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Optimistically, I hope it filters out the people who were only interested in it for the money. When I was in school, decades ago now, very few people went into
by time0ut 6mo ago
Optimistically, I hope it filters out the people who were only interested in it for the money.
When I was in school, decades ago now, very few people went into CS compared to other majors. Everyone I knew going into it did it because they loved it. I would have done it regardless of the career opportunities because I want to build stuff.
Interviewing candidates over the years since then, my experience has been there are still very few of those passionate nerds and a lot of people who did it for other reasons, like the money or similar. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. I don’t fault people for it.
Maybe if we get very lucky, it will go back to a relatively few passionate people building stuff because it is cool?
- drivebyhooting 6mo agoI only went into SWE for the money. I initially pursued my real passion which was math and physics and got a cold water bucket to the face only after grad school.
- KellyCriterion 6mo agoSo you didnt tap your toe into a real dev environment before that second? :-)
- denkmoon 6mo agoHaving an industry’s labour supplied only by those inherently passionate about it is a great way to crush wages and working conditions. Look at what companies like Blizzard get away with because their employees just want to make video games at their favourite dev studio. While they’re a pain in the ass sometimes, I welcome the devs who are only here for the cash.
- sunir 6mo agoI think you have the law of supply and demand backwards.
- alex43578 6mo agoThis is totally leaving out the supply and demand aspect. People like the idea of making games more than working on the plumbing of some accounts payable software, so Blizzard can pay less and treat worse than NicheBoringFinanceCo.
- Archonical 6mo agoThe parent comment is describing supply and demand. If Blizzard attracts a larger supply of workers who will accept lower pay and worse conditions because they intrinsically want the job, Blizzard gains leverage. That is exactly why studios like Blizzard can get away with more than “NicheBoringFinanceCo.”
- alex43578 6mo agoIf an “industry’s labour [is] supplied only by those inherently passionate about it” the post says it would “crush wages and working conditions”. That runs completely counter to the basics of supply and demand in a perfect competition market. It would be market with far fewer (labor) suppliers, who could therefore command a higher wage, not lower.
- dwohnitmok 6mo agoYou are only looking at supply. Neither supply nor demand by themselves adequately describe prices (even in supply-demand 101 theory; in practice of course it gets significantly more complicated than just supply and demand). There are fields with few suppliers where supply is extremely cheap and fields with few suppliers where supply is extremely expensive. Is the number of suppliers low because demand is also low or is the number of suppliers low because demand is high but supply is constrained? A field that previously had a supply of labor in it "for the money" who all leave is indicative of the former scenario not the latter. That does not lead to higher wages. That leads to low wages. (There are a variety of reasons why this story is too simple and why I remain uncertain about developer salaries in the short term) There is a broader question of whether having people who are in it for the money leave independently "causes" wages to go down (e.g. if you were to replace all such people with people "purely in it for the passion"). My suspicion is yes. Mainly because wage markets are somewhat inefficient, there are always mild cartel-like/cooperative effects in any market, people in it for passion tend to undersell labor and the people in it for the money are much less likely to undersell their labor and this spills over beneficially to the former. Note that this broader question is simply unanswerable assuming perfect competition, i.e. a supply-demand 101 perspective (which is why it doesn't make sense to posit "perfect competition" for this question). It posits durable behavioral differences among suppliers that are not determined purely by supply and demand which do not update reliably in the face of pricing. This is equivalent to market friction and hence fundamentally contradicts an assumption of perfect competition.
- ddorian43 6mo agoWhere are the gamedevs in it for the money?
- cabalamat 6mo agoWorking on boring accounts software.
- sb057 6mo agoSee also: public school teachers. You either need to be insanely passionate or incredibly stupid to take ~$55k/year for long hours as an educator that is also a babysitter. And insanely passionate teachers are in short supply.
- boringg 6mo agoI bet a lot of teachers look at what devs do and think that its also insane to sit in front of computer all day, in a no boundary job, working on something you really don't care about and is potentially really bad for civilization only to make money off and lose your sense of self.
- notesinthefield 6mo agoMy spouse has expressed this nearly verbatim after transitioning out of a 16 year career in middle and grade school education to medical curriculum development. It was hell on her mental health but at least there was a clear motivation and purpose for being there.
- alex43578 6mo agoLong hours? Teachers work the same hours or less than other adults per “New Measures of Teachers’ Work Hours and Implications for Wage Comparisons” by West. “Teachers work an average of 34.5 hours per week on an annual basis (38.0 hours per week during the school year and 21.5 hours per week during the summer months).” That’s leaving out the benefits of incredibly strong union protections, it being a state job with matched benefits, absurd job security even in the face of terrible performance, etc.
- mylifeandtimes 6mo agoWait-- I think you are confusing "teachers" with "police officers".
- nullstyle 6mo ago“ benefits of incredibly strong union protections” Lol, try saying that to an alaskan teachers face and watch yourself get slapped for the absurdity of the claim.
- deterministic 6mo agoThere are plenty of non-games software companies that are treating devs purely. However almost all of the companies I have worked for in my 30+ years career treated devs well. So if you are in a shitty situation, I highly recommend finding another job instead of just placing yourself over a barrel.
- Thanemate 6mo ago>Optimistically, I hope it filters out the people who were only interested in it for the money. I hope not, because we don't need software developers to be "starving artist 2.0". And on that note: I vividly remember people staying away from the video game development industry because it was deemed "passion industry", and that had a really negative connotation of long working hours for asymmetrical return, and more. I don't look forward for every other software engineering branch to become like that.
- hyperadvanced 6mo agoSeems… improbable. There will certainly be less of us, but the fact remains that nobody wants to debug this shite vibecoded apps companies are pushing, and some simply are not able because of skill atrophy and perverse incentives to use AI at the cost of stability.
- Hasslequest 6mo agoBrother, we need to eat. You don't need to go to college to learn about some topic, you can pirate textbooks. You need to go to college to get a piece of paper saying you did. If you were passionate about computer programming, you can do it in your free time while you flip burgers or do whatever you need to survive
- viccis 6mo ago>You need to go to college to get a piece of paper saying you did. If you were passionate about computer programming, you can do it in your free time while you flip burgers or do whatever you need to survive This is a naive view of the average (or even above average) person's approach to learning, as well as an overly cynical read on the intellectually motivating atmosphere that comes from earnestly engaging in an academic environment.
- Hasslequest 6mo agoIt's not naive. I've been to college. To call it intellectually demovating is an understatement
- viccis 6mo agoUnless you were unfortunate enough to go during peak covid years, then that was just a skill issue. If it was truly beneath you, you could have been writing and publishing papers.
- array_key_first 6mo ago> Maybe if we get very lucky, it will go back to a relatively few passionate people building stuff because it is cool? I think we basically lost this when software/computer/internet entered the mainstream. Now, like everything else, it has to be bland, unoffensive, and a commodity.
- underlipton 6mo agoI'm not saying that this is an incorrect read, but I think it's important to consider that young people might be responding to the general desperation of a tight labor market across the last generation. It used to be that you could get a degree - any degree - and that would be enough to get you in the conversation for a position somewhere. Today, a degree isn't any sort of guarantee of any sort of job - in your field, entry level, dead-end retail, anything. Tuition skyrocketed and only a few fields kept pace. So, you get the degree in the field that's a "winner." Of course, this just increases competition, robs other fields of needed competency, etc. Prisoner's dilemma?
- raw_anon_1111 6mo agoI really wish this entire romanticism of the good old days when people only got into computer science because they breathed ate and dreamed about computers would die. It was never reality - I graduated in 1996 and have worked at 10 jobs everything from lifestyle companies, to startups, to boring old enterprise to BigTech and now consulting companies. To a tee everyone has treated it like a job and not some religious calling. There is absolutely nothing wrong with coming to work at 8 leaving at 6 and not thinking about computers until the next day. You don’t need to be doing side projects and open source contributions to do your job as a software developer anymore than a surgeon needs to be performing operations at home. No I wouldn’t have chosen a major because I enjoyed it if it didn’t make any money. I didn’t then and I still haven’t found a method to get over my addiction to food and shelter.
- jazzpush2 6mo agoThat's just your experience, though. It reflects mine, before I went to elite companies, where it is quite normal for people to live-and-breath software, at almost all hours.
- ryandrake 6mo agoThis is never normal, and should not be normalized.
- raw_anon_1111 6mo agoAnd by definition most developers don’t work at “elite” companies. I hope you don’t call your average FAANG and adjacent “elite”. And if you think that is normal, it’s honestly kind of sad.
- jazzpush2 6mo agoI've worked at FAANG, yes, as well as one of the top two frontier AI labs, quant, and now, in a similar role doing very technical research. Do you not think it's considered "elite" to e.g. work at such companies in highly technical roles in the same way that a PhD at Stanford is considered "elite"? As a holder of the latter, I do. If not, what would you consider an "elite" team? Maybe you think the statement was pretentious, but your response: "I hope you don’t call your average FAANG and adjacent “elite” - that's sad" is, truly, the most pretentious thing I've ever read on this site. So I'll ask: what do you consider elite?
- archagon 6mo agoI think it will actually filter out people who weren't doing it for the money.
- weatherlite 6mo ago> Maybe if we get very lucky, it will go back to a relatively few passionate people building stuff because it is cool? This is a really narrow way to look at it and define it lucky. What you describe will absolutely be a shitstorm for everyone - passionate workers and non passionate alike. Management doesn't care about your passion, it cares about the bottom line. Lots of folks will get fired - passionate people as well, or see their salaries cut and their job security evaporate. There's no winners in the scenario you described other than the employers.