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>"The fact is that your material well-being is rarely in jeopardy because of a missed deadline, so your reaction is fully up to you." Much of what the author s

>"The fact is that your material well-being is rarely in jeopardy because of a missed deadline, so your reaction is fully up to you." Much of what the author says is true, currently. This is a fantastic market for programmers, and anyone being born into this era is lucky. But the forces of supply and demand will sort this market out in the future, to which the author seems ignorant. Name another profession that requires "Little or no education", and "no physical effort" (not to mention the ease of globalizing coding) that has sustained the kind of market pressure where agents are required to fend off recruiters, or kids right out of school can demand six figure salaries and four weeks of holidays right off the bat. America (and the world) will churn out programmers until being a programmer is a marginal decision, equal among many occupations. It will lose its luster; it has already happened to lawyers. So planning on having a blase attitude towards deadlines and stress-free work in this field at 50 (assuming you're ~30 now) is a tad naive. I believe this will be an extremely competitive field in 20 years.

_yosefk 14y ago
Why isn't the field extremely competitive now? The demand has been strong for a decade and a half; it seems like a lot of time. (I'm not sure I have an explanation myself, really; perhaps it's something innate in people and perhaps it's something about education, but the fact remains that the world still hasn't churned out enough programmers even though the incentives have been there for a long time. One possible explanation is that much of the software implements bureaucratic processes and there's always more demand for this sort of processes - so demand will outstrip supply no matter what happens at the supply side.)
- plinkplonk 14y ago
  "Why isn't the field extremely competitive now? " Visas. Most programming work (of the type talked about in the OP) originates in the USA, and most companies, even startups, need employees to come in the door everyday. (not taking on the question of whether this is ideal or not, that is the just the way it is, right now) . Imagine (as a thought experiment) a scenario where a smart kid who lives in India or Ukraine or Africa is just able to get on a plane and land in SF for an interview or a job irrespective of whether he has the right degree, paperwork etc and without jumping through hoops at the consulate and rolling the dice. The (edit: thanks @daladd for correction) supply would go way up and hence average salary would go down (which is why large companies are trying for more H1 Bs - they like easier availability of devs and lower salaries) Or imagine the border with Mexico being completely officially open. See what happens to the dishwasher/fruit picker payment structure.
  - pyre 14y ago
    > The demand (and hence average salary) in SF for > programmers would go way down Wouldn't this be detrimental to the SF area, considering as the high cost of living? I realize that cost of living will probably lower to meet what people can afford, but not without growing (or shrinking) pains, I imagine.
    - eru 14y ago
      The effects on the cost of living would be harder to predict, I believe. Because even if you have less wealthy individuals, if they are more of them, they will still drive prices up. Perhps, for say land or houses, people will still pay the same price or more per square meter. But they will get by with less area.
    - hindsightbias 14y ago
      Detrimental for whom? The changes to the cost of living are primarily a function of the now thousands of google and apple commuters. Not that that is stopping them from complaining when they wonder why moving up to a 2BR costs $4k/month now.
      - pyre 14y ago
        The growing pains associated with pay not meeting (or barely meeting) the cost of living.
  - veemjeem 14y ago
    That perspective is from someone who lives in the USA. If you live in China, programmers are as hot a commodity as they are in the USA, but it's hard to find good programmers. I know of several companies in China trying to hire developers in the USA because it's easier to source high quality talent than locally in Shanghai. Every time there is a tech meetup talk in shanghai, around 300 people show up, but only 20 of them know what they're talking about. Maybe computing isn't a field that chinese people study hard to become good at. The companies in the USA are competing with companies in China for essentially the same talent pool. It's a good time to be in software.
- rsaarelm 14y ago
  There's definitely more you could do with education. A lot of professional programmers are people who started doing programming as a hobby as kids. Attempting to teach programming to 20-year-olds entering an university seems to not work terribly well, while the basics can be picked by a 10-year old. If you waited until people are 20 to start teaching them to read and write, you would probably also get poor results, while the weird kids who learned to read for fun when they were 12 would end up outperforming the regular students when they grew up.
  - jeremyjh 14y ago
    This is a very interesting idea. It certainly seems plausible, I wonder if anyone has studied it.
  - suby 14y ago
    On the other side of the coin, people who picked up programming as a hobby while they were 10 might have picked up some rather nasty habits that need to be unlearned, where as someone who is learning in school at age 20 won't have those problems.
    - eru 14y ago
      Depends on the schooling, too.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  Programmer is like the modern villager. Villagers grew food and made stuff and that's what you ever needed. The programmer writes code and everything in our civilization is already code or it will be. Therefore, programmer is a much broader occupation than almost any other. It's still a seller's marker because of that. Look at everything around you, and while there is at least one item that doesn't execute code inside, we haven't hit peak coder yet.
  - dmorgan 14y ago
    >Programmer is like the modern villager. Villagers grew food and made stuff and that's what you ever needed. The programmer writes code and everything in our civilization is already code or it will be. That's an extremely short-sighted way to look at it. In fact, take out the non-programmers, and all programming will collapse -- literally come to a halt. You know, guys like those that grow and transport out food, clean up the streets and the garbage, cook our meals, mine our coal, produce our energy, drill our petrol, build our houses, etc etc. People seem to think that because he have the "information superhighway" (sic) we're, say, above actual highways. Where the fact is that without truckers and highways and oil and the like, the "information superhighway" will collapse in a few days. In fact, you can take programming out of the picture, and the whole world will keep on turning, at least as well as it did in the sixties or fifties. The reverse, not so much. Programming is indeed a pervasive but insignificant in the grand scheme of things addition to the workings of our society.
    - guard-of-terra 14y ago
      There would be computerized food transport, real world garbage collectors, pizza machines, miner droids and 3D plotters handling bricks for building. There is no reason you can't replace most of those human tasks with machines. And while we gradually do that, we'll need more and more programmers. Or maybe we will fail horribly, but not because it could not be done; and somebody will do this a few centuries later.
      - dmorgan 14y ago
- speleding 14y ago
  People smart enough to be programmers have more options than being a programmer. Most of the people in my CS class ended up as managers, 15 years after graduation.
bjansn 14y ago
But I envision in a few years we will talk more explicitly about 'coders' and 'programmers'. It's just a very different ballgame.
Swizec 14y ago
Yes and no. Look at what happened to "making websites". It used to be a super lucrative field, now agencies who can afford to slash prices because they hire cheap developers can churn those out by the hundreds a month. It's become a very silly market to compete in because all the competition that still happens is based on price. But while this was happening, the web evolved and opened up new jobs and opportunities. Now you can make a lot of money by making web apps, interactive things and so on and so on. That's still not a market where everyone can compete. Even moreso, mobile has opened up. So I think that programming has a very lucrative future for a while yet, because new fields where it is applicable open up faster than old ones become commoditized.
scotty79 14y ago
The programmers write programs that enable new activities that require more programs. Even if we consciously attempted to turn every person on the planet into a programmer I don't think supply overcomes the demand. Ever. Until the strong AI is developed.
LnxPrgr3 14y ago
I went to school with people who went into CS because they thought they were pretty good with computers and they saw money in programming. Some of them made it; others dropped out or changed majors. "Despite the enormous changes which have taken place since electronic computing was invented in the 1950s, some things remain stubbornly the same. In particular, most people can’t learn to program: between 30% and 60% of every university computer science department’s intake fail the ﬁrst programming course." (Source: http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf) Many others learn how to string glue code together, but can't really solve problems that go deeper than finding the right library to import. I've heard working programmers worrying they'd fail a FizzBuzz test in an interview. If anything, I suspect the bar for talent will go up—increasingly, programmers barely getting by now will become a commodity. But real aptitude is still rare, and I think the right combinations of talents will hold their value for a good while.
- suby 14y ago
  I don't understand how anyone can be a working programmer and fail the FizzBuzz test. What are these individuals working on that allows them to contribute enough to the company to not get fired?
  - LnxPrgr3 14y ago
    It doesn't hurt that a lot of managers have no idea what to expect from programmers and no idea how to find and attract good programmers. They seem to learn to cope with whatever they can get and learn not to expect much. And I have a theory: there's a group of people who have picked up patterns from a bunch of examples they've found on the Internet, or in code they've managed to be allowed to work on, and they've never grown past that. They're fine as long as you're asking them to do something they've seen or done before (for generous definitions of fine), but completely screwed the moment you venture out of that zone and consulting the Internet draws a blank. They can memorize patterns, but haven't learned to think through anything more complicated than that. These people can appear productive to the right people, yet be completely stumped by FizzBuzz.

_yosefk 14y ago

Why isn't the field extremely competitive now? The demand has been strong for a decade and a half; it seems like a lot of time. (I'm not sure I have an explanation myself, really; perhaps it's something innate in people and perhaps it's something about education, but the fact remains that the world still hasn't churned out enough programmers even though the incentives have been there for a long time. One possible explanation is that much of the software implements bureaucratic processes and there's always more demand for this sort of processes - so demand will outstrip supply no matter what happens at the supply side.)

plinkplonk 14y ago
"Why isn't the field extremely competitive now? " Visas. Most programming work (of the type talked about in the OP) originates in the USA, and most companies, even startups, need employees to come in the door everyday. (not taking on the question of whether this is ideal or not, that is the just the way it is, right now) . Imagine (as a thought experiment) a scenario where a smart kid who lives in India or Ukraine or Africa is just able to get on a plane and land in SF for an interview or a job irrespective of whether he has the right degree, paperwork etc and without jumping through hoops at the consulate and rolling the dice. The (edit: thanks @daladd for correction) supply would go way up and hence average salary would go down (which is why large companies are trying for more H1 Bs - they like easier availability of devs and lower salaries) Or imagine the border with Mexico being completely officially open. See what happens to the dishwasher/fruit picker payment structure.
- pyre 14y ago
  > The demand (and hence average salary) in SF for > programmers would go way down Wouldn't this be detrimental to the SF area, considering as the high cost of living? I realize that cost of living will probably lower to meet what people can afford, but not without growing (or shrinking) pains, I imagine.
  - eru 14y ago
    The effects on the cost of living would be harder to predict, I believe. Because even if you have less wealthy individuals, if they are more of them, they will still drive prices up. Perhps, for say land or houses, people will still pay the same price or more per square meter. But they will get by with less area.
  - hindsightbias 14y ago
    Detrimental for whom? The changes to the cost of living are primarily a function of the now thousands of google and apple commuters. Not that that is stopping them from complaining when they wonder why moving up to a 2BR costs $4k/month now.
    - pyre 14y ago
      The growing pains associated with pay not meeting (or barely meeting) the cost of living.
- veemjeem 14y ago
  That perspective is from someone who lives in the USA. If you live in China, programmers are as hot a commodity as they are in the USA, but it's hard to find good programmers. I know of several companies in China trying to hire developers in the USA because it's easier to source high quality talent than locally in Shanghai. Every time there is a tech meetup talk in shanghai, around 300 people show up, but only 20 of them know what they're talking about. Maybe computing isn't a field that chinese people study hard to become good at. The companies in the USA are competing with companies in China for essentially the same talent pool. It's a good time to be in software.
rsaarelm 14y ago
There's definitely more you could do with education. A lot of professional programmers are people who started doing programming as a hobby as kids. Attempting to teach programming to 20-year-olds entering an university seems to not work terribly well, while the basics can be picked by a 10-year old. If you waited until people are 20 to start teaching them to read and write, you would probably also get poor results, while the weird kids who learned to read for fun when they were 12 would end up outperforming the regular students when they grew up.
- jeremyjh 14y ago
  This is a very interesting idea. It certainly seems plausible, I wonder if anyone has studied it.
- suby 14y ago
  On the other side of the coin, people who picked up programming as a hobby while they were 10 might have picked up some rather nasty habits that need to be unlearned, where as someone who is learning in school at age 20 won't have those problems.
  - eru 14y ago
    Depends on the schooling, too.
guard-of-terra 14y ago
Programmer is like the modern villager. Villagers grew food and made stuff and that's what you ever needed. The programmer writes code and everything in our civilization is already code or it will be. Therefore, programmer is a much broader occupation than almost any other. It's still a seller's marker because of that. Look at everything around you, and while there is at least one item that doesn't execute code inside, we haven't hit peak coder yet.
- dmorgan 14y ago
  >Programmer is like the modern villager. Villagers grew food and made stuff and that's what you ever needed. The programmer writes code and everything in our civilization is already code or it will be. That's an extremely short-sighted way to look at it. In fact, take out the non-programmers, and all programming will collapse -- literally come to a halt. You know, guys like those that grow and transport out food, clean up the streets and the garbage, cook our meals, mine our coal, produce our energy, drill our petrol, build our houses, etc etc. People seem to think that because he have the "information superhighway" (sic) we're, say, above actual highways. Where the fact is that without truckers and highways and oil and the like, the "information superhighway" will collapse in a few days. In fact, you can take programming out of the picture, and the whole world will keep on turning, at least as well as it did in the sixties or fifties. The reverse, not so much. Programming is indeed a pervasive but insignificant in the grand scheme of things addition to the workings of our society.
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    There would be computerized food transport, real world garbage collectors, pizza machines, miner droids and 3D plotters handling bricks for building. There is no reason you can't replace most of those human tasks with machines. And while we gradually do that, we'll need more and more programmers. Or maybe we will fail horribly, but not because it could not be done; and somebody will do this a few centuries later.
    - dmorgan 14y ago
speleding 14y ago
People smart enough to be programmers have more options than being a programmer. Most of the people in my CS class ended up as managers, 15 years after graduation.

bjansn 14y ago

But I envision in a few years we will talk more explicitly about 'coders' and 'programmers'. It's just a very different ballgame.

Swizec 14y ago

Yes and no. Look at what happened to "making websites". It used to be a super lucrative field, now agencies who can afford to slash prices because they hire cheap developers can churn those out by the hundreds a month. It's become a very silly market to compete in because all the competition that still happens is based on price. But while this was happening, the web evolved and opened up new jobs and opportunities. Now you can make a lot of money by making web apps, interactive things and so on and so on. That's still not a market where everyone can compete. Even moreso, mobile has opened up. So I think that programming has a very lucrative future for a while yet, because new fields where it is applicable open up faster than old ones become commoditized.

scotty79 14y ago

The programmers write programs that enable new activities that require more programs. Even if we consciously attempted to turn every person on the planet into a programmer I don't think supply overcomes the demand. Ever. Until the strong AI is developed.

LnxPrgr3 14y ago

I went to school with people who went into CS because they thought they were pretty good with computers and they saw money in programming. Some of them made it; others dropped out or changed majors. "Despite the enormous changes which have taken place since electronic computing was invented in the 1950s, some things remain stubbornly the same. In particular, most people can’t learn to program: between 30% and 60% of every university computer science department’s intake fail the ﬁrst programming course." (Source: http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf) Many others learn how to string glue code together, but can't really solve problems that go deeper than finding the right library to import. I've heard working programmers worrying they'd fail a FizzBuzz test in an interview. If anything, I suspect the bar for talent will go up—increasingly, programmers barely getting by now will become a commodity. But real aptitude is still rare, and I think the right combinations of talents will hold their value for a good while.

suby 14y ago
I don't understand how anyone can be a working programmer and fail the FizzBuzz test. What are these individuals working on that allows them to contribute enough to the company to not get fired?
- LnxPrgr3 14y ago
  It doesn't hurt that a lot of managers have no idea what to expect from programmers and no idea how to find and attract good programmers. They seem to learn to cope with whatever they can get and learn not to expect much. And I have a theory: there's a group of people who have picked up patterns from a bunch of examples they've found on the Internet, or in code they've managed to be allowed to work on, and they've never grown past that. They're fine as long as you're asking them to do something they've seen or done before (for generous definitions of fine), but completely screwed the moment you venture out of that zone and consulting the Internet draws a blank. They can memorize patterns, but haven't learned to think through anything more complicated than that. These people can appear productive to the right people, yet be completely stumped by FizzBuzz.