overasaturation and gatekeeping

i put a lot of work into my career and it's discouraging that every other guy I talk to is in CS now, and that everyone is making web apps. makes me want to switch into aviation like i've always wanted to. nobody understands how difficult this industry actually is. they watch career highlights on youtube, the ambassadors of the field promote it as an industry with little barrier to entry, high pay, and no work. i told a girl i was a software engineer and she told me "every guy i talk to is a software engineer", made me very sad, i overworked myself to get ahead in the field, when i complained about work to my friend he responded "but don't software devs have an easy job"- i have two mutual friends who just got their first jobs and the first 6 months they've done nothing. i guess some companies can afford deadweight. am i salty? yes, i like to sulk about this, but my suggestion is to get ahead, get promoted so that you're not a victim of oversaturation.

>every guy i talk to is a software engineer Huh, that's interesting since only about 1/400 people are software developers worldwide. She really should start playing the lottery.

Deriving validation from external sources is a liability - you're subject to the infamously inestimable whims of markets.

>i told a girl i was a software engineer and she told me "every guy i talk to is a software engineer" So what? Did you chose a career to impress girls?

>>34230 this hits home, I've no problem with incompetent people in the field, but when people are so dumb that they can't distinguish talent from an idiot on youtube putting 4 lines of python together then soykaf goes south. I heard from these people that oracle tables are slow, because they are a list and hash maps are much faster. I heard that 2mb is too much to keep in ram and a no-sql webscale database would be required. My point of complaining is that these people hire you, are your managers and peers, and your pay get hugely impacted by it. You will be averaged down to these people, and unless you have some crazy narcissistic complex as most of them you won't brag about how awesome you are for doing a hello world with kubernetes, this will make others see your hard work as nothing special, consequently your pay will be averaged down to a bootcamper that don't give a soykaf about learning. I rebelled against the system, I've 2 jobs, doing interviews trying to get the 3rd one. I do the least amount of work possible, if the system bullshits me, I bullshit it back. I recommend you do the same, at first I was afraid, but it feels good, feels like justice. Feels that you actually get paid what you deserve. You don't need validation from these people, just money. So scam them, and slack at work building personal projects that bring you fulfillment.

>>34235 appreciate it, i've been doing less while doing more, if that makes sense, not going out of my way to do things they didn't ask for, etc. i will try to take your advice >>34234 no, but it stings when a girl says this. what am i gonna do about it? nothing, i want to whine a little

Sounds like you live a tech hub 'Office Space' hellhole OP. Why don't you move to someplace that isn't a tech hub and work with the humble everyday working computer? Business IT, industrial automation, automotive embedded, telecoms/ISP/infrastructure/cloud. There's tons of computers that aren't PCs, there's tons of programmers who aren't working for a company that sells commercial software. Hell, you could be an aviation programmer. Working for aircraft manufactures or the airlines. I'm sure its full of messy spaghetti legacy stuff, but real workplaces are always like that.

>>34239 >i will try to take your advice I wish you good luck. In terms of the math of it: Suppose your monthly cost is 4k, you get paid 12k in your job. If you get another job paying another 12k, you have 20k of profit, in other words, your free income goes up by 150%. Even if you work only 5 months there, is 60k. If you are like me, planning to get a third job, it would be 120k. On the above scenario, 1 year with 3 jobs you would save the same as 4 years with 1 job. But given that it will push you to give less soykaf at work since you have alternatives, and your stress levels are correlated with lack of security (money and stability) and how much soykaf you give. You probably will feel better, giving less soykaf and stuffing your bank account. Please come back to tell your story later on, I hope to hear good news.

>>34245 >Why don't you move to someplace that isn't a tech hub and work with the humble everyday working computer? i work in the detroit area, i could pivot into embedded dev for an automaker if i tried hard enough. my chief complaint is the impression people have of me when i tell them i'm a programmer. i feel like people side-eye developers. i don't hate web development, quite the opposite, i love it, and i work hard because i enjoy it. >>34249 how do you deal with taxes? does the IRS care that you're getting two W2's?

>>34256 >how do you deal with taxes? does the IRS care that you're getting two W2's? I'm European so I handle it as B2B, but if you are handling it with a normal work contract you can do the same. Unless your contract forbids you to work anywhere else, you are safe. Just keep in mind that you also don't want to sign contracts that limit you even if you stay in one place, is quite common to have a startup on the side, and only leave your work when it starts flying. I seen corpos trying to get a slice of people IPO because they worked there before, claiming that it was developed during their work hours. Maybe some Americans can answer regarding proper US laws. For example, what happens if both pay 401k? I imagine that you want to take as many benefits as possible from your workplace.

>>34263 interesting,, a coworker of mine was pretty open about having a startup on the side.. but i'd have to read our contract.

>>34230 I think part of the problem is that the industry expects you to be good at marketable tech before getting a job. It's not enough to be good at math, to know a bit about operating systems, networking, machine arch, you also have to know react or whatever. There is a tradeoff that has to be made when they start demanding marketable skills with no training, and that tradeoff is fundamental CS knowledge.

>>34265 Non compete clauses are pretty common in the US, depending on your company as to if it’s enforced or if any one would care that you did work on the side. Some jobs have such ridiculous contracts as “all code you write while employed at X, belongs to X” would be interesting to see what if they could actually enforce it if they were unable to prove it was on company time or hardware.

>>34317 >>34265 iirc, non-competes can't prevent you from having your own startup as long as that startup doesn't compete with your employer and doesn't involve any skills that were learned at your current job. So your coworkers startup may not be forbidden by a non-compete. However, employers are often dicks and aggressively enforce it. Your job is the first time you ever used git? Better hope your employer doesn't enforce the non-compete to prevent you from taking any job that uses git for 5 years! Very good and free market right there. Biden and the FTC are making some efforts to ban non-competes and regulate NDAs to prevent workarounds to the ban, so maybe this problem will be better soon.

my impression is that non competes are very often quite difficult to enforce, seldom enforced anyway, and do not easily cross state lines. If you are not moving to a company that is clearly a direct competitor and working in an area of competition, you're probably safe. Even if you are, you're probably safe.

Good programmers are a minority. For every 40 CS graduates 3 tops know how to program. The rest just get by. Some can program basic things, some others can't even understand recursion. The truth is, something as time intensive and 'taxing' (entire day sitting in front of a computer, requiring logic, creativity, thousands of hours before you get good) is not something the majority of people enjoy or are willing to do. The industry is saturated, not by programmers but 'coders' who use dubious JavaScript code at best and only know the basics of React. If you like programming, you'll stand out and do well. If you only see it as a job, well then, yes, worry about your job.

you must be happy about the mass layoffs recently then in my opinion workers should unionize instead of infighting, we really are the one against the capitalism, no matter how good or poor programmer you are, you still are nothing more than number for them

A lot of these issues are present in every industry. If you want out get out now. CS will get the worst of it for the foreseeable future in terms of oversaturation and unless you're taking advantage of it like >>34235 you will be constantly disappointed by the industry. >>34329 The 20th best graduate thinks that 50% of people can program >>34256 Many Americans work two or more jobs, it won't be a problem with the IRS as long as you file

>>34344 10x devs never get 10x compensation despite what they might think. The compensation of a senior at a company is directly tied to the lowest compensation given to a junior.

>>34344 corpos have endless resources and manhours to throw around, what exactly do you think will happen if a union does form? it'll be controlled opposition, corpos will push endless effort into infiltrating it and co-opting it to their own purposes. teachers have a union yet they don't get paid well and get compelled to do unreasonable things by their higher ups.

>>34404 >teachers have a union yet they don't get paid well and get compelled to do unreasonable things by their higher ups. This is called having a spineless union. Historically, unions were powerful enough that they got into actual shooting wars with corpo enforcers, and oftentimes won. That doesn't sound to me like the result of infiltration or co-opting. In more recent times, just threatening to form a union is enough for a lot of corps to simply shut down a branch. People get fired or worse for talking about it. They invest money into anti-union propaganda and legislation. These are not the actions of people who are confident they can co-opt the union to further their own goals. On the other hand, TA's at a lot of universities have successfully unionized and even gone on strike to get decent wages. Even 'replaceable' unskilled labor such as starbucks workers have been able to get wins. This is the reason they're scared: banding together for your common interest makes you powerful.

gatekeeping is important, i hope wages don't go down..

>>34408 >Historically, unions were powerful enough that they got into actual shooting wars with corpo enforcers, Historically, unions were funded by the KGB to undermine the economy of western countries. You're delusional if you think it has anything to do with "the workers". >>34404 >teachers have a union yet they don't get paid well and get compelled to do unreasonable things by their higher ups. Teachers live under socialism though. Once the state has a monopoly on the means of production the workers are screwed. What are they going to do, quit and get a job at the other department of education? >>34329 >If you like programming, you'll stand out and do well. You also need to make sure you're in a competitive area. The reason salaries are so high in silicon valley is because when the break room runs out of free snacks you can go up to the roof, fold your resume into a paper airplane and throw it in a random direction to get another job. >If you only see it as a job, well then, yes, worry about your job. I wouldn't go too far with the passion is everything meme. What's more important is understanding how your company makes money and how your actions help that effort. Way too many people are just entitled brats, "I got my degree now give me money hurr durr". First of all focus on what value you bring to the table, then once employers are fighting over you the money side is easy.

>>35021 >Historically, unions were funded by the KGB to undermine the economy of western countries. You ah yes, that dastardly KGB operating... uh... before the existence of the Soviet Union. >What are they going to do, quit and get a job at the other department of education? Most moderately sized municipal areas in the US have multiple school districts and they pay different amounts and treat their workers differently, and there's also private schools but the pay at most of them in my hometown was a lot worse than the public districts. It's not like every school district is directly controlled by the federal DOE office; it's exactly the kind of decentralized oppression that americans coom themselves over.

>>35021 That "money is everything the only value is market value" attitude is what lead the tech world to Apple and Google. If you like the way things are then good for you I guess, but from where I stand, wanting to program because you have a genuine passion for it is much more respectable than doing it because you're a corporate cog.

>>34230 I totally feel you OP

>>34234 You don't? The physiological urge to get your banana wet is the only reason why we even went to the coal mines and the horrible factories of the industrial age. It's easy to provide only for one person, and the only reason why anyone would work hard or a lot is to provide for more than himself. This is how I see it: any society, of any time anywhere in the world had a question to solve: what to do with the young men. They are the only demographic that change governments, create civil wars or unprecedented prosperity. Of all the societies and cultures, only few solutions have been found. The obvious one is to send them away. It's easy when you are a nomad horde in the steppes of central Asia, it's what create empires if used correctly. It can be done differently like the Vikings, the disinherited young men who couldn't even buy a sword and had to navigate the entire know world looking for opportunities, the Pax Catholica Europe that didn't had wars to keep it's youth busy and sent them in crusade, far away or Switzerland who encouraged them to become mercenaries for the other powers, that way they would either die and the problem is solved or come back with a big bag of money. The second one is to give them something the can loose, and men only want one thing: a small home and belonging to a small social unit. Design your nation to enforce monogamy and every men will have his share. Every men will have the only thing he ever desired if he just go to the coal mine, on the sail ship, trapping beavers in the endless forest or build cathedrals. It's what fuel the periods of exceptional wealth. The third solution is bread and circus. You just conquered Gauls and now there is so many slaves on the market that it break the price of agricultural goods and you are forced to sell to the big man the farm you got for your service. Your only hope now is to go in the city looking for day jobs. A critical mass of young men find themselves in this situation and the soldiers understand it will happen to them as well. Just give them what they need to stay alive, occupy their mind with any entertainment they may want and you won't even notice they are here. It's a solution that can happen only when there is enough wealth around and it obviously can't last forever. The last solution is violence. When you give the right to rich men to have harems or 4 wives, the common man know he don't have a chance so the only option for the wealthy and powerful to keep their concubines is to massacre the population at the smallest sign of rebellion. You understand it, we are still divided between the second and third option, but democracies can't solve their addiction to public spending and we are sliding to the last solution. So, you see, impressing the young women is really the only reason we ever had to choose a career. If you know you can't get one you become a goat herder, live a simple but pleasant life and contribute little to society. If you know you can make it, you just do what it take and you make things move around you even if it was not your goal.

>>35038 You're not the genius you think you are. >The physiological urge to get your banana wet is the only reason why we even went to the coal mines and the horrible factories of the industrial age. The world industrialized because of social darwinism. An industrialized society is naturally going to be more powerful than an agrarian one, having the means to accomplish siginificantly more work for siginificantly cheaper in significantly less time. The people who had the will and means to industrialize overtook those who didn't or couldn't, which eventually extended to the entire world. People didn't "decide" to work in factories, they decided to survive when presented with a situation where it was their best bet. And they sure as fuarrrk didn't do so because they were horny. >It's easy to provide only for one person, and the only reason why anyone would work hard or a lot is to provide for more than himself. Everything after that comma is utter nonsense. People are naturally competitive and greedy (traits that extend to all successful organisms). We always crave to have more; both more than others, and more than ourselves currently, and are more than willing to make sacrifices in order to get it. Note that this desire for "more" extends beyond just "having more things". It also includes more health, more strength, more power, more influence, more intellect, more knowledge, etc. >The second one is to give them something the can loose, and men only want one thing: a small home and belonging to a small social unit. As stated above, men want way more than that, even if at first glance their desire for more presents itself in a way that superficially says otherwise. And people don't want to be part of a social unit, they want to be above a social unit. They want to exist above others (even when they're amicable with them), but have to learn to exist next-to and below them for the sake of survival. This instict is the most obvious in children (chūnibyō), but it carries on into adulthood in a more subtle form, both because our desire for more manifests in more subtle ways, and because get better at concealing it out of necessity. >So, you see, impressing the young women is really the only reason we ever had to choose a career. Except for the men who have no interest in women, and seek fulfilment in something else, which happens frequently, especially among intellectuals, where the appetite for knowledge (and, in many cases, influence) leaves them with little time or energy for dealing with women, even if it costs them the status of a married man. >If you know you can't get one you become a goat herder, live a simple but pleasant life and contribute little to society. You can't live a "pleasant" life if your will to more isn't being satiated. You're actually miserable, you've just trained yourself to ignore the hunger pangs. Those who truly do enjoy this sort of life desire more of less (asceticism), and wouldn't be seeking out women to begin with.

>>35041 >Not always. Both the Soviet and American empires with their industrialized societies and possessing the most powerful militaries were defeated by neo-Luddite goat herders armed with Kalashnikovs in the agrarian society Afghanistan Power doesn't necessarily just mean military power. Much of the United States' global reach, for example, comes from cultural export and business. Ditto China and manufactoring. >Those are a tiny minority, and a tiny minority alone can't sustain a civilization Maybe. But a tiny minority can have a profound influence. That we still know the name Aristotle millennia after he died says a lot. >it will get torn apart over time. This is the fate of all empires. Empires don't die, they just rebrand and balkanize.

I am enjoying all this programming discussion going on here.

i love the gatekeeping, i want to maek moar money. keep salaries high discuss.

>>34256 Not to be a glowie, but I visit fam in Michigan every so often and would be up for meeting a fellow lain if you are ever up for hanging. Downtown Detroit is pretty neat, but sucked when I tried to get to Windsor and no one knew where to get on the bus to get there.

The biggest problem as I see it is that people in most countries can no longer engage in what they consider meaningful, fulfilling labor that also pays a living wage capable of supporting a family. As a result people who would normally dislike CS are forced into the field. Beyond this, most software development work has very little to do with computer science and instead is developing applications that end up being at best websites or generally just more efficient and scalable alternatives to spreadsheets. I remember being very interested in computing as a child (born late 90s), but after becoming a software developer I'm becoming less interested by the day. The vast majority of technological innovations have resulted only in the capitalist class abusing workers and harvesting larger portions of their surplus labor. Technological innovation does very little to improve the human condition in modern first world countries until we change our political systems to distribute the gains in efficiency instead of letting a small minority of people hoard the benefits. This is while immigration is used to put a bandaid on the fact that most educated labor is living in such dysgenic conditions that they have a negative birth rate. For instance, South Korea has a birth rate of around 0.81, that is apocalyptic. There are no technological solutions, only political. FOSS has effectively become a tool for large corporations to democratize the building of tools that they then use to create degenerate businesses that prey upon the worst qualities of humanity, greed, lust, wrath, pride, so on. With AI/ML it's become even more depressing, your labor is being harvested and used to train your replacement. The better a job you do, the faster you get replaced. When the fastest growing industries in the US are food service and dollar stores, it's hard to not think it's going downhill. I preferred computing when it was a niche, edgy hobby and not a requirement to be a functioning human being. Now it's just a tool for mass surveillance and maintaining regressive societal structures. Until we have a political solution or debate revolving around inequality and surplus value extraction by the capitalist class further technological progress will only hurt the majority.

>>35130 Thank you really good comment, I can't stand working with people who think that computer tech will somehow create a better world on it's on. Whereas we have since a while have everything to create an awesome world for everyone. We need political/economical changes not more tech.

>>35130 been thinking about a lot of these points lately. especially these: >The vast majority of technological innovations have resulted only in the capitalist class abusing workers and harvesting larger portions of their surplus labor. >Now it's just a tool for mass surveillance and maintaining regressive societal structures. thank god for tor/tails

>>35022 >ah yes, that dastardly KGB operating... uh... before the existence of the Soviet Union. This response is to a post romanticizing a time when unions were powerful. The time period when unions were most powerful and violent overlaps exactly with the cold war. Removing the context of the post and pretending it's saying something else is very bad faith by the way. >It's not like every school district is directly controlled by the federal DOE office I don't know the details of wherever you are but on a high level the government allocates funding therefor the government is the one and only customer. (And the government doesn't have customers to answer to because taxes are involuntary). You can put an army of bureaucrats inbetween the government and the teachers but fundamental facts are the same. When one side is a monopoly the other side suffers, in this case workers. >it's exactly the kind of decentralized oppression that americans coom themselves over What you want is pupils/parents to pay the school/teachers directly. Then you have thousands of potential customers not one big one. Within a real market workers can now demand higher salaries and other benefits proportional the the quality of service they are able to deliver. You might be opposed to that because you're an egalitarian and want everyone to be equally poor regardless of how talented they are but that's a different issue. So to summarize the point again, competition for labor is the reason tech salaries are so high and lack of competition is why teachers are screwed with or without their unions. >>35038 >the only reason men do anything is because women wont have sex with broke losers True. >>35040 >Except for the men who have no interest in women, and seek fulfilment in something else, The subconscious evolutionary instinct for you to pursue wealth and status (or "fulfilment" as you put it) acts on a lower level than sexual orientation. That is, males are still driven by primitive instincts to be productive even if their higher level sexual orientation circuitry is messed up. Newton is not an argument against what >>35038 said.

>>35038 >The physiological urge to get your banana wet is the only reason why we even went to the coal mines and the horrible factories of the industrial age. I disagree, I don't think sex is an enough reason for a man to go to coal mines, there are easier ways to get sex without doing all of that, people that work there are either forced to do so, or have families and maybe that's the only way to feed them. That's brave, but from what you said, you consider everything to be materialistic I suppose, meaning no love, no family, no moral values..., only sex, and I find this way of thinking to be shortsighted but whatever. >Impressing the young women is really the only reason we ever had to choose a career. Some people are passionate about things, others don't have (or never bothered to find) it and that's why all they do is chase women, don't get me wrong love is an awesome thing but making women your day job is just a waste of life, imagine yourself on your deathbed, thinking of your youth, there would be nothing that'd make you proud, and that is a true tragedy, you came, you'll go and nothing has ever changed even at small scales.

>>35140 >The subconscious evolutionary instinct for you to pursue wealth and status (or "fulfilment" as you put it) acts on a lower level than sexual orientation. That is, males are still driven by primitive instincts to be productive even if their higher level sexual orientation circuitry is messed up. Newton is not an argument against what >>35038 said. You said absolutely nothing, using too much words, bitch of course you are made to feel good, who wants to feel bad, and Newton is indeed an argument against what other lainon said.

>>36251 >I disagree First of all do you believe in evolution? Because if not we're just wasting our time here. >I don't think sex is an enough reason for a man to go to coal mines, there are easier ways to get sex without doing all of that There are or there were better ways? You need to be careful about projecting your modern view of the world backwards 100 years. Half of males who ever lived never reproduced. Finding a willing mate is such a fundamental problem to humanity's continued existence that it is burned into our DNA. >Some people are passionate about things What I'm saying is that "passion" is driven by an evolutionary desire to obtain wealth and status. Because as a male those things increase your chances of finding a mate and raising children to maturity. >making women your day job is just a waste of life It's not a conscious decision it is all just biological instinct. So even somebody with fuarrrked up sexuality is still driven to acquire wealth and status even though they are not interested in women. >>36252 This isn't /hum/ just saying "no you" to everything I wrote is not an acceptable response. If you're angry but can't form a rational counter-argument then you're probably holding onto some false beliefs for emotional reasons.

>>34230 Hey OP, your view on CS and software engineering shouldn't be decided by how mainstream it is. Searching for a niche for a niche's sake is not a virtue.

>>35140 >The time period when unions were most powerful and violent overlaps exactly with the cold war. This is incorrect. Unionism in the US was most violent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before any real industrial safety laws existed, that's when all the labor riots/wars happened. It is true that labor unions reached the height of their political power in the 1950s, but by the end of the cold war they had been thoroughly defeated. >I don't know the details of wherever you are but on a high level the government allocates funding therefor the government is the one and only customer In the US, in any given location there are multiple entities that collect taxes: federal, state, county, cities, and school districts are among them. Every level can collect taxes and every level allocates funds for public schools, most of which is handed over to the lower level with some stipulations on how it is to be handled. The school district is the arm of the government that is actually responsible for running schools, and which pays teacher salaries. It is already the case that a substantial amount of the taxes you pay for education go directly to the local school district. That's why public schools in wealthy towns are usually nicer than public schools in poor towns. >Within a real market workers can now demand higher salaries and other benefits proportional the the quality of service they are able to deliver. And they are unable to do this when working for the government? Like I said, private schools in my area generally pay worse than public schools.

>>34230 I totally agree with you. I chose this field when I was 8 and seeing average joe with no interest other than money makes me want to quit. I hope GPT advances enough and need for mediocre engineers eradicate. This field is more about designing and optimizing relations between system components, not writing a script to move data from here to there.

>>35040 Chūnibyō is more than a social behavior. It is the outcry of someone who cannot fit in the world. They do not merely want to exist above others, they want to exist above this World, because deep down they know that the World will eat them alive like it did the others. A chunni is someone who refuses to give up their individualism and idealism. They refuse to be reduced to another biological battery powering the Machine. They refuse to Die. chūnibyō is realizing that this world is the Matrix chūnibyō is the Luciferian principle chūnibyō is realizing you are going to die on the cross like Jesus Christ chūnibyō is refusing to Die

If she talks to other guys, she isn't worth your time. This is why I'm just going to fuarrrk sluts, instead of wasting my time trying to get a wife who wont care or appreciated.

>>36264 >First of all do you believe in evolution? Yes and no, I believe in evolution as the best explanation we have so far, I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow a new theory pops up, this is how science have always been, never a fact, just theories getting swapped by other theories. >There are or there were better ways? I am sure there were prostitutes 100 years ago. Also not better, but easier, big difference. >What I'm saying is that "passion" is driven by an evolutionary desire to obtain wealth and status. It seems that you can't understand that some people do some things just because, no wealth or status, just the joy of doing it. Of course joy is, fully or mostly, physical, that is, it has a biological effect/explanation, but so is everything else, and that doesn't mean much since for example one could argue that the body is a just a manifestation of something metaphysical (e.g. soul). >It's not a conscious decision it is all just biological instinct. Sure your body would love to have sex all day, but you can refuse, like religious people who resist temptation. >So even somebody with fuarrrked up sexuality is still driven to acquire wealth and status even though they are not interested in women. Are people that go and build cabins in the wood driven by status and wealth? How about people that isolate themselves for religious reasons?

>>36287 >Are people that go and build cabins in the wood driven by status and wealth? How about people that isolate themselves for religious reasons? You're just playing the "what about intersex" card. Your edge cases don't disprove the point that the majority of normal male behavior is driven by an instinctive desire for wealth and/or status because that's what women look for when deciding which men to have sex with. sage because this is not what /lambda/ is for

honestly if you're good it doesn't even matter. there is still a major shortage of people who know what the hell they're doing and even the cheap bastards running the show know it. you'll always be able to get the jobs you want and have a ton of leverage in pay negotiations. just make sure you're actually having those negotiations, and being pushy about it. and of course if they don't give you what you want, be willing to leave.

>>36289 >make sure you're actually having those negotiations, and being pushy about it Having a recruiter helps because they get paid a percentage of your yearly salary by the company you choose. So they are incentivized to negotiate the highest salary they can for you.