[LRUG] Are coders worth it?

[Steven Deobald]

I've come to the world of startups and their economies (which seems to be
the crux of his article, not programming or Rails, specifically) when I
joined nilenso. But I've been watching the job market and the New Startup
Bubble for years while I worked elsewhere (game companies, high finance,
oil companies, you name it).

I'm inclined to agree with much of what he has to say but what's funny to
me is that these "real kitchens", as he puts it, have just as much Rails
(or Java, or .NET... it doesn't matter) code propping them up as the
startup space does. The majority of programmers in every country I've
worked in (Canada, the US, the UK, and now India) are "awfully mediocre" --
just like him. That doesn't matter, either. For the time-being, whether you
work in a high frequency trading company or a government or a fast food
chain you will be writing software to support a fractured system of
emergent complexity for which software can either be a crutch or a cure. In
part, the choice is up to us.

This is part of what we're trying to do with nilenso: Build things that
matter. Whether you are inside an old enterprise or trying to start a new
one, most of these things seem like they are going to take the shape of a
"startup" in the sense that computing, fast food, and automobiles were each
once "startups". We ask ourselves every day if the software we're writing
improves people's lives. Does it simplify the business model? Does it
automate a repetitive job? Does it abstract away the bureaucracy and
complexity? Good. Then we're winning.

I love identifying both the cures and the crutches: Kayak and Cleartrip are
my cures for booking international flights. The silly world of the web he
bemoans was the only place businesses like these could emerge and I'm
delighted to participate. Every piece of enterprise software I've ever
written, which required stories detailing Functional Requirements defined
by Business Analysts who interviewed Subject-Matter Experts ...these were
crutches. Every time I didn't push back on the business to clean up its act
and simplify its operation, I was making the problem worse.

Is Instagram a cure or a crutch? Ask that question in 5 years. If Instagram
still exists, you have your answer.

Steven Deobald -- ⌀ -- nilenso.com


On 7 June 2013 01:38, Najaf Ali <ali at happybearsoftware.com> wrote:

> patio11 et al said so on twitter, this article misses two pretty big
> points:
>
> * Venture-backed b2c companies with questionable value to society are
> over-represented in tech news and the headspace of a lot of people who
> write articles like this. If you build robots, write software for b2b,
> aerospace, healthcare, non-profits etc you're not in the tech press much
> because being in the tech press doesn't matter all that much to you or your
> stakeholders.
>
> * Developers in regular companies automate things, i.e. put people out of
> jobs. If you can replace entire departments with software, *of course* that
> job commands a higher pay. When you build the mining robot that does the
> job half as well at a tenth the price, then yes, you're worth more than the
> miner by any metric you could conceive of (apart from perhaps saltiness and
> machismo).
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Stephen Strudwick <stephen at strud.me.uk>wrote:
>
>> Yes and no :)
>>
>> Some coders are not paid nearly enough, others earn more than they
>> deserve.
>>
>> There is a trend of very young rails devs who only know rails and have a
>> year or 2 experience
>> but can earn amazing money...
>>
>> But they tend to know the framework very very well and for the problems
>> they solve do a good job.
>> However sooner or later as more people also jump on the bandwagon the pay
>> for that skill set will level out.
>>
>> I guess for a lot of them when they have to step out of web dev into
>> broader software development they suddenly come
>> unstuck and build some nasty solutions. This is the learning curve to
>> becoming a good dev but they are getting
>> paid well to screw up which is unusual.
>>
>> However a good rails dev with great and diverse development background
>> will make your company and be worth 5 mid
>> level devs at least :)
>>
>> Rails development is in a bit of a bubble atm with high demand, but give
>> it a few years and the market will be saturated !
>>
>> Stephen
>>
>> On 6 Jun 2013, at 17:16, Benji Lanyado <benjilanyado at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm sure many of you have read this already, v thought provoking:
>>
>>
>> http://www.aeonmagazine.com/living-together/james-somers-web-developer-money/
>>
>> The writer (a Ruby dev) essentially, argues that he is overvalued, and
>> that what he does has little meaning.
>>
>> Fwiw, I think he's wrong, but mostly because I think he demonstrates one
>> of the things that troubles me the most about devs (I've only been one for
>> a year): the seemingly permanent succession of talented, interested devs
>> taking jobs they know they won't enjoy, or won't interest/challenge them,
>> purely for the money. The problem, imo, is not an underlying vacuousness of
>> coding itself, but rather a lack of self-worth, and not being able to see
>> the wood from the trees when lotsa money is floated in front on your nose.
>>
>> But that's just, like, my opinion.
>>
>> Can we all cuddle now?
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Ali, http://happybearsoftware.com
>
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