Comment by fleddr
3 years ago
An unsolvable problem. The rapid deterioration of skill will not stop, it is accelerating instead. People's desire for stability as they grow older will not change either.
The only attraction in software development is the relatively good pay. The job itself sucks. You'll spent your life sitting in a chair looking at a text editor, and that's the best part of your day as about 50% of it is distractions. You're quite unlikely to work on something truly creative or thrilling, so it's mostly a boring grind.
Then, as the article mentions, it turns out the grind was for nothing and the rug is pulled every few years and you have to start over again. The job is cognitively taxing so you'll turn into an absent person that lives in their heads, it drains your life energy.
If I would be young now, I'd say fuck it and go install solar panels or heat pumps. It's outside, physical but not too physical, thus healthy. You get to meet lots of people and you see the direct result of your work. There's no office politics and you're contributing to a tangible good thing for the world. Skill requirements don't change much.
You might come home somewhat physically tired (but over time it normalizes), with a clear head and not a care in the world. There's no overflow between work and personal life.
Chose wisely, young ones.
The jobs you mention are even more repetitive. Just like most jobs. I think this is a the grass is greener mind of thing
No, they're not.
You go to different places and different people, every single day. That's 100% less repetitive compared to sitting at home or going to the office to see the same people.
As for the tasks themselves, it was merely an example, but even for this example I disagree. My brother-in-law basically does all of these things, both for private citizens and industry and comes across a wide array of different situations.
I'm not saying it's absolute perfection, no job is. But I stand by my point that it has a series of very meaningful advantages: far healthier, more social, direct impact of your work, no cognitive overload, no politics.
Go ask people installing solar panels and heat pumps if the idea of working a "cognitively taxing" job where they could make more money, work from anywhere and not be dead physically tired at the end of the day sounds appealing... I don't think you'll hear them all say "screw that, I love installing solar panels". The grass is always greener for sure, but none-the-less software engineering and tech offers a very high quality of life with significant earning potential and a ton of flexibility.
> If I would be young now, I'd say fuck it and go install solar panels or heat pumps
Amen. For me the advice I give the young—-go for a trade. HVAC (especially if you live where it’s hot) and plumbing to me are the most future and recession proof jobs there are. Literally by the time other folks are graduating with CS degrees and massive college debt, you have been making 70k a year for 3 years and are about to clip 6 figures for the rest of the time you want to work.
One day a computer will be able to write its own code (and that’s not that far off now), but no robot or computer in this world will be able to come to your house and fix a clogged toilet, or replace a blown capacitor in your heat pump and people will always be willing to pay nearly anything to get those two problems replaced.
Unfortunately, this is also a low cost skill to acquire, so the barrier to entry is low.
As all the mid level white collar jobs keep getting automated away, there's going to be a glut of people in need of income who are more than capable of learning a trade if their ego can handle it.
> Unfortunately, this is also a low cost skill to acquire, so the barrier to entry is low.
Why is this “unfortunate”?
It's not so much a desire for stability in general rather than the depreciation. I found that piece in the post rather convincing. I don't think most people have a problem with learning new skills in this field. But having to throw away old ones sure feels like a waste and given the model in the post limits how good you can ever get.
Also, sitting and staring at a text editor should not sound that awful for anyone who likes to create via writing code. Because that's how you do it. But that's not what you experience, obviously. It's about what goes on in your head.
I remember the feeling after taking a new job as a fresh graduate. It felt ridiculous that I know get paid for doing the thing I've wanted to do most of the time in the past ~12 years but I was told that you can't do that all day because you have duties. (Now the pay was actually pretty bad, even for local standards, as my first job was in an academic research institute.)