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We've become cashiers. My 6 year old is doing my job. The best I can hope for is that HN article that said the word "Context". I know the magic words "Make m

We've become cashiers. My 6 year old is doing my job. The best I can hope for is that HN article that said the word "Context". I know the magic words "Make me a single page html js web app"... or "Install Virtual Box with Fedora Cinnamon using CLI".... I'm 8x more productive than I was in 2022... And I jokingly say "I'm probably not going to have a job in 1 or 2 years"... We are going to create incredible value to humanity. 8x rate. I don't know what our hourly will be.

DrewADesign 7mo ago
> I'm 8x more productive than I was in 2022... And I jokingly say "I'm probably not going to have a job in 1 or 2 years"... > We are going to create incredible value to humanity. 8x rate. I don't know what our hourly will be. Do we have 8x more demand for software than current developers can currently supply? No, we don’t. Many developers will soon have a very bitter pill to swallow once they realize that developers are the beneficiaries of good market dynamics rather than some precious intellectual elite whose skills are monetizable in any other context. Their hourly will be whatever DoorDash pays them to deliver pizza and egg rolls. Grad school isn’t any safer, and frankly, many of the soft, arrogant and maladroit people I’ve seen try to enter blue collar trades fail very quickly once they realize how hard the road is to get to those high salaries they always hear about.
- foldr 7mo ago
  >Do we have 8x more demand for software than current developers can currently supply? No, we don’t. Demand for software has been pretty elastic historically. In 1970, the quantity of software that's written now would have seemed absurd (and demand for that amount of software certainly didn't exist back then). I don't know if there'll be another huge increase in the amount of software that gets written or not, but it doesn't seem so implausible. For example, there's a long tail of Excel spreadsheets waiting to be turned into applications. The cheaper it becomes to do that, the more of these spreadsheets become suitable candidates for appification.
  - DrewADesign 7mo ago
    And what good does today’s software demand do for late career developers laid off during the .com bust? Just in time to have the derivatives shenanigans kill their retirement accounts right when they needed them? The fact that companies making more money than ever are laying off software engineers indicates that at the very least, this demand isn’t imminent. I don’t think it even makes sense to imagine there’s going to be another internet revolution in the near future. I don’t care about the health of the industry — that will do fine. I’m more concerned with the wellbeing of people pretty likely about to get run over by the productivity train. People’s mortgages, cancer treatments, tuition for kids, and retirement plans don’t care if Microsoft is doing great in 10 years if there’s 8 years until the market needs them again.
    - foldr 7mo ago
      This isn't the first time in history that companies have laid off software engineers. Late career software engineers are in a much better position economically than most people.

DrewADesign 7mo ago

> I'm 8x more productive than I was in 2022... And I jokingly say "I'm probably not going to have a job in 1 or 2 years"... > We are going to create incredible value to humanity. 8x rate. I don't know what our hourly will be. Do we have 8x more demand for software than current developers can currently supply? No, we don’t. Many developers will soon have a very bitter pill to swallow once they realize that developers are the beneficiaries of good market dynamics rather than some precious intellectual elite whose skills are monetizable in any other context. Their hourly will be whatever DoorDash pays them to deliver pizza and egg rolls. Grad school isn’t any safer, and frankly, many of the soft, arrogant and maladroit people I’ve seen try to enter blue collar trades fail very quickly once they realize how hard the road is to get to those high salaries they always hear about.

foldr 7mo ago
>Do we have 8x more demand for software than current developers can currently supply? No, we don’t. Demand for software has been pretty elastic historically. In 1970, the quantity of software that's written now would have seemed absurd (and demand for that amount of software certainly didn't exist back then). I don't know if there'll be another huge increase in the amount of software that gets written or not, but it doesn't seem so implausible. For example, there's a long tail of Excel spreadsheets waiting to be turned into applications. The cheaper it becomes to do that, the more of these spreadsheets become suitable candidates for appification.
- DrewADesign 7mo ago
  And what good does today’s software demand do for late career developers laid off during the .com bust? Just in time to have the derivatives shenanigans kill their retirement accounts right when they needed them? The fact that companies making more money than ever are laying off software engineers indicates that at the very least, this demand isn’t imminent. I don’t think it even makes sense to imagine there’s going to be another internet revolution in the near future. I don’t care about the health of the industry — that will do fine. I’m more concerned with the wellbeing of people pretty likely about to get run over by the productivity train. People’s mortgages, cancer treatments, tuition for kids, and retirement plans don’t care if Microsoft is doing great in 10 years if there’s 8 years until the market needs them again.
  - foldr 7mo ago
    This isn't the first time in history that companies have laid off software engineers. Late career software engineers are in a much better position economically than most people.