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While I agree with this in principle, I think the market is a separate problem. As much as this is correct, the market is not going to select for competence. Th
by voidhorse 25d ago
While I agree with this in principle, I think the market is a separate problem. As much as this is correct, the market is not going to select for competence. The market is going to select for affordability.
Ultimately the most affordable worker of the future is going to be the person who knows just enough to prompt an agent to first build a feature and second fix it "fast enough" when it ultimately breaks.
Companies might have a couple of people who actually know how to design systems and think deeply on hand for overall architecture, load balancing design, and serious problems but this will be a small cadre of employees. In some sense, I suspect, in relation to degrees, computer science will eventually look like the field of curation: an extremely small pool of outstanding positions looking to be filled by an orders of magnitude greater number of degree holders.
Unless the bubble does eventually burst, in which case people will hopefully return to their senses.
- rcarr 25d agoYou're missing nepotism from the equation. The salaries available at American Big Tech have made it so that graduates see a dev career as more desirable than traditional prestige industries like investment banking and law. The same nepotistic hiring practices common in those industries will also become entrenched in tech and already are to an extent.
- AnimalMuppet 25d agoI have worked for 40 years in software. I have seen very little nepotism. Contacts, yes. Nepotism, no. I'm not denying that it happens. I don't think it's a significant driver, though.
- rcarr 23d agoI don't doubt it, but it is also only the past 15-20 years or so when tech became a prestigious career with higher salaries than law and investment banking and not just a "job for nerds". To some extent, the latter is still the reputation it has in the UK/EU where the salaries are nowhere near US levels. At the minute I would agree that I am going off a broader definition extended to friends and past colleagues but I strongly suspect in the next 10-20 years more traditional family nepotism will seep in as the kids of millennial coders who got their break at FAANG start graduating and using family contacts to land jobs. Yeah engineering will always require a baseline of knowledge but if the basic competence is present there is nothing to suggest that tech is immune to the nepotism which exists in every other industry. The "don't be evil" days are clearly long gone.
- terminalbraid 25d agoWhat is it you think "nepotism" means?