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Somehow I don’t think the people who learned to code wanting to make games or fix problems, or because they just love it, would have become o vestment bankers.

Somehow I don’t think the people who learned to code wanting to make games or fix problems, or because they just love it, would have become o vestment bankers. There’s certainly a group who went for the money but there’s also a large number of make the money doing something they love. Your gentrification comment is irrelevant

LewisVerstappen 4y ago
I think his comment applies more towards the PM/BizOps type people. A lot of them are actually ex-Bankers too
- alephnerd 4y ago
  It's SWEs as well. Leetcode grinding isn't hard if you have an Applied Math background, like a large portion of IBankers. Ironically, I don't meet many ex-IBs as a PM. Edit with additional anecdote: A friend of mine who works IB told me how most of SF's Goldman Sachs Analysts (new grad IBs) class in 2020 and 2021 left for tech (either PM or SWE) because you earn more as a new grad FAANG dev than as an IB Analyst ($90k base and variable bonus that ended up pushing TC to around $150-160k with 60-70 hours of work).
alephnerd 4y ago
It is not when it shows how people in Tech have a level of undue capital influence in America in the 2020s. This isn't the 1980s-1990s anymore (which was 30-40 years ago at this point) when nerds would be bullied for playing D&D or put in lockers. Society has changed, and software engineering is viewed as the goto high paying job for people in my age demographic. And to be honest it makes sense - you make six figures, almost never go into the office, have the ability to travel all over the world working remotely, low working hours, intellectually stimulating work, etc. And it's my cohort that plays a role in buying property and making everything expensive. The archetype of programmer you mention still exists (hell, I don't program for a living anymore but I still mess around with kernel programming and OS dev) but are very much the minority now. Majoring in CS and CE is a fast track way to become a member of the 10% in American society so EVERYONE is trying to major in it.
- cudgy 4y ago
  > Society has changed, and software engineering is viewed as the goto high paying job for people in my age demographic. This explains the influx of grifters and “MBA” types into the software industry along with the focus of software onto marketing junk, psychological manipulation, invasive ai, scammy digital coins, and scraping up people’s private data.
- wadd1e 4y ago
  I find solace in the fact that most of these people will not "succeed"(by that I mean becoming respectable, competent engineers who will have good opportunities readily available to them). CS is hard; quite a large chunk of these sorts of people who enroll in bootcamps or try to major in CS end up dropping out or not pursuing a CS related job. Who knew that being genuinely interested in a subject helps in becoming good at it too.
  - alephnerd 4y ago
    Ehn maybe. I know some legitimately brilliant engineers who absolutely fucking hate code and once they grind up to staff, will nope to Engineering Management or Product Management. I liked code but at some point, I got pissed off at ego driven "10x" engineers who couldn't be bother to explain in a non-combative manner how they architected their code base even though I was directly impacted by it. I realized weilding the mallet of "Profit and Loss responsibility" could get the assholes to shut up and let the rest of the engineers get unblocked.
    - wadd1e 4y ago
      Yeah I see your point, but is that a product of an unideal work environment or a lack of passion? Mabye even both to be honest.
Swizec 4y ago
As someone who got into coding for the fun of it as a nerdy kid in the 90’s – now that the money is there, I’m not gonna not follow it. If I can have fun for 50k or for 200k+, I’ll take the 200k option thanks.

LewisVerstappen 4y ago

I think his comment applies more towards the PM/BizOps type people. A lot of them are actually ex-Bankers too

alephnerd 4y ago
It's SWEs as well. Leetcode grinding isn't hard if you have an Applied Math background, like a large portion of IBankers. Ironically, I don't meet many ex-IBs as a PM. Edit with additional anecdote: A friend of mine who works IB told me how most of SF's Goldman Sachs Analysts (new grad IBs) class in 2020 and 2021 left for tech (either PM or SWE) because you earn more as a new grad FAANG dev than as an IB Analyst ($90k base and variable bonus that ended up pushing TC to around $150-160k with 60-70 hours of work).

alephnerd 4y ago

It is not when it shows how people in Tech have a level of undue capital influence in America in the 2020s. This isn't the 1980s-1990s anymore (which was 30-40 years ago at this point) when nerds would be bullied for playing D&D or put in lockers. Society has changed, and software engineering is viewed as the goto high paying job for people in my age demographic. And to be honest it makes sense - you make six figures, almost never go into the office, have the ability to travel all over the world working remotely, low working hours, intellectually stimulating work, etc. And it's my cohort that plays a role in buying property and making everything expensive. The archetype of programmer you mention still exists (hell, I don't program for a living anymore but I still mess around with kernel programming and OS dev) but are very much the minority now. Majoring in CS and CE is a fast track way to become a member of the 10% in American society so EVERYONE is trying to major in it.

cudgy 4y ago
> Society has changed, and software engineering is viewed as the goto high paying job for people in my age demographic. This explains the influx of grifters and “MBA” types into the software industry along with the focus of software onto marketing junk, psychological manipulation, invasive ai, scammy digital coins, and scraping up people’s private data.
wadd1e 4y ago
I find solace in the fact that most of these people will not "succeed"(by that I mean becoming respectable, competent engineers who will have good opportunities readily available to them). CS is hard; quite a large chunk of these sorts of people who enroll in bootcamps or try to major in CS end up dropping out or not pursuing a CS related job. Who knew that being genuinely interested in a subject helps in becoming good at it too.
- alephnerd 4y ago
  Ehn maybe. I know some legitimately brilliant engineers who absolutely fucking hate code and once they grind up to staff, will nope to Engineering Management or Product Management. I liked code but at some point, I got pissed off at ego driven "10x" engineers who couldn't be bother to explain in a non-combative manner how they architected their code base even though I was directly impacted by it. I realized weilding the mallet of "Profit and Loss responsibility" could get the assholes to shut up and let the rest of the engineers get unblocked.
  - wadd1e 4y ago
    Yeah I see your point, but is that a product of an unideal work environment or a lack of passion? Mabye even both to be honest.

Swizec 4y ago

As someone who got into coding for the fun of it as a nerdy kid in the 90’s – now that the money is there, I’m not gonna not follow it. If I can have fun for 50k or for 200k+, I’ll take the 200k option thanks.