Coders should be afraid of what happened to the journalism industry | Hacker News Reader

Coders should be afraid of what happened to the journalism industry

work.qz.com

24 pointshellofunk11 comments

I think coding is very close to creative writing. You need to focus to achieve an analogous page of the book, fitting all the characters and making sure the story doesn't clash. It is much better when the story is great and characters are entertaining, but unfortunately the non-technical people on top of the pyramid, who have very little coding experience and see it as something that people at the bottom of the pyramid do, they don't see a story in what you write at all. They just see a bunch of words that in the end create a product that needs to sell. Indeed coders are treated much like the creative people in many industries including writing and design.

>Writers rally around the laid off, are eager to commiserate. “Failed” coders are shunned in tech culture. They don’t even want to acknowledge your existence.

This is true. When you get laid of from your coding job, your former coworkers treat you like you have a terminal disease, like they might catch it by spending time with you.

Not really sure why this is.

It always intrigues me how some get a new job "through the networking". In many markets, especially where low cost and outsourcing centers are prevalent there is no network. Colleagues are enemies during the recruitment, in case of success it's safer to keep a distance, and in case of leaving contacts are cut off.

I think in some situations it’s because the work friendships are not true and are based on proximity and convenience. When the work ends there is no longer any proximity so the friendship withers.

I think this may be exacerbated by all the messaging about how work is a “family.” It’s typically not, but can be confusing when a co-worker is no longer part of the family.

Of course the best, most productive companies I worked with had small teams that had relationships outside of work.

But in most cases I’m just being polite to 90% of co-workers because we work together.

It’s an interesting argument, but I think it’s a misleading one. What hurt journalism isn’t outsourcing, it’s the internet making the same information available for free (and often in more depth).

Admittedly, automation may have an effect later, since many journalism jobs are basically rewriting press releases or acting as an RSS system. But for the moment, the mountain of online competition doing things for free is what killed most of this industry, perhaps along with some adblocking and what not.

Yes, if by "the same information" you mean the advertisements. Bring back the classified ads, and the newspapers couldn't care less about competition from Drudge etc.

There is one IT industry with bright future for those average-skilled. Creating web tools for IQ, algorithm, and general in-depth multi-domain teasing.

I think this is a continuing trend that’s been slowly growing over the past 20 years. Fortunately, it’s a lot easier to get a job in tech without networking (job boards) than in writing.

Seeing an org outsourced isn’t new, but it’s always new when it happens to you. Seems odd that this writer hasn’t tracked this trend.

This reminds of a trend I read about a while back where the rewards accrue to an increasingly small number of high profile people in a field while the majority just get poorer.

Like the music industry?

Malcom Gladwell had written about it, how most gangsters, Sumo fighters are poor. It can also be observed in other industries like art, sports, music. In India till some years back it was difficult to get food money in these industry. With rising income and middle class some sources like local events and training to kids have come up, but still these career options are seen as a high risks.

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