Those are some insanely low wages. It put the highest level of wages for Software Developer: Applications in the northwest Chicago suburbs at $91,624. While that is well above entry level wages, it is nowhere near what a senior level developer in that area makes. Add another $30k to get into the ballpark.
I think you missed the previous poster's point. "Programming" is a way in which a task can be automated. As such, it can be viewed as a tool. If someone can come up with a way to get things automated without writing a program, then the tool called "programming" is no longer required.
Almost anything can be viewed as a tool. It was the previous poster's insistence that programming is not a profession, and the comparison of it to a hammer, that led me to refute his statements.
Every job can be automated. Every single job. Some programming jobs will be automated in the future, although usually when tools like compilers take away certain programming tasks it only makes development more affordable so even more programmers are hired. Programming, like most careers which require critical thought, will likely be among the last jobs to be fully automated away.
Programming as we know it will almost undoubtedly change significantly over the coming decades. Programming 50 years ago will probably be more foreign than using punch cards is now. But until strong AI becomes a reality we will still need people to design future applications.
Coding is a tool, not a profession.
"Programming" is not a profession any more than a "hammer" is a profession.
Both of these analogies are silly. They should read Computers are a tool, not a profession. and "Computers" are not a profession any more than a "hammer" is a profession..
Programming is a set of skills that utilize computers, just like carpentry is a set of skills that utilize saws and hammers. Programming is most certainly a profession.
Programming is not a skill that is limited to those who choose it as a profession, just like carpentry. People who choose it as a profession are usually much better at it though. I have done quite a few carpentry related tasks to help renovate the house I bought last year, but I still had professionals build my new cabinets. Just like my wife does some VBA programming in her analyst job, but leaves most of that work to the developers and DBAs at her company.
I think you missed out on a few things and underestimated the complexity of the law and of accounting (beyond simple bookkeeping/process execution)... plastic pipes don't replace plumbers who are still needed to install them. You still need HVAC techs to do the install/replacement, and shipping 100 pounds of copper overseas, is insanely expensive.
I think you missed out on a few things and underestimated the effect on an industry when perhaps 50% of the jobs go away. No one will claim there will be no electricians or plumbers in the near future, but new technology could displace a large number of those jobs. So telling kids to become a plumber when in 10 years they may be competing in an industry with 30% unemployment and a protectionist union presence that values senority is no different than telling them to go into STEM which is being invaded by H1B's.
I don't actually believe plastic pipes will put many plumbers out of work, just as I don't believe H1B's are significantly endangering our STEM jobs, but even if I did your arguments still don't make sense.
Why would a CS grad want to be a software developer? That doesn't make any sense. They should have studied software development and programming. That's like an MD hoping to get a job as a medical tech... a noble profession, but the MD can earn much more, be more fulfilled properly applying their education as a doctor, and the same is true of a CS grad. Their ideal employment will have little to do with coding.
Do people really believe this nonsense or do they just want to sound smart because they understand what pure computer science is?
The fact of the matter is CS education in the U.S. (and probably abroad) is primarily treated as a way to train software developers at the vast majority of universities. I couldn't find any statistics on how many CS graduates work in pure CS related jobs after graduation, but I would bet it is under 5%. Perhaps even under 1%. The vast majority work as software developers, IT workers, or move into an entirely different industry.
A computer science BS graduate is not the same as a doctor; they probably are closer to the medical tech you mention in your analogy. I would agree with you that PhD CS graduates are similar to MDs, and that these CS graduates likely do not want to work as LOB programmers. But this is a very tiny minority of CS graduates.
I've got a PhD in CS, and I grew up with the U.S. education system of the 1970's and 80's. I had playground time, and little formalized national testing. I'll bet few of the Turing award winners or ACM Fellows were educated in the manner advocated by today's politicians and Plutocrats.
If they're so eager to make good computer scientists, one might ask if they're willing to reproduce the educational environments of those luminaries.
Do you realize they aren't complaining that there are no PhD CS students in the US right? They are complaining that there aren't enough. So if there aren't enough now, there obviously weren't enough in the 70's and 80's to meet today's needs. And therefore we absolutely cannot expect to have enough CS students if we mimic the education system of the 70's and 80's.
I'm not saying their approach is the right way, but I guarantee the 70's approach is the wrong way (not necessarily every aspect is wrong, just the entire system as a whole).
It's right there behind health care and pensions, both of which we've seen being raided by the politicians in the past few administrations.
Why do people still regurgitate this nonsense that politicians have raided social security and medicare? Social security had a surplus for decades, so the government spent it on U.S. bonds owned by the social security fund. When there is no longer a surplus, projected to be in about 2020, the fund will start to cash out these bonds. This really isn't rocket science.
Yes the fund will likely run out of bonds to sell in 2033, but slight changes in social security taxes and/or retiree payouts can make it last far longer. The 1983 Social Security Amendments that put all of this in motion was always meant to be a short term fix to a very immediate problem at the time (social security was set to run out of money that same year). Considering the plan is still on track to last 50 years I think it has been a success. A new generation of politicians will have to solve the problem again sometime in the next 20 years, just like they did in 1983.
I agree with almost everthing you wrote
Then why did you write, "There is no level of diversification or foresight that can protect the masses from major bubble collapses"?
I outlined a level of diversification and foresight that *would* protect the masses from major bubble collapses, and demonstrably *has* protected many people from major bubble collapses. You claim it's impossible. Only one of us can be right - either there *is* or there *is not* a way to insulate yourself.
I agree with your strategies for mitigating the risk of bubbles. I disagree that following these strategies has no negative effect on regular investor portfolios. As I said in my post, "while it is possible to mitigate some of the damage, standard investors lose out on a lot of income because of these strategies." If drastic bubbles were not part of a more moderate boom / bust cycle, regular investors with lower risk tolerance could make much more money investing.
That there is some "theoretically possible way to have invested and gotten more money out of the market" ignores the fact that human beings are irrational, jerky, panicked things who do stupid, reckless shit all the time - including investing in ways that create bubbles. Trying to pretend that's not the case, or trying to blame that all on "the investment industry" is stupid.
No one is claiming it is possible to have markets without bubbles. Just like it is not possible to live in a world with no theft or murder. But we can still be upset at the irrational, jerky, panicky investors who create these bubbles, just like we are upset at thieves and murderers. The OP simply said these people tick him off, and my post was backing up that he had something legitimate to be pissed about. Neither of us mentioned any fixes because I doubt either of us think there are any realistic ones.
Eliminating risks come at a cost.
If this is true (which I agree it is) then anyone introducing extra risks into the system (without an equal amount of upside) is creating a negative effect for everyone else. This is basically my entire point.
There is no level of diversification or foresight that can protect the masses from major bubble collapses.
Sure there is. It's so easy, you probably can't see it.
The closer you get to retirement, to more you'll need some share of your investments in quality bonds, so that if you need money to live on through a crash bottom you won't need to sell stock.
While these techniques help mitigate the damage from bubble collapses, they also limit your returns. This is why there is no way the masses can protect themselves from these collapses. The best thing they can do is forgo significant earnings because they have to be more timid in the 10-15 years leading up to retirement. If they didn't have to fear massive bubble collapses, your average investor could likely earn an extra 30% on their retirement accounts.
You discuss many of the tactics people have to use to safeguard their money because investors cannot be trusted to not create ridiculous bubbles. I agree with almost everthing you wrote, but this entire thread was started by someone complaining that these tactics are even necessary. If it were not for these extreme bubble/bust cycles then people could probably keep much more of their money in higher return index funds instead of balancing them with bond funds.
Because of these extreme cycles, retirees have to put around 50% of their retirement savings in bonds for the last 15 years of their working lives. If they could trust the investment industry more, they could be making an extra 3-4% on their money with index funds instead. This would likely yield an extra 30% on top of their final retirement nest egg. Sure you would still have ups and downs, but what really hurts retirees is those 30-40% nosedives near the beginning of their retirement.
The point of my post is to agree with the OP when he was complaining that these bubbles significantly hurt your average guy just saving for retirement. While it is possible to mitigate some of the damage, standard investors lose out on a lot of income because of these strategies.
Too bad that doesn't stop a common mistake, though - someone betting everything on the company they work for, salary, stock/options, and 401(k) investments.
There is no level of diversification or foresight that can protect the masses from major bubble collapses. Sure some people will get lucky, and they will spend the next 20 years pretending it was their expert planning that explains this luck, but the vast majority will have their investments take a significant hit. You can put your money in index funds to avoid excessive fees, but have the stock market tank. You can put your money into buying rental properties, only to have your local real estate market tank. You can put your money into bonds, only to have their value erode as interest rates and inflation rise. You can put your money into precious metals only to have that bubble burst too.
Most people don't have enough money to diversify any better than just putting their money in diversified mutual funds. But then they lose almost all of the control you seem to expect them to have over their investments.
If you lock down submissions so you can have a paid tier, then welcome to fork town.
Seems that MySQL did quite well even while obtaining ownership of most submissions so they could have their paid tier help fund further development. The forking didn't really start until Oracle purchased the software, and that was over a decade after open source developers had been contributing the a project with the type of license you seem to think can't work in the open source community.
You need to buy an SSD. Visual Studio takes about 3-4 seconds to load on my mediocre i5 laptop, but it has an SSD. It takes almost 10 seconds when loading a very large solution on startup.
What a jumbled mush of disgruntled ramblings. I can understand why you are so disgruntled because you are probably upset that none of your coworkers or likely even friends and family listen to your incoherent arguments.
Making business more reliable and reducing risks is not communism. It isn't even capitalism, it is just good business.
Part of managing a company is ensuring you do not take unnecessary risks. One very unnecessary risk is relying too much on individual employees. Any employee can be hit by a bus tomorrow, and a well run company can weather the loss of any one employee no matter how skilled. One part of proper knowledge management is codifying and disseminating the intrinsic knowledge of key employees so the company is not too reliant on them.
Can't we just agree that everyone in this thread is whining, with only the OP making decent arguments in that whining?
To do nothing is to be nothing.
