22% Drop in Programming Jobs | Hacker News Reader

22% Drop in Programming Jobs

washingtonpost.com

59 pointstalkingtab63 comments

To save you wasting 10 minutes: The distinction between programmer and software developer in government definition, led to "programming" jobs dropping by 22%. This doesn't affect the "Software development" industry which saw only a 0.3% drop.

It is really a click bait.

Agree on the click bait title but it did not save me a click. For those wondering more. There is some distinction, which I still do not fully comprehend between "programming" which is grunt work and "developer" which is ingesting requirements and coding on top of working with "programmers" to implement a client needs. If someone has more insight on the distinction I would love to understand because it could be interesting if programmer was the initial stepping stone into developer.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) definitions:

“Computer Programmer”: https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes151251.htm

“Software Developer”: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm

>The distinction between programmer and software developer in government definition

To save the click on what this means specifically:

"In the government’s schema, programmers do the grunt work while the much more numerous — and much faster-growing — software developers enjoy a broader remit. They figure out what clients need, design solutions and work with folks such as programmers and hardware engineers to implement them."

It is clickbait, assuming you don’t know the distinction between a developer and a programmer. If you do it’s actually a pretty solid title. I’d argue it’s worth a read because the main point is very good.

I think the core distinction is important and gets at what LLMs are and are not good at. LLMs are good at translating clear specifications into common programming languages. That is what a programmer, by the BLS’ definition, does. The hard part of being a software dev never has been writing the code.

They are claiming that the act of programming is in the process of being replaced. That seems somewhat likely. However they aren’t saying that overall tech industry jobs nor even software dev jobs are decreasing.

The problem is that I don't think this distinction actually exists outside the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The obvious hypothesis to me, which the source article doesn't seem to consider, is that this statistic isn't measuring anything other than a change in fashionable job titles.

I’ve been asked multiple times in interviews what I think the difference between a dev/engineer and a programmer is. As a hiring manager I’ve also had people ask me the question as a way to get at role expectations. These were all at smaller companies though and on the East Coast so it might be a small vs big company thing? But it’s definitively not just a BLS understanding of job roles.

I do agree with your hypothesis though. The article doesn’t even account for the software engineer title either.

This is literally the first time that I hear someone making any difference between “programmer” and “developer”. Hell I don’t even think I’ve ever heard a difference with “software engineer”, apart from countries where engineer is a protected title

If you don't work in the government sector than that makes sense

I work in government and my position has been reclassified from computer programmer to software developer and software engineer over the past 20 years. Same workload and skillset. We're even supporting some of that same software written 20 years ago.

If we assume programmer and software developer are the same job and there's been a 22% drop in programmers without a corresponding increase in devs, then it still seems like a net job loss?

Absolutely, and this is the story. Not what they seem to have wrote about...

A net job loss, but a much smaller one. The source article includes a graph of "Employment in the computer and data-processing services industry", showing a perceptible but quite small dip which could be correlated with either widespread GenAI or the 2022 bear market.

> LLMs are good at translating clear specifications into common programming languages. That is what a programmer, by the BLS’ definition, does.

IT guy here. Can confirm.

Not even a decade ago, stitching together disparate systems would have entailed identifying and designing the thing we wanted to accomplish, establishing requirements, and relying on an internal coder/programmer to get it done. Today, with Powershell, Python, YAML, REST APIs, webhooks, declarative infrastructure, etc, programmers were already infrequently utilized if they existed within an organization at all; with LLMs, they’re just not needed, provided your Admins/Engies are competent enough not to test in production and can identify when they’re being lied to by a chatbot.

It's not AI:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXDETPSOFTDEVE

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXAUTPSOFTDEVE

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPITOPHE

Companies and VC's with unrealistic valuations will spin it as such.

There's also section-174, which big corporations don't care about but kills smaller businesses left and right.

I hear a lot of static about this on hacker news and nowhere else.

I work for a large company and we were already capitalizing the time we spent developing software. From an accounting perspective it makes sense that software development effort produces a semi-durable asset that a company can use, sell, etc.

For smaller companies, the math is the same.

For startups very specifically, who expect to go to the moon or go bust in 5 years, I can believe that having a lower initial burn rate (because they could represent all developer salaries as opex and deduct in the immediate calendar year) was beneficial.

Also, the tax law changes actually disincentivize offshoring software development by requiring an absurdly long amortization schedule for foreign-developed software. Yet offshoring is currently as intense as it has ever been since the early 2000s. (If we expect the tax law changes to have a big effect on developer hiring, we would expect a decrease in offshoring given the disincentives).

Yeah 174 is crazy: https://youtu.be/1ecu0YsCGxg

Never listen to theo.

Maybe... :-) Where is he wrong?

I mean, section 174 was a big deal to the large corp I'm in when it was getting started. We had to clarify R&D time separately.

I wonder how much of this drop can be simply explained as having reached a certain industry maturity. I assume at some point most of the fundamentals are in place, so we need less people?

Programming isn't an industry, per se. It's a skill, like accounting, sales, communications or law. There are definitely many businesses for which it's a core strength, but any large company has some need for it.

Maturity is definitely an issue. If you listen to what the industry is selling these days it's pretty much just AI. Before that it was DeFi and VR. There hasn't been a new smartphone since.. the smartphone.

I have more thoughts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41495082

I think programmer is the last job I would replace with AI.

That sounds like something a programmer would say.

That's funny, but I also don't doubt that the industry, should it pursue this path, is going to be on a hiring spree to get engineers back to fix the mess they've wrought a few years from now.

"Pursuing this path" kicked-off 2 years ago when the tech industry collectively conducted the first round of unprecedented-in-scale (until the following year) 'right-sizing'.

It's the idea programmers should be last which is kind of arrogant/funny.

First we replace judges, doctors, police, generals, state officials, politicians, etc etc, and only then the programmer, the true foundation of our society!

(It shouldn't need stating that replacing any of these professionals with AI systems as they exist today is a terrible idea. Yes, even the politicians)

I probably wouldn't replace any of those with a system that excels in generating plausibly sounding bullshit.

LLMs are good at processing natural language. I think only a few human tasks are suitable to be fully replaced with AI. Things like translation might be a good candidate, with some proofreading.

Journalism is an obvious one, since most journalism today is just rewriting information gathered from other media or social media, the same thing LLMs do. Insightful opinion writers or actual investigative journalists would be an exception.

I could see LLMs easily doing the job of newspaper sports reporting, for instance, taking the stats and a few main facts from last night's game and turning it into a narrative article. It just wouldn't be good at long-form pieces that go into depth about motivations and strategy.

FRED enables combining (and tweaking/scaling/etc) charts pretty easily on their site. Check out the 'edit graph' button. You can use the ID's of the individual charts (like IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE) when searching for a table to add.

Here are those 4 tables combined: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1EDHP

Nice tip. Thanks.

>> while programmers do in fact program, they “work from specifications drawn up by software and web developers or other individuals.” That seems like a clue.

I wonder if this conclusion is drawn from keyword searches on job postings. It is true that not many position titles these days include "programmer" - usually it is software engineer or developer. Of course, there is no difference other than terminology has shifted.

22% drop in programming jobs, but only a 0.3% drop in developer jobs. It's an interesting point of differentiation. I imagine there's a lot more developers than programmers when you're being pedantic about it.

What's the difference between programming and software development? I can't read the article.

I imagine it's counting the PM's, infrastructure and support staff...

From the article

In the government’s schema, programmers do the grunt work while the much more numerous — and much faster-growing — software developers enjoy a broader remit. They figure out what clients need, design solutions and work with folks such as programmers and hardware engineers to implement them.

At one time these were called System Analyst. Is that no longer a thing ?

Government statistics consider "system analyst" to be a third, different thing (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...). "Computer systems analysts study an organization’s current computer systems and design ways to improve efficiency."

It is, at least from the visual of different "coding" type jobs there is still a slide for System Analyst. I have no idea what most of the differences are.

Those might be called "software architect" now. At least, it's somewhat close.

That's still what it means at my company: tech-y stuff that doesn't involve programming. It usually involves more direct contact with clients, insulating the programmers from that. I'm not sure why it's called "system analyst," since they don't analyze systems.

The other programmers call themselves coders or developers. My official title might even be "developer." I tell people I'm a programmer because I'm 55.

Honestly I'm more confused as with that. Seems like 'bureaucrats who grew up without PCs try to explain job' more than anything.

To be fair other engineering disciplines do typically separate the engineers from the technicians in basically that ('design vs do') way.

IIUC, if I come to you and say I want a website that looks like this slide I drew that makes you a _programmer_. You're mechanically implementing somebody else's design.

If I come to you and say I want to sell these widgets on a website and you develop the website then that makes you a _developer_. You're mechanically implementing your own design.

> You're mechanically implementing somebody else's design.

Only if the customer also provides the backend design, specifications for all interaction etc etc though.

But that's just a bit of nitpicking.

> But that's just a bit of nitpicking.

The whole question is about nitpicking though.

If somebody comes to you with a picture of a desired webpage and list of http calls to make for each button on that picture then you're a programmer.

Similar to how if I come to you with say a paragraph in English and I want one in French that makes you a translator not an author.

Sure, not everybody who writes code has this narrow responsibility. The ones that do are programmers though in the eyes of BLS.

The last part sounds to me like some sort of weird combination of manager and product owner instead of anyone who touches the code.

I'm sure there's a more formal distinction. But I've noticed younger developers don't call themselves programmers anymore. Computer programmer was always the "what do you want to be when you grow up?" job title for kids into computers and coding, but that's changed.

and how many software engineers, in my eyes they are still the same thing :P but I am old.

https://archive.is/6lt46

When I entered the job market back in ye olde 1980s there really weren't 'software developers', we were all 'computer programmer'.

Because the higher level stuff; design, devops, agile, hadn't been invented yet.

This article is so ridiculous it really make me think of Gilman Amnesia Effect and makes me question other newspaper reporting. I definitely won't be trusting anything I read in WP's "Department of Data" column from now on.

The claim that the level of programmers is now as low as it was in the 80's is ridiculous.

The author could instead make and article about the terminology change over time but that would be a boring topic for a general purpose newspaper.

As expected, the end of the ZIRP has hit startups hard.

And will continue to, I think. There's probably a long tail of startups that raised near the end of zirp and will have their runway diminish over the course of the next few years.

I remember looking at BLS statistics 10-15 years ago and pondered why they meant by "programmer" vs "software developer" jobs. After all, even back then, programmers were on the decline.

Is a "programmer" someone who enters machine code instructions via toggle switches? I suppose that could have been a job in the 50s perhaps.

This number feels too low..

I have some amazing developer friends in the U.S. that are still out of a job, 9 months later.

Maybe your judgement about your developer friends or your trust of in the ability of the industry to evaluate developers is wrong.

This article is like someone starting to do a stats problem, realizing they screwed up and then going "OK done!"

How was the increase in descries in the last 10 years? During corona was a peak, now it goes down.

In the past week, I used Cursor to make significant changes to a larger project, which led me to cancel a contract with a consulting firm. Then, almost spontaneously, I built a digital requests platform with thirty forms for our company—an MVP that turned out to be quite solid.

On the weekend, I put together a site for my spouse where she can submit URLs from paywalled articles, receive an AI-generated summary, and get an archive.is link—just a fun side project. And since I was on a roll, I also built a new UI for my thousands of notes in Obsidian: a three-pane viewer with a list, note preview, and folder navigation.

All of this, simply because I can. It really makes me wonder what this means for the software job market. This article offers some perspective.

Very cool. The AI-generated summary, do you have to pay for an API for that or are these kinds of services available free these days?

I use my openai api key. Only my wife an I use the site.

In my case the app sends the summary to my Obsidian vault as well and creates a new note, if I ask it to.

I feel like we're in crazy times. I feel like I can implement whatever I think of with a hundred devs at my fingertips. The only limit is my time and imagination.

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