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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
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.
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...
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?
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 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."
Opposite anecdote: I live in a major city on the West coast of the U.S., and I've never had a period of the last 7 years where I couldn't get a six figure offer when I wanted a new job. And I didn't even have to move.
The lesson from your travels isn't that being a computer programmer is a bad gig. It's that you shouldn't move to a place where there is only one job. Move to a major metropolitan area, and you can earn a lot of money with virtually zero unemployment in the field.
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
...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?)
If it's the article I think you're talking about it was spot on, but you've misunderstood it.
He never claimed microsoft was dead as in about to go out of business. He claimed that the big bad microsoft, a threat to the entire industry was dead. He was right. Perhaps you don't remember the world from back in the 90s ad the wake of destruction microsoft left in its path. The big fear of almost any software company was that microsoft woule enter the area and destroy them.
I doubt github has ever had such a fear because that microsoft has died thankfully.
If you speak to old timers, they'll tell you of the days when IBM left fear and destruction in its wake and had the industry in a death like strangle hold. That IBM is dead too, even though they're pulling in $100bn in revenue.
Neither microsoft nor IBM have the industry dominance that they used to.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.