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The Rising Power of Developers
msmoriarty writes "Google's Don Dodge, GitHub's Tom Preston-Werner, New Relic's Lew Cirne and others recently got together in San Francisco on a panel called 'The Developer is King: The Power Behind the Throne.' According to coverage of the event, the panelists all agreed that programmers — both independent ones and those employed by companies — have more power, and thus opportunities, than ever. Even the marketing power of developers was acknowledged: 'The only way to convince a developer is by giving them a demo and showing them how it's better,' said Preston-Werner. 'The beauty is, you plant these seeds around the world, and those people will evangelize it for you. Because another thing that developers are great at is telling other developers what works for them.'"
Some rich guys got together, told themselves how great they are and how they deserve to be rich. News at 11.
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A group of successful developers get together on a panel and, surprisingly, everyone on the panel agrees that developers are very important and goin' places in the world.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Executives and project managers. Somehow they still think their ability to think of 'innovations ' is the only bottleneck.
This is all about marketing power, and using devs as mouthpieces. Devs are always either agreeing or arguing, with the new ones either lapping up anything the older ones say or dissing them as crotchety and set in their ways. The only selling I see going on is on what resources to use and which to ignore, and there are always a basket of opinions going in different directions depending on which site you're on at the moment. If someone can find a way to milk them as a group, beyond, you know...developing stuff, then go for it, but to say they are king makers is a bit of a virtual stretch. Any marketer will see them as just another group.
Isn't he the moron that started crying after Paul Graham published his dead-on "Microsoft is Dead"? The guy is a first-class dipshit.
that article was clearly written as a project during a self help seminar to build self esteem.
programmers — both independent ones and those employed by companies — have more power, and thus opportunities, than ever
Sounds like part of a campaign for an H-1B quota increase.
In the long run (read : I mean the next 30 years), every job in existence has a programmer involved.
Manual Labor? In the long run, it'll be robots that do nearly all of it, and software is the only real obstacle that stops us from automating more tasks.
Manufacturing? Software problem. Healthcare? Most of a doctor's thinking could be automated with existing software techniques. (sure, not the physical procedures part, but that's only a portion)
Of course, in the LONG, LONG run, someone will advance the art of software to the point that we have software that can write itself, and then we're all out of work...
"and others recently got together in San Francisco". So, others are still behind the throne, like always... Isn't it nice to play puppet master? Ninja in the shadows? Plus, a good developer's name just come out if he (maybe she!?) screwed up big time (definitely she!!).
I have never met a competent developer who had trouble finding work.
I HAVE met incompetent out-of-touch, burnt-out, full-of-themselves developers who can't find work. It's this second kind that think they're good but are not and who should be in another field.
As far as finding work goes, you're probably correct. I have, however, met a fairly large number of good developers who are 10x more productive than an average programmer, but have difficulty getting paid what they're worth.
We (software engineers and developers) are the dumbest group of skilled professionals in the history of skilled trades. No other field, no other economic opportunity has been so badly squandered as the field of software development -- ever.
Compare software engineers to doctors or lawyers. Both doctor's and lawyers have to pass exams. They are certified by boards of other professionals. If a doctor or lawyer screws up badly enough they lose their right to be a doctor or lawyer. Not software engineers. When a software engineer writes terrible code they are not disbarred and the screw up reflects poorly on the trade in general. No wonder people don't respect our field -- we don't respect it ourselves.
We've taken the secrets and tools of our trade, open sourced them, and created legions of arm chair professionals around the world who not only reflect badly upon our trade but undermine the very vitality of it. Why spend thousands of dollars to get a degree to compete on Craigslist for $6 and hour? How can we expect our customers to hire good developers when we don't give them any metric to use to rate good developers?
Sorry, it has to be done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE
Its hard to explain to folks who see my resume and employment status why I refuse to accept money to train train local young people.
First of all people aren't used to people with ethics. So they don't understand why I wouldn't want to take money from kids by leading them into pauperism.
Secondly they've been led to believe that domestic programmers with equal skills have an equal shot at the high income positions that are going to foreign aggressors. Its one of those things that's just too depressing to admit to one's self about the horror of the government's oppression of the citizens. This is especially true in rural areas where almost every family has a young man who has served in the military and either killed, or been indoctrinated that is is ok to kill for the government (if they, themselves haven't been permanently disabled if not killed).
Seastead this.
I can't imagine this being true.
I for one welcome our new developer overlords...
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
To find work, you need a skill: You need to be able to convince people that you can provide a level of value for the pay.
This is easy if you just want average-skilled developer work, all you need to do is have a degree/work experience/answer interview questions. It's a LOT harder if you want to convince people to pay you for significantly above average work, but that is the skill you need if you want that kind of pay.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Amen. Three years ago, I moved 650+ miles to take a new job. Sequestration caused my team's contract to get cancelled. Tomorrow I move 200+ miles to take a new job.
Even with 20 years experience...I'm a freaking migrant worker.
Moms, don't let your kids grow up to be computer programmers.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
"Pope Francis, former Pope Benedict and others recently got together in The Vatican on a panel called 'Jesus is King: The Power Behind God.' According to coverage of the event, the panelists all agreed that Catholics — both regular people and priests — have more power, and thus opportunities, than ever. Even the marketing power of the papacy was acknowledged: 'The only way to convince a Catholic is by giving them a wafer and showing them how it's the body of Christ,' said Preston-Werner. 'The beauty is, you plant these seeds around the world, and those people will evangelize it for you. Because another thing that Catholics are great at is telling other people what works for them.'"
That was really easy. I didn't even have to change "evangelize."
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
So does TechSNAP and the Linux Action Show. WebSphere on the other hand.... I hate IBM!
We're hiring competent developers. So is the rest of Tampa, FL. Every IT event around here is 75% recruiters. There's no shortage in this area.
To find work, you need to be in the right city, and have the right credentials, which are typically inflated since they'd rather outsource the work anyway.. Otherwise, do you want fries with that?
I have been out of work in the past for nearly a year. Lots of people claiming that they wanted to hire me, if only they had the budget. When the economy is bad and there are no job openings, it doesn't matter how competent you are. Maybe a lot of these new people haven't really been in a bad economy or downturn except the current one. Also the fads comd and go, if the current fad is web sites with scripting language of the day, and you don't know web stuff, then all those jobs pass you by no matter how good a programmer you are.
Some of the people that do the best with getting jobs are the dabblers, quickly learning the rudiments of something and then moving on in a few years when fashions change; client/server turns into palm pilot apps turns into web design turns into mobile apps, etc.
Also very important to finding a job, is to not be geeky and nerdy. You need people skills and that is not easy to learn for the borderline autism spectrum people who are great coders and hardware designers and mathematicians. You have to learn to NOT be yourself in an interview.
I have never met a competent developer who had trouble finding work. I HAVE met incompetent out-of-touch, burnt-out, full-of-themselves developers who can't find work. It's this second kind that think they're good but are not and who should be in another field.
By "burnt-out", of course, you mean "old". Try getting a job when you're over 50. It almost doesn't matter how good you are, the resumes get dumped automatically if you say your college degree is from the 70's.
Not one example of developers succeeding or what they might have done to stand out in a sea of offshore contractors, but a bunch of self-congratulatory pap about how successful their own businesses are. And not ONE developer in the panel -- all pompous management taking the credit for themselves.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Also the fads comd and go, if the current fad is web sites with scripting language of the day, and you don't know web stuff, then all those jobs pass you by no matter how good a programmer you are.
Some of the people that do the best with getting jobs are the dabblers, quickly learning the rudiments of something and then moving on in a few years when fashions change; client/server turns into palm pilot apps turns into web design turns into mobile apps, etc.
Yes, people who never believed this new-fangled interweb "fad" was going anywhere, or never bothered learning any new technology after they left tertiary education because gosh darn it if C was good enough for Kernighan, it should be good enough for everyone - they might find it hard to get a job.
Lawyers need to keep up-to-date on precedent, accountants need to know the latest tax changes, and doctors need to follow the latest developments in medicine. A developer needs to keep up with the changing nature of technology.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The market is good, you can get a job.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
...right after
1) Shareholders (reason why we're in business) ....
2) Customers (who pays the bills?)
3) Salespeople (who brings in the customers?)
4) Top management (whose vision makes the difference between a big success and an also-ran?)
5) Marketing (who identifies and attracts the customers?)
6) Finance and accounting (who brings in investments and manages the cash so we can stay in business?)
7) Lobbyists (who ensures that the government doesn't pass taxes and other legislation that would interfere with our business plans?)
8) Press relations (who gets the word out to Wall Street so we can attract investment?)
9) Recent college graduates (who will provide the 'fresh blood' and intimate knowledge of technological trends that will carry us into the future?)
10) Offshore developers (who makes it possible to keep costs down so that #1-9 can be satisfied?)
But the languages used to program on the web are changing all the time.
When Paul Graham published the article in 2007, Microsoft has around 46 billion $ in revenue. Now Microsoft has around 78 billion $ in revenue. Looks like Paul Graham was the moron - the article has crossed 6 years to get vindicated.
Is he the guy in Mad Men?
So are the languages on the desktop - but they're not changing fast enough that remaining relatively current is particularly difficult. I still see more job advertisements for PHP and Java than I do for Ruby on Rails or NodeJS.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The interesting projects are likely to be RoR or node. I make a living doing high value interesting stuff in perl. I pulled a rare 'to 2am on friday night last night' but for the most part I get interesting work that's well paid and they leave me alone to get on with it. Sweet gig.
Also very important to finding a job, is to not be geeky and nerdy.
Yep.
And it's not just for the interview. Unless you are a code monkey working robotic-like to the requirements that someone else makes for you, you need to have people skills for the job.
You are probably not such a good coder if you don't have people skills. Just like it's hard to be "good" in bed if you are the only one there ...
I'm not sure why you're comparing RoR and NodeJS to PHP and Java, so the following might feel a bit confused. This is my take.
The RoR fad is over and Ruby is starting to fall in popularity, so I don't expect to see it pass PHP (which, despite the hate, is actually growing).
The NodeJS fad is just beginning. I'm not comfortable making any predictions about it just yet, though I suspect it won't gain much ground in the near-term, for practical reasons. JavaScript, on the other hand, isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It seems to get more important every year.
Java is essentially dead on the browser. While it has a nice niche on the server, it's not really a significant player. Under Oracle, the best I can say is that its future is uncertain. Still, I wouldn't worry about starting a new Java project. If it's dying, it's got a lot of time to recover.
Anyhow, what I see isn't a lot of instability and change, but a rather stable and safe set of languages for the web.
PHP is practically ubiquitous, and owns quite a bit of the web (~80%). With lots of companies deeply invested in PHP for both public-facing sites and internal intranet apps, it's not going away any time soon. That makes it a very safe choice for new projects.
I don't think I need to explain why JavaScript isn't going anywhere. Love it or hate it, it's pretty much your only option. Java applets aren't coming back. While Flash is going to hang on for years, it's essentially dead and thus unsuitable for new projects. You're ultimately left with just two safe choices on the browser: "use JavaScript" or "don't use anything at all".
Looking back 10 years, things are basically the same. PHP was a smart choice for new projects, and JavaScript was still your only real choice on the browser -- though "nothing at all" was probably the smarter way to go at the time. (That's a long time. Think how much changed from 1993-2003 vs 2003-2013.)
So I'm just not seeing that "languages used to program on the web are changing all the time" like the parent asserts. What I've seen are a few of fads come and go, each failing to gain against a now near standard set of tools.
If "keeping current" means jumping on the latest bandwagon, count me out. I'll happily play with new things as they appear, but that's just for fun. I'd have to be crazy to make any sort of serious investment in what is very likely going to be the next passing fad. That said, I'll happily agree with you that new fads on the web appear infrequently enough that keeping up isn't difficult at all.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I have never met a competent developer who had trouble finding work.
I HAVE met incompetent out-of-touch, burnt-out, full-of-themselves developers who can't find work. It's this second kind that think they're good but are not and who should be in another field.
So you're like 18, or something?
From mid-2001 to the same time in 2003 I spent more time not working than working. Headhunters all ran and hid. Before that, I had been part of the OS support team on one of the larger mainframes in town, solely responsible for several mission-critical products, then a developer for software for various different platforms. I was an early adopter of both C++ and Java, worked with J2EE before JSPs had been invented. I actually developed and brought one of the very first C++ compiler systems to the PC market.
These days, I have clients who are quite happy with my ability to resolve thorny technical issues and keep their business prosperous and growing.
But there have been fat times and there have been lean times. Be grateful if you haven't experienced the lean ones. Or if you have the people skills to keep Management loving you when they start kicking people with demonstrated abilities out on the street.
But the languages used to program on the web are changing all the time.
So? Where have you been in the last two decades?
You are describing the same thing that has been happening on the desktop, and what occurred in the Client-Server arena. On the later, I remember when people rabidly debated about products based on AS/400, or AIX or OS/360, or Honewell-Bull or PICK. How about network platforms? Ethernet or Novell's token ring? And on the desktop, hmmm, VB or PowerBuilder or Delphi or FoxPro or Clipper or DBase? Or maybe Fujitsu COBOL? Sometimes straight up C++ with Borland or Symantec or Watcom or MS?
Technology changes all the time. All. The. Time. It changes because as we push the limits of hardware and software, we find new ways to create value. We also find, with experience, that some stuff wasn't really that great if we are lucky (and might actually cause considerable problems at worst.) So new custom techniques come to solve them. And eventually those custom techniques become "common practices". And those "common practices" eventually make it up as syntactic or semantic elements built-in right into new languages and tools.
So what's the surprise?
And stuff on the web doesn't change that often, at least within the broad stacks. Once you are in a Python stack or a Ruby/RoR stack, or a Java stack or a .NET stack, things do not change that much other than improvements and bug fixes to the languages and frameworks on the stack.
Even with JavaScript, which is pretty much the backbone of the web, how often does it change. Once you stick to a Javascript stack (ExtJs, or JQuery for instance), that doesn't change. And if you know one, you can easily extrapolate into the other.
Changing from one broad stack (say from Python to Java or Ruby to .NET), that's a lot trickier, but those changes occur infrequently. Very rarely does a person jumps through multiple stacks within a decade (which is an eternity in this profession), since it is usually companies (and sometimes geography) which dictate what stacks are in use. And the major challenges are not related to language or framework changes, but to changes in architectural paradigms, which can vary significantly from one to the other.
But again, that type of change is a) infrequent, and b) not impossible to overcome, and c) necessary to keep one's knives sharp.
Java is essentially dead on the browser.
Has it ever been alive in the browser?????? Other than applets at the end of the dot-com bubble 13 years ago, I've not seen any major use, if any, of Java on the browser. It has always been a de-facto server-side technology.
While it has a nice niche on the server, it's not really a significant player.
That doesn't make any sense either. Every major banking, online transaction or e-commerce system out there is in Java. Ebay? Java. Amazon? Java. Office Depot? Java? Anything enterprisey? Java. There is a lot more going on in terms of custom software development than web sites.
PHP is practically ubiquitous, and owns quite a bit of the web (~80%). With lots of companies deeply invested in PHP for both public-facing sites and internal intranet apps, it's not going away any time soon. That makes it a very safe choice for new projects.
Where do you get the statistics for that claim? Just a quick look at Dice, Monster for job openings do not a demand that would go hand in hand with that statistic.
Where do you get the statistics for that claim?
Here you go. Let's just say it's a bit better than a "quick look" at a couple of job websites.
That doesn't make any sense either.
Sure it does. It's found a nice niche with high-traffic sites. It's share as a server-side language for the web sits at around 3%. I'd call that pretty minor!
There is a lot more going on in terms of custom software development than web sites.
Obviously! Now try to put that in the context of the discussion.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I'm not sure why you're comparing RoR and NodeJS to PHP and Java
Because the OP was saying the only way you can get a job in development is to follow the new hotness. I was demonstrating that actually, there are more jobs for older technologies than there are for the new, faddish ones.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
...which is great, because the one thing that all developers lack is ego. everything else, they're absolutely brilliant at.
Lots of people claiming that they wanted to hire me, if only they had the budget.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but I have never had a client whose budgeting process was so rigid that exceptions were forbidden, even when a good business case was made. When a company can hire a person for $X and that person's work will make or save the company some multiple of $X, then budget gets freed up to hire that person.
You how chicks like to dump us saying, "It's not you, it's me!" so that we supposedly won't feel badly about it? That's what is happening to you, except in your case it's, "it's not you, and it's not me either. It's some asshole in accounting."
Riiiiiiight.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock