Bookie or porno director...
Certified electricians and plumbers don't do so bad these days either, and it takes less time and money to get certified than it does to get a degree.
Seriously. Unix admins who are used to installing there own cat5 cable and stuff should have no problems getting certified as good old fashioned electricians. I've heard a lot of stories about _huge_ sums made by electrical contractors on major construction projects, or simply those doing residential wiring who are known and trusted in a neighbourhood. We're talking lawyer/banker-sized paychecks.
This stuff is well paid because it isn't glamorous and nobody thinks about setting up in plumbing or electrical contracting after years running up student debt & cramming their heads with useless abstract 'middle class' knowledge at university, ergo:-
You won't be competing with thousands of unemployed MIT & Stanford Ph.Ds who have no family to provide for and are prepared to work 16 hour days.
People need a plumber to stop the poo backing into the shower _even during recessions_.
For the love of god, it's only a week or so since we had an identical thread under a similar name. JUST DEAL WITH THE FACT THAT CLAIMING SOME UNDERSTANDING OF 'NET TECHONOLOGY IS NO LONGER A PATH TO INSTANT RICHES. YOU CAN STILL DO OK IF YOU WORK HARD, BUT THE GOLD RUSH IS OVER, GOT THAT?'.
OK, now that's out of my system, can the people who don't really enjoy working late to solve logic puzzles please leave the profession, whilst the rest of us pay our mortgages they way we always planned?
The software industry was never the web-hype bullshit game that you describe. It was people producing software and selling it to other people who want to run it on their computers.
Quite right, I was just using that as an example, however the web-marketing hysteria drove a false demand for all kinds of useless tools and auxilary software/systems.
The software 'industry' is changing in part because tools are getting better, and people are learning more how to develop their own code. It's not really that hard to develop computer applications to do what you want them to do, so specialists who are 'software only' will fade way, and 'industry' will view software as one of it's components. The people best qualified to produce a software app for a given application are the people who work in that application, and know the processes. Not the people who produce layer upon layer upon layer more of 'object orientation' in a seeming attempt to abstract away to nothing the actual work being done.
But because of problematic economic fundamentals (stock market still mostly overvalued, high level of debt in the economy, issues of overtaxation in western europe), salaries just aren't going to be what they used to, because demand just isn't what it was during the boom. This should eventually get ironed out (slowly and painfully).
An additional problem is that software developers are facing increasing competition from cheaper, but equally skilled, programmers abroad. This problem isn't going to go away readily.
The software industry isn't dead, it's just turned into a _normal_ industry. That means that a hard working & well qualified graduate working for somebody else can reasonably aspire to home-ownership (after years of saving), a car & the occasional foreign trip. If you're smart & frugal you might even achieve all this without being a slave to your credit-card bill for the rest of your working life.
If you make it up the career ladder or start your own company that suceeds, you could end up significantly richer than most people, just like Ben & Jerry of the famous ice-cream or senior management at General Motors. Note that neither of these companies was built without a good idea, careful financial management and years of effort by the founders.
What is no longer likely to happen is that you will dream up some piece of sketchily thought-out vapour-ware or online store that may help people save 3% on their dog-food purchases (based in naive & flakey financial projections) and immediately be offered $200 million in venture capital and a huge-well equipped office all paid for in pre-IPO company stock. Those days are _long_ gone, and they're never coming back to the web industry.
If the latter is what you expected to greet you on graduation, and you won't be satisfied if it takes you any longer to become a bazillionaire, then think about writing a movie or becoming a rock-star. It happens. Occasionally. Try and stay off the crack whilst waiting tables in LA though.
Failing that, the same kind of bubble will probably occur in some kind of tech field in the next 25 years or so. Perhaps nanotech, perhaps something we haven't heard of yet. Take your pick and take your chances..
Not only do we get paid a little less than in the US (well, less than NY or California, despite slightly higher cost of living in southern England), but we have to do CS exams involving hardcore problem solving, and at Bachelors level every exam I had was closed book!
I'd rather see more programmers joining professional associations than becoming unionised.
Yes, both defend their members interests in terms of pay and conditions, but professional associations garner their members more trust and respect by also ensuring their members meet certain standards of competence and behaviour. This eventually lets them influence things like laws and insurance policies (oh, we can't insure that project without a professional software engineer approving the designs and test procedures).
This is why accountants and lawyers with the right certificates on the wall get nice offices, lunch on expenses and decent salaries, despite the fact that we have no shortage of either profession in most industrialised countries.
I know that most software developers hate wasting time on political and business stuff, but if you refuse to take part, you should also remember not to complain the next time you see the engineers getting laid off but not the lawyers. Or the next time you make a significant contribution to the design of a product worth millions, but get paid less than the lawyer who designed the sales contract.
Then the entire system is useless and must be abandoned. As a safety feature, when all countries are declared 'unsafe', the system should delete all its data using the most effective means possible with software.
In the extreme case where all users/countries had been reported as 'captured' then extreme measures would be required to protect the identities of the 'survivors'.
Of course, the more users/countries one could get to join this civil liberties 'trust network', the less likely would be its total destruction.
I take your points seriously. I understand that my points will seem abstract to anybody suffering real repression now. What my point is is to point out the need for an international 'fraternity/sorority' of trust.
This international 'brotherhood' can only be protected from remote 'usurpers' with public key cryptography and the stiffening 'backbone' of a unanimous vote. Yes, there will be many occasions where decent, freedom loving pundits' opinions are excluded by the system, but at least you could be assured that a repressive government would have far less chance of suppressing the truth than they do currently. Freedom would be protected by reputation, which would, in turn, be protected by a fraternity of international honour.
I realise this sounds a little mad. I'm willing to go into more detail to explain myself.
Excellent point. It's clear that such software requires a feature that allows a user to do the following with minimal keystrokes:-
'I'm about to be captured. Please assume anybody logging in as me is an evil cracker. Anything that can be decrypted with my key should be re-encrypted with the key of a 'safe' user who is registered with a 'safe' country'
Determining 'safe' countries and 'users' would require some care. Perhaps a voting system of some kind? or Central control by the project maintainer (via their private key)? Both systems could be abused. The first system would be prone to the agents of the 'evil' army registering as users and overwheliming by force of numbers.
The second system would put require all other users to trust the maintainer, and could be compromised by their capture and interrogation. (Being the maintainer of such a project would make one a target of many hostile intelligence agencies).
I think the most trustworthy system would be a variant of the first, whereby all new users had to be declared 'trusted' by unanimous vote of current 'trusted' users. Of course this wouldn't scale to well, adding new user becoming slower and more difficult as each new user is added. Establishing trusted countries could be handled as follows:-
1) If any trusted user claims a country cannot be trusted, then the system assumes the country cannot be trusted until 'reinstated' by unanimous vote.
2) If any user who is registered to that country invokes the 'i've been captured' feature above, the country is no longer to be trusted until restored by unanimous vote.
By unanimous vote I mean a unanimous vote of trusted users in trusted countries.
No, _we_ put the pressure on the programmers. Something like 95% of published games make a loss. You rightly point out that really innovative gameplay and graphics require real talent and dedication to conjure up, but _we_ as gamers simply don't buy the games that are lacking. The studios are under constant pressure to deliver something that excites our jaded palates or go bust.
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Bookie or porno director... Certified electricians and plumbers don't do so bad these days either, and it takes less time and money to get certified than it does to get a degree. Seriously. Unix admins who are used to installing there own cat5 cable and stuff should have no problems getting certified as good old fashioned electricians. I've heard a lot of stories about _huge_ sums made by electrical contractors on major construction projects, or simply those doing residential wiring who are known and trusted in a neighbourhood. We're talking lawyer/banker-sized paychecks. This stuff is well paid because it isn't glamorous and nobody thinks about setting up in plumbing or electrical contracting after years running up student debt & cramming their heads with useless abstract 'middle class' knowledge at university, ergo:- You won't be competing with thousands of unemployed MIT & Stanford Ph.Ds who have no family to provide for and are prepared to work 16 hour days. People need a plumber to stop the poo backing into the shower _even during recessions_.
For the love of god, it's only a week or so since we had an identical thread under a similar name. JUST DEAL WITH THE FACT THAT CLAIMING SOME UNDERSTANDING OF 'NET TECHONOLOGY IS NO LONGER A PATH TO INSTANT RICHES. YOU CAN STILL DO OK IF YOU WORK HARD, BUT THE GOLD RUSH IS OVER, GOT THAT?'. OK, now that's out of my system, can the people who don't really enjoy working late to solve logic puzzles please leave the profession, whilst the rest of us pay our mortgages they way we always planned?
The software industry was never the web-hype bullshit game that you describe. It was people producing software and selling it to other people who want to run it on their computers.
Quite right, I was just using that as an example, however the web-marketing hysteria drove a false demand for all kinds of useless tools and auxilary software/systems.
The software 'industry' is changing in part because tools are getting better, and people are learning more how to develop their own code. It's not really that hard to develop computer applications to do what you want them to do, so specialists who are 'software only' will fade way, and 'industry' will view software as one of it's components. The people best qualified to produce a software app for a given application are the people who work in that application, and know the processes. Not the people who produce layer upon layer upon layer more of 'object orientation' in a seeming attempt to abstract
away to nothing the actual work being done.
But because of problematic economic fundamentals
(stock market still mostly overvalued, high level of debt in the economy, issues of overtaxation in western europe), salaries just aren't going to be what they used to, because demand just isn't what it was during the boom.
This should eventually get ironed out (slowly and painfully).
An additional problem is that software developers are facing increasing competition from cheaper, but equally skilled, programmers abroad. This problem isn't going to go away readily.
The software industry isn't dead, it's just turned into a _normal_ industry. That means that a hard working & well qualified graduate working for somebody else can reasonably aspire to home-ownership (after years of saving), a car & the occasional foreign trip. If you're smart & frugal you might even achieve all this without being a slave to your credit-card bill for the rest of your working life. If you make it up the career ladder or start your own company that suceeds, you could end up significantly richer than most people, just like Ben & Jerry of the famous ice-cream or senior management at General Motors. Note that neither of these companies was built without a good idea, careful financial management and years of effort by the founders. What is no longer likely to happen is that you will dream up some piece of sketchily thought-out vapour-ware or online store that may help people save 3% on their dog-food purchases (based in naive & flakey financial projections) and immediately be offered $200 million in venture capital and a huge-well equipped office all paid for in pre-IPO company stock. Those days are _long_ gone, and they're never coming back to the web industry. If the latter is what you expected to greet you on graduation, and you won't be satisfied if it takes you any longer to become a bazillionaire, then think about writing a movie or becoming a rock-star. It happens. Occasionally. Try and stay off the crack whilst waiting tables in LA though. Failing that, the same kind of bubble will probably occur in some kind of tech field in the next 25 years or so. Perhaps nanotech, perhaps something we haven't heard of yet. Take your pick and take your chances..
Not only do we get paid a little less than in the US (well, less than NY or California, despite slightly higher cost of living in southern England), but we have to do CS exams involving hardcore problem solving, and at Bachelors level every exam I had was closed book!
Might not look pretty, but you can do what you're describing using JNI
I'd rather see more programmers joining professional associations than becoming unionised.
Yes, both defend their members interests in terms of pay and conditions, but professional associations garner their members more trust and respect by also ensuring their members meet certain standards of competence and behaviour.
This eventually lets them influence things like laws and insurance policies (oh, we can't insure that project without a professional software engineer approving the designs and test procedures).
This is why accountants and lawyers with the right certificates on the wall get nice offices, lunch on expenses and decent salaries, despite the fact that we have no shortage of either profession in most industrialised countries.
I know that most software developers hate wasting time on political and business stuff, but if you refuse to take part, you should also remember not to complain the next time you see the engineers getting laid off but not the lawyers. Or the next time you make a significant contribution to the design of a product worth millions, but get paid less than the lawyer who designed the sales contract.
Then the entire system is useless and must be abandoned. As a safety feature, when all countries are declared 'unsafe', the system should delete all its data using the most effective means possible with software.
In the extreme case where all users/countries had been reported as 'captured' then extreme measures would be required to protect the identities of the 'survivors'.
Of course, the more users/countries one could get to join this civil liberties 'trust network',
the less likely would be its total destruction.
I take your points seriously. I understand that my points will seem abstract to anybody suffering real repression now. What my point is is to point out the need for an international 'fraternity/sorority' of trust. This international 'brotherhood' can only be protected from remote 'usurpers' with public key cryptography and the stiffening 'backbone' of a unanimous vote. Yes, there will be many occasions where decent, freedom loving pundits' opinions are excluded by the system, but at least you could be assured that a repressive government would have far less chance of suppressing the truth than they do currently. Freedom would be protected by reputation, which would, in turn, be protected by a fraternity of international honour. I realise this sounds a little mad. I'm willing to go into more detail to explain myself.
Excellent point. It's clear that such software requires a feature that allows a user to do the following with minimal keystrokes :-
:-
'I'm about to be captured. Please assume anybody logging in as me is an evil cracker. Anything that can be decrypted with my key should be re-encrypted with the key of a 'safe' user who is registered with a 'safe' country'
Determining 'safe' countries and 'users' would require some care. Perhaps a voting system of some kind? or Central control by the project maintainer (via their private key)?
Both systems could be abused. The first system would be prone to the agents of the 'evil' army registering as users and overwheliming by force of numbers.
The second system would put require all other users to trust the maintainer, and could be compromised by their capture and interrogation.
(Being the maintainer of such a project would make one a target of many hostile intelligence agencies).
I think the most trustworthy system would be a variant of the first, whereby all new users had to be declared 'trusted' by unanimous vote of current 'trusted' users. Of course this wouldn't scale to well, adding new user becoming slower and more difficult as each new user is added.
Establishing trusted countries could be handled as follows
1) If any trusted user claims a country cannot be trusted, then the system assumes the country cannot be trusted until 'reinstated' by unanimous vote.
2) If any user who is registered to that country invokes the 'i've been captured' feature above, the country is no longer to be trusted until restored by unanimous vote.
By unanimous vote I mean a unanimous vote of trusted users in trusted countries.
Does this make sense?
No, _we_ put the pressure on the programmers.
Something like 95% of published games make a loss.
You rightly point out that really innovative gameplay and graphics require real talent and dedication to conjure up, but _we_ as gamers simply don't buy the games that are lacking.
The studios are under constant pressure to deliver something that excites our jaded palates or go bust.