Comment by highwaylights
3 years ago
On one hand, I agree with you that on the whole we're a bunch of spoiled crybabies. Totally grant you that.
On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true. Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done).
Most of us are just doing things for money. Are most people working hard? Not usually, because it mostly doesn't matter. Spreadsheets idle in inboxes, meetings lead nowhere and achieve nothing, brown-nosers and family members get promoted into jobs they're incompetent at. And the world continues to spin regardless.
Also, have you all tried making a non-swe career work lately? How about for 5+ years?
In the last two years I've worked with hundreds of bootcamp students who have reached the end of their rope with 20th century career paths that no longer make any f-ing sense. From teachers to construction workers to bartenders to graphic designers. Not all of them have a deep love for writing software, but all of them recognize that its one of the only viable paths available if you don't want to have roommates into your 40s.
As my best friend told me in an abandoned bay area parking lot before I switched careers to swe, there just doesn't seem to be any other reliable way for people in our generation to make a living. Maybe it only applies to california, maybe it only applies to millennials, but having been on both sides of that fence now I 100% agree.
I saw this as well as someone who hired from "Bootcamps" graduates for a couple of years. The people that got into bootcamps came from all sorts of professions. Most of them had a Bachellor degree (this is in Mexico) and had already worked in their profession for some time.
There were people from Tourism, Law, (non-software) Engineering, Biologists, Chemists, Philosophy, among others.
Most of the people in those areas were burned out of REALLY being overworked, underpaid and being treated like trash (you should see how Law firms treat their interns).
> there just doesn't seem to be any other reliable way for people in our generation to make a living
I suspect this may be exaggerated, in that there is still demand in other career paths, they just aren't as appealing for various reasons, e.g. manual/technical trades with reasonable pay but some physical labor involved or a long apprenticeship period
I do worry we might be flooding the field and siphoning talent from sectors that matter, even as the proportion of software jobs that don't really need to exist balloons
this seems like a recipe for a lot of disappointed people in need of retraining once we realize code can't eat the entire world, and in the meantime it feeds the bubble cycle, pointless or abusive "innovation", and speculative nonsense software is plagued by
We need data for this. More importantly, we need data for how tough it is to get certain jobs. That means stuff like:
* Time spent on finding a job
* Time spent on studying in order to attain a job
* Actual amount of hours worked (hard to get accurate data on it)
* Actual amount of effort per hour (hard to operationalize)
It's a very tough discussion to have, but I have a gut feeling that you're simplifying too much and are partially wrong. But I can't even give evidence that you might be wrong because I don't have data. So at best I feel we're both blind and we don't have a one-eyed king that can see! ;-)
SWE is easy as fuck for the amount of money it gives.
Compare that to physics, chemistry, bio or mechanical engineering.
When I see SWE saying they know 10 different languages I see someone who is bragging that they know how to sum 1+1 1+2 1+3 (...) 1+10
No wonder people with no degree can learn how to code in a few months and get a nice paying job. Try that with any of the others I mentioned and you get nothing. Not with 1 year. Not with 2 years. Maybe with 3 years of studying.
Unsure if the conclusion here naturally follows your premise.
Doctors require lots of qualifications which is a barrier to entry into the career. This significantly drives up compensation.
Are most doctors really more than human frontends to webmd? Probably not.
Source: my doctor told me this (really).
Extending this to SWE. A degree may not be necessary to enter the field anymore, but I don't see how it should be less of a requirement than for a regular consulting GP. Both are expected to understand fundamentals well, and both can cause harm if they do their job badly - I'd argue the SWE can cause a lot more harm to be honest.
If it seems like I'm suggesting qualifications should be mandatory for SWEs, I'm not. I'm saying other professions are revered in a way that we aren't - and I don't see the evidence it's especially warranted.
We can get statistics for some of the parent's claims:
> On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true.
10.3% of US jobs are classified as "physically demanding". [1] (I didn't see parent said "labour" until after my research, but I expect figures in the UK are similar). Assertion is TRUE, the majority is not doing "grinding" labor.
> Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done).
Hard to say about the parenthetical, and it is impossible to say if the jobs don't need to be done without running an experiment, but some research has been done on whether people think their job needs to be done. A study of the European Work Commission Survey [2] showed that in 2005 only 7.8% of people responded that they were not doing useful work. In 2015 even fewer, 4.8% felt they where not doing useful work. (The UK reported slightly higher at 5.6%). A "recent poll" from an article dated 2017 which links to a 404 for the poll claims that poll said that 37% of Brits felt their jobs were useless. [3] Even the originator of the "bullshit jobs" book thought that 20 - 50%--maybe as high as 60%--were useless. Assertion is probably FALSE, most jobs have some utility.
> Most of us are just doing things for money.
Yes, and so what? Does that make it not worthwhile?
According to a Pew study from 2016, 49% of Americans are "very satisfied" with their job (59% of people whose family incomes were over $75k), and about half said they viewed their job as a career. 51% said their job gave them some sense of identity (higher percent as with more education), while 47% percent say the job is just what they do for a living. However, those working in non-profits, government, or self-employed were about 62% likely to say their job gives them a sense of identity, while only 44% of those working at a company said the same) Assertion is PROBABLY FALSE, depending on the definition of "most" and the intent of the claim, but the statistics certainly do not make it a definition-true assertion.
[1] https://dc.citybizlist.com/article/639055/dc-has-the-2nd-sma... (scroll to the bottom for the US figures)
[2] https://phys.org/news/2021-06-workers-useless-jobs-previousl...
[3] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/why-its-time-to-rethi...
[4] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2016/10/06/3-how-a...
I’m honestly impressed at the extent you’ve researched what I said to this level.
My guess (and it would only be a guess, as I don’t see how it would be possible to really know either way) is that for many of the respondents they could well be kidding themselves about how necessary their job actually is.
As an example, Bob might feel his job really matters, and it might within his company, but his whole company could be an also-ran or a quango that the world wouldn’t miss if it didn’t exist.
All of the above aside, how would you feel about coming to my house while I watch the news and subtly letting me know when I’m being fed alternative facts?
I’ll provide unlimited tea and biscuits. Don’t keep your gifts to yourself!
Am I to assume you're not happy to trust ma gut?
I've met many people in life that trust their gut. Without anything else, from what I've seen, people trusting their gut is a net negative. With that said, that's mostly because it's a bit of a cultural thing that trusting your intuition is a smart thing to do. However, there are enough people out there who's intuition will kill themselves, if they would only trust their intuition (e.g. drug addicts, not limited to only them though). There are also less dramatic examples that I've seen (women and men consistently finding the wrong partner). So on average, a net negative. Since you're a random person on Hacker News making some bold claims, yea I need something stronger than just your intuition.
Or, you know, you could just listen to people.
Qualitative evidence is just fine. We might want to stop exclusively fetishizing numbers, and instead of complaining how hard it is to find data, do something to fix the problems right in front of our face.
> Or, you know, you could just listen to people.
Well, that's all dandy. But when someone actually shares something it's "cry me a river". Their contribution is summarily dismissed because it's not the Right Evidence from the Right People.
> Most other jobs are generic office jobs
I really don't think this is true. Maybe in the US, but worldwide I would charecterize most job environments as closer to sweatshop than office.