Slashdot Mirror
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.
People are always willing to pay someone else to create a tool for them.
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
...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
Nonsense yourself.
Microsoft is full of very smart, creative developers. What prevents them from releasing innovative stuff is the business model -- what does it do for Microsoft to let loose wild elements into a software environment they already own.
The free software movement allows these ideas to survive the poor motivations of the corporations.
If AOL goes out of business tomorrow or decides that they are no longer well served by expending resources on developing a browser, it becomes obvious that the browser they developed has a life of its own, unlike the best innovative code I have seen at most companies, which never sees the light of day because they were clueless about how to build a business model out of it.
It is still a tiny minority of code by commercial developers that has been permitted to see the light of day as free software, but it has been quite positive and to a certain extent innovative, at least when compared with the commercial alternatives that have actually been released.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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
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.