5 ms·

Watch it when capitalists pushing incessantly people to learn coding. They're trying very hard to cut the costs of their input "materials" and they will do ever

by notNow 11y ago

Watch it when capitalists pushing incessantly people to learn coding. They're trying very hard to cut the costs of their input "materials" and they will do everything that they could to devalue us in every way possible. So, if you're a talented and competent dev, be super aggressive with these predators and take everything your hands can grab before they have the upper hand and show us their true colors. Happy Coding!

serve_yay 11y ago
Indeed. Labor costs.
walterbell 11y ago
http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepreneurs-are-the-new-labor-part-i/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre... "...the balance of power between investors and entrepreneurs that marks the early, frontier days of a major technology wave (Moore’s Law and the Internet in this case) has fallen apart. Investors have won, and their dealings with the entrepreneur class now look far more like the dealings between management and labor (with overtones of parent/child and teacher/student). Those who are attracted to true entrepreneurship are figuring out new ways to work around the traditional investor class. The investor class in turn is struggling to deal with the unpleasant consequences of an outright victory..."
- aswanson 11y ago
  This sounds contradicted to the mathematics/empirical/quantitative observations. Startups built on texting two alphabetic characters are attracting million dollar financing rounds. Startups based on erased timeouts of texts are declining 3 billion dolllar acquisition offers. VCs are trying to get deal flow by building the reputation of being the most helpful to entreprenuers. Interest rates are at historic lows and hundred billion dollar pension and mutual funds are pouring money into every 1st to 3rd tier vc to chase returns. tl;dr...this sounds like some bs.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    The privilege level of Snapchat's founder would place that particular example closer to the investor segment. Quantitative observations can be complemented by fundamental analysis. tl;dr the articles provide 10 pages of relevant context.
    - aswanson 11y ago
      "Privilege level". I guess that means because his dad was already rich, the valuation of billions of dollars for a disappearing text service means nothing, along with the fact that forbes inflated a two-page article into 10 means something. Ok.
      - walterbell 11y ago
        It means the "balance of power between entrepreneurs and investors" is different when your monthly allowance runs into the thousands, i.e. this very successful and commendable outlier is not represenative of the norm.
- api 11y ago
  I don't see that... or rather, if it's true here it's true to a significantly greater extent in most other industries. Money continues to be available, and often lots of it. It's available on better terms than most others in most other professions can even imagine receiving. To put it bluntly: in most industries you are meat and own nothing and never have any chance of owning anything. This has been the condition for nearly all human beings who have ever lived, today and in the past. There are also more alternatives to VC today: larger angel rounds, crowd funding, etc. It's also easier to bootstrap since everything (but people) has fallen in price. Those two things together have made the funding environment more competitive for VCs -- they have to offer more value or compete at the higher end.
achompas 11y ago
Watch it when capitalists pushing incessantly people to learn coding. They're trying very hard to cut the costs of their input "materials" and they will do everything that they could to devalue us in every way possible. Did you actually read this article? The article doesn't aim to teach Bloomberg's audience (which consists of VPs, SVPs, and managers, as implied in the first couple of paragraphs) how to code or replace the average developer.
flashman 11y ago
This is a really ugly, selfish attitude. It's like opposing literacy because it will put pressure on jobs for those who can read and write. It's circling the wagons around people who had the privilege and opportunity to learn these things before everybody else.
- walterbell 11y ago
  Agreed, we need more Bloomerg articles that increase the supply of financial and negotiating skills.
- Dewie3 11y ago
  > It's circling the wagons around people who had the privilege and opportunity to learn these things before everybody else. The underprivileged Bloomberg readership.
woah 11y ago
Let us keep the sacred arts secret, brothers. EDIT: Just being sarcastic. You are clearly incompetent, coasting along in your job, and afraid of someone with 6 months of experience being better than you.
- thrwwy5 11y ago
  Seems to have worked well enough for doctors and lawyers. They're unionized (through the AMA and ABA), upper-class professionals who command much more respect from the general public than we do, and whereas our salaries tend to max out at around $150k, theres can easily exceed $500k (in the case of medical specialists or law firm partners).
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    The AMA and ABA aren't labor unions; outside of government service -- where programmers are also often unionized, too -- doctors and lawyers generally don't have labor unions.
    - thrwwy5 11y ago
      How exactly are they not unions? They lobby for legislation to erect barriers to entry to reduce competition and secure higher wages for their members. The ABA was actually the target of an anti-trust investigation by the Justice Department that resulted in them pleading guilty and paying a fine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association#Antitrust_consent_decree_and_contempt_fine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association#Antitr... The AMA (and AAMC, and the licensing boards) should be dealt with the same way, ideally even more harshly. All your post did was underline just how effective these professions are relative to programmers at securing higher incomes and greater prestige and shaping their public perception.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        Lobbying for legislation is a tangential part of what a labor union does, and lots of organizations that aren't labor unions also do that. Labor unions first and foremost do collective bargaining on behalf of employees with the business owners who employ them. ABA and AMA don't do that. ABA and AMA are professional associations, like ACM, that happen to have effective lobbying arms, and their members are often independent business owners rather than employees.
alextgordon 11y ago
Capitalists only want to reduce unnecessary costs, not all costs. A programmer is more like factory equipment than a factory worker. If a company invests in superior equipment, they can produce better quality products and net higher profits. If we're going down in the name of efficiency, the managerial and legal professionals are going first.
- alexqgb 11y ago
  The accountants are in even bigger trouble than the lawyers, fwiw.
- bottled_poe 11y ago
  In this industry it seems that product success is only loosely related to product quality.
Hytosys 11y ago
This is egregious if you replace "coding" with "writing" or "reading". Historically, any perceived detriments of mass education have been significantly outweighed by benefits.
- smorrow 11y ago
  That's true, but it's also true that you can only add so much stuff to the syllabus, and then there'll be too much school. You've got to draw the line at some point. Why not draw it at boring computer stuff that barely anybody needs to know?
atemerev 11y ago
Capitalists want people to be generally happy. Happy people buy more things. People who have useful well-paid jobs are generally happy (and can buy more things). Everybody knows that there will be huge drop in available jobs next few years, but software development skills will still be in high demand. Hence, capitalists want more people to learn how to code, so they could keep their jobs, so they can be generally happy and buy more things. Capitalism _is_ profit-oriented, but happy people bring more profit.

by notNow 11y ago

serve_yay 11y ago

Indeed. Labor costs.

walterbell 11y ago

http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepreneurs-are-the-new-labor-part-i/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre... "...the balance of power between investors and entrepreneurs that marks the early, frontier days of a major technology wave (Moore’s Law and the Internet in this case) has fallen apart. Investors have won, and their dealings with the entrepreneur class now look far more like the dealings between management and labor (with overtones of parent/child and teacher/student). Those who are attracted to true entrepreneurship are figuring out new ways to work around the traditional investor class. The investor class in turn is struggling to deal with the unpleasant consequences of an outright victory..."

aswanson 11y ago
This sounds contradicted to the mathematics/empirical/quantitative observations. Startups built on texting two alphabetic characters are attracting million dollar financing rounds. Startups based on erased timeouts of texts are declining 3 billion dolllar acquisition offers. VCs are trying to get deal flow by building the reputation of being the most helpful to entreprenuers. Interest rates are at historic lows and hundred billion dollar pension and mutual funds are pouring money into every 1st to 3rd tier vc to chase returns. tl;dr...this sounds like some bs.
- walterbell 11y ago
  The privilege level of Snapchat's founder would place that particular example closer to the investor segment. Quantitative observations can be complemented by fundamental analysis. tl;dr the articles provide 10 pages of relevant context.
  - aswanson 11y ago
    "Privilege level". I guess that means because his dad was already rich, the valuation of billions of dollars for a disappearing text service means nothing, along with the fact that forbes inflated a two-page article into 10 means something. Ok.
    - walterbell 11y ago
      It means the "balance of power between entrepreneurs and investors" is different when your monthly allowance runs into the thousands, i.e. this very successful and commendable outlier is not represenative of the norm.
api 11y ago
I don't see that... or rather, if it's true here it's true to a significantly greater extent in most other industries. Money continues to be available, and often lots of it. It's available on better terms than most others in most other professions can even imagine receiving. To put it bluntly: in most industries you are meat and own nothing and never have any chance of owning anything. This has been the condition for nearly all human beings who have ever lived, today and in the past. There are also more alternatives to VC today: larger angel rounds, crowd funding, etc. It's also easier to bootstrap since everything (but people) has fallen in price. Those two things together have made the funding environment more competitive for VCs -- they have to offer more value or compete at the higher end.

achompas 11y ago

Watch it when capitalists pushing incessantly people to learn coding. They're trying very hard to cut the costs of their input "materials" and they will do everything that they could to devalue us in every way possible. Did you actually read this article? The article doesn't aim to teach Bloomberg's audience (which consists of VPs, SVPs, and managers, as implied in the first couple of paragraphs) how to code or replace the average developer.

flashman 11y ago

This is a really ugly, selfish attitude. It's like opposing literacy because it will put pressure on jobs for those who can read and write. It's circling the wagons around people who had the privilege and opportunity to learn these things before everybody else.

walterbell 11y ago
Agreed, we need more Bloomerg articles that increase the supply of financial and negotiating skills.
Dewie3 11y ago
> It's circling the wagons around people who had the privilege and opportunity to learn these things before everybody else. The underprivileged Bloomberg readership.

woah 11y ago

Let us keep the sacred arts secret, brothers. EDIT: Just being sarcastic. You are clearly incompetent, coasting along in your job, and afraid of someone with 6 months of experience being better than you.

thrwwy5 11y ago
Seems to have worked well enough for doctors and lawyers. They're unionized (through the AMA and ABA), upper-class professionals who command much more respect from the general public than we do, and whereas our salaries tend to max out at around $150k, theres can easily exceed $500k (in the case of medical specialists or law firm partners).
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  The AMA and ABA aren't labor unions; outside of government service -- where programmers are also often unionized, too -- doctors and lawyers generally don't have labor unions.
  - thrwwy5 11y ago
    How exactly are they not unions? They lobby for legislation to erect barriers to entry to reduce competition and secure higher wages for their members. The ABA was actually the target of an anti-trust investigation by the Justice Department that resulted in them pleading guilty and paying a fine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association#Antitrust_consent_decree_and_contempt_fine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association#Antitr... The AMA (and AAMC, and the licensing boards) should be dealt with the same way, ideally even more harshly. All your post did was underline just how effective these professions are relative to programmers at securing higher incomes and greater prestige and shaping their public perception.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      Lobbying for legislation is a tangential part of what a labor union does, and lots of organizations that aren't labor unions also do that. Labor unions first and foremost do collective bargaining on behalf of employees with the business owners who employ them. ABA and AMA don't do that. ABA and AMA are professional associations, like ACM, that happen to have effective lobbying arms, and their members are often independent business owners rather than employees.

alextgordon 11y ago

Capitalists only want to reduce unnecessary costs, not all costs. A programmer is more like factory equipment than a factory worker. If a company invests in superior equipment, they can produce better quality products and net higher profits. If we're going down in the name of efficiency, the managerial and legal professionals are going first.

alexqgb 11y ago
The accountants are in even bigger trouble than the lawyers, fwiw.
bottled_poe 11y ago
In this industry it seems that product success is only loosely related to product quality.

Hytosys 11y ago

This is egregious if you replace "coding" with "writing" or "reading". Historically, any perceived detriments of mass education have been significantly outweighed by benefits.

smorrow 11y ago
That's true, but it's also true that you can only add so much stuff to the syllabus, and then there'll be too much school. You've got to draw the line at some point. Why not draw it at boring computer stuff that barely anybody needs to know?

atemerev 11y ago

Capitalists want people to be generally happy. Happy people buy more things. People who have useful well-paid jobs are generally happy (and can buy more things). Everybody knows that there will be huge drop in available jobs next few years, but software development skills will still be in high demand. Hence, capitalists want more people to learn how to code, so they could keep their jobs, so they can be generally happy and buy more things. Capitalism _is_ profit-oriented, but happy people bring more profit.