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Can Full-Time Tech Workers Survive the Gig Economy? (dice.com)
Nerval's Lobster writes: By some measures, more than 40 percent of U.S. workers will be independent in 2020. Today, that number stands at 34 percent, according to the Freelancer's Union. By all accounts, the trend seems widespread enough to indicate that tech pros should prepare themselves for the dynamics of a world that depends more on contingent work. The question isn't whether the tech world will see an increasing prevalence of 'gigs,' rather than full-time positions; it's whether those in full-time positions can easily keep their jobs when there's pressure to farm it out cheaply and easily to freelancers. Or will the need for people who can see projects through the long term prevent the 'gig economy' from radically changing the tech industry?
When products can be spun up, sold off and trashed in the space of a few years this might become viable. For now there are plenty of projects which require long-term staffing because of the sheer body of knowledge required to hold them together.
REALITY 1
This is counteracted by the "disrupt" movement that believes software is cheap and that we should be able to rewrite an operating system in a couple of nights with enough beer. Once we're capable of rewriting an OS and enough of a software portfolio for a platform to become viable [in a short space of time] then we've got our gig economy. It'll be a hellhole of turn up, burn out, fuck off economics - software with no documentation that's hacked together with no testing and no accumulated wisdom. At this point all the money injected into utilizing computers for the benefit to business will start to flow in reverse and we'll suck that value back out in the form of frustration and customer-funded testing. Computers will eventually become no net use to anyone because the software will be so abysmal.
REALITY 2
The glut of programmers rolling off the CS mill will far exceed demand and the majority will go into open source in the hope of making up enough bullet points to get an interview. In the meantime the software industry will happily take the fruits of the free OSS platforms development and essentially get their code and support for free. This has the effect of handing the software maintenance bill to the disenfranchised parents of the basement dwelling 30 year old programmer with an $80,000 CS program yet to pay for.
If you're a programmer then start training into something more grounded, like plumbing, electrical or building. You can't farm that work out to other nations without bringing them in from overseas. This will work as long as regulation requires them to be well trained and licensed. Once that card plays out though we'll all be living in shanty towns with live cables and broken pipes flailing around all over the place. That won't matter though because you'll be skilled enough to do the work yourself.
Then maybe we can dismantle society and all move back into caves.