Slashdot Mirror
The Rise of Developeronomics
New submitter Geist3 writes "Forbes has an article by Venkatesh Rao asserting that the safest investment for both corporations and individuals is in software developers. Throwing money at talented coders now — even on random projects — will build relationships that are likely to pay off big in the future. 'In what follows, I am deliberately going to talk about the developers like they are products in a meat market. For practical purposes, they are, since the vast majority of them haven't found a way to use their own scarcity to their advantage.'"
Umm... were you around during the 1990's?
Even in a normal market, tons of hiring managers don't understand enough to separate the wheat from the chaff anyway. In an overheated market, when hiring managers have to take what they can get if they want to fill a position at all... it is STUNNINGLY easy for workers with zero aptitude to jump in.
People will buy any old fucking thing you slap a lower case i in front of. Why bother trying?
Don't be silly; nobody bought an iPaq.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
This is exactly how Rockefeller was thinking: when you come across talent, you hire, then you adapt your business based on the people available. Even if in the short term it does not fit in an existing MS-Project plan, over the years you build a strong core and the team is driving the business, not the other way around. And if people walk away to get more experience, you keep the door open so you can benefit from what they did elsewhere.
Unfortunately, a lot of companies are doing the exact opposite because the MBAs are trained to manage by balance sheet, stock price and quarterly projections: short-term metrics.
lucm, indeed.
You misunderstood. First there is a bubble. A bubble is when the price of a good keeps rising because it has risen in the past. Then there will be people who want a piece of the pie but aren't actually developer material. The bubble may burst sooner due to demand side changes or it will burst later due to the supply side flood.
I believe that developers are exceptionally undervalued. So much so that drastic raises would not be a sign of a bubble but a necessary correction. If you haven't noticed, the importance of software keeps growing, and writing good software is a hard problem that requires lots of experience and knowledge in difficult abstract fields in addition to application specific knowledge. Currently software quality is a major inhibitor of economic growth. Just look at how often you have to update software to fix security bugs.
"...the vast majority of them haven't found a way to use their own scarcity to their advantage."
The way: Unions.
No, that's how the non-scarce resources create an advantage for their collective selves. If you're not scarce you make yourself scarce by joining a group that then says "well, we're it" so you must treat us as if we are scarce. Sort of a "you don't like what I want... well guess what... you have to give it to me anyway because all my buddies are going to hold out for the same and no one will do you work if you don't meet my demands".
Scarce resources have power individually, through simply being scarce. Sometimes it takes a while for someone to realize just how scarce they actually are. Scarce resources are special. They might be really close to the only one who can do the job required job in the required amount of time to the desired degree. That's what makes them scarce. They have the right experience, with the right knowledge, and the possibly even right background for the exact work that needs to be done. Truly scarce resources are capable of getting more than they would be unionized because they are not lumped in with the not quite so scarce.
My present is the activity I am currently engaged in with the purpose of turning the future into a better past.
I have NEVER , during 15 years in the field, EVER encountered a competent IT professional who dreamed of being in a union.
Now I can't prove my competence in a slashdot post, but I am a software engineer that fully supports unionization.
I am fairly compensated, as I do a good job of negotiating what I believe I am worth. But there is more to unionization than compensation. Though I do support collective bargaining (which does not need to be seniority based, and can be performance based).
Unionization can be used as a tool to bring product quality back into the hands of those that produce the product. Having a union to collectively support only quality changes should improve overall product quality.
Unionization is a tool that can be utilized. I would much rather have more tools at my disposal than less (though we need not use every tool for every task).
Just remember that the corporation is bargaining against you, as there goal is to maximize profit, and they are doing it collectively. If you want to even the score you do your bargaining collectively. But corporations have also done a great job to convince the American people that Unions are bad and lazy, so I doubt I'll be changing any minds here.
Lastly, Unionization is fully in-line with Libertarian ideology, even the Neo Libertarians of the US Libertarian party, and the likes of Ron Paul. Collective bargaining is an important tool that allows capitalism to be successful.
>I know I could run at 300 lines of C a day Someone call security. We have a mid-level manager masquerading as a coder. I've never met a competent coder who considers lines-of-code/day to be an even remotely useful metric of productivity. Coders who eat through requirements like a shark through chum with tight, transparent patterns...those are the good ones.
>So cash out before the crash. Barring that, be part of the upper half.
I hate people who say this kind of thing. It's like telling investors: Buy low, sell high!
There is no "upper half" that is fairly and reasonably chosen. I have a lot of experience in the field, and politics, knowing your manager's favorite flavor of ice cream, and selling your work to everyone is worth a lot more than actually being the talented guy who delivers rock solid work. Work environments are full of politics. It's wrong, and it's lame, but it's true.
Overheated market?
What overheated market?
When I see stupidity like this:
Or this ...
He's never read the posters on the minimsft blog, all swearing that after being "managed out", they will never, ever recommend Microsoft products.
Really? So none of those iPhone or Android devs got their start on anything but Apple or ... what? Gmail?
Of course, it's all based on a false premise:
The bakers and butchers will still be eating when Groupon is bankrupt. And almost nobody gives a crap about Yelp. They get their recommendations from friends, not strangers trying to game the system. And certainly not from an iPhone app spamming them with "Eat at Joe's".
Like so much from Forbes, this is just more idiot drivel!