we can see lot of online programs to train new people. millions of new students graduating every year across the globe with computer science degree. In coming 5-10 years are we going to see a severe saturation among SWEs ? Corporate tech gaints like google, fb, apple are conducting training programs just to create such saturation to hire people for peanuts ? Some people will say experience matter. But what happens if there are lot of experienced people over a period of time ? So being a SWE should be a temporary goal? @google @apple @facebook #google #facebook #apple #engineering #software #swe
Just because someone attends an online program doesn't always mean they can pass the interview. If anything it will just mean fang becomes more prestigious with a more demanding bar. Question is are we going to change the way we get interviewed with how remote work is becoming more prominent for companies. Since we see just because someone can interview / leetcode doesn't always mean they can do the job.
with online programs, the number of people attending the program drastically increases and hence the probability of MANY people clearing the interview will be much more. And as the definition of most of the JOBs recently shows that "anyone who can write business logic using some programming language". And anyone who can code can write business logic can eventually know about how to deal with software stuff can be a potential SWE. So, do you think we all are replacable soon.
I doubt that. Have you seen the quality of code from these graduates? Usually not great. By the same logic investment bankers and CFOs should be unemployed soon because we know how to count 💰.
swe is already saturated. Look at situation in India and consultancies. Job market is too crowded and very limited opportunities for engineers. So very high unemployment even when you are over qualified like m.tech/phd etc. Lets consider situation here.. we are heading towards similar direction. India has coaching classes for exams like IIT-JEE, CAT, CET here we have 'boot camps' to go to top tier companies. Business model is same like selling dreams to get into elite university or top sw company and asking insane amounts from students. Students pay because they feel they will lag behind. This trend needs to change. Afterall it depends upon hardwork, luck and talent be it top university or top tier sw company.
Is market that crowded in Seattle? Is it just for junior roles? In NY before covid I had 3-5 recruiters a week minimum contacting me
one recruiter contact 1000 people for same SINGLE job because of platforms like Linkedin. Being part of such companies we should understand this. And BTW, there can be multiple 3rd party recruiters for same company and they can spam the same job description to millions of poeple within seconds by paying 10 bucks. Do you still think getting recruiter calls indicates that you are NOT replacable ?
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You are conflating software engineers with code monkeys.
every SWE was a code monkey when they begin career. and you have accept the fact that most of the SWEs are just delivering the code which depends on lot of abstractions. as the abstractions increase, all they want is cheap code monkey than a experienced SWE with lot of coding experience. have you anytime thought why google is hiring so much with less TC ? basically they created lot of robust abstractions that they can install code monkeys now.
People have thought the same thing for a long time (including me) and it hasn't happened. There's now a lot of people who can build software poorly, but still not very many people who are good at it. I don't really understand why it's that way, but it's true. If you just build pretty repetitive things on top of existing frameworks, I would probably worry that your work will become commodified, but if you're good at designing and writing novel frameworks, I probably wouldn't worry.
very few people predicted something like covid-19 can happen in 2020 to humanity. Just imagine shortage of toilet paper in 2020 after inventing an automatic electric car. probably we should think beyond the box and not to rely on our SWE jobs and acquire other skills before freshers replace us.
In all fairness the only reason we had a toilet paper shortage was because people are stupid.
You forgot to think about companies that are coming new. There are tons of start up these days , openings are crazy like hell. Pre covid, software engineer job openings were increasing steadily and companies were hiring right and left. So it will get adjusted too. Now do companies like Microsoft take advantage of such cheap engineers for peanuts ? Yes. They wanted to.
Please watch this talk by Bob Martin on the future of software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc He specifically talks about the quantity and the quality of programmers.
@WhoIsJohnG this post is about both the quantity and quality of programmers. Quality programmers are not special people. If you took 5 years to become quality programmer, the freshers are just taking 2-3 year or less than that because of lot of awareness and learning platforms (which is good, i am not blaming that). So, probably we should be aware that count of QUALITY programmers is going to see a surge.
Just watch it, it’s an enjoyable talk. People don’t mature faster just because you give them access to learning platforms.
I feel like America is trying to push out more to fill the skill gap, I also feel like every post on this matter is contradictory. 1) When immigration is involved, America won’t survive without foreign labor because we don’t produce enough engineers. 2) When people talk about the rise of high enrollment online programs, suddenly were going to have too much labor. If we start producing more qualified engineers, wouldn’t we just hire the most qualified of the bunch from the rest of the world and then rely on talent we can produce domestically?
There is a 5 to 1 ratio of open positions to engineers so no https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/blog/5-quick-stats-about-developers-and-what-they-mean
I had the same thoughts a while ago.