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Comment by missedthecue | Hacker News Reader

I have a moral problem with trying to keep people out of a better life just to fatten my own income. If you want to be smarter and better and more skilled than the competition, that's great, but trying to keep supply low to rent-seek just seems insatiably greedy to me.

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I was in construction in my 20s. I earned $X when I was learning. A few years later, I was working independent and earning $Y. It ended up that $Y was lower than $X. This is akin to earning less as a senior dev than you did as a junior dev, except you'd also have to buy your own chair, desk, computer, and software license to work as a sr dev.

The problem was multifold, and I think the crux of the situation. The people who entered the field didn't respect the field, and only aimed to undercut the next guy, causing wages to plummet in the span of 5 years.

Software doesn't need that much protection yet, but that slide happens way faster than you think it will. It's not about keeping people out; it's about educating those who come in to respect the industry they are entering. Many people are actively preventing people from learning about the proper value of their work.

I see no problem with people competing for work by lowering their bid? Sounds like you’re encouraging cartel-like behavior (which is, for example, why a pit of real estate agents still get paid 5-6% in a transaction despite clearly not being worth that, on average).

The next time we hear about a security breach, who takes responsibility?

Why are we allowing immature engineers and product managers to drive decisions that impact millions if not billions?

The same people who take responsibility now? The topic on hand isn't whether we should encourage untrained 12 year olds to secure our technology. It's whether trained STEM educated professionals should. Some here don't want more STEM professionals because it would increase supply and reduce the equilibrium price (wages).

> The same people who take responsibility now?

That’s not good enough. That’s why making software a trade is what some engineers have been pushing for.

> Some here don't want more STEM professionals because it would increase supply and reduce the equilibrium price (wages).

And some don’t want to see an influx of low-quality engineers, because these decisions have major negative consequences.

The OP mentioned the push for more STEM workers, but the push for more STEM workers comes doesn’t equate to more CS degrees or STEM degreed workers.

It’s also about bootcamps and a broad questioning of why a college degree is needed at all.

the computer science field is under no obligation to fix all the hiring and career problems in existence, just like law or medicine is not under that obligation.

that's why we need unions!

why is this voted down?

I neither upvoted or downvoted that comment, but this isn't Reddit. Low-effort opinion posts like that aren't the type of thing that people generally want to see here.

As far as unions go, I always support the right of anybody to voluntarily organize, but unions are IMO a horrible fit for programming.

I hate how this sounds, but programmers have a creative job that's not relatively fungible like say a house painter who does a relatively standardized task. The best painter in the world is physically capable of what, painting about 2 or 3 times more square feet per hour than an average painter? I don't know exactly, but I doubt that the best painter in the world is say 100x more effective than an average one.

Programmers vary wildly in the value they produce. Good programmers who want to unionize are going to plant themselves near the lower tier of compensation when they easily provide 10x or 100x of the value that a less skilled programmer brings.

computer scientists are not programmers. programming is a task that might be done as part of what a computer scientist does.

by organizing, further commodization of this very challenging and relatively modestly compensated profession can be prevented.

I'm not sure I follow your opinion here. In what way did anybody advocate preventing competition?

"We developers need to wise up before it's too late. I don't see doctors advocating to lower the barriers of entry."

How exactly did you interpret this?

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