Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
Here's the problem: Most all of what makes a good lawyer or doctor isn't at all about finding creative, novel ways to solve problems. Much the opposite in fact; Creative application of law or medicine is most likely to get you disbarred or thrown in jail. It's much easier to create a quantifiable exam when the subject matter is so well defined and creativity is shunned.
In software however, it's completely the opposite. Creative, novel application of existing technology and/or the invention of entirely new technology, is a good software developer's bread and butter. It's a big part of the essence of what makes them a good developer rather then a coding drone.
So how do you create an exam to quantify a good developer? By the very nature of what you're looking for the only "right" answers are "wrong" ones. But which wrong answer is right? That's completely subjective in an exam setting, however in the real world it's much easier to quantify: Your shit works and works well or it doesn't.
My
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.
Meanwhile, you get back to work and tell the boss that the new product feature is a bad idea, and you get told to shut up and keep rowing.
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.