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Software Developers Are Now More Valuable To Companies Than Money, Says Survey (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: As our global economy increasingly comes to run on technology-enabled rails and every company becomes a tech company, demand for high-quality software engineers is at an all-time high. A recent study from Stripe and Harris Poll found that 61 percent of C-suite executives believe access to developer talent is a threat to the success of their business. Perhaps more surprisingly -- as we mark a decade after the financial crisis -- this threat was even ranked above capital constraints. And yet, despite being many corporations' most precious resource, developer talents are all too often squandered. Collectively, companies today lose upward of $300 billion a year paying down "technical debt," as developers pour time into maintaining legacy systems or dealing with the ramifications of bad software. This is especially worrisome, given the outsized impact developers have on companies' chances of success. Software developers don't have a monopoly on good ideas, but their skill set makes them a uniquely deep source of innovation, productivity and new economic connections. When deployed correctly, developers can be economic multipliers -- coefficients that dramatically ratchet up the output of the teams and companies of which they're a part.
Naa, that would be un-capitalist. Developers must be cheap wage-slaves that do not have a real career-path and are unable to find a job once they hit 50. That will surely not have any impact on whether smart people go into software writing or not, right?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And open concept offices.
If they considered developers more important than money, they'd pay the developers more to keep the skilled ones. Every time a developer leaves a company, a hunk of business knowledge walks out the door with him.
Companies care about that quarter's finance report, and the C-level execs care only about fleecing the company for all they can stuff into their own pockets. Look at what they do, not what some survey says.
Microsoft owns javascript? You have things backwards.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Maybe it just sounds too much like 40 years of businesses claiming there was a shortage of engineers in the U.S. when what they meant was there was a shortage of engineers that could be treated really badly.
Or maybe it's the fact that companies only seem to be willing to hire H1Bs that will do anything not to go back to their shitholes, or young kids who are stupid enough to believe managements promises and have no family or social life to distract from putting in 80+ hour weeks ?
Software Developers Who Are Willing To Work For Uncompetitive Wages And No Benefits Are Now More Valuable To Companies Than Money, Says Survey
This just tells me that developers need to get organized and start saying no to 80+ work weeks collectively. Otherwise it will be divided they fall, forever.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The sun rose today.
Microsoft has just announced paid extended support for Windows 7 as too many companies are using it. There’s a lot of server 2003 systems out there too, with companies rather risking security exploits than upgrade.
Forget how long I've been out of work, it's been 2-3 years now since I quit looking.
Employees are our most valuable asset? I'm pretty sure it's actually still money.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's like saying "gold is worth more than money!" - totally meaningless.
One (gold, developers) is a commodity that IS exchanged, the other (money) is the medium OF exchange.
Saying that "commodity X" is worth more than "exchange medium Y" makes no sense because a commodity CANNOT be worth "more" or "less" than the medium of exchange used - it can only ever be worth a specified amount of Y.
No where does it say that companies think developers are more important than money.
The results state that the companies perceive the risk of not being able to find skills as higher than the risks of not being able to access capital.
This is especially true if you're a cash rich organisation.
In the current financial climate finding returns on your investments is hard. Interest rates are at historically low levels, bond returns are zero, and so that leaves higher risk investments to get returns. That effectively translates into money moving into the stock market and VC type investments which pushes money further and further up the risk tree making funding generally easy to find.
What management school fails to teach young inexperienced executives: If the company's future existence depends on whether or not an employee does the job correctly or not, they are "worth more than money".
Incurring technical debt is a business decision.
And it may well be the right decision.
For example, in a startup, time to market typically trumps software quality.
And there are a lot of startups in the software field...
Not at my company, and certainly not at any other publicly-traded company.
Maybe at some privately-held company until it gets bought out.
Right behind carbon paper.
Software developers generally have to do what they are told, and work on whatever the boss thinks is important. You don't get to decide whether it is going to bring in money or not.
a cubicle.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
I was thinking the same thing. Although JavaScript, Java, and the surrounding ecosystems could have come from MS, no doubt.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I've consistently found that companies do NOT value domain knowledge in developers very much. Many colleagues have agreed with me on this. I'm not sure exactly why, other than perhaps co's would rather have somebody skilled in the latest eye-candy UI's more than an expert on their domain; and somebody who has been in the company for a while may have let their UI "fad" skills slip compared to a hungry grad. It's called "ageism" in other contexts.
Books are judged by covers: UI fad compliance. Human nature. I've seen PHB's go gaga over "fashionable" and animated UI's, even giving a bastard dev a raise, and completely ignoring the horrid functionality and operational problems that came with it.
(I can rant all day about the state of UI technology/standards AND human reaction to it. UI issues wag the IT dog.)
Table-ized A.I.
Post-scarcity society. Post-scarcity economy. The worth of money degenerates and disappears - ECB negative interest is almost a standard now and Jeff Bezos wears the same jeans I do and has the same phone. The worth of knowledge however suddenly rises because in a functioning post scarcity society is the only thing left that counts. Hence people are starting to notice the nerd camp who value knowledge above popularity actually on to something.
Seems very fitting to me. I'm just wasn't expecting that to happen that fast and I'm my lifetime. But then again, nobody did, so that's a pleasant surprise.
All in all, the consequence is logical. Capitalism has run its course, knowledge and culture are King. We need more of this, and fast, so people stop fighting stupid wars and accruing useless tat.
My 2 cents. Errrm, "knowledge points". :-)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
What does the headline even mean? A business quantifies things by ROI... developers should be no different than any other asset. Maybe they just need to work out what the 'R' means.
You fire us and replace us with H-1B drones or outsource to 'dev centers' in third world countries.
As we age, you push us off onto the shit projects which keeps us from getting experience in new technologies, thus making us unhireable after you lay us off.
You refuse to train us but expect but demand that anyone you hire has years of experience in your particular tech mix.
etc., etc., etc.
Maybe the problem isn't that there's a lack of available tech talent, maybe the problem is that there is a lack of management talent. Used to be that 'managers' actually used to put thought and effort into building a workforce, recognizing it as something of strategic importance to the long-term health of their business. Now, 'managers' just expect things to happen for them.
money can be borrowed - mgt thinks so can s/w talent...
nothing to see here - move along