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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.

35 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. So why not treat them well? by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:So why not treat them well? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't understand this. I am 44, have been doing software development since college. I am already a millionaire (if you include my 401k savings), and am on track to be a multi-millionaire when I retire. I have never worked an 80 hour week, and only had a few 60 hours and one 70 hour week in my entire career.

      It helps that I never married or had kids, and invested wisely. But even so, I hear these horror stories about how software developers are treated and I just have not seen it.

      The city I live in is a tech hub, not a middle-of-nowhere city with no tech jobs. Maybe more people just need to move here.

    2. Re:So why not treat them well? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But even so, I hear these horror stories about how software developers are treated and I just have not seen it.

      Me neither. I have worked for companies that had catered meals, free soda, laundry service, sky diving bonding trips, etc. I have had plenty of opportunities to travel. I have worked some late nights, and done a few death marches, but those only lasted a few weeks, out of a career lasting decades.

      Software developers are likely the most spoiled employees in the history of the world.

      People will alway whine.

    3. Re:So why not treat them well? by spagthorpe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It won't really have any impact, because young people don't think they'll ever get old. Or it will be different for them.

      Had a 20-something at my last job make a number of comments about some of the older developers there, saying they'd hate to still be working at that age, and that they are probably stuck doing the same work because they can't learn anything new. I don't know why he was telling me this, as I was twice his age at the time, but it's obvious that he doesn't think he'll be in the same position.

      They ultimately did lay off a lot of their senior engineers and replace a lot of the position with 20-somethings, including in project management positions. A number of those projects never saw the light of day after years of re-writes into new frameworks.

      --

      WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
      (Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)

    4. Re:So why not treat them well? by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 3, Informative

      Having a measured IQ >150, I can tell you with my excellent two-minute Googling skills there are approximately 300K in the U.S. if you're using the Stanford-Binet scale. For the Wechsler scale, it's more like 140K, which is still a lot of people. Heck, the Prometheus Society's cut-off for membership is 160+. I guess to you, they basically don't exist...

      --
      The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
    5. Re:So why not treat them well? by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'd actually love to see a study into this -- how do you walk the fine line of broadening your toolset versus reeling in over-excitable young devs, without seeming like "that old guy who doesn't like to learn new things"?

    6. Re:So why not treat them well? by dcw3 · · Score: 2

      There is more than one IQ scale...you can wiki it. Oh, and they do exist.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    7. Re:So why not treat them well? by jebrick · · Score: 2

      People will alway whine.

      And there you are wrong. I have a pretty good career myself. But I see how many coders are treated and I am not surprised at all that there are by far not enough good ones.

      I think it depends on the company. I've worked for an established startup that still expected 70+ hours per week of it's coders. The company had all the things you expect for the startup. Free snacks. Break room with gaming consoles, ect. They were most happy with unmarried coders right out of college. If you were married you had better not have kids. If you are married and have kids your wife had better not work. Basically, anything that would take away their coding time is not a good employee. They had a 25-30% turnover but did get bought by a much bigger fish.

      I now work for a company that, while paying slightly less than market, allows for work-life balance.

    8. Re:So why not treat them well? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 2

      And actually, that leads to a way to get even cheaper software developers: Hire ones over 50 to do the legacy technical debt stuff.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  2. And yet there's agile by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And open concept offices.

    1. Re:And yet there's agile by Seven+Spirals · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've quit one job and refused two others because of open offices. The two I refused were absolutely flabbergasted by my refusal. They literally could not understand why anyone wouldn't want to be in an open office space surrounded on 3.8 sides by glass-walled manager offices, loud ugly marketing girls, and a bunch of H1B dudes who couldn't be bothered to wear deodorant. That place (MX Logic) had the worst looking office I've ever seen. One of them offered me the job on the spot after the interview and I was already shutting them down and refusing it before they even got started. I told them there is about a zero percent chance of getting anyone really talented to take the gig, because they had this ridiculous noisy slave pit thing going. I nearly left before I even *did* the interview I was so disgusted with the place. The hiring manager was (of course) offended, but he was also clueless. About a year after that interview I had a guy come up to me at the local Maker Space who was one of the "technical resources" for the company during the interview (quiet guy in the back of the room). He told me "My god was I cheering when you refused them over the goddamn open workspace idiocy. My boss was upset over that for weeks. They still talk about it during the hiring process and argue about it."

    2. Re:And yet there's agile by Ocker3 · · Score: 2

      "But I can See everyone and I know that they're working" - Manager If someone doesn't know enough about their direct report's job that they don't know whether they're working or not without seeing them at their desk, there's a problem. Not all jobs are reduced in efficiency by a cubicle farm, but if your job is primarily about mental focus for the time-intensive tasks, then most people will benefit from having their own room. And the employer will probably benefit enough that an actual room is a worthwhile investment. Not everyone can have one of those fancy early-Pixar fancy houses in a big room (I'm pretty sure Pixar doesn't have them these days either), but a cubicle farm reduces focus and productivity.

    3. Re:And yet there's agile by Klaxton · · Score: 2

      It begs the question, why even apply there in the first place.

      So you could see their office environment tucked away behind the job description on the internet?

    4. Re:And yet there's agile by Klaxton · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've worked in the industry for many years, usually with a private office or shared with one person. Recently got a job in an agile "scrum" shop, which went to an open floorplan a few months later. Miserable experience on both counts. Every day you get a Jira work ticket for some "the user wants to see" granule of a thing that you had no part in designing. Zero privacy. It is amazingly de-motivating.

    5. Re:And yet there's agile by The+Cynical+Critic · · Score: 2

      Sounds a bit like my previous job... Thou there the noise was mostly a system test rig with an old, not-currently-in-production-use, version of a system we were in the process of re-engineering running a stability test in case a customer wanted our system on site in an expedited manner running in the "engineer room" with me and 3 co-workers. I tried asking my boss, whose idea it was to have the old system running a 24/7 stability test and to have all the engineers in this room, if this was absolutely necessary and he insisted it was, but refused when I suggested we move it to his personal office or another office used as storage space (until a new marketing guy got hired and we had to empty it out for him).

      The really annoying thing about the test rig, generating a constant hum at about 68db, was that it turned out to be completely pointless as we were able to get the new system production ready by the time the next customer was ready for us to come on-site and install our equipment. The other 3 people weren't even that big of an issue as we all knew it was mostly to save space in a small office as we were running on a shoestring budget until we got external funding, which never came as our parent company had a few years prior been in charge of a pretty badly failed project and ruined it's reputation in the process.

      Thankfully after that employer went belly-up this spring I quickly found a new job where I have better pay and an actual office for myself (thou I had to put up with just a small corner for the first month until we moved to a larger office in the same building). I don't even have enough stuff in my office to fill even half of it and only put together a single shelf as I didn't even have enough stuff to fill that single shelf. Put in a 40" flat screen TV as a monitor for the small git server on the shelf and data visualization when I'm showing off my work to multiple co-workers just to make the room feel less empty (and find use for a TV that had lying in the corner after we emptied an unused office at a nearby site).

      --
      "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
    6. Re:And yet there's agile by DaFallus · · Score: 2

      Office layout and the bathrooms are honestly two of the most accurate indicators of how employees are treated that I've seen. If you interview at a place with a bathroom that looks like a place you're likely to be mugged or raped, or if the toilet paper is empty or so thin that you can see through it, run.

      --
      No one cares what your captcha was

      Houston TX, USA
  3. Yeah, right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Yeah, right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      LOL. You've massively understated the ageism and the issue of job qualifications.

      First, the ageism problem is associated also with a problem that people aren't allowed to take breaks. After having great success even to the point of being a chief architect on an 80-man program, I quit working for a while and now can't find anyone who will let me start at the bottom.

      But, the job qualification thing is really ridiculous. A good software engineer is a specialist at picking up new domains, languages, frameworks, etc. That really is the job. While working in a major corporation, I would switch projects routinely with no problem. It rarely took more than a couple of weeks to come up to speed on the new group's tools and languages which were always different. To require knowledge specific to the project before entering the project is stupid.

    2. Re:Yeah, right by Altus · · Score: 2

      So in a discussion of an article that says that software engineering tallent is more valuable than money, your argument is that these people are too expensive?

      Seems to me that this wouldn't be possible if it weren't sufficiently pervasive, keeping wages down for older engineers, otherwise those IBM engineers would just go elsewhere rather than take shittier pay from IBM.

      --

      "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

  4. Yeah haven't heard that one before by Crashmarik · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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 ?

  5. FTFY by thevirtualcat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Software Developers Who Are Willing To Work For Uncompetitive Wages And No Benefits Are Now More Valuable To Companies Than Money, Says Survey

  6. .ORG by fluffernutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:.ORG by Ocker3 · · Score: 2

      How do we re-invent Unions without calling them Unions and avoid the very real baggage that the term has in the USA? Guilds?

    2. Re:.ORG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      80+ hours a week ?!! How do you even write functioning software after 40+ hours in a week ? When your brain is your tool and it is fatigued how can that work ?
      Better work 40 hours a week and write something proper, go home and refill your battery, enjoy life and be fresh the following day. 80+ hours is just 'making hours' not getting actual work done.

    3. Re:.ORG by StormReaver · · Score: 2

      ...and start saying no to 80+ work weeks collectively.

      That only works when there aren't a hundred H1B's (or other non-USA-equivalent) from shithole countries waiting to take each job. If all non-shithole-country IS/IT worker joined the union and said no to abusive working conditions, there would be only shithole country workers in IS/IT.

      And no, that wouldn't convince companies to start paying high salaries for highly skilled workers. It would merely convince them to hire more shithole-country workers to fill the void.

  7. Yet us 50+ folks are unemployed by Snotnose · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Forget how long I've been out of work, it's been 2-3 years now since I quit looking.

    1. Re:Yet us 50+ folks are unemployed by Locke2005 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm 57 and got at least 3 calls TODAY offering to submit me for contract software positions. Granted, a lot of recruiters try to low-ball me on the hourly rate, but they change their tune as soon as you call their bluff and tell them you're not interested at that low rate.

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    2. Re:Yet us 50+ folks are unemployed by Locke2005 · · Score: 2

      I agree; I regard recruiters as people that weren't ethical enough to get jobs as used car salesmen. I interviewed for a job once, didn't get any response, so I started another position. A month after the initial interview, the recruiter for the first position offered me $1500 cash in a plain, unmarked envelope to quit the job I'd just started and take the other position instead! (Apparently the cash came out of his commission.) So yes, recruiters know nothing, rely almost entirely on keyword searching in resumes, and will do anything to make a quick buck. But as long as the checks clear, why should I complain?

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  8. Talk about not understanding an article / Poll by Harlequin80 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  9. Not at my compamy by dccase · · Score: 2

    Not at my company, and certainly not at any other publicly-traded company.
    Maybe at some privately-held company until it gets bought out.

  10. Employees are our Most Valuable Asset by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 2

    Right behind carbon paper.

  11. Re:False by Klaxton · · Score: 2

    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.

  12. Re:Step one of the cure... by gweihir · · Score: 2

    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.
  13. Re:Legacy systems are out of control by gweihir · · Score: 2

    That is a different problem. Their new offerings are just really bad. Also, nobody sane used MS crap on server-side.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  14. Domain knowledge NOT valued, fads are by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    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.)