Re: Advice for mid-life career change (to programming)
- From: Randy <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 12:54:22 -0500
spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> CBFalconer wrote:
>>Tony wrote:
>>... snip ...
>>>So, what suggestions would you have for my next step in my attempt
>>>at a career change?
>>
>>Good luck. It sounds to me as if you have the necessary abilities
>>without the specific experience, and you need to find someone
>>willing to bet on your learning curve. With the present
>>outsourcing you will have problems. Look to the embedded field.
>
> It's not true that outsourcing destroys American jobs. It creates jobs
> for communicators who can speak on the phone or write to the developers
> in other lands.
Where do you think the new jobs came from? They aren't new; they're old
jobs that used to be here before they went there.
Or are you suggesting that there's an explosion of IT work in the world,
and it's only the US that's not keeping up with the Joneses?
>
> Furthermore, companies in China and in India are so hurting for
> personnel that they will even hire Americans who at many companies are
> valued as mentors.
Lots of examples of this are forthcoming in your next post?
>
> I realize that not every American programmer is up to selling the house
> and hopping a ship to Shanghai. But on balance outsourcing creates jobs
> as well as a modicum of economic justice.
Think before you speak. Nobody who is losing their job in this country
deserves your definition of "justice". They oppressed nobody.
I'd agree that this is the inevitable unintended consequence of
colonialism. Eventually, the conquistadors lose control of the
conquered and when technology enables the latter to compete on an even
playing field with the former, the latter is motivated to kick ass.
>
> It's always been hard to find an entry level job in programming.
False. Kids were being plucked out of college before graduation from
1995 through 2000. 90% of CS grads found computer work within a year of
graduation for more than a decade before that.
> Basically, it's hard when you start out, easy in midcareer and then
> it's hard again (life sucks). In part this is because American
> programmers lack solidarity and look to their managers to do them
> personal favors.
It's hard because inertia is against you. You're bucking the trend --
you're not making life easy for HR folks. If they hire you and you
fail, they will look foolish because they took a chance on you and chose
you instead of some safe choice like someone with a BS in CS. You're
making them work harder, and that's bad for you.
....
>
> As to the embedded field, my friends in that field all still use C and
> not Java for performance reasons, and they tend to use legacy coding
> methods, avoiding OOD and OOP. They are protected because they have
> made their chops not by learning new developments but by being able to
> write tight and fast systems rapidly. A truly effective OOP paradigm
> and just-in-time compilation might do a better job but the field is
> sufficiently sealed off that it does not want to change, in my limited
> experience.
There's very little work in the embedded field for software engineers.
On average, there are more than 10 software jobs for every hardware job
in this country, a great many of which are located in $ilicon Valley.
Also, most programmers of embedded systems have a background in EE, not CS.
>
> It is true that in America, programming jobs are hard to get as opposed
> to offshoring communication. One reason is the hangover of truly absurd
> salary expectations from the dot.com boom, where a generation of
> developers learned they needed 200,000 a year to survive. The reality
> is that companies have no morals and will hire you if you offer them a
> rate of 10.00 an hour and can do the job.
Or for that wage, you can just go to work in McDonalds.
Fact is, few laborers make good software engineers. Programming is
hard. It takes a logical mind, a good sense of organization, a lot of
knowledge about the design and implementation considerations, and
ideally, the ability to see your code through somebody else's eyes.
These skills are uncommon, and as such you're not going to find capable
programmers among the employees at your local burger shack. Therefore
to hire such people, you're going to have to pay them more than
$10/hour. Unless they live in China, that is.
>
> As to getting nailed on the Web or in person for working at what is in
> fact a global rate, ask the nailer where he was when you were pounding
> the bricks looking for 500.00 an hour.
So programmers make either $10/hr or $500/hr... nothing in between?
>
> I predict that in a few years, programming will be no more prestigius
> or higher paid than simple forms of advertising copywriting or
> journalism, because that's what it is: writing. The people who remain
> will be those who like to code.
I'll take that bet in a heartbeat. I know lots of smart folks with CS
degrees who are poor programmers. Even after years of education and
professional experience, many software professionals develop software
poorly. Again, programming is hard. It's going to be hard forever,
because it's all about making design and implementation decisions that
work correctly and make sense.
Few people are logical or methodical. If you look at careers in which
professionals cannot afford to make mistakes and on which business
depends, all are paid well. And this doesn't *begin* to factor in the
constant study required of all programmers in order to remain up-to-date
with the technology. Probably no other field requires as much self
study as programming. Not even medicine.
If you doubt the difficulty inherent in programming, do a literature
search on "automatic programming" -- the attempt to build an
"intelligent" system that can develop software with a minimum of human
assistance. Generously, this endeavor may be described as having
"crashed and burned". AFAIK, after over 40 years of frustration, the
field disintegrated.
We'll automate medicine before we automate programming.
Randy
.
- References:
- Advice for mid-life career change (to programming)
- From: Tony
- Re: Advice for mid-life career change (to programming)
- From: CBFalconer
- Re: Advice for mid-life career change (to programming)
- From: spinoza1111
- Advice for mid-life career change (to programming)
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