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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

This is probably an unpopular opinion here, but only a very small subset of developers need to design algorithms or even know any of them by heart.

Disregarding a few years that was mostly WordPress consulting, my experience is largely enterprise C#. Lots of line of business applications, glorified CRUD apps, and some client work. Zero need for any ability to write a BST or radix sort.

If you're working for SpaceX, or Twitter, or a Big 4, of course you should know those things. But most developers don't work for one of those companies. The vast majority of programming is done to further a business other than programming.

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Vast majority of developers would benefit from at least passing knowledge of algorithms and data structures.

For past few years I work (not full-time) on what is essentially a prototype of trivial line of business application: stock-keeping system. It is 3 layer and blahblah, with me implementing most of the server side. Amount of various hacks in the server to accommodate requirements of the "It is impossible to linearize a tree in C# without having local SQL database" kind is truly ridiculous (most of these involve few lines of generator-and-list-comprehensions-heavy python code on server).

Somehow there is whole large class of so called "developers", that can only directly transform input to output and anything that requires building some kind of data structure is impossible/unfeasible/whatever for them.

I'd agree with that. My impression is that the profession is bifurcating into two categories:

1) Programmers, who have solid coding skills that primarily work on building systems using existing modules and libraries. 2) Software engineers, who have algorithmic and systems level expertise along with advanced coding skills, and are capable of working on complex software such as operating systems, compilers, and other libraries / components used by others.

Let me hasten to add that that isn't to say one is better than the other. Both are needed, just like both regular doctors (in greater quantity) and neurosurgeons are needed (in lesser quantity) are also needed and all are highly skilled professionals.

>and all are highly skilled professionals

Apparently (and unfairly), our society thinks otherwise - family doctors make $150K/year and neurosurgeons make $750K/year :-)

Outside of SV and NYC, $150k is more than enough for a single-income family of four to have a solidly upper-middle class lifestyle.

Not, really, if saving for retirement is factored in. Most people aren't saving at all, which is how they manage to maintain that upper middle class lifestyle on what has becoming the equivalent of a formerly lower middle class salary.

It's true. I make in that neighborhood, and I can't even save for a house, much less retirement. Maybe my kids will support me when I'm old.

What makes you think they will be able to afford to, if you couldn't?

If you really feel that you are living beyond your long term means, you should act: you can make more changes now than you will be able to later, and as hard as it can be to accept - this problem isn't going to solve itself.

Thanks, I hadn't thought of that.

Where do you live?

Austin

So true. Alone its a good salary with retirement needs not so much.

How can you not save for retirement with 150k outside of those places? Are you assuming everyone is getting a Lamborghini or something?

I'm not assuming anything, except that you don't know the costs involved in supporting 4 people, while raising and paying for the education of two children, and while putting together the few millions of dollars it takes to live, pay for medical bills and assisted living for a decade or three after you can no longer work.

True but neurosurgeons go through almost 10 years of additional training at a fellow's salary (~$50k/year), in addition to a much worse work-life balance.

I'm pretty sure there are more distinguished engineers and other senior engineering roles paying $750/year in total comp at Google/Microsoft/Apple etc. than there are neurosurgeons.

Not to mention tens of thousands of average developers that got lucky with stock options and became millionaires where a doctor of same age is still slaving away as a resident with 24-hour shifts and abysmal pay ($50-$60k year for surgical residents, according to google).

The market (not society) is treating us developers pretty well.

>The market (not society) is treating us developers pretty >well.

I am on the East Coast (outside of NYC, though), have been in the software business for 20+ years and know a lot of smart /accomplished people.

I don't know a single software engineer who makes more than $200K/year in a senior engineering role, as an employee. (We are comparing salaries, not consulting income or stock options here, which can disappear very quickly).

It would be nice for you to step outside of the bubble you live in SV, every now and then :-)

Please include stock grants, because otherwise it's a silly comparison. With that included, I know a lot of people in SV, NYC, and even Pittsburgh who meet that bar. Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft -- all of these places pay over $200k total compensation for senior engineers. A grant of shares of GOOG or MSFT every year isn't likely to completely disappear within the vesting period...

Stock grants for non-executive employees are rather rare (at least on the East Coast).

And even then, once the bubble pops, if you don't sell (there is usually a vesting period), they could be worth much, much less than today. Remember 2000-2001?

I'm confused about this "east coast" thing. Many of the major tech companies that compensate in cash+RSUs operate on the east coast at some scale or another. Heck, in Pittsburgh alone, you can pick from Uber, Google, Facebook (Oculus), and Apple, of the "really big tech companies that give their employees RSUs". You'll find similar options, no pun intended, in NYC and Boston, at minimum.

As I said: The rolling vesting offered by most companies means that you're selling stock every year after your first. So if you ignore the first year (or pretend that it's poorly compensated), it's not that shockingly bad.

> stock options

RSUs in an established big company are much less likely become worthless overnight. Core part of your compensation at Amazon/Facebook/Google/etc...

I am not in SV (but still on the West coast) and I know several software engineers making more than 200k/year. That includes stock grants, because it's ridiculous not to when the stock is in a public company and can be immediately turned into cash.

The barrier to being neurosurgeons is much higher than a software engineer. The average Neurosurgeon will make on average more than than top 1% of engineers. You can look at pure statistics and get that result.

Looking at the reponses (and downvotes), it looks like my comment was understood as a comparison to software engineers' salaries

I was just pointing out that, even though both family doctors and neurosurgeons go through long and arduous studies, the income disparity among doctors is very high.

IMHO software engineering is more about how you go about your work rather than what you work on. You can be an absolutely brilliant developer working on complex software but still not be a software engineer, yet still work alongside and be paid more highly than software engineers.

You're designing algorithms even when you're coding a FizzBuzz or a "Hello, world". And most of the business logic is by far more complex than FizzBuzz.

Hah, I was just discussing something like this with a coworker this morning. We both agreed that the business logic we're dealing with is actually less complex than FizzBuzz! We work for a huge bank where nearly all (our) business logic boils down to boolean conditionals. There's almost no math at all and if there is it's all addition and subtraction.

Writing front-end JavaScript is vastly more complicated than the business logic!

Everything I witnessed was not just a bunch of boolean conditions, but a mess of boolean conditions. This is where complexity comes from.

And, think about the awful stuff like derivatives, taxes, etc.

Need to know? Sure.

But being able to adapt, apply and even create algorithms is a big part of what separates crappy CRUD/UI implementation dev jobs from real engineering and research roles. I don't imagine anyone wants to be stuck writing CRUD apps their entire career.

If you are just a CRUD developer then yeah you don't need much to do average work.

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