I still feel that software development isn’t in freefall because of AI, but because large companies have hit the point where they aren’t going to put resources into development unless it will immediately produce revenue.
What large software company is doing the development typical of the industry a decade ago?
I’ve definitely noticed that. Deadlines are extreme now, there’s no research, it’s just ship it now. There’s no overhead. In 10 years the business side has taken complete control with no regard for the process, and AI only amplified that.
Seniors like me are being burned out, and the juniors don’t have enough experience to handle what business is throwing now. There will be a reckoning in the field I think as companies lose that experience.
Good thing senior developers will always just pop up from thin air when you need them, instead of being actual people who started as rookies and gradually got experience!
Right?
IMO this is the silver lining as it ensures there will be a shortage of developers in a few years, even entry level people.
…I mean, the company I started for gave me a 6 month crash course, and then hired me out as a senior dev. Does that count?
Not to be rude, but they gave you barebones experience then lied about your experience.
A senior dev isn’t something you can crash course in even a year, it’s multiple years of experience layered in top of each other.
A crash course is essentially just a junior dev. Your company just wanted to charge more for your hours.
I’ve got 30+ years of fuck ups under my belt so I know to avoid those and create brand new, innovative, fuck ups… You can’t just teach that.
What’s the biggest blunder you remember?
I’m going to claim this one wasn’t entirely my fault and should have been coded better… But I ran it.
I ran a script that expected to run from a bin directory, cd/chdir to a input file directory, then do a sed on every file to replace windows line endings to UNIX/Linux line endings. After that it would start loading and processing them.
The problem was, if the directory it tried to change to didn’t exist, it silently continued and ran it on the current directory… You know, the bin directory… With all the compiled C binaries.
So at about 16:30 on a Friday, 30 min before we started our huge weekend builds, I nuked about 70% of the binaries by randomly replacing all bytes that looked like crlf with lf. Turns out binaries didn’t like that.
Good times.
An European country had no access to card payments for a weekend here :)
One hundred percent. They gave me a crash pad through them, I could bring anything up to them without needing to go to my ultimate employer. Yes, I was a junior in the suit of a senior and I’m very much aware of that fact.
I have 15 years of experience and have been unemployed for 18 months, it’s not just juniors who can’t find a job right now.
26 years of experience here. I’m on month 8. I’m starting to think that those 26 years are hurting more than they’re helping.
Agreed, what little luck I’ve had has fallen through and I very specifically felt that it was because they were looking for somebody who was younger and less experienced than I am at least in this one instance.
Same. I’ve been a software developer for 20 years, and have been unemployed for months. I’m honestly considering just switching industries at this point.
This is why I went into academia. My job is pandemic–proof.
Because young software developers like all apprentices are mostly not productive, their value is in their potential and it will not be understood what has been thrown away until a generation has been lost and there is no one with experience to lead. The gamble of course is that by then machines will be able to take on those positions too but it’s a big gamble and even at best it’s betting against people.
Using a lot of words to say “It won’t affect this quarter”
If it’s true that young software developers are mostly not productive, then employing them hasn’t made sense for decades because staying at the same company for most of one’s career stopped being the default some time around 1980.
Long ago, companies hired new people and professionals took on apprentices knowing they were bot going to be productive initially, but thst over time they would be trained and loyal.
Then companies decided that they could poach the people other trained instead of spending money on training their own employees in the interest of short term profits. Then a lack of training meant they didn’t need to increase pay for their own employees to increase shirt term profits, so people started job hopping as it was the only way to increase pay. This of course required personal training outside of working hours or just being good at interviewing, not necessarily the job. That is also why we have entry level positions that require a decade of experience and pay minimum wage.
We have the current culture because of short term profits being the sole driver of business.
Solid explanation
Let’s not also blame credential mills and telling everyone “just learn to code” while ruinning every traditional career and stagnating wages.
I couldn’t believe it when they actually hired somebody at a job I used to work at, to work with three of us who all had CS degrees, who had been through six weeks of a Vo-tech program after recently graduating high school. And the higher-ups actually expected this person to be able to work on the stack we were using at the same level we did.
I’m a person who dropped out and I’ll be the first to say I don’t think a diploma means much. But I taught myself programming when I was 13, did programming competitions, math contests, and have spent thousands of hours programming, working on algorithms, reading math books, etc. And I know where I’m out of my depth.
That being said, that’s NOTHING in experience. They could learn from there, but they’d be a very very hands on intern.
My problem with what you’re saying is then the expectation becomes that I’m going to give you the education that I paid and took the time for, I’m not getting paid to be your professor and since I’m the senior that we’re not meeting our deadlines falls on me not you. And I’m not talking about just programming knowledge, a CS degree is far more than programming, one of my classes was just how to talk to users and understand what their needs are through interviewing and observing. And I say this is somebody who also dropped out but then went back later and finished my degree.
I definitely said a stupid thing.
A diploma is not nothing, I just think it’s not the only thing. Traditional paths just never worked for me and there are others out there too.
I don’t mean to belittle you or people with a degree. I know that’s what it reads as though and I’m sorry for that.
But yes, hiring someone with that experience is going to need to be hand held significantly for years, and that’s something you don’t foist on people. It’s not going to speed a team up, and prior who don’t want to teach aren’t good teachers.
Part of the job of senior devs is to mentor juniors regardless of their background. Not to gatekeep over your own degree.
There is a big difference between mentoring and dealing with a 4 year difference in education and maturity.
Maturity gap sounds more like a hiring miss on culture fit than an issue with mentoring. More of an org issue IMO. Their education level shouldn’t really matter if they have a good attitude and willingness to be coached.
Even without a job in the field, being able to code is a skill that gives you lots of opportunities.
You’re not wrong.
If you have an idea for a product you could develop independently, that might be a better approach to the field than just out pounding the pavement looking for work.
Problem is now you have to get good at marketing.
