May 3, 2008 at 11:45 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Shortage of Programmers
May 5, 2008 at 4:50 am
Everyone has their piece of the pie that they are pursiung. For some their piece is the big bucks and the prestige. For others it is using their skills to aid a smaller company to be the big company of tomorrow. For another group it is contributing to the development of the Developer Community.
This variety is important in the continuity of our industry.
There are hands. There are feet. We all cannot be hands. We all cannot be feet.
May 5, 2008 at 6:13 am
Don't forget - along with the perks come the risks. Not all that long ago a lot of people thought that working for IBM was a guaranteed gold watch and comfortable retirement. Then all of a sudden IBM had to run leaner and a lot of people got pink slips. IBM is still a major player in the software field, but it's surprising how good things can come and go. It's likely only a matter of time before Microsoft (and eventually Google) will have to have the make the same kinds of decisions.
Unfortunately, until the day that the west dumps capitalism and replaces it with socialist central planning (and I don't think that day is coming any time soon) we all have to live with the ups and downs of the market for our jobs.
As a general rule, I find it's best to realize that there are certain places where you get pools of employment for your field - find the one you like best and hang around. While you're there, work hard to make yourself valuable. It's not a perfect approach, but it works for me...
P.S. to the editors - "Google" is not in the spell check dictionary of the text editor for your site. I got a message that it should be changed to "Goggle". oops!
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May 5, 2008 at 6:24 am
Steve - "Being the "Voice of Microsoft" has a nice ring to it "
Thou blasphemer! May the mighty Bill smite thee with a pox!
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"stewsterl 80804 (10/16/2009)I guess when you stop and try to understand the solution provided you not only learn, but save yourself some headaches when you need to make any slight changes."
May 5, 2008 at 6:54 am
I worry that we're going to tip over in some weird way. You've got kids with very little real experience making $75-100k right out of high school/college. No doubt some are very good, but when you start out at the level you're just looking to go higher, and outside of MS/Google going higher is very hard. In addition, the bigger challenge is that you've the experienced people making about $5k a year more than the beginners. I'd like to think they should command a bit more of a premium. It's long been a challenge in corporate circles and it's not gettting any easier.
May 5, 2008 at 6:55 am
In Canada, there has been a decades long "brain-drain" south to the United States. People get paid more and pay less taxes (generally). But I agree with Steve ... if someone from the US wants to pay me more money so that I can program from Canada, I'll sign up. Until then, I am pretty happy living where I am.
Mia
Mia
I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
-- David M. Ogilvy
May 5, 2008 at 6:56 am
Whine all he wants, and make no mistake it is whining, developing an architecture and/or tools that millions of people, other developers included, will use is far more 'heady' or significant a task than developing software for some two bit clerk to enter sales invoices more efficiently. Why would you not want to work in that role for those two companies? But of course, Hailstorm is the only product MS has to work on!
However, that wouldn't be as good as peddling jobs on my blog.....jobs.joelonsoftware.com.
May 5, 2008 at 7:55 am
I agree with your philosophical points and also the comments about Joel. As a long time reader of his column, I was really surprised. It definitely sounds like a rant in all respects.
Architecture astronauts or not - Google is getting bigger and bigger by offering web based software for the masses. I think a better point to explore would be that Microsoft has taken a follow-ship position, and how it has happened.
I also tried to listen to Joel's new podcasts but boy are they ever boring! The title of each podcast is "podcast #1", "podcast #2" and so on - pretty clear they didn't have a clear topic to explore intelligently.
Also, I've come to expect suits to denegrate and deminish the contribution of SW developers, but not Joel! I am sure that Joel has at least a few past columns in which he explained the economics of SW on the side of SW developers, such that one good, cheaply distributed and properly marketed product can bring in a great deal of money, which is why a SW developer can justifiably make more than a doctor or accountant. (The SW developers contribution is effectively spread to lots of places at the same time, doing lots of work not easily done otherwise.)
Not to mention that breaking into 6 figures isn't that much any more: taxes go up, gas goes up, hopefully starting salaries for in-demand fields go up.
May 5, 2008 at 8:39 am
Steve,
Actually, there are very few baseball players making $200K to $300K per year. The major league minimum is over $500K, and minor league salaries are very low.
David Morrison
May 5, 2008 at 8:52 am
Being the "Voice of Microsoft" has a nice ring to it
I dunno. I just can't picture you with a hair line moustache, thick glasses, and a hat with a little silver skull on the front. I'm not going to start calling you "little Joe" just yet. :w00t:
You can tell I'm jerking you around here, right?
ATBCharles Kincaid
May 5, 2008 at 9:13 am
amysecker (5/5/2008)
Not to mention that breaking into 6 figures isn't that much any more: taxes go up, gas goes up, hopefully starting salaries for in-demand fields go up.
Maybe most of the people watching this post are rolling in it 🙂
However, this small survey doesn't really agree with your comment:
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2f_Developer_%2f_Programmer/Salary
The same site also has some Canadian salaries ... they are even further from the 6-figure salaries that amysecker finds commonplace.
Mia
Mia
I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
-- David M. Ogilvy
May 5, 2008 at 9:16 am
Couldn't I go with bald-Ballmer look? I'm getting there on my own already.
Course I'm in a little better shape, maybe I'm the tan Ozzie/Ballmer morph! 😉
May 5, 2008 at 9:26 am
Joel's rant, aside from the last paragraph ranting on salary, seems to be focusing on "clouds" and synchronization. A friend of mine, a citizen of Mexico, bought an AirMac with a solid-state drive just so he could travel into the USA without fear of anything being found on his drive: he pulls everything that he needs out of .Mac and wipes the drive before crossing the border.
Myself, if I ever start traveling internationally, I'll probably clean out the things that I don't want TSA people looking at, PGP the things that I consider trade secrets, and create a mostly empty "public" login to show them that I'm a clean, upstanding, citizen. Meanwhile I plot the downfall and subjugation of the world for the Free Republic of Mars! :hehe:
I am not a fan of clouds, I want to be in control of my data. I maintain backups, though I'm no longer doing off-site backups. All I need to do that is buy another 500gig external HD and have my wife drop it off at the observatory when she goes to work. I'm not terribly concerned with Yahoo and Google looking at my email accounts, because I don't do anything particularly noteworthy. That does not mean that I want my life to be an open book to be examined by the government or anyone else: anything that I want to be private I PGP and use encrypted email for with keys exchanged with a very select few.
But I'm ranting about clouds and privacy, which is not what the editorial is about.
Undeniably, Joel is right: Google & MS can afford to offer high salaries to top grads. He's also right that they have no real-world experience. Both companies have to make the appearance of hiring top talent, they have to answer to the Board of Directors which answer to the share holders. They have to try to maintain continuous growth, which is not possible in the long run, but they have to try: Wall Street will have it no other way. Both companies currently have the resources to do that, but will it last forever? I doubt it. I think Google's stock is tremendously overvalued and is going to hit a reality check speed bump in the not-too-distant future.
Google & MS can out-bid for top programmers. But there's plenty of skilled programmers still available, along with many tops who, as Our Beloved Editor and others have pointed out, don't want to move to Redmond or work for one of these companies, they have other motivations rather than just top dollar.
Joel, like many bloggers and editorial writers is frequently amusing, frequently insightful, and frequently just bloviating, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.
(sounds to me like he got sniped at the last minute like an eBay auction when he was trying to hire someone)
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
May 5, 2008 at 9:28 am
mhaskins (5/5/2008)
amysecker (5/5/2008)
Not to mention that breaking into 6 figures isn't that much any more: taxes go up, gas goes up, hopefully starting salaries for in-demand fields go up.Maybe most of the people watching this post are rolling in it 🙂
However, this small survey doesn't really agree with your comment:
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2f_Developer_%2f_Programmer/Salary
The same site also has some Canadian salaries ... they are even further from the 6-figure salaries that amysecker finds commonplace.
Mia
If you take into account that this particular title has a specific "paygrade" in mind, no - that particular title doesn't much break into the 100's. On the other hand, you might care to check out the scale for Senior Software engineers/designers, etc.... you get a much different picture, which does break into the 100's fairly often.
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
May 5, 2008 at 9:31 am
aljtdj (5/5/2008)
Whine all he wants, and make no mistake it is whining, developing an architecture and/or tools that millions of people, other developers included, will use is far more 'heady' or significant a task than developing software for some two bit clerk to enter sales invoices more efficiently.
Which would you want to be a "Little fish in a big pool" or a "Big fish in a little pool". Being a Big fish in a little pool is just as heady and perhaps even more so than being a 'Little fish in a big pool'. After all you might actually know that "two bit clerk" and be able to hear them say the words "thank you, it works great". Having been fortunate enough to work in both situations let me say "Big fish in a little pool" is more satisfying to me and many others.
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