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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.
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.
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...
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.