Comment by pkdpic
3 years ago
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