cronyism we have or nothing. It is like how people divide things into socialism vs capitalism. There's a lot of nuance and complexity here. Government regulation matters because we want high competition. There's ways to have supply and demand price determinations without them being wildly out of control and without plutocrats. There's a continuous spectrum of things you can do, not discrete, and definitely not binary. So my suggestion is, and I'm far from being alone, is reign in the plutocrats. No one cares about them while the average person's life is getting better, but boy do we care when that stops happening. Especially when we see their lives continue to get better while the quality of our lives decrease.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I do not see how >Government regulation matters because we want high competition. There's ways to have supply and demand price determinations without them being wildly out of control and without plutocrats. is mutually exclusive to >we pay people the lowest amount we can that is enough to keep them from going to another job. This system is the same as shopping at a store that sells you the same goods at a lower price than another store. I do not see what this has to do with a “plutocrat”. Buyers have been buying goods and services at the lowest prices they can find for at least thousands of years.

smiley1437 4y ago

There are limitless free resources available on the web such that pretty much anyone who wants to be a software developer, COULD be a software developer. So why aren't there more people for these highly compensated jobs? I remember seeing someone say 'Running is free, but not everyone can be Usain Bolt'. A bit elitist to be sure, but being a good developer requires a certain type of thinking that simply isn't common in the general population.

thecoppinger 4y ago
I’d disagree — I think most folks are too busy and stressed to learn to code. Access to quality, free information isn’t enough, sadly. The average person the world over isn’t in a position to make the jump due to economic factors over intellectual limits.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- steve1977 4y ago
  But there are many many people at least in the western world who absolutely would be in a position to make the jump. And yet they choose not to.
  - thecoppinger 4y ago
    I'd argue that having the confidence and ambition to make the jump is also a function of privilege to some degree.
    - steve1977 4y ago
      Well, you could argue that having any kind of talent or ability (inherent or or not) is a privilege then.
ZephyrBlu 4y ago
Completely agree. Most people are just not cut out to be developers. Not in a "you're not smart enough" sense, but in a "your mind does not operate this way" / "you won't enjoy the work" sense.

cercatrova 4y ago

> since developers are so valuable, shouldn't more and more people become developers until the cost for paying a developer goes way down? There is a natural ceiling of the number of SWEs due to aptitude for programming. Some people simply don't have the grit, tenacity, persistence, or even intelligence for being able to learn to program, much less do it in a professional environment. I've taught many people and of those, perhaps 80% just can't handle it. They see the money, start trying to learn programming, and they give up after a few lessons because they couldn't understand for-loops for example, or they just get bored and conclude it's not worth the effort. I've seen this firsthand.

imtringued 4y ago
I think math and programming are the same in terms of difficulty in logical thinking. The hardest part isn't actually intelligence, it is tenacity and endurance. You must be prepared to sit a whole eight hours in front of a computer to solve a nerve wrecking problem no matter how trivial it's end result is.