Software engineering is technical, sure, but it's not that hard -- if some of the idiots I've worked with in the past could hold down jobs, then anyone can. Which dying industries should we be looking at to fill the gaps in the software industry?
It actually is, have you ever notices the absolute void of developers over the age of 40? People yell age discrimination but it is not true, it is the constant churn in ones life. From constantly reeducating yourself to stay relevant to the next emergency that requires 16 hrs 7 days a week for 2 months. It requires a passion for technology just to fulfill the reeducation requirement not to mention the hours. It burns developers out. The worst part is those on the outside don't get it, they think we pay them all this money and they still whine complain and won't take our jobs. So we have a profession with a high reeducation to relevance cycle and extreme requirements of time. Those two alone knock out a good deal of the population from even entering the profession. Then you have to deal with the burn out once you are in the grinder which always take a few of the good ones every year.
So if you couple the education needs, burnout and with the fact that it is really hard to be a good developer you find that even the good one are out of the industry by 40. Usually through earning enough money to "drop out" start a worm farm in Texas. Or they hitched their star to the right wagon and have become very successful.
I know because I have seen it, as a 36 year old who has suffered two burnouts, I have seen every one of my contemporaries fall. I remain because I set my terms, I made a agreement to myself that I would get out of the corporate grind and work for myself.
I found a niche that was under-served (web accessibility, HCI for JS based web apps). So in a sense I am off the market, I don't think that I would go back to a corp gig for anything below 2x what the market is paying. But lets not fool ourselves as a freelancer, I am still for hire it just allows me to set some terms on how and when I work. It seems for me at least that this was enough to stave off a third bout of burn out. Being able to work from home and set my own hours has done a lot for my ability to refresh, recharge and reeducate.
PS: It's a true eye opener to see someone making 500$ an hour working a 40 hour week and know they could raise their rates and keep their job and they also get more done than the average small team.
Right some how we make the moral argument that one person should not be making that much. But when you realize a good developer can do the work of a team. Because the how you do it, is more important than how much you do of it. Couple that with the fact that a developer can automate 100-1000 peoples jobs and the true value of their labor starts to take form.
There was a good article from one of the early Apple guys who wrote the switcher. Apparently both Jobs and Gates where after it and him and both as soon as he entered the room started out with a critique as to why it was not worth that much, how he only put 100 or so hours in to it because he was a "good" developer. It is pretty typical of what you see out there. I will try to dig it up, it has been posted on HN a few times.
The lens of experience allows you to see things very differently. The business knowledge you amass in the various field is extraordinary. It it one of the few industry where you field of primary business while change several times in your carrer.
That breadth really allows you to see thing differently than someone who stays in Real Estate or Manufacturing their entire carrer. As you get older it seems that, that information become more and more interesting to you. You start to connect independent pieces of puzzels people did not even know existed and come up with novel views on how the world works.
It really is a shame that people don't survive but the hyper boom bust nature of software dev is just too much on a good deal of people who just want to make a living.
Adding time for people to realize that there is actual jobs, coupled with the "we only hire the best" and not that many people become software engineers.
In pre-2000 dot.com you could've gotten a job with a word 'Internet' on your resume, but nowadays you should at least know decent coding.
I'm currently bootstrapping a search engine for economic/financial news at http://Newsley.com. (alpha of search is here: http://newsley.com/search )
Frankly, it's amazing. There's a sandbox where you can play with it here: http://viewer.opencalais.com/ Copy and past a couple paragraphs of text into the text box, and you can see some of what the api can do.
It was the .com bust along with a few other things. The market was so over-saturated with hacks in for a quick buck that when it popped it took a while to shake out who was who. This ran a lot of good developers out of the market never to return. The outsourcing craze right afterward did nothing to help the situation and just reinforced that the remaining few jobs where going to be further and further constrained. Which is what happened for a while. The schools and their CS programs pretty much became ghost town overnight.
I know, I had went back to finish my degree after 10 years in the industry around that time. I remember what was a full class became me an 2 other guys. I remember saying to one of them. Times are going to get good again in about 5 years.
Not surprisingly, it was basically a one-way street.
(It also reminds me of http://xkcd.com/435/ )
Addendum: For the difference between hard and soft science, see http://clustertwo.org/articles/Strong%20Inference%20%28Platt... - the hard sciences are the ones based on the "strong inference" defined there
It's easy for you or I or most anyone on HN to say that, but my experience proves that it's not true in the general population.