Software Developers Are Now More Valuable To Companies Than Money, Says Survey (cnbc.com)
- Reference: 0102640098
- News link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/18/09/06/2024232/software-developers-are-now-more-valuable-to-companies-than-money-says-survey
- Source link: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/companies-worry-more-about-access-to-software-developers-than-capital.html
> As our global economy increasingly comes to run on technology-enabled rails and every company becomes a tech company, demand for high-quality software engineers is at an all-time high. A recent study from [1]Stripe and Harris Poll found that 61 percent of C-suite executives believe access to developer talent is a threat to the success of their business. Perhaps more surprisingly -- as we mark a decade after the financial crisis -- [2]this threat was even ranked above capital constraints . And yet, despite being many corporations' most precious resource, developer talents are all too often squandered. Collectively, companies today lose upward of $300 billion a year paying down "technical debt," as developers pour time into maintaining legacy systems or dealing with the ramifications of bad software. This is especially worrisome, given the outsized impact developers have on companies' chances of success. Software developers don't have a monopoly on good ideas, but their skill set makes them a uniquely deep source of innovation, productivity and new economic connections. When deployed correctly, developers can be economic multipliers -- coefficients that dramatically ratchet up the output of the teams and companies of which they're a part.
[1] https://stripe.com/reports/developer-coefficient-2018
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/companies-worry-more-about-access-to-software-developers-than-capital.html
And yet there's agile (Score:2)
And open concept offices.
Re:And yet there's agile (Score:5, Interesting)
I've quit one job and refused two others because of open offices. The two I refused were absolutely flabbergasted by my refusal. They literally could not understand why anyone wouldn't want to be in an open office space surrounded on 3.8 sides by glass-walled manager offices, loud ugly marketing girls, and a bunch of H1B dudes who couldn't be bothered to wear deodorant. That place (MX Logic) had the worst looking office I've ever seen. One of them offered me the job on the spot after the interview and I was already shutting them down and refusing it before they even got started. I told them there is about a zero percent chance of getting anyone really talented to take the gig, because they had this ridiculous noisy slave pit thing going. I nearly left before I even *did* the interview I was so disgusted with the place. The hiring manager was (of course) offended, but he was also clueless. About a year after that interview I had a guy come up to me at the local Maker Space who was one of the "technical resources" for the company during the interview (quiet guy in the back of the room). He told me "My god was I cheering when you refused them over the goddamn open workspace idiocy. My boss was upset over that for weeks. They still talk about it during the hiring process and argue about it."
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> ....One of them offered me the job on the spot after the interview and I was already shutting them down and refusing it before they even got started.....
It begs the question, why even apply there in the first place.
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> It begs the question, why even apply there in the first place.
So you could see their office environment tucked away behind the job description on the internet?
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"But I can See everyone and I know that they're working" - Manager If someone doesn't know enough about their direct report's job that they don't know whether they're working or not without seeing them at their desk, there's a problem. Not all jobs are reduced in efficiency by a cubicle farm, but if your job is primarily about mental focus for the time-intensive tasks, then most people will benefit from having their own room. And the employer will probably benefit enough that an actual room is a worthwhile
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Sounds like a real horror show. Safe to say you made the right move.
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I've worked in the industry for many years, usually with a private office or shared with one person. Recently got a job in an agile "scrum" shop, which went to an open floorplan a few months later. Miserable experience on both counts. Every day you get a Jira work ticket for some "the user wants to see" granule of a thing that you had no part in designing. Zero privacy. It is amazingly de-motivating.
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Microsoft owns javascript? You have things backwards.
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I was thinking the same thing. Although JavaScript, Java, and the surrounding ecosystems could have come from MS, no doubt.
Yeah, right (Score:5, Insightful)
If they considered developers more important than money, they'd pay the developers more to keep the skilled ones. Every time a developer leaves a company, a hunk of business knowledge walks out the door with him.
Companies care about that quarter's finance report, and the C-level execs care only about fleecing the company for all they can stuff into their own pockets. Look at what they do, not what some survey says.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
LOL. You've massively understated the ageism and the issue of job qualifications.
First, the ageism problem is associated also with a problem that people aren't allowed to take breaks. After having great success even to the point of being a chief architect on an 80-man program, I quit working for a while and now can't find anyone who will let me start at the bottom.
But, the job qualification thing is really ridiculous. A good software engineer is a specialist at picking up new domains, languages, frameworks,
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> Don't know where you live, but in most places I think developers are paid fairly well. We offer straight-out-of-school newbies $80-$90k, and still some turn us down for better offers.
Most places are not the Bay Area or a few big US cities. In most of the world, new starter salaries in software development are rarely more than 1/3 of that level, and in many places they are much lower.
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Your post is probably at zero rep because it was posted AC, but you make good points.
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Software developers generally have to do what they are told, and work on whatever the boss thinks is important. You don't get to decide whether it is going to bring in money or not.
Yeah haven't heard that one before (Score:2)
Maybe it just sounds too much like 40 years of businesses claiming there was a shortage of engineers in the U.S. when what they meant was there was a shortage of engineers that could be treated really badly.
Or maybe it's the fact that companies only seem to be willing to hire H1Bs that will do anything not to go back to their shitholes, or young kids who are stupid enough to believe managements promises and have no family or social life to distract from putting in 80+ hour weeks ?
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you misread, and i quote
"developer talent is a threat to the success of their business" thus the hiring of no talent, spot filling h1b. and if they accidentally get a talented h1b... replace and repeat.
FTFY (Score:5, Funny)
Software Developers Who Are Willing To Work For Uncompetitive Wages And No Benefits Are Now More Valuable To Companies Than Money, Says Survey
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Fucking-A right. Period.
.ORG (Score:4, Insightful)
This just tells me that developers need to get organized and start saying no to 80+ work weeks collectively. Otherwise it will be divided they fall, forever.
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How do we re-invent Unions without calling them Unions and avoid the very real baggage that the term has in the USA? Guilds?
In other news... (Score:1)
The sun rose today.
Legacy systems are out of control (Score:2)
Microsoft has just announced paid extended support for Windows 7 as too many companies are using it. There’s a lot of server 2003 systems out there too, with companies rather risking security exploits than upgrade.
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A pity that new features aren't separated from security patches to allow users to keep their old platform secure without feature changes.
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> Newer file browsers no longer let you edit the file path, you have to click on everything to get somewhere
Ctrl+L , no, you don't need to thank me.
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So I'm supposed to upgrade the single Windows 2003 system I have, running as a non-networked VM, hosting a proprietary application on a system we need to lookup legacy data that never changes so I can pay to upgrade to a modern system, figure out a way to migrate the data from one proprietary application to a new and different system just so I can have support I don't need on a system that can't realistically be exploited in the first place?
OR I'm supposed to pay a premium for extended support on the curren
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That is a different problem. Their new offerings are just really bad. Also, nobody sane used MS crap on server-side.
Yet us 50+ folks are unemployed (Score:4, Informative)
Forget how long I've been out of work, it's been 2-3 years now since I quit looking.
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I'm 57 and got at least 3 calls TODAY offering to submit me for contract software positions. Granted, a lot of recruiters try to low-ball me on the hourly rate, but they change their tune as soon as you call their bluff and tell them you're not interested at that low rate.
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> I'm 57 and got at least 3 calls TODAY offering to submit me for contract software positions. Granted, a lot of recruiters try to low-ball me on the hourly rate, but they change their tune as soon as you call their bluff and tell them you're not interested at that low rate.
I get recruiters wanting to submit me all the time. Then after a week, I follow up and the "the position is closed." I think recruiters are assholes who got fired from see car lots for ethics violations.
So, when you get a real job with health insurance, you'll be an outlier.
Of course, that's assumimg you're not full of shit.
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I agree; I regard recruiters as people that weren't ethical enough to get jobs as used car salesmen. I interviewed for a job once, didn't get any response, so I started another position. A month after the initial interview, the recruiter for the first position offered me $1500 cash in a plain, unmarked envelope to quit the job I'd just started and take the other position instead! (Apparently the cash came out of his commission.) So yes, recruiters know nothing, rely almost entirely on keyword searching in r
So, the old adage? (Score:2)
Employees are our most valuable asset? I'm pretty sure it's actually still money.
Nonsensical headline... (Score:2)
It's like saying "gold is worth more than money!" - totally meaningless.
One (gold, developers) is a commodity that IS exchanged, the other (money) is the medium OF exchange.
Saying that "commodity X" is worth more than "exchange medium Y" makes no sense because a commodity CANNOT be worth "more" or "less" than the medium of exchange used - it can only ever be worth a specified amount of Y.
Talk about not understanding an article / Poll (Score:2)
No where does it say that companies think developers are more important than money.
The results state that the companies perceive the risk of not being able to find skills as higher than the risks of not being able to access capital.
This is especially true if you're a cash rich organisation.
In the current financial climate finding returns on your investments is hard. Interest rates are at historically low levels, bond returns are zero, and so that leaves higher risk investments to get returns. That effecti
lots of employees are "worth more than money"... (Score:2)
What management school fails to teach young inexperienced executives: If the company's future existence depends on whether or not an employee does the job correctly or not, they are "worth more than money".
Tech debt is a business decision (Score:2)
Incurring technical debt is a business decision.
And it may well be the right decision.
For example, in a startup, time to market typically trumps software quality.
And there are a lot of startups in the software field...
Not at my compamy (Score:1)
Not at my company, and certainly not at any other publicly-traded company.
Maybe at some privately-held company until it gets bought out.
Employees are our Most Valuable Asset (Score:3)
Right behind [1]carbon paper. [dilbert.com]
[1] http://dilbert.com/strip/1993-03-03
And this is why we keep them chained to (Score:2)
a cubicle.
So why not treat them well? (Score:5, Insightful)
Naa, that would be un-capitalist. Developers must be cheap wage-slaves that do not have a real career-path and are unable to find a job once they hit 50. That will surely not have any impact on whether smart people go into software writing or not, right?
Re: So why not treat them well? (Score:1)
This is really true. As the fact that the IT leads the world.
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> But even so, I hear these horror stories about how software developers are treated and I just have not seen it.
Me neither. I have worked for companies that had catered meals, free soda, laundry service, sky diving bonding trips, etc. I have had plenty of opportunities to travel. I have worked some late nights, and done a few death marches, but those only lasted a few weeks, out of a career lasting decades.
Software developers are likely the most spoiled employees in the history of the world.
People will alway whine.
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> People will alway whine.
And there you are wrong. I have a pretty good career myself. But I see how many coders are treated and I am not surprised at all that there are by far not enough good ones.
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As much as I'm for better treatment and perks for coders, the issue of "not enough good ones" isn't because of that. There's only so many smart people, dumb people and mediocre people don't make good coders. Some of the above-average ones might make the cut as maintenance coders or some incredibly soul-crushing AGILE environment where they don't actually have to think, but for the most part any programming position of note requires a 150+ IQ to do even moderately well.
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How many 3+ standard deviation people are we supposed to believe you know?
Same crit as you gave the GP. I doubt you know even one.
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The issue is very much that a lot of the few people that could be good at it, see the working conditions and career options and go somewhere else. Also, 150+IQ people basically do not exist. I gather this is some wired non-standard US scale...
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Having a measured IQ >150, I can tell you with my excellent two-minute Googling skills there are approximately 300K in the U.S. if you're using the Stanford-Binet scale. For the Wechsler scale, it's more like 140K, which is still a lot of people. Heck, the Prometheus Society's cut-off for membership is 160+. I guess to you, they basically don't exist...
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> ... see the working conditions and career options and go somewhere else.
Where do they go?
Doctors, lawyers and investment bankers work longer hours than programmers. Nearly everyone else makes less money.
Maybe they become underwater welders?
Re:So why not treat them well? (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't really have any impact, because young people don't think they'll ever get old. Or it will be different for them.
Had a 20-something at my last job make a number of comments about some of the older developers there, saying they'd hate to still be working at that age, and that they are probably stuck doing the same work because they can't learn anything new. I don't know why he was telling me this, as I was twice his age at the time, but it's obvious that he doesn't think he'll be in the same position.
They ultimately did lay off a lot of their senior engineers and replace a lot of the position with 20-somethings, including in project management positions. A number of those projects never saw the light of day after years of re-writes into new frameworks.