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Comment by joshdavham | Hacker News Reader

> “The notion going in was, you got a computer science degree, you were set. There was going to be a job waiting for you when you got out, and I think many people went into computer science for that reason,"

As much as the current market saturation in tech can be linked to interest rates, overhiring or AI, I think that this is actually the main reason. Too many people got into tech simply for the paycheque, social status and perceived job security who weren't necessarily very passionate about the field to begin with.

There was a great YC video about this around a year ago where they basically lamented that many of the people getting into tech nowadays are the same people who, 20 years prior, would've gone into law, medicine, finance or management consulting. This has made the field ridiculously competitive and has also made it really difficult for employers to tell the yuppies apart from the true hobbyists.

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> This has made the field ridiculously competitive and has also made it really difficult for employers to tell the yuppies apart from the true hobbyists.

This is an extremely funny way for a place like YC to put this problem. The same place that views employment as a purely contractual based relationship, with at-will firing and with a concept that people shouldn't stay in the same job for too long is lamenting the appearance of workers who view things the same way and couldn't care less about your vision, and definitely won't sacrifice their personal life for your business' success, since it's not their hobby.

There’s very much this bifurcation here, perhaps almost unique to jobs that also happen to generally pay well, at least in the US, of people for whom software development is a job you do like any other vs. it having to be some all-consuming passion.

YC being about startups and business and profit at all costs deriding people who go into it for money is a hell of a take. I’d say they’d love to see software become a passion industry so they can pay less like they do in most positions in every passion industry. The way software is developed for profit is a far cry from developing software from a hobbiest or passion perspective.

I realize I probably should've linked to the YC video: https://youtu.be/ia7IKW0yuG0?si=2a3xvKDZUZxZ_her&t=376

I don’t want to jeopardize my (public, state) university’s ABET accreditation but it was an open secret that the comp sci department just waved people through. My own experience supported this- any assignments that involved writing code (beyond introductory programming courses) were group projects, and I was one of very few who could write code- so after a couple of semesters everyone knew who to form groups around. All the groups had one (maybe two) people who could actually code. Most of my graduating class did not go on to be software engineers. They are mostly in the tech field, but as project managers, software sales, that sort of thing. One ended up at Boeing for a time as a software engineer- he was actually in my group for one of the classes and wrote, to this day (11 YoE) the worst code I’ve ever seen. That he was allowed to write code for Boeing proves to me that all the allegations about Boeing QA are true. That they decided he was competent enough totally explains why their MCAS software caused two of their planes to nose-dive into the ground.

I would hate to think that I can’t find a job because all of these dead-weight engineers are occupying seats at companies who might otherwise hire me. I feel like it’s more likely that the dead weight let go from FAANG realized they have to actually do work now, and take their new roles “seriously enough.”

I thought it was an open secret that masters in CS was just a scheme to buy immigration status?

Most of my classmates were white, so I doubt they were there for immigration reasons. This was also undergrad. Is an M.S. an automatic ticket to permanent U.S. residency?

What I saw in school was a lot of foreign masters in CS students with zero experience with coding and often with very little interest in learning. Big cheating issues. The school liked it because they were paying full price, and IIRC the students liked it because they got residency while studying and they could turn that into work permits and longer term status by getting a job after graduating. Definitely not an automatic ticket, but a relatively low barrier way to enter, assuming you have money.

There were plenty of local masters students as well, but it just didn't make a whole lot of sense to do masters in CS at the time, not a lot of value there beyond undergrad unless you were on your way to PhD or maybe decided to study CS after completing some other undergrad discipline.

Sounds like one heck of a loophole for those individuals, propped up by the institutions themselves (as usual). It reminds me of all the loopholes with the H-1B visas- for example, employers can get around both the "you need to hire U.S. citizens ahead of H-1B visa-holders" and the "you need to pay H-1B employees the same as U.S. citizens" stipulations?

That said, I have personally only known Asian SWEs whom I worked with in person to be very talented and hardworking, perhaps to a fault. Definitely to the detriment of their health and time with their families.

I don't doubt there remains a significant number of "0.1x devs" that are somehow still employed despite everything, and it's a shame because that heavily implies there are a significant number of unemployed "10x" or "1x" devs who can't find a job- so, again, as always, the institutions are supporting the status quo (in this case, by not really giving a fuck if they have quality talent working for them).

Nevermind the MCAS, the doors flying off of airplanes shows that it's not just software, and that no quality disaster is really big enough by itself to create some renaissance of interest in engineering excellence. Clearly Google was absolutely never going to fix declining search quality until finally ChatGPT came along and pushed them towards doing it and despite that Anthropic may very well still win the AI race.

It's easy to look at this type of thing and moan that the MBAs finally won, or start talking about antitrust enforcement and too-big-to-fail. There's some truth to that but it fundamentally seems like a bigger shift where the social contract is broken almost everywhere and cooperation itself is just on the decline. Things are increasingly adversarial between corporations and labor, corporations and consumers, governments and citizens, governments and corporations, and the list goes on.

There's so much we can learn from history, but that takes time and we're a very apathetic and comfortable civilization now.

I think it's important and worthwhile, though. It will give you an edge over everyone else if you "know" what is going to happen- history repeats itself, in part because so few bother to learn it and learn from it.

It was only this month that I finally learned that the American Civil War was about BOTH states' rights and slavery. To some reading this (this is a particularly-learned forum after all), you may think "duh - it was about states' rights to own slaves"- but that wasn't how it was taught to me in my public, Florida high school. We weren't taught that the North was just as racist as the South, and that the ONLY reason they didn't have slaves in the North was that their economy was better-off without it. We weren't taught that Lincoln's main problem with the South seceding was simply that it was illegal- literally not allowed by the Constitution. It only became a fight over "slavery" when the Union Army was getting its ass kicked and Lincoln was forced to "free all slaves" so that some would join the Union Army to fight (this was also to gain support on the global stage and make it less likely for other countries to trade with and otherwise support the Confederacy).

The Confederacy decided to secede because they believed that slavery was going to become illegal at the federal level "at some point"- there was not a formal plan to do so at the federal level at the time.

This segue came about because I was seeing memes on Facebook about the Union beating the Confederates "a second time" if the current political trend continues. These people think they're on the right side of history by identifying with the Union but that's not really the case. I mean heck the Civil Rights Movement wasn't for another 100 years following Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

All that to say- history implies there's another revolution on the horizon where, once again, we have to put the 1% in their place.

Some of the best programmers I know are competent, smart, and well adjusted people who chose this career and put in the work because of the demand. Some will tell you they don't even like programming. And some of the worst programmers I know are the type who centered their image and self esteem around being a true hobbyist.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with really liking, say, photography and looking around and saying “Nope, unless I basically win the lottery there’s not a lot of money in that and most of the jobs are actually pretty boring.”

Some people here probably disagree but nothing wrong with picking something you’re OK with, pays well, and you’re competent at.

...but you can't overwork them to the point of burnout and then replace them the next round of rubes.

YC and their startups were big perpetrators of the practice and spurred the trend further in software. I'm getting old so I was around for the late 2000's; YC used to con impressionable youths HARD. pg's cult of personality, his bad book, etc... it was all to get smart and passionate kids to overwork for him.

"That has made it really difficult for employers to tell the yuppies apart from the true hobbyists."

In reading HN stories and comments for the past 17 years I have noticed in the last 5 years or so there seems to be a sizeable contingent of people who publlish and comment online who express skepticism or even disdain for anyone who writes programs as a hobby, so-called "hobbyist programmers".

Perhaps this is not what is meant by "true hobbyists" in the above quote as their employers would have no need to know about a programming hobby. These hobbyists are not employed as "developers". They are employed in fields where salaries are not routinely financed by debt.

I have never read such a thing. Care to link an example?

In 2013, IDC estimated 40% of software authors were "hobbyist programmers" not "developers".

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1513176/the-rise-of-ho...

https://www.pcworld.com/article/443076/idc-hobbyist-programm...

Fast forward 10 years. Stack Overflow conducted a survey and only 5.56% of respondents said they programmed as "hobby" and were not employed as "developers". But 70.4% said they were employed as "developers" but also programmed outside of work as a "hobby".

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/

Perhaps there could be some ambiguity in the term "hobbyist" as applied to computer programming.

Those are some interesting findings. And while it probably doesn't need to be said: this is a Stack Overflow survey where the respondents voluntarily filled it out. I'd expect them to be a bit nerdier than the average! Indeed, 25% claiming to contribute to open source is pretty high haha.

Just to be precise, when I wrote "true hobbyist", I was referring to people who actually like programming, data science, IT, or UI/UX, etc and don't do it for purely career/financial reasons.

For example, my parents were originally musicians but were forced to change careers and became (music) teachers for financial reasons. However, they still practice and perform super often even though they don't make much (or anything) from it. It's kinda people like them that I'm referring to as "true hobbyists".

It has been painful working with yuppies in this way because most of them have no regard for correctness of the code. They push whatever runs. Code-consistency and maintainability are alien concepts to them, and most management isn't even aware of the existence of these concepts. Any product they develop turns to a wild, unmaintainable, unscalable, and incorrect mess within three years.

I also believe that the rise of code camps without having to put in the time, ZIRP, and FAANG level compensation led to a flood of software devs who were more about "making paper" than about the love of computer science.

Conversely I can say with a high degree of confidence that I've never met a M.Eng who was in it for the material perks.

Tangentially, it reminds me of something I heard about Scandinavian countries (though I can't vouch for the veracity of it). Since you were going to get the hell taxed out of you no matter what you did - it made more sense to focus on doing what you loved as a career.

Not a Scandinavian myself (Australian - halfway between the Nordic model and the US dollarocracy, and sadly sliding ever closer to the latter), so can't speak authoritatively. But I would have thought it's not so much about "getting the hell taxed out of you no matter what you do", but more about "getting decent pay and a massive social security safety net no matter what you do". Although either way, yes, makes sense to choose your career based on passion rather than paycheque. Which is why, for example, Finland (famous for its high standard of public education) AFAIK has a significantly less severe teacher shortage than most other OECD countries.

Re: MEng

Not so sure. A generally well-paying professional job? Probably. A deep passion for tinkering and building mechanical things? Not so obvious.

> Tangentially, it reminds me of something I heard about Scandinavian countries (though I can't vouch for the veracity of it). Since you were going to get the hell taxed out of you no matter what you did - it made more sense to focus on doing what you loved as a career.

I live in Scandinavia and it's not so much about being taxed the hell out of it, it's more that whatever your profession you will, most likely, have a decent income to live with dignity and some comforts, and getting "rich" by simply working for a FAANG-type/finance company with absurd amounts of bonuses through options/RSUs is not viable.

Also, there are safety nets in place in case you want to risk going self-employed/starting a company with your profession. If you are a carpenter and want to start a small business, failing is ok because you likely won't be homeless or starving.

My feeling is that it's more about income inequality being relatively low while still having enough range that it pays off in case you work with something that requires more extensive training (law, medical, etc.).

This has been an issue for decades.

Here are some numbers:

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_325.35.a...

Note the peak in 1986 or so. Another peak right after the dotcom bubble burst (students started during the bubble). And the late 2010s surge in masters degrees as people are either trying to make themselves more competitive (than just having a BS) or coming in from another field like EE or Physics and trying to get a credential to get in the door.

These are some interesting numbers! Thanks for sharing!

No problem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43778701 - You may like to read this, written by Bertrand Meyer in 1984 where a student of the time had lamented the apparent difficulty of earning the CS degree just so he could get a well-compensated job.

I appreciated this too! This was a pretty cathartic read. Definitely a bit ahead of its time.

> Too many people got into tech simply for the paycheque,

A key factor in people overtraining for a particular field is a lack of alternatives.

People jam up a degree because it's the one reasonable option that has a real shot at paying for itself.

People who are not really in a position to make the decision tend to put themselves on at least a certain trajectory in college. Changes are possible—maybe less than in the past. But complete reinvention is hard and probably at least somewhat costly.

I agree and I think ultimately, all the layoffs are actually good for the industry (though not for the people obviously). While what I'm saying is callous, there are too many people who don't know anything and don't care to learn getting in the way of people who want to do a good job. It really hurts product quality and development practices, since people who don't care eschew best practices. I don't mind if somebody goes into the industry for money, as long as they actually care to do a good job, but those type of people are becoming more rare.

> I don't mind if somebody goes into the industry for money, as long as they actually care to do a good job, but those type of people are becoming more rare.

I think I've been very lucky to frequently have coworkers that want to do a good job, but what is remarkable is that I've never worked for a company that really wanted to do a good job. Leaders fail upwards, terrible companies often survive and thrive, and thrive even harder when they get more terrible. The product as such is often fake; the customer list is usually the really valuable thing, and the customers themselves cannot leave for whatever reason, because they have no alternatives or are somehow held hostage. Many B2B relationships are completely unnecessary, it's just a tactic for a person at the business to become or remain important. Most CEOs would much rather play power games with mergers and acquisitions than do the comparatively boring work of mastering fundamentals or being innovative in their industries. Some version of this kind of mentality is becoming common for investors and workers too. Real work just gets in the way of looting the corpse and arranging your exit plans.

As narratives become more important than substance at virtually every level of post-manufacturing economic activity in services, and incentive structures are screwed up enough for a long time.. it's sad but not surprising that workers eventually get the "no one else cares, why should I?" attitude.

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