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I hate this stereotype on HN that we're all working in or adjacent to adtech. It's simply not accurate. There were 4.4 million computer programmers in 2022. T

I hate this stereotype on HN that we're all working in or adjacent to adtech. It's simply not accurate. There were 4.4 million computer programmers in 2022. Taking some extremely rough numbers: Google employs ~190k people worldwide. Meta another 86k worldwide. Microsoft 120k (in the US). Amazon 950k (in the US). Even if we were to treat every single one of the employees I listed above as if they were a programmer living in the US (which is clearly ridiculous), we'd still only account for 1/3 of US programmers. Once you factor in the number of those employees outside the US and the number who do things other than programming (and even more those who work on, say, AWS), the number would become even smaller. The vast majority of programmers do not and never have worked in ad tech. Working in ad tech is a choice that some people make, and yeah, it can pay even more money than a regular software job, but choosing one of the millions of other jobs available isn't exactly choosing poverty.

wharvle 3y ago
Huge market distortions can come from a small absolute proportion of the market. Say, those with spying-advertising money-spigots. Nothing I wrote contradicts what you've written—rather, and the phenomenon paying incredible wages to capture the top talent—so, those with both a lot to gain from improving labor supply—and the coincidence of having a whole lot of money to fund PR and lobbying pushes to get more grads in the pipeline for computer-stuff hiring, is concentrated largely among ad companies. What I mean is the STEM push sold one thing, but it was largely about another thing, which was more workers to help sell ads slightly better. It was about that to the people pushing it, that is.
- lolinder 3y ago
  It's a nice theory, but do you have any evidence for it at all? STEM is a new acronym, but the same line has been being pushed ever since Sputnik. What makes you think that this new version is suddenly ad tech and not just a continuation of the same old national security concerns that it's been about for generations?
  - wharvle 3y ago
    1) The timing of when the term and the push for more "STEM" education got a huge boost and became far more prominent (again—you're right that there was another freak-out over science and math education during the space race, fizzling out a bit when it became tied to the disastrous "New Math" approach). Having some insight into the education side of things, the sudden renewed vigor in that movement always struck me as suspicious. 2) The actual outcomes for STEM grads, as covered in this article. Looks like only one of the letters reaped large benefits from the push more more grads in those areas. Surely anyone could have looked at science, engineering, and (non-actually-CS) math and noticed that wages weren't acting like there was a major shortage, back in, say, the '00s and early '10s? But they were in programming. So now we've told a generation of kids there's a bright future in STEM (all four letters!) but it was kiiiinda a lie, and it kiiiinda wasn't hard to see it was a lie back when these kids were in grade school.
    - ajdjueiznc 3y ago
      [dead]

wharvle 3y ago

Huge market distortions can come from a small absolute proportion of the market. Say, those with spying-advertising money-spigots. Nothing I wrote contradicts what you've written—rather, and the phenomenon paying incredible wages to capture the top talent—so, those with both a lot to gain from improving labor supply—and the coincidence of having a whole lot of money to fund PR and lobbying pushes to get more grads in the pipeline for computer-stuff hiring, is concentrated largely among ad companies. What I mean is the STEM push sold one thing, but it was largely about another thing, which was more workers to help sell ads slightly better. It was about that to the people pushing it, that is.

lolinder 3y ago
It's a nice theory, but do you have any evidence for it at all? STEM is a new acronym, but the same line has been being pushed ever since Sputnik. What makes you think that this new version is suddenly ad tech and not just a continuation of the same old national security concerns that it's been about for generations?
- wharvle 3y ago
  1) The timing of when the term and the push for more "STEM" education got a huge boost and became far more prominent (again—you're right that there was another freak-out over science and math education during the space race, fizzling out a bit when it became tied to the disastrous "New Math" approach). Having some insight into the education side of things, the sudden renewed vigor in that movement always struck me as suspicious. 2) The actual outcomes for STEM grads, as covered in this article. Looks like only one of the letters reaped large benefits from the push more more grads in those areas. Surely anyone could have looked at science, engineering, and (non-actually-CS) math and noticed that wages weren't acting like there was a major shortage, back in, say, the '00s and early '10s? But they were in programming. So now we've told a generation of kids there's a bright future in STEM (all four letters!) but it was kiiiinda a lie, and it kiiiinda wasn't hard to see it was a lie back when these kids were in grade school.
  - ajdjueiznc 3y ago
    [dead]