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Is The Software Industry Dead?
A reader writes:" Ok. So I'm about to graduate and then I come across this story:
Do Software Firms Have Bright Future?
None other than Larry Ellison of Oracle thinks that the best is behind us and that software is a dead industry. What does the rest of slashdot think? Will that shiney new degree be worthless? " I think it's safe to say that it's not dead - but that the times it once had aren't going to return; e.g. tulip blubs sell well, but not like they used to.
no
People are always willing to pay someone else to create a tool for them.
The software industry _deserves_ to die. They haven't even kept pace with free software, and none of these new fangled games/programmes are original.
Remember the days of Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital? When was the last time you played a game that was genuinly new and exciting, that could keep your attention for days without getting repetative.
Remember when the release of a new word processor got you more than a few more animations for the little annoying paperclip?
At least with all of the big companies gone we might get some innovation back (something that free software seems to be pretty good at) - and there might be a few less illegalities and irregularities to worry about as well.
Best of all, it might kill off DRM/TCPA in one fell swoop. Yipee.
Beep beep.
I find it weird that computer industry is the fastest growing industry and people are starting to declare it dead. Especially when it hasn't reached its full potential. There's still plenty of growth left, especially in the entertainement business. 'Real' virtual reality etc. will employ tens of thousands of people.
not the software industry. If you look at open source/power personal PC trends it is the high dollar software and hardware vendors that are in real trouble. It is interesting to note that most people here view MSFT = bad and Linux = good, but really both provided computing power to everybody at a much lower cost than some (Orcale, Sun, etc.) would like...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
Just like any recession, some industries tend to be insulated from the economic woes that surround them. Anything that will allow people to escape reality feels less impact, and in some cases, has positive growth. Alcohol is a prime example of an industry which operates in direct contradiction to recessions, and if you're too young to drink, games can be a replacement.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
I am also going to be graduating with a computer science degree. When I started four years ago this was the degree to have if you wanted to be guaranteed a job. Now it seems run-of-the-mill and it does not set you apart from the masses whatsoever. In job hunting, I have found that if you only have a computer science degree you are not going to easily find a job. Everyone wants experience or special abilities. For this sole reason I am staying on in college another semester to get my philosophy degree to set myself apart from all the other generic computer science grads. No longer will a cpu sci degree be enough. It's sad how things have changed so badly in the last four years......
Give it a look
To say the industry is dead is to imply there's nothing new under the sun. Wrong. Software is not a commodity; it's driven by innovation, and the next killer app is always on the way. I am assuming, of course, that open source folks won't be the only ones writing killer apps.
Like McNealy, he's always saying outrageous stuff to get attention. Surprise, it's always calculated in some way to draw attention to his products or company. I see no reason to believe that this isn't a publicity ploy rather than an oh-so-sincere belief from his heart.
And no I didn't read the article, he blabs stuff all the time and I don't listen anymore. Furthermore, he can burn in hell for eternity for exposing me to his monstrosity of a development tool, Oracle Reports Builder 6i.
I have to say that software industry is growing. I would think that the 'low end' is quite healthy nowadays, considering how many individuals and 'independents' are setting there own companies to produce software for PDAs and mobile phones. Want to play MP3's on your phone? Somebody's bound to have done it (or it's an idea for one of you coders reading this).
It's the high end that is having the problems. And even then not all of them - e.g. I agree with the article that MS is still growing: they keep on diversifying. People have realised that over the years some of the 'high-end' systems they've been getting are a rip-off, and that there are cheaper options (you can guess for yourselves) which can replace them.
I can say even in an economic downturn, that if there is a piece of software that has proven worth, and will genuinely help a customer, then it will be purchased. It's just that nobody is delivering what people want (or could want).
...is not the industry that most programmers work in.
If you're getting a degree in software development, there's about a 98% chance that if you write code, it will be for a custom business system that will never be used outside of the company you work for.
Programmers rarely work in software product companies, and in those companies the programmers find themselves to be the minority (both in number and in pay) -- overshadowed by marketers, admins, and lawyers. Their jobs are to produce the product, worked 18 hours a day, paid what amounts to minimum wage, and maybe one day it might result in a royalty check.
See, the software product industry doesn't really exist. The billions of dollars made by Microsoft are in truth a bizarre anomoly that most companies have not been able to recreate. That is not to say that other companies don't sell software profitably too, but in those cases the software is sold as simply a service offering vessel. Microsoft is one of the few that can sell a shrinkwrap product to millions of people and walk away from them until it's time to sell them the next release.
Other cases where software is sold as a product usually has nothing to do with the rest of the software industry. The box is an end user consumable like entertainment content or some kind of shovelware gimmick.
It is the software product industries Ellison is talking about when he says the software industry is on the decline. He probably even sees it in his own company. No one buys Oracle for the sake of having Oracle software, they buy Oracle so they have Oracle's support infrastructure behind it.
So while the software product industry may be on its way out, it doesn't mean you should switch majors just yet.
The software systems and services industries are poised for a boom. Businesses are starting to collect more information, expanding into more markets, becoming (finally) a little more computer literate. It is in these fields we can seek to sell ourselves, and it is also in these fields we can best sell Linux and open source.
"It's square now... the growth just isn't there anymore, the big bumps of the three sided wheel are gone and the good days of people being interested in wheel development are over."
Really the industry probably hasn't seen its best days. How much crappy software is there out there? How far are we from getting it right? Right now we have square wheels, we haven't figured it all out yet. The industry (open and proprietary) is changing, which is good. We are at a point when software is about to become really exciting. There is so much that can be done and bright minds will do it. Besides its better that investors aren't throwing money at anything with DOT and a COM, it will mean sounder companies, sounder projects, and more interest in open/free software solutions (as true believers will make the project anyways, regardless of monetary gain).
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Being a Marketing Major, I am forced to learn this type of thing... New Industries go though several stages. 1. Growth - growing demand with high profit margins. 2. Mature - high competition low profit margin... and in this stage jobs tend to leave for cheaper labor centers which I beleave is India in this industry. 3. Decline... market saturation... kinda self explanitory. The software industry, is a little odd and follows a slightly different path but it still seems we are in the second stage. There will be fewer jobs availible, but there should always be jobs for the most talented programers...
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
Yourdon made a similarsimilar prediction in 1993 and he was way off....
We are in the middle of the information revolution and information processing will be big business.
What the software industry needs is a professional designation like lawyers, doctors, etc...
You will have to pry my proprietary software $$$ from my cold dead hands!
For the love of god do not follow the above advice!
Rather, follow these ez steps.
Get into a large company.
Realize how just about everything they do is amazingly stupid.
Find a core technical problem that they have. Spend your time solving it and working any bugs in your code.
When they ignore you, leave and sell it back to them (in another division) for 50K a pop. They'll be grateful.
Find other companies in the same market and sell it to them too.
Focused solutions to persistant problems of larges companies will always be needed. And you'll be able to make a living around it. OSS won't address it because it's to specific. MS won't bother because it's too cheap. SOHO sucks because the effort to sell it is far more than the potintial payout.
See: Crossing the Chasm for a flavor of what this is all about.
I aint in the computer business, just a blue collar sort who loves computers, had one since it was a Sinclair Mail Order!!! The economy has been cleaned out by a bunch of scam artists who looted the economy. That is the heart of the problem. Since they chose the Tech Industry was a favorite hustle, it is hurting worse than most industries. I dont see how anyone could be pessimistic about the future of the Computer Industry unless they want to continue selling 20th century technology for top dollar. These seem to me the sort that are crying the loudest. If I was young and just out of college, I would be extremely optimistic, because alot of garbage in the industry had been hauled to the street, making room for me and my 21st century ideas. The potential for utilizing todays hardware is mostly unrealized, nevermind tomorrows computer networks. There has yet to be written a computer language that even begins to use the potential of the hardware, let alone the software that exploits the language. Get busy!!!
HenryJamesFeltus.com
Being in the VLSI industry this is a topic that's been discussed quite a bit. It used to be that hardware needed to catch up with software demands. Think back to Windows 3.1-- it took a while to build a 20MHz 386 which made Win3.1 run decently.
You might remember Bill Gates, there's no money to be made in software, comment during those days.
Now, from a consumers point of view, only the gamming industry puts any real stress on the hardware. Your word processor and internet browser will run fine on a 200+MHz PII.
So software still has a lot of potential before it hits limitations. But it will need very advanced programmers to make use of it-- they need to know how to play around with stuff in the AI realm.
The only real fear I have is a 3 year hardware invention brick wall. Silicon is getting much harder to work with, and all the quantum and biological alternatives are still pie in the sky. The recession has brought funding in those technologies to its knees. So I wouldn't be too surprised to see a small stall in Moore's law. If you want to get picky, I think we already are not meeting the 18 month frame of Moore's law. It's more like 24 months now.
In ten years, we'll be filing his quote in with Ken Olson's quote that there's a market for maybe a dozen computers worldwide, or the comment from the patent office clerk a century or so ago that said everything that can be invented already has been.
Of course, it's technically possible that Ellison is right. I wouldn't wager on it, myself, humankind has a history of doing things that can't be done-- walking on the moon, breaking the sound barrier...
Nowadays, just about everyone graduating has some kind of computer programming experience. The ability has become a commodity, programmers are a dime a dozen, especially in foreign labor pools.
So no, its not dead, its just not going to pay like it used to.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I concur. In 1980, a typical machine ran at 1 MHz. Today, 4 GHz machines are not uncommon. Modern processors can dispatch several instructions per second (for optimized code). Thus, compuational power has increased by a factor of roughly 10,000 over the last 25 years.
The software industry will continue to grow. The rate at which computational power is increasing may slow after this decade, but people entering the software industry today will still see another factor of 10,000 (if not much more). This is truly revolutionary.
I usually assume that the problem space addressible by computers goes as the log of the computational power. I expect the software industry to focus on these new applications. Today's big software programs, such as word processors, spreadsheets, and even operating systems will become increasingly dominated by open source efforts as the software industry views these at 'too simple' to gain significant differentiation and added value. The market for tools to develop these complex new applications may become increasingly important (and even more difficult than today).
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
OTOH, the software industry is going through, and will continue to go through, large changes. There will be fewer opportunities for three people in a garage to become billionaires. In many cases, large development organizations dedicated to a single product (the equivalent of factories in manufacturing industries) will be moved out of the United States in pursuit of lower labor costs. There will still be lots of small jobs that are done locally, but in many of those cases an understanding of the business or process into which the software fits will be as important as development skills. Research jobs will still exist for the talented few who can do that well. But overall, I expect it to be a very different environment than it has been for the past 20 years.
From having observed a number of different threads on slashdot that are on topics related to this one, I have come to the conclusion that people here equate the usefulness of a degree (and a computer science degree in particular) based on the amount of $$$ that a company is willing to pay someone because they have said degree.
Right now some of you may be saying, 'Well, duh!!'
The fact is, there are a million and one reasons why someone could have gone to university to get a degree in a particular field. If the original author of this thread simply got a computer science degree because he saw a cushy job with a large salary and good benefits at the end of his time in university, then, unfortunately, yes, his degree is worthless. Now, on the other hand, if he had gone to university with larger goals in mind, then his degree might be worth a lot more.
What are these larger goals? Well, the author has to ask himself, why did he originally choose to pursue a degree in computer science? Was it because in highschool he enjoyed mathematics and tinkering with computers? If so, then he has just spent four years studying and learning about a topic for which he has a genuine interest. Gaining knowledge simply for the sake of gaining knowledge is most definitely NOT a worthless endeavour.
Again, I hear the naysayers: "That's all well and good in your socialist dreamworld, but we live in a capitalist economy and one needs to make a living."
There *are* still software development jobs out there. And I bet you any money, a company would be much more willing to hire a university grad who has a genuine interest in being a developer, someone who is fascinated by the world of computers, than someone who views programming as a chore and only chose the comp.sci. route because he felt he could make a lot of money in that field.
The same goes for any profession. You're going to be spending at a minimum 40 hours a week doing your job (and in some cases, that's a gross underestimate). Even if you have a job that pays six figures, you have to *enjoy* what you're doing, otherwise you'll be miserable and you'll consider you're training and career to be worthless. If you don't believe me, check out some surveys of job satisfaction among BIGLAW lawyers (these are corporate lawyers who have 120+k salaries out of university). If you do enjoy what you're doing, then you'll be more likely to consider the time invested in a degree, and your current career, worthwhile, even if you're not making huge money.
Has always been a blow hard. If you have followed any of his wisdom you'd find hes generally ALWAYS wrong. The guy has always thought he's larger than life but in reality he's a pimp trying to sell whatever new fandagled device he comes up with. This isnt new, but larry always has this way of saying things so absurd that people actually listen. The software industry isnt dead, but it may be getting over crowded with people that go to school for computers but have no passion for it. Someone along the way told them, "so what if you build cardboard boxes allday, anyone can learn to program!". Yes people can be trained but its the truly skilled and passionate people that will get the jobs and get them w/o a problem. Passion means spending much of your own time learning. The amount gained on your own surpasses anything you will be taught in school. And that my friends is what seperates the "paper" kids from the "die hards". Programming has nothing to do with physical labor, its brain power.
In a long-ago land, large companies ran Big Iron and green screens and it was pretty damn easy to buy software packages and get them into production. The biggest worry was the amount of customization needed to make the stuff 'fit' your specific business processes, etc.
Nowadays.... We have *nix, Windows, MVS, etc. running on all manner of hardware. We have middleware out the wazoo. So when we go to the street to buy a software package, it's a decent bet that the vendor may drive you to a new platform in your shop. Complexity, cost, etc. increases - and that's even before you have to deal with customization, integration into security infrastructre, etc.
All in all... the software industry gave us many of these platforms, so now they are dealing with it. Pushing industry standards for 'stuff' is the only way the industry will ever find its legs again, and I'm not very confident that this will industry will come back to good health any time soon. In the meantime, let's talk about a new licensing plan, shall we?
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
Saying 'software is dead' is like saying Oracle is dead. Wait, he may have a point then... Anyway, that company needs to just ditch that guy. You will start seeing their p/e value go up real fast.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
The dirty secret in the ERP market is that the differences between PeopleSoft, SAP, and Oracle are relatively trivial. Certainly database access can get half a second faster, run over a tablet instead of a PC, or run on cheaper hardware. But the dramatic gains happened in the nineties when all the information got into the databases in the first place.
Database-centric software is about to become like cars. We have the basic 4-wheel, 3-box, internal combustion model. Some makers squeeze 10% more fuel efficiency out. But the real competition is all hype and price.
Monte argues, and I believe, that growth in software has to come from intelligence. Analytics, engines, and rules need to encode process and real world knowledge. That is where the next opportunity for software is.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Two things to remember:
1) The Silicon Valley is not The Software Industry
2) The fortunes of a handful of companies do not define an entire industry
Software is a lovely new tool, without much history (as compared to things like structural engineering, agriculture, political science). As such, there will be widely-differing approaches to using this accretion of abstract thought that makes machines do things in the real world. Once unleashed, a technology is almost never removed from the world, for good or ill.
Remember how the automobile industry looked before WWII - there were literally hundreds of varieties of automobile you could purchase, from companies largeish and small. Though the number of companies making them has decreased, the industry as a whole is quite active (and has a large hand in controlling most aspects of how we live, at least in most places).
Software, and the related technologies that keep evolving, is an important asset to our species. What would remove it from our considerations would likely also remove us from this rock.
Network Computers, Java - well, Java's quite popular, but nothing like the Windows-killer he predicted it would be, and NCs? They have a niche market - and apart from Sun's SunRay, use something like Citrix to access the same old Windows apps, under a hacked version of the same old Windows NT. When someone with a track record like this says "your market is doomed", I'll take that as "buy, buy, buy"!
I did like the tale of his speech at some Ivy League place, though: "To those graduating today: it's too late. You're doomed. You've already been brainwashed and had all the creativity and potential crushed. Everyone else: it's not too late. You can still drop out early and be a success, like I did!"...
The software industry may get worse because of outsourcing to 3rd world countries where the labor costs are lower but it will not just die.
Maybe, maybe not. So far, I get the impression those countries are OK for cheap "grunt work", but if you want decent coding, you're still better off with the usual US/UK/Canada. Apparently those countries tend to emphasize rote learning in schools, rather than trying to foster the creativity and problem-solving needed to be a good programmer. Don't worry about it too much - apart from anything else, grunt work tends to be the first to be taken over by automation - and even the cheapest third world country will struggle to compete with a robot on efficiency, reliability and running costs!
There are 19 or so processors in todays cars. The last module we built sold 1.2 million units. Alot of the comments to this thread revolve around the application world. If it interests you take a look at the embedded world. The worst that can happen is that you will be more diverse and worth more money.
(in Homer voice)
Stupid wiener Larry Ellison
Learn that abbreviation. Return of Investment.
Basically, the computer industry has failed to deliver on time, on budget forever. Only, it's not getting (much) better.
We need real economists to create real business cases for our customers. Then we need to deliver. There are lots of big software projects that fail, either partially or totally.
It's unglorious and hard. But it needs to be done.
Stop the brainwash
The reason software development is dying out is coming from the popular development tools. Developers chained to Microsoft tools can only build apps for Microsoft, and worse, usually end up using broken Microsoft Components (like Internet Explorer).
Innovation is being killed off by capitalism in the US. Small, innovative companies with new ideas are rapidly bought out by big business, while big business is so concerned about their bottom line, they can't really be innovative.
But there is another group of developers - the Open Source developers. This group is not worried about status quo, or quarterly profits, only good software. This group is working hard, and is coming up with many exciting innovations, but sadly, there's a trade-off: There's no guarentee that software app A will work with software app B. No promises that there will be user-friendly or up-to-date documentation, and no certainty that the software in question will even work on the next generation of hardware.
Innovation is risky. Most businesses do every thing they can to avoid risks.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
"Yes, things will come into balance eventually, but that will take decades."
:)
Take a look at NAFTA. In the early 90s, companies soared into Mexico and set up shop. They made everything, clothing, cars, etc. But then the quality of life began to increase, educational levels rose, and thus demands for pay raises came about.
By 2000, all these companies were hightailing it for the next great low-cost destination, China. Believe it or not, MEXICO was now TOO DAMNED EXPENSIVE to operate out of. Left behind were these halfway-developed dying manufacturing towns with standards of living no better than when they started.
The same thing will happen to the US. The effects are not so immediate because the US has some wealth that is hard to get cheaper or from alternate sources ( agriculural capacity, mining ), and the US economy is diversified. But in the last two decades we have seen entire domestic industries die ( textiles, steel to name a couple ), and we have chosen to ignore this and try to replace it with the budding electronics / software industry.
But our electronics and software will soon be made everywhere but the US as well. The rising trade deficit for the last decade has been an alarming warning sign. It's not going to balance out until the US is milked completely of it's buying power, because the huge multinational companies aren't going to stop producing cheap goods unless nobody wants to buy them.
And then, when the US market dies, somebody else will become the buyer of these trinkets, and the system will continue. The US as a nation is of no importance, they're just the current best customer.
And when the Chinese workers start to rise above 3rd-world status, the companies will all move to the next big low-priced contender. Who knows, after they're done fully milking the US and dragging us down, we'll be RIPE for the manufacturing explotation! Imagine, the US supplying cheap goods to a China with cash to blow!
Welcome to global capitalisim, folks. Profits rule, not nations. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it, pawn. Now, SMILE, and stop looking so depressed
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Here's my 'trade' story. Year is '96. A few months out of school, on my first job on a fast-track design-build of a semiconductor fab, I'm in the trailing end of a week-long crunch to make a milestone Monday morning.
During a break, I visit with one of the master pipefitters I'm watching (we were about to pass pressure testing of the pure-water piping throughout the fab), it's 3am on Monday, and 'cuz we're in Texas, even then it is hot, humid, and uncomfortable weather. He's smokin' a cigarette, I'm not. We're both tired and grimy (him for obvious reasons; me because of how carefully I'm checkin' stuff so my company will get the 6-figure bonus tied to making this milestone on time. )
So, anyway, I do a bit of mental math and realize another milestone was gonna happen on this next paycheck. You see, so far I'd sort of celebrated my first 4-digit pre-tax paycheck and first 4-digit after-taxes check. It sounds silly now, but after college that much money was surreal. This time, I'm lookin' at a $2000 pretax week because of all the OT (even though I am making just straight time, since I'm an 'exempt' (which means no overtime bonuses) that happens to at least get paid all the excess hours, due to the long hours the job demands).
I mention this to the pipefitter.
He does a bit of math in his head, and says that, adjusting for after-hours (what most of us in the US call 'time and a half'), weekend, beyond 40, beyond 80 and Sunday bonuses, he's on triple time, (or $37.50 an hour * 3 = 112.50) right now and his paycheck should have the equivalent of 170 hours of work with all the bonuses. As in $6k, more or less, for working the same week I just did.
He was 500 miles from home and missed his little girl when he was away on jobs like this for a few months at a time, but he typically made as much in 3-4 months as I did that year, so all the extra time at home and able to be *really* around with his kids was worth it, he said.
I'd already thought about it in school, but I'll say again what I said that night. If I could do it all over again, I'd be a chef or a plumber. Income's good, ability to work and live anywhere in the world is good, people are happy to see you, they are thrilled if you do great work, and nobody (I MEAN NOBODY) has ever looked over my shoulder and said "Wow... cool integral".
Incidentally, I'm finally fading away from that viewpoint. I've specialized in IT to where 9/10 of the time, I *love* my job, and I'm making double what I did then. I can safely bet that within a few years it'll double again. I work flexible hours so my little kids get lots of daddy time. There's no way I'd have made six figures per year and had this much work flexibility and fun as a plumber or a chef. But I know I'm lucky... I don't disagree with FadeAway's opinion at all, since just about everyone I know would be happier following his recipe than mine.
PS: what trade, FadeAway? I'm just curious.