Is The Software Industry Dead? 733
A reader writes:" Ok. So I'm about to graduate and then I come across this story:
Do Software Firms Have Bright Future?
None other than Larry Ellison of Oracle thinks that the best is behind us and that software is a dead industry. What does the rest of slashdot think? Will that shiney new degree be worthless? " I think it's safe to say that it's not dead - but that the times it once had aren't going to return; e.g. tulip blubs sell well, but not like they used to.
No, it isn't dead (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No, it isn't dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, you apparantly didn't read what I wrote. I said I have a job NOW. I've been fully employed at a healthy salary since 1993 (when I graduated). However, given current trends in the industry I fully expect to NOT be employed in software development in the future unless either (A) I'm lucky or (B) the cost of living gets really really low here in the US. We're talking 3rd-world nation low. Then again, that's where the suits are pushing us, so maybe we'll be a third world nation soon. Then perhaps we could compete.
Re:No, it isn't dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the problem with the industry is some of the current salaries represent a skill that at one time was harder to come by. As programming languages become simpler to code with and more people get into the market, the more salaries will need to come down.
On the plus side, with a good number of years experience you can always try and develop a specific skill across a wide number of platforms/languages and keep yourself gainfully employed.
Or do what the Auto companies did and form a union!
Re:No, it isn't dead -- OT (Score:5, Insightful)
The real estate prices too are in a way, silly. The cost of land is not much, the houses are getting bigger and bigger, and no one can find a place that is good but small enough to be affordable. Just like the dream of owing new SUVs, a lot of the cost of living is in the minds.
S
Re:No, it isn't dead -- OT (Score:5, Insightful)
And you can expect companies to screw their employees by going to cheaper and cheaper labour. After all, the effect in the short term is hardly noticeable even though over time it will completely shift the ecconomic base from the richest countries to the poorer countries.
Actually, not quite... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately though the people who will benefit the most from this are those who control capital and the means of production. They will be able to drive down costs, and thus drive up profits. More money will flow up to the top because of this. This will be a global phenomenon.
Re:No, it isn't dead -- OT (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I hear about outsourcing to other countries, I have to retrospect that this has been happening for at least 20 years in one industry or another.
Whenever there is a labour force to do simple training to do the same job you do at half the price, I would be stupid not to say yes. STUPID.
Of course that is where the laws of tarrifs, etc try to balance the deficits of greedy companies.
In My Biased Opinion, I believe that many social woes from America come from a society of consumers constantly wanting more. This makes them greedy, greedier than other countries anyways.
Re:No, it isn't dead -- OT (Score:4, Insightful)
because you are looking to live in the areas clustered with idiots.
I bought 10 acres lakefront with a 1500 sq foot house that is on a sports lake where I can fish, powerboat, sail. whatever for 1/2 the price of the same house in the city in a OK neighborhood on a postage stamp lot. I commute farther because of it, but time in the car is 100% identical to my shorter commute... 1 hour drive either way.
rule #1 if you see a subdivision and rich boy houses everywhere... you do NOT want to live there.. the neighbors will be jerks and you will horribly overpay for what you get. look for rural land that is in commute time the same as what you have now. you will be happier, have neighbors that are dang friendly and nice and you get the side effect of leaving your keys in your car and the house unlocksed and NOT WORRY ABOUT IT.
suburbia is for the stupid, and the $200,000.00+ homes are for the massively idiotic.
you are looking at the wrong places and hanging with the wrong people. be yourself and be sure your home is your paradise not you the slave to your home, mortgage and car payments..
BTW, if you live smart, it pisses off the "gotta be better" crowd... as you will always have money to spend on vacations , $4000.00 camcorders, home theatre systems that make thiirs look stupid, etc... it's the fact you dont feel crunched like they do that is the ultimate satisfaction...
nothing is more satisfying than... "Nice new BMW dave... when you getting a boat? oh too bad, well you can borrow one of mine anytime... come out and sail on my lake.. I gotta go It's time for brakes on my Pontiac..."
Re:No, it isn't dead (Score:5, Insightful)
You left out another alternative: what if (C) the cost of living increases elsewhere ? What if the third world countries outgrow being third world countries ? The reason the cost of living is higher in the US is largely due to a currency differential. Basically, you can buy a lot of third world labor with your spare change. If the "third world" countries develop competitive economies, this differential will not be sustained -- either America's currency will drop, or the other currencies will grow, or both.
Two things I see coming out of this -- one is that a lot of people are going to get burned by transitions in major economies. Another is that being American does not in itself entitle you to buy hours and hours of someone else's time, if that someone else has comparable skills. In other words, the worst thing that's going to happen to your living standards is not that your labor is going to become cheap, it's that foreign labor is going to become more expensive.
No, it's not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do all problems need a computer? No. Hopefully, we will never turn down that road. But, wherever custom solutions are needed, and there is a lot of need for custom ones, programmers are needed. Systems analysistssts, graphic artists and dbas.
Re:No, it's not. (Score:5, Informative)
The software industry isn't going away, it's just getting smarter. More is being done with less, which means more higher paying jobs for highly skilled positions and fewer for copy/paste codemonkeys.
depends (Score:5, Insightful)
Flexibility Yes, Business No (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, there are people who specialize in business. Except that if they're not flexible, their shiny degree aint worth much either. (Heard an interview with an unemployed "Vice President of Brand Awareness." Can't understand why he's a year plus on the breadlines.) Which brings me to my main point: everybody needs to be flexible.
Too many techies are overspecialized. Their only educational priority is to prepare for some job that happens to be Very Hot when they start school. Even if the dot.com boom had lasted for 100 years, people like that would be in big trouble eventually. Technology changes, and you need the mental flexibility to keep up with those changes. You won't get that with a narrow education.
Re:Hello!! (Score:5, Insightful)
See, the thing is, it's really hard to make a useful core engine that is reusable in a lot of different scenarios. 9 times out of 10, it's easier and cheaper to start from sractch, making use of good toolkits/API and directly solving the problem at hand, hopefully in a reasonably flexible way, than to wrangle some existing infrastructure into what the client wants.
Actually, that toolkit/API level software work IS a bit like using legos (few people should writ a Java hashmap function from scratch)...I think my Lego-like, you're thinking something more on the scale of...I dunno, Capsela.
But what can I do? I switched to Comp Sci in 1994 or so. I read Wired, but I had no idea something like the boom was coming. I added a Comp Sci major to my English because Comp Sci is what came naturally to me and felt personally rewarding... I'd be trying to do it even if there was no boom. I guess if the situation gets ugly enough, I'll rethink my life... though it's gonna be hard to a lateral switch that's likely to knock me so far down the payscale.
Larry says...... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Larry says...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Larry says...... (Score:5, Insightful)
Much much better than trucking my ass to each PC so that I can install the new app when there are 100 PCs involved. Even better when the number of machines in question reaches the thousands.
Anyways, the software industry isn't dead. There will always be a need for new software. Business models are different between companies. That's how they compete. They excel in different areas, and to do that they need different software. Software that more closely meets their needs. Saying software is dead is akin to Steve Balmer saying that opensource and free software don't innovate, but Microsoft innovates all the time. MS buys what they think is cool, and reshrink wrap it with a new label. Free software is honestly the ONLY place where innovation occurs. Someone has an idea, and they run with it. The idea may not be polished, the software may not even be implemented that well, but it isn't the software that is being questioned, it is the innovation. The software becomes polished when some company buys/steals the idea, or when a new company is formed specifically to flesh the idea out.
If you people actually believe that all the software ever necessary is already written, then please do get out of this industry. Go write a book or something, please. Let the rest of us innovate in peace.
(BTW: I'm not trying to attack the parent thread, I'm just spewing ideas.
Re:Larry says...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Network Administration would be even easier if all you gave those mere users was a legal pad and a sharpened pencil. You could have them request that you print out their latest email from the server, and maybe even rig up a pneumatic tube to deliver the printed copy to them.
IT People who want back Dumb Terminals because it makes their job easier are like landscape workers who want there only to be huge expanses of lawn, no trees, gardens, or features, because it makes it easier for them to mow.
Re:Larry says...... (Score:3, Interesting)
Network Computers, Java - well, Java's quite popular, but nothing like the Windows-killer he predicted it would be, and NCs? They have a niche market - and apart from Sun's SunRay, use something like Citrix to access the same old Windows apps, under a hacked version of the same old Windows NT. When someone with a track record like this says "your market is doomed", I'll ta
funny (Score:3, Interesting)
ROI (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, the computer industry has failed to deliver on time, on budget forever. Only, it's not getting (much) better.
We need real economists to create real business cases for our customers. Then we need to deliver. There are lots of big software projects that fail, either partially or totally.
It's unglorious and hard. But it needs to be done.
Re:ROI (Score:3)
We need real economists to create real business cases for our customers. Then we need to deliver. There are lots of big software projects that fail, either partially or totally.
What we need is for managers to accept realistic expectations and allow enough time to do a proper design. Most projects fail because these requirements are not met. There's also the issue of project leadership, but at least that's under the control of the project manager.
No it is Oracle and Sun that are hurting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No it is Oracle and Sun that are hurting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oracle's long term prospects are very good. Perhaps their pure packaged software business is not going to be the revenue pig that it has been, but their enterprise services business (support and consulting) has a bright future. I think Larry is making this pitch about software being dead because he sees that he needs to move his business even more to the services side, like IBM has done.
I think he's reacting to the open source phenomonon. He's declared that Linux will w
Re:No it is Oracle and Sun that are hurting... (Score:3, Insightful)
All of this has to wear down their mindshare (if not their marketshare) sooner or later.
Actually, Oracle's long term prospects look grim. They tend/need to bleed too much money out of their customers in order to make their b
It's not dead (Score:3, Funny)
Can you imagine not needing software? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that software is dead by a longshot. It may not grow explosively like it did during the 80's and 90's, (but then again, it might) but I don't see it going away... ever.
There will always be a need to process data for as long as man exists. If we don't need to think up new and better ways to do that, I'll be very surprised.
Re:Can you imagine not needing software? (Score:5, Insightful)
There will always be a need to process data for as long as man exists. If we don't need to think up new and better ways to do that, I'll be very surprised.
This is absolutely true. But those are consultants or IT departments, they live perfectly well with free software.
Re:Can you imagine not needing software? (Score:5, Insightful)
> If so, then can you imagine everyone not needing software?
OK. Can you imagine everyone not needing salt and spices in their food? No? Now, make the leap - can you imagine the spice trade as a booming business minting new millionaries seemingly without end? Is that last statement too much?
I hope so -- the spice trade is relatively unimportant in grand economic terms, but it was not this way in the 15th-17th centuries.
Similarily, there will always be a software industry. But will it command the imagination of a nation? Or will people look to, say, nanotechnology or biotechnology for the next big boom?
Also, I think Ellison stressed Silicon Valley as well.
In the 1960's and 70's, led by Shockley, then Fairchild and then finally Intel, Silicon Valley was a thriving centre for chip making. Then chip making became commoditized and by the late 70's - early 80's, Silicon Valley was in a bust due to Japanese competition.
But it bounced back.
Then, in the 80's, defence R+D and PC software rose to promenance.
Only to bust in the 90's.
Finally, in the late 90's, there was the great internet boom...
So the real question isn't, "software, wherefore art thou?", but really, will the next economic revolution (and yes, the Internet revolution will go down in the history books as matching the industrial revolutions) again be due soley to software? Or will it be something else? And, will the next revolution be centered in Silicon Valley? Or will it be somewhere else?
Don't think it must be in Silicon Valley - after all, the Internet revolution didn't happen in Manchester and Glasgow - don't expect the center of yesterday's revolution to be the center of tomorrow's.
Re:Can you imagine not needing software? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the GNU zealots have their way, that will be the situation. Lets say linux and its host of supporting applications become so good that a majority of persons decide to use it, and it just plain works... Who is going to pay you to write new software if you have a nearly perfect open-format word processor and office suite? And business apps? and operating system?
Maybe games and entertainment will continue to need programmers, but in general, without moving forma
Dull Degree (Score:5, Interesting)
You would have been better off with a second... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dull Degree (Score:3, Informative)
I hope you plan on keeping the coding up during your extra schooling. Otherwise, you will just be a semester behind in experience too.
Re:Dull Degree (Score:5, Insightful)
When I started four years ago this was the degree to have if you wanted to be guaranteed a job. Now it seems run-of-the-mill and it does not set you apart from the masses whatsoever.
No offense, but if you studied computer science because you thought there was easy money to be made, you did it for all the wrong reasons.
There's one thing that will surely "set you apart from the masses"; it's called talent. Usually that goes hand in hand with actually having a passion for the subject - it doesn't sound like you have this. Think about it - you are competing with people who go to university to study computer science, then come home, and work on their computer some more.
What are you in it for ? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you were in it to come out making 80K+ while working a 40 hour week... then you'll probably end up dissapointed. Otherwise, if your a code junkie, you probably won't have much trouble finding a job that you enjoy.
Is your degree worthless?... well thats really up to you.
Not dead at all. Just changed..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Go after SOHO business. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Go after SOHO business. (Score:3, Insightful)
Messaging systems (you could produce one of these that is as good as anyone else's at a fraction of the
Everything has been invented (Score:5, Insightful)
News.com is claiming that start-ups are hiring (Score:4, Informative)
Re:News.com is claiming that start-ups are hiring (Score:3, Insightful)
2) How many of these startups would it take to cover for the Lucents out there?
Friday (Score:5, Insightful)
I took me about five minutes to wrote a little routine to parse the data into the correct format. Within the hour we were back on schedule.
So the answer to the question is "no".
This is the age of information. The more information we have, the more need there will be to manipulate that infroamtion.
The software industry is quite healthy (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the high end that is having the problems. And even then not all of them - e.g. I agree with the article that MS is still growing: they keep on diversifying. People have realised that over the years some of the 'high-end' systems they've been getting are a rip-off, and that there are cheaper options (you can guess for yourselves) which can replace them.
I can say even in an economic downturn, that if there is a piece of software that has proven worth, and will genuinely help a customer, then it will be purchased. It's just that nobody is delivering what people want (or could want).
The software industry... (Score:5, Interesting)
...is not the industry that most programmers work in.
If you're getting a degree in software development, there's about a 98% chance that if you write code, it will be for a custom business system that will never be used outside of the company you work for.
Programmers rarely work in software product companies, and in those companies the programmers find themselves to be the minority (both in number and in pay) -- overshadowed by marketers, admins, and lawyers. Their jobs are to produce the product, worked 18 hours a day, paid what amounts to minimum wage, and maybe one day it might result in a royalty check.
See, the software product industry doesn't really exist. The billions of dollars made by Microsoft are in truth a bizarre anomoly that most companies have not been able to recreate. That is not to say that other companies don't sell software profitably too, but in those cases the software is sold as simply a service offering vessel. Microsoft is one of the few that can sell a shrinkwrap product to millions of people and walk away from them until it's time to sell them the next release.
Other cases where software is sold as a product usually has nothing to do with the rest of the software industry. The box is an end user consumable like entertainment content or some kind of shovelware gimmick.
It is the software product industries Ellison is talking about when he says the software industry is on the decline. He probably even sees it in his own company. No one buys Oracle for the sake of having Oracle software, they buy Oracle so they have Oracle's support infrastructure behind it.
So while the software product industry may be on its way out, it doesn't mean you should switch majors just yet.
The software systems and services industries are poised for a boom. Businesses are starting to collect more information, expanding into more markets, becoming (finally) a little more computer literate. It is in these fields we can seek to sell ourselves, and it is also in these fields we can best sell Linux and open source.
Re:The software industry... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is absolutely true. However, the interesting point is that the software industry is trying to encroach on the industry in which most programmers do work: internal IS custom development.
For example:
Many millions (billions?) of programmer hours have been invested in writing slightly different versions of a double entry accounting system. Look around your company - there is at least one person making a decent living supporting custom accounting/hr/payroll applications. The software industry (Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel, etc) is agressively trying to put this person on the unemployment line. The fact that these companies have not yet been successful in this attempt does not change my opinion that eventually they will be successful: off-the-shelf (OTS) vs. custom is a solved problem, and it is only a matter of product iterations (5?) before the field is cleared.
In fact, outside of data processing (collecting information in a relational database and running reports on said data), the battle between OTS and custom is over. The fact that the battle between the commerical software industry and the open source software industry in these arenas is ongoing is irrelevant to the 98% of software developers employed by internal IS. Today, no one in your company in making a living writing device drivers, operating systems, network stacks or word processing programs, as they might have been 10-15 years ago.
So, if current trends continue, what is the prognosis for the mainstream software developer? Are we auto mechanics - our services commoditized and wages lowered by massive standardization and upstream quality improvements? Are we electrical engineers - our hand crafted circuits driven out by general purpose registers and instructions? Are we secretaries and typists - destroyed by a cultural change and widespread adpotion of do-it yourself tools (computers, word processing software and voice mail systems)?
I don't know. If I did, I would be as rich as Larry Ellison.
Ram Sadasiv
Re:The software industry... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are exactly right. For example, you can do most of what most Cisco products can do with free software, but when something goes wong, you won't have Cisco's Special Circumstances agents to back you up. You can do most of what a Sun can do with x86 hardware, but (apart from maybe IBM) there's no-one in the x86 space that can give you the kind of backup that Sun can, if you need it.
The software systems and services industries are poised for a boom. Businesses are starting to collect more information, expanding into more markets, becoming (finally) a little more computer literate. It is in these fields we can seek to sell ourselves, and it is also in these fields we can best sell Linux and open source.
The problems these days - and these were always the interesting ones - are not so much "what can we do", which is what the packaged software industry answered but "what should we do, and how do we do it" which is where bespoke software, developed and iterated quickly by people who know both tech and business come in. The future's bright for those that understand that IT is about solving problems in the real world, and can identify and understand those problems.
How can the software industry be dead? (Score:3, Insightful)
And I don't mean to troll, but Ellison is a known blowhard.
Nonesense.... (Score:4, Interesting)
"It's square now... the growth just isn't there anymore, the big bumps of the three sided wheel are gone and the good days of people being interested in wheel development are over."
Really the industry probably hasn't seen its best days. How much crappy software is there out there? How far are we from getting it right? Right now we have square wheels, we haven't figured it all out yet. The industry (open and proprietary) is changing, which is good. We are at a point when software is about to become really exciting. There is so much that can be done and bright minds will do it. Besides its better that investors aren't throwing money at anything with DOT and a COM, it will mean sounder companies, sounder projects, and more interest in open/free software solutions (as true believers will make the project anyways, regardless of monetary gain).
There is a industry growth curve.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:There is a industry growth curve.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be like saying all manufacturing is the same market, so televisions and automobiles should be lumped together.
Computers are everywhere and they need software (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider that every cellular phone is a computer, every car on the road has a computer in it, and hell, even your microwave has a computer.
And as computers become more ubiqitious and get built into every device, and it requires that these devices become more and more "intelligent", they are going to require more sophisticated software to run them.
You think your microwave that'll accept voice commands is going to happen by magic? We're still 10 or 20 years away from having a computer like "HAL" (in 2001), i.e. a computer smart enough to write it's own software, so, I'd say that there's still plenty of time for you to make some money.
And even then, when computers are doing the programming, there will always be those who are better at it than the machines. Of course, the machines might conspire to bump off those folks, but that's fodder for my next novel...
TTYL!
Of Course. (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, there will definitely, incontrovertibly, be a contraction in the industry (already well underway) and reduction in salaries. The NYT coverage of this same interview didn't focus on the software industry dying, but more on the power shifting towards customers -- no longer can you wave around technology words and expect people to snap up your product. You have to deliver rock-solid software that works, at an affordable price (of course, the definition of "affordable" is flexible; lots of people buy SAP).
It was kind of inevitable, really. Getting a CS degree was the thing to do to ensure yourself a job after college, at least when I was there, and I think for a time after I left. It seems like there's a glut of people who are "in IT." Maybe they're not all GOOD, but they are plentiful. And add to that, outsourcing to India. Lots of people complain about how remote Indian coders aren't up to snuff, but that won't last; as the firms over there mature and improve their training, they'll only get better.
As for the argument "you'll always need software," well that's true. But you also always need electricity and telephones, and no one really considers those to be premium fields to go into. That said, you can make a lot of money over the course of your life as a bonded electrician. And I think this is the way that IT is headed: it's going to become a commodified, buyer's market.
Which is why I also think it would be a good idea to get some sort of unionization or guild system up and running now, before there's a total glut and everyone's layed off and miserable. The days of high-flying super coders demanding 100K a year plus options, are over. We've come down to earth, some a lot harder than others, and I think we need to deal with the reality of a computer industry that's a lot less glamorous (come on, we all started out as nerds anyway) and less in-demand than we got used to.
Software as a product may not have a future. (Score:3, Insightful)
So in my opinion the software business in the foreseeable future may not survive as a "production" industry, but rather as a service business. I imagine it like this: the product - the piece of software the developer creates - becomes secondary to the know-how required to actually be able to write a piece of software, or to extend it. A coder then would offer this knowledge as a service.
A business model for this type of enterprise probably already exists among those companies creating open source (GPLed) software. One example springs into my mind - the guy who wrote snort. IIRC he makes money by selling his security knowledge - the tool he created is just that - a tool, or a platform for his services, but not a product.
A hearty rejoinder... (Score:3, Informative)
Being a Robber-Baron Software Tycoon Is Dying... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is, The Ellisons, Gates, even Jobs's of the world are a dying breed if the Stallmans, Torvalds and other Open Source guys have their way. open Source has provided much of the real innovations in software over the last decade (how's that BSD TCP stack running these days, Bill?) and has now moved into the arena of whole systems. Why pay $300/annually for a piece of software when a free equivilant that runs better is readliy downloadable?
That said, you can see why Larry is worried. He hears the pounding of the hooves of the horsemen of his economic apocylypse. I, as a ride on one of the thundering heard am enjoying every inch of the ride.
Diplomas are Union Cards... (Score:3, Insightful)
Getting a CS, or *any* degree is not the same thing as going to a trade school, and it's time that people quit treating it that way.
If you went after your CS degree chasing the idea of money, then you are better off changing your major to something you enjoy doing, rather than something that you do for the money.
Let me ask: do you want a job? Or do you want a career? If you just want a job, being a trucker or an assembly line worker at GM generally pays more than being a software engineer.
In the hey-day of Silicon Valley, all you had to do is say you were a "2nd year CS student", and you would be hired by some desperate company, with more funding than good sense, to be a warm body to fill a cubicle, at some inflated salary... what a disaster for everyone: a bunch of partially trained computer scientists who think they are being paid a lot because of the value of what's inside their heads, rather than what's inside their pants (a butt for filling a chair). No more, and the industry is better for it.
The bottom line is that the people who chase a particular degree because "I think that's where the money is", rather than "I think I will enjoy doing this for the rest of my life" are losers. They always have been.
These are the same people who used to want to be doctors, and then used to want to be lawyers. Now they are the people who used to want to be computer scientists.
Creating a life for yourself is all about finding something you enjoy doing, and then finding someone to pay you to do it, not about finding something that someone will pay you to do, and suffering through it.
You will be much happier, and so will your future spouse and kids, when it turns out you don't beat them over being trapped in a job that's "work" for you, when it should be something you enjoy doing.
-- Terry
Tulip blubs? (Score:3, Funny)
e.g. tulip blubs sell well, but not like they used to.
Ah, gotta love Slashdot and all its spelling fulbs.
Sabbe dhamma anatta (Score:5, Insightful)
There is other software. Your cellphone and your microwave and your laser printer all have processors in them, and somebody has to write code for them. That business (embedded systems) is also in healthy shape. Not growing by leaps and bounds, not vacuuming up every last resume or recent grad, but not about to fall over and disappear either.
There are lots of businesses and business niches that involve software development. There are even still some businesses paying people to develop websites. And for all the sufferings of unemployed sysadmins, there are still people being paid for sysadmin work out there.
Everybody got burned by the dot-bomb. For a couple of years, businesses were so hungry that they'd hire anybody who could write three lines of Perl and give them a corner office and big stock options. That was an unstable situation and there has been a backlash.
If you ask, "is the industry dying?", there will always be an authoritative idiot saying yes. The more important long-term question is, "could this kind of work hold your interest for three or four decades?", so think about that and plan accordingly.
Is the software industry dead? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the biggest lies the corporations ever sold us was that everything useful a person can do is an industry. Is music an industry? no, it is entertainment. Is information an industry? no, it is knowledge. Is entertainment an industry? no, it is a diversion. Is there an industry based in every one of these? yes. Should there be? not necessarily.
They may be nice to have and convenient at that, but they are in no way vital to have them as money-driven gargantuan machines.
Examples of true industry: textiles. metal. machinery. transportation. food.
Examples of false industry: information. music, movies, and other media.
While software has proven itself to be like unto machinery, the fact that there are so many people doing it for free and giving the fruits of their labors away proves that anything infinitely dispersable without loss to the original provider cannot be a true industry without having to actually produce the object being sold. Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel, but if I copy it and give it to a friend, Linus has lost nothing. If I have a wooden box and I copy it and give it away, I have lost the cost of the wood. That is the difference. I know there are holes in my arguement, but thats where semantics come in and I generally ignore semantics when they are placed on an idealistic level anyhow. Until a serious discussion on the subject takes place, there isn't any point in bothering with them.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure Larry Ellison thinks software is dead. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, it's technically possible that Ellison is right. I wouldn't wager on it, myself, humankind has a history of doing things that can't be done-- walking on the moon, breaking the sound barrier...
IT Shakeout Go get your REAL job at Burger King (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems only fair that the most experienced / qualified people stay in the industry that they have those skills in and the least qualified get out of the industry. Anyone still in school taking Computer Science with lofty dreams of making it to the top is fooling themselves and they will find themselves working in a low paying / thankless job. Sorry guys you missed the boom and it is now a buyer's (employer's) market so chances with no experience you are out of luck.
My advice for would be Computer Science majors would be to switch majors to one that compliments a market where there is a demand for workers. I have investigated what that is, but may be forced to very soon. With that said there are a bunch of people that are going into Computer Science because it is their passion and not as a career path. For those I say fine just don't take enthusiasm for a false sense of job security because it does not exist.
There ya go...
lol
Nick Powers
My Resume [nickpowers.info]
Illusions destroyed... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not alone but you are probably in for a big surprise if you haven't already figured this out...
Think about musicians. There are a whole lot of them out there and almost all of them dream of making it big. Most of those that make money as a musician are doing so in obscurity and without the *BIG* money. Most musicians know this.
Think about how many companies sell software. Think about how many employees they have.
Think about how many people are out there that can work in the software industry.
The fact is that most people making money in the computer industry are not doing it by working for a company that sells software.
So, is the software industry dead? Not really but it was never "alive" the way you thought it was. It's smaller than it has been in the past but your chances weren't that great to being with--greater than being the next top 20 artist but not as great as you probably thought.
What should you do? Do what we all do...go get a job writing software for company that has every intent of using it rather than selling it.
Not dead yet, just a commodity (Score:3, Interesting)
So no, its not dead, its just not going to pay like it used to.
Next Big Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Spreadsheets, GUIs, relational DBMS's (Oracle), and the internet were all new technologies that added impulses (in the engineering sense) to the computer industry pendulum, keeping it swinging higher. People right now are unsure where that next kick is coming from.
What is coming down the pike that people absolutely must have? Bioinformatics? Small wireless devices? If you knew what's coming next, you could be the next Larry Ellison. Unfortunately, Larry wants to be the next Larry Ellison, too, and he's got more money to spend on research.
In the end, you should find something that is well defined (fuzzy plans make flops), that interests you, that doesn't put you in direct competition with a multi-billion dollar firm, and that there's at least some market for. If you're good at it, you'll do fine.
Or join the multi-billion dollar firm, and save your weekends for fun.
Industry: dead; Degree: still valuable! (Score:5, Insightful)
Having said that, yes, unfortunately the software industry is dead, at least from the perspective of the individual programmer. There are a lot of reasons for this, including:
1. Most corporations and private companies are outsourcing almost *everything*, usually either overseas (India, mostly) or to local companies that use overseas talent. You can't beat them on price, ok? Their cost of living is a fraction of yours, and they'll undercut you until you starve. It doesn't matter that your skills are superior, or that you're a great programmer; some guy in Bangalore can work for 1/5 what you cost, and to a pointy-haired boss, that's all that matters. This is a terrible, terrible thing, and corporations deserve no loyalty or mercy from us -- when their customer base can no longer afford their products thanks to rampant layoffs, they'll die off like the vermin they are. But there's nothing we (or anyone) can do about it, so we might as well accept it.
2. Even if a private company isn't going to go into full-blown outsourcing, they ARE going to rely mostly on contractors. What THIS means is, most of the work will go to inexpensive foreign talent ANYWAY (because now, the contracting companies will do the outsourcing) and those Americans who DO get contracting gigs will have to settle for chump change or lose the bid. IF, that is, you can get them to pay you at all -- there are lots, and I mean lots, of stories about people getting stiffed by companies. Corporate IT is a really dicey business for a programmer or admin these days.
3. Software companies aren't going to provide many jobs. Applications software is deader than hell. It's been slaughtered by the Open Source community, who can produce solid software that not only costs nothing, but which can be copied infinitely, and has no hidden gotchas like the equivalent proprietary software. You simply cannot compete with that; you can't beat them on quality, or on price, or even on style (most open source software these days even LOOKS good). It's a dead industry, ok? Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily, but it does mean you won't be able to count on a salary from this sector.
But it's not all doom and gloom. There are still a couple of places where you can make some money.
First of all, public sector jobs may not pay as much as the private sector USED to, but they sure pay a hell of a lot more NOW. Federal, State, and Local jobs are all unionized, so you're protected, and you get great benefits. So this is a great place to hunker down during the recession. One warning: they can be annoying places to work. But it's worth a little aggravation to have a steady job.
Second of all, if you're good at graphics, game companies are going to keep growing. They're making money hand over fist. But concentrate on console games. People are sick of having to upgrade their PCs every couple of years, and they're switching over to consoles at a breakneck pace.
Third, and this is pretty dicey, you might be able to make some bread writing Java and J2EE libraries and tools that corporations might want to buy. Get the money up front, though. Don't get stiffed. And, buy some kind of dongle or other copy-protection scheme, or corporations WILL pirate your code like mad. Think I'm kidding? Companies like to ask you for a "demo" and then, use that to do whatever project they had in mind. Then you don't get paid. Get the don
Bioinformatics is the future (Score:3, Insightful)
With all the genetic information now available now which we know very little about yet, there is a very high need for people with knowledge in CS and Biology to analyse this data -- incidentally, students most likely to take CS have historically looked down on the natural sciences and natural science students have historically been afraid of the quantitative sciences including CS.
I know a few physicists and mathematicians who have learned a bit of biology and scored big in Bioinformatics, the reverse is also true but fewer biologists have learned CS to become bioinformaticians.
Exact Opposite! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think software has a long way to go in other fields besides gaming. Windows 2003 is not a giant leap forward and users of Windows still want more features/reliability/speed. Increasing hardware speed only helps so much if the software isn't developed.
IT Dead? (Score:3, Informative)
The article essentially argues that an in-house IT department is no longer strategic for most companies--that IT has become a commodity. Although I think this is completely absurd at this point, chances are they have a point. In any case, it's interesting reading.
Software vs Software Industry (Score:3, Interesting)
OTOH, the software industry is going through, and will continue to go through, large changes. There will be fewer opportunities for three people in a garage to become billionaires. In many cases, large development organizations dedicated to a single product (the equivalent of factories in manufacturing industries) will be moved out of the United States in pursuit of lower labor costs. There will still be lots of small jobs that are done locally, but in many of those cases an understanding of the business or process into which the software fits will be as important as development skills. Research jobs will still exist for the talented few who can do that well. But overall, I expect it to be a very different environment than it has been for the past 20 years.
Many forget that (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at Nokia for example: they have thousands of programmers and they aren't selling any software for the end users.
Cell phones, cell phone networks, banks and many others require tons of software. Unlikely ordinary desktop software, this software must be bug-free and very optimized.
useful vs useless (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now some of you may be saying, 'Well, duh!!'
The fact is, there are a million and one reasons why someone could have gone to university to get a degree in a particular field. If the original author of this thread simply got a computer science degree because he saw a cushy job with a large salary and good benefits at the end of his time in university, then, unfortunately, yes, his degree is worthless. Now, on the other hand, if he had gone to university with larger goals in mind, then his degree might be worth a lot more.
What are these larger goals? Well, the author has to ask himself, why did he originally choose to pursue a degree in computer science? Was it because in highschool he enjoyed mathematics and tinkering with computers? If so, then he has just spent four years studying and learning about a topic for which he has a genuine interest. Gaining knowledge simply for the sake of gaining knowledge is most definitely NOT a worthless endeavour.
Again, I hear the naysayers: "That's all well and good in your socialist dreamworld, but we live in a capitalist economy and one needs to make a living."
There *are* still software development jobs out there. And I bet you any money, a company would be much more willing to hire a university grad who has a genuine interest in being a developer, someone who is fascinated by the world of computers, than someone who views programming as a chore and only chose the comp.sci. route because he felt he could make a lot of money in that field.
The same goes for any profession. You're going to be spending at a minimum 40 hours a week doing your job (and in some cases, that's a gross underestimate). Even if you have a job that pays six figures, you have to *enjoy* what you're doing, otherwise you'll be miserable and you'll consider you're training and career to be worthless. If you don't believe me, check out some surveys of job satisfaction among BIGLAW lawyers (these are corporate lawyers who have 120+k salaries out of university). If you do enjoy what you're doing, then you'll be more likely to consider the time invested in a degree, and your current career, worthwhile, even if you're not making huge money.
Who really knows? (Score:3, Insightful)
An Oldtimer Speaks (Score:3, Interesting)
In a long-ago land, large companies ran Big Iron and green screens and it was pretty damn easy to buy software packages and get them into production. The biggest worry was the amount of customization needed to make the stuff 'fit' your specific business processes, etc.
Nowadays.... We have *nix, Windows, MVS, etc. running on all manner of hardware. We have middleware out the wazoo. So when we go to the street to buy a software package, it's a decent bet that the vendor may drive you to a new platform in your shop. Complexity, cost, etc. increases - and that's even before you have to deal with customization, integration into security infrastructre, etc.
All in all... the software industry gave us many of these platforms, so now they are dealing with it. Pushing industry standards for 'stuff' is the only way the industry will ever find its legs again, and I'm not very confident that this will industry will come back to good health any time soon. In the meantime, let's talk about a new licensing plan, shall we?
End of the Databse, Rise of Analytics (Score:3, Interesting)
The dirty secret in the ERP market is that the differences between PeopleSoft, SAP, and Oracle are relatively trivial. Certainly database access can get half a second faster, run over a tablet instead of a PC, or run on cheaper hardware. But the dramatic gains happened in the nineties when all the information got into the databases in the first place.
Database-centric software is about to become like cars. We have the basic 4-wheel, 3-box, internal combustion model. Some makers squeeze 10% more fuel efficiency out. But the real competition is all hype and price.
Monte argues, and I believe, that growth in software has to come from intelligence. Analytics, engines, and rules need to encode process and real world knowledge. That is where the next opportunity for software is.
What about software for the War Fighting Robots? (Score:5, Funny)
-- Military school Commandant's graduation address, "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson"
Dying industry? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) The Silicon Valley is not The Software Industry
2) The fortunes of a handful of companies do not define an entire industry
Software is a lovely new tool, without much history (as compared to things like structural engineering, agriculture, political science). As such, there will be widely-differing approaches to using this accretion of abstract thought that makes machines do things in the real world. Once unleashed, a technology is almost never removed from the world, for good or ill.
Remember how the automobile industry looked before WWII - there were literally hundreds of varieties of automobile you could purchase, from companies largeish and small. Though the number of companies making them has decreased, the industry as a whole is quite active (and has a large hand in controlling most aspects of how we live, at least in most places).
Software, and the related technologies that keep evolving, is an important asset to our species. What would remove it from our considerations would likely also remove us from this rock.
Slashdot is dead? (Score:3, Funny)
The centralization of net assets that has occurred and the drop in jobs is not fairly characterized by using the peak of the bubble as the level of expectation of the typical "disgruntled" information technologist from the US.
Far, far from it.
My advice to young wippersnappers (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want money, go into retail management or marketing. That is safer from cheap foreign labor rates because it is "closer" to consumer preferences (local culture). Pick technology if and only if you like technology, not because of expectations of a fatter paycheck. And, have a second career as a backup, because tech is highly cyclical and unpredictable.
Not dead, just a mid-life crisis (Score:3, Insightful)
The industry needs another VisiCalc or Mosaic before it really starts moving again, I think...
It depends what your expectations are. (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider trade..? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always been good with computers. My dad has over 20 years in IT so I was always surrounded by technology.. it came naturally.
In high school, I was always being told by my teachers, family, and friends that I should get into tech. The Internet boom was in full effect, and that's where the money was. But I knew, just knew, that it was not what I wanted to do for a living.
While my passion for software and computers was strong, I watched my dad come home day after day, looking miserable. He was working in upper management in the IT department of the municipality, overseeing day to day IT operations of the entire city. He dealt, on a daily basis, with nothing but grief. Morons who wanted the impossible, end users who didn't know their ass from their floppy drive, and miles of red tape that is omnipresent in the beurocratic mess that is government operations. Yes, he made great money, but he was NEVER happy.
So, watching this, I ignored the advice of everyone and hopped right into trade. I'm in a field that's very rare, and the people who can do it are even rarer. I'm 23, no post-secondary education, and in a few years I'll be earning more than most IT professionals. My friends who went to school for tech degrees now have huge student loans to pay off, and not one is working in the tech industry. They now are cooks, factory workers, in retail sales, and one is even an assistant manager at a fast food joint.
I'm glad I dodged the tech bullet. I'm glad I didn't turn my beloved hobby into a hated profession. I've found a field where the work is hands on and satisfying, and when I come home.. I can sit down at my PC without cringing.
My point - if you're out of school with a degree that you're finding useless.. consider getting into a trade. You earn decent wages while you train, and the money only gets better. Due to everyone going into tech, new recruits in the trades are few and far between. As the boomers retire, skilled tradesmen are going to be in high demand, so wages could stand to increase even more. You get paid by the hour, so you don't have to work about crunching code 16 hours straight, and not seeing any gravy for the work due to your salary.
Just an idea.. and it beats the hell out of managing at McDonalds to pay off those loans.. =P
Re:Consider trade..? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I got into a trade recently, and that's some great advice. I wish I'd have thought about it earlier, especially the way interest rates are going. I traded up to a Volvo, and it's much more comfortable for long trips than my Oldsmobile was.
Seriously, though, I've been thinking of switching careers for a reason you don't discuss: physical presence. With the push towards telecommuting and outsourcing offshore, it's getting way too easy to replace programmers, and that's not a comfortable feeling. I'd rather be doing a career that requires physical presence, like, say, being an electrician. You can't telecommute as an electrician, and you can't fly in somebody from another country every time you need a building wired. Being a tradesman is sounding more and more attractive.
Re:Consider trade..? (Score:5, Interesting)
During a break, I visit with one of the master pipefitters I'm watching (we were about to pass pressure testing of the pure-water piping throughout the fab), it's 3am on Monday, and 'cuz we're in Texas, even then it is hot, humid, and uncomfortable weather. He's smokin' a cigarette, I'm not. We're both tired and grimy (him for obvious reasons; me because of how carefully I'm checkin' stuff so my company will get the 6-figure bonus tied to making this milestone on time. )
So, anyway, I do a bit of mental math and realize another milestone was gonna happen on this next paycheck. You see, so far I'd sort of celebrated my first 4-digit pre-tax paycheck and first 4-digit after-taxes check. It sounds silly now, but after college that much money was surreal. This time, I'm lookin' at a $2000 pretax week because of all the OT (even though I am making just straight time, since I'm an 'exempt' (which means no overtime bonuses) that happens to at least get paid all the excess hours, due to the long hours the job demands).
I mention this to the pipefitter.
He does a bit of math in his head, and says that, adjusting for after-hours (what most of us in the US call 'time and a half'), weekend, beyond 40, beyond 80 and Sunday bonuses, he's on triple time, (or $37.50 an hour * 3 = 112.50) right now and his paycheck should have the equivalent of 170 hours of work with all the bonuses. As in $6k, more or less, for working the same week I just did.
He was 500 miles from home and missed his little girl when he was away on jobs like this for a few months at a time, but he typically made as much in 3-4 months as I did that year, so all the extra time at home and able to be *really* around with his kids was worth it, he said.
I'd already thought about it in school, but I'll say again what I said that night. If I could do it all over again, I'd be a chef or a plumber. Income's good, ability to work and live anywhere in the world is good, people are happy to see you, they are thrilled if you do great work, and nobody (I MEAN NOBODY) has ever looked over my shoulder and said "Wow... cool integral".
Incidentally, I'm finally fading away from that viewpoint. I've specialized in IT to where 9/10 of the time, I *love* my job, and I'm making double what I did then. I can safely bet that within a few years it'll double again. I work flexible hours so my little kids get lots of daddy time. There's no way I'd have made six figures per year and had this much work flexibility and fun as a plumber or a chef. But I know I'm lucky... I don't disagree with FadeAway's opinion at all, since just about everyone I know would be happier following his recipe than mine.
PS: what trade, FadeAway? I'm just curious.
Re:Depends on the division. (Score:5, Interesting)
Add Potatoe Chips (Score:3)
Re:Depends on the division. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, gaming has been hurting for a few years now. Most of the little developers let themselves be bought out rather than go under. And unfortunately it's only a minority of big hit games that make money. People love to say "Look at Grand Theft Auto 3 and Splinter Cell!" but those are the exceptions.
Re:Please say it's so (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please say it's so (Score:5, Insightful)
It indeed happens seldom to find a really original idea implemented as a software product. But that's happening both in the commercial and the free software world. Hey, what was the last M$ or IBM software product, not being a clone
But for the free software world, I do think that the first NCSA web server and the first web browser (running on good old NeXT) can be considered "not a clone" and were also free downloadable. So, there is your example....
Re:Please say it's so (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft BOB.
Re:Please say it's so (Score:3, Interesting)
Try liquidwar. One of the most fascinating and innovative games I've ever played.
http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/
Re: Please say it's so (Score:3, Informative)
> I will agree with you once the free software subculture actually comes out with something that is NOT A CLONE of a commercial product.
TeX? Mosaic? SSH? Rogue?
How frikken many commercial clones of Rogue and Mosaic have we seen?
Some of the most genuinely innovative stuff we've got had its origin in the free software subculture.
Re:Please say it's so (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realise that the Software Industry is about a LOT more than Windows programming and games
Welcome to the embedded/telecom-industry - please bring your Open Source GPRS-signalling stack
Re:Please say it's so (Score:5, Insightful)
Free software is helping to kill the Software Business. Dickie Stallman's utopian view of a technology industry entirely peopled by unpaid labor is coming true.
Re:Please say it's so (Score:3, Insightful)
That is not RMS's view. In fact, RMS _wants_ people to charge for both software and software services. In fact, that is the way the FSF was initially funded.
The software business in its current model deserves to die because the _last_ thing it does is service the customer, instead of the first thing. It is a testament to computing power that people have benefitted at all over the past several years
Re:Please say it's so (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. The modern free software movement uses commercial developers to do it's R&D. So you have the free software people shouting "We're innovative!" on the one hand, but from the outside it all looks very me-too.
Re:Please say it's so (Score:5, Interesting)
Nonsense yourself.
Microsoft is full of very smart, creative developers. What prevents them from releasing innovative stuff is the business model -- what does it do for Microsoft to let loose wild elements into a software environment they already own.
The free software movement allows these ideas to survive the poor motivations of the corporations.
If AOL goes out of business tomorrow or decides that they are no longer well served by expending resources on developing a browser, it becomes obvious that the browser they developed has a life of its own, unlike the best innovative code I have seen at most companies, which never sees the light of day because they were clueless about how to build a business model out of it.
It is still a tiny minority of code by commercial developers that has been permitted to see the light of day as free software, but it has been quite positive and to a certain extent innovative, at least when compared with the commercial alternatives that have actually been released.
Re:Please say it's so (Score:3, Interesting)
As I've said before, this is nonsense. You can only build on existing work. If that work is not available in source, it is effectively lost. Hardware changes too... It isn't "innovation", it's growth. If I can't study it, I can't build on it. Between "closed software", "close hardware", and, in the US, the "DMCA" you can't effectively build on the existing body of software. What this does is force programmers into re-inventing (and hopefully avoiding patent restriction -- this makes the MS SQL
Re:Please say it's so (Score:5, Insightful)
The software industry doesn't deserve death more than any other, say the auto industry, the oil industry, the drug industry, the political graft industry, or the [fill in random industry here].
The biggest difference between the software industry and others is that it has to compete with a cottage industry of experienced, competent developers motivated not by money but by reputation and perfection of technical skills, whose capital costs are virtually nonexistent. As a result, for perhaps the first time in industrial history, a cottage industry has gotten as strong as the corporate segment with which it competes. In what way does this mean that the corporate segment deserves to die?
It doesn't. On the contrary, note the rapidly developing symioses between the corporate and the - let's call it "free" - side. This doesn't mean that free software development is going corporate, rather it means that free software development is gaining even more strength. This is the ideal result.
One of the ways the free software segment continues to grow is through corporate sponsorship, most typically, where the best free developers are provided with salaried or contract positions, which are not just slave labor, but in which they can devote the majority of their time to doing what they were already doing, i.e., putting more and better software into the public domain. In return for which the corporation gains prestige, competent advice, some influence on project design directions, and the occasional emergency hack. Without such corporate sponsorship, the free software segment would still grow, but not nearly as quickly.
Rather than imminent extinction of the profit-making software industry, what's really happening is a species die-off, coupled with the rise of a new species of software company that understands the new lay of the land. To profit in the next decade, the old monopoly tricks won't work any more. Any monopolies that have so far survived just serve to attract the attention of more free developers: the bigger the monopoly, the bigger the attraction. So monopolized market segments tend to be pushed into niches, and when these niches are finally the biggest targets left, they in turn attract attention, and so it goes. A smart company can profit by *staying* in front of the advance, where free developers are pushing into the remaining niches, but aren't quite there yet. This is where a salaried team working according to preset guidelines can perform best, to deliver products that are good for the customer not because there is no other choice, but because they are easier to learn, slicker or more functional than what the customer can get for free.
This requires understanding the synergies, reading the new directions accurately, and above all, noticing what the free software developers - being free - sense and react to so much more efficiently than traditional corporate structures. In other words, ride the train, don't stand in front of it.
Amazing (Score:4, Interesting)
Saying 'software is dead' is like saying Oracle is dead. Wait, he may have a point then... Anyway, that company needs to just ditch that guy. You will start seeing their p/e value go up real fast.