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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @10:15PM (34 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @10:15PM (#968003)

    Why you should learn to code:

    1. You will be paid poverty wages. Six figure salaries are a myth told by the tech industry to scam you.
    2. You will spend your career copying open source code into proprietary products and services. The tech industry does not innovate ever. Innovation is done by unpaid students and volunteers who are too naive to know they are being scammed.
    3. Your career will end at age 30 regardless of how skilled and accomplished you are. "Keep your skills up" is tech industry propaganda that means keep your age down.
    4. You will not find employment after your career ends at age 30. Everyone outside the tech industry will be envious of your coding ability. Nobody outside the tech industry will understand why you cannot simply get a high paid job in the tech industry.
    5. You can continue coding after age 30. The tech industry will gladly take your open source code and pay you exactly nothing for your work.
    6. A ten year career at poverty wages is not enough to retire. You will die poor.

    Learn to code. Die poor.

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday March 08 2020, @04:34AM (29 children)

    Have you considered you might just suck at coding?

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @06:15AM (24 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @06:15AM (#968106)

      Well let me see, I have straight A grades in computer science, a bachelor's degree in computer science, a master's degree in computer science, started multiple open source projects, contributed to many more open source projects. I am especially good at optimizing and debugging, and on one occasion I doubled the speed of an open source app with one line of code. No I do not suck at coding. And yet I cannot get a coding job.

      Have you considered the reality that the tech industry is massive fraud.

      Look at the open source license credits in every consumer electronics product made today (your TV for example) and every big name app produced today (your web browser for example) and you will see how billion dollar corporations take from the open source community and give back nothing. Who do you think produces all that open source software for the tech industry to take without compensation? Unpaid volunteer open source developers like me. Who do you think throws together all that open source code for billion dollar corporations to exploit for profit? Underpaid young naive fools living in poverty who are promised a bright future right up until they are replaced when they turn 30.

      Keep chasing that mythical six figure coder salary. You get it the day after never.

      Never stop coding open source for free. Somebody has to produce value for the tech industry or the whole house of cards collapses.

      Learn to code, kiddies. You can be like Peter Pan. Never ever dare to grow up because the dream ends at 30.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @07:01AM (16 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @07:01AM (#968116)

        Keep chasing that mythical six figure coder salary. You get it the day after never.

        That's odd. I know several (middle-aged white men, no less!) folks who have those six-figure coding jobs you say are mythical.

        No I do not suck at coding. And yet I cannot get a coding job.

        Have you considered (as seems likely based on the tone of your post) that it may be that you can't get the job you want because you're a bitter, whinging asshole?

        That's not a swipe at you personally. In fact, your post *screams* "I'm an entitled asshole and you fucking people just don't understand how wonderful I am. Fuck you!"

        I know that's just the kind of person I'd want to hire! Why don't you send me your resume?

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @07:55AM (15 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @07:55AM (#968127)

          Understand this, you patronizing asshole. I was less bitter when I was young enough and naive enough to believe blatant lies. I was once optimistic enough to believe that natural talent for coding would naturally lead to gainful employment as a coder. I am quite fully disillusioned by now. This is the tone of someone who knows how fraudulent your tech industry really is. There is only one kind of person you want to hire: young, stupid, cheap, and soon replaced by younger, stupider, and cheaper. Free is even better than cheap, and boy oh boy, do you types know how to rip off open source for free labor. There is an endless supply of fresh college students who are just starting out in your world, eager to believe your lies about six figure coding jobs and coders who live to middle age. Fresh young college students will work for free coding open source for you just so long as you can maintain the illusion that they will get paid some day. And when the day comes that they finally realize you are a liar, that day is when they tell you to go fuck yourself. Everything works out fine for you though. You just repeat the same lies to the next batch of fresh college students.

          Learn to code, kiddos. Free open source is definitely not free unpaid labor to enrich billionaires.

          • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @08:40AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2020, @08:40AM (#968135)

            Thanks for confirming my initial impressions, friend.

            It's nice to be reminded that I'm a pretty good judge of people.

            As to your predicament, I suggest heavy self-medication.

            Peace out!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @07:02PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @07:02PM (#968603)

            Yeah, I'd totally hire this ass-hat....

            With that attitude? Yeah.... Riiiiiiight....

            • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @10:47PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @10:47PM (#968737)

              If he really is that big of an ass-hat then he should try politics.

          • (Score: 2, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday March 10 2020, @05:25PM (11 children)

            by shrewdsheep (5215) on Tuesday March 10 2020, @05:25PM (#969178)

            Maybe it helps you to see that what you experience(d) is not specific to tech. There is hard skills (coding, expertise in the subject matter) and soft skills. Unfortunately, the hard skills only play a minor part in determining who gets promoted, gets credit or respect. The soft skills are often much more important as defined by your mode of interpersonal interaction. Soft skills is not a really positive term in this context, it comprises aggressiveness, boastfulness and other egotistic traits (most the time veiled in hypocritical kiss-ass behavior or seeming modesty). This is true for tech, science (arguably more so), public services, politics, basically all workplaces with competitive incentives.

            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Tuesday March 10 2020, @07:32PM (5 children)

              by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday March 10 2020, @07:32PM (#969236) Journal

              And this is part of the ongoing lie. The simple fact is that there are nowhere near enough jobs for coders to advance into management, especially when most of the management jobs are already spoken for by people related to existing management. Has nothing to do with soft skills and everything to do with who you know (and no, ass kissing isn't a soft skill, it's a con artist skill). Then again , given how much of the industry is based on con games, that explains a lot.

              The industry is dying. The consequences of massive consolidation are evident in a lack of innovation, and the need to exploit the poor via gig "platforms " because that haven't come up with new ways to add actual value to the overall economy.

              We've been had. But keep plugging out code for your masters at google, Facebook, and amazon to use to further exploit the masses rather than help them improve their economic well-being and independence. Stupid is as stupid does.

              --
              SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:04PM (3 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:04PM (#969651)

                Ah, so you are the bitter AC... Perfect match. I wouldn't hire you either. Luckily we are still allowed to discriminate against people with a bad attitude, though probably not for long in Canada if you win all your lawsuits.

                • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:18PM (2 children)

                  by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:18PM (#969679) Journal

                  No, I'm not the bitter AC. I posted under it specifically so that people would realize that I'm not the only one with the same sentiment. Do you really believe that I'm the only person in the last 20 years to realize that the open source movement has been co-opted by the big companies and that there is no other way forward to make money for small independent developers except to go to a closed-source license if they want to make money selling their fostfare, because RMS was full of crap?

                  --
                  SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:55AM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:55AM (#969959)

                    Do you really believe that I'm the only person in the last 20 years to realize...

                    No, with the Sith there are always two

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @06:23PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2020, @06:23PM (#979728)

                    Shows what you know https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html [gnu.org]

                    RMS never talked about financial viability that I know of, feel free to provide your own citations.

              • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Monday March 30 2020, @03:58PM

                by TheRaven (270) on Monday March 30 2020, @03:58PM (#977256) Journal

                The simple fact is that there are nowhere near enough jobs for coders to advance into management

                Coders only 'advance into management' in companies with a crappy promotion model. In other companies, they advance to senior development (or possibly architect) roles. There are some skills common to developers and management, but most of the skills that they need are different. HP championed this model (in the '70s or '80s), where a person's manager may be more junior to the person, because a small but specialised engineering project may need senior engineers but only junior managers.

                --
                sudo mod me up
            • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday March 23 2020, @03:44AM (4 children)

              by Mykl (1112) on Monday March 23 2020, @03:44AM (#974303)

              I came here to say something similar, though I have a more favourable view of soft skills to you. Too many developers think that their tech skills, and tech skills alone, are the sum of their value to an organisation. Further, anyone who demonstrates soft skills such as diplomacy, negotiation and managing upward is a "kiss-ass".

              I started as a junior developer (Bachelor of Science, majoring in Computer Science), and am currently the manager of just under 200 technical and management consultants for a professional services firm. Over the years I've dealt with many technically talented people. Some of them have been wonderful to work with, and some have just been assholes. Any day of the week I'd take an 'average' developer who is willing to work collaboratively with others over a 'skilled' asshole who acts like a prima donna.

              If you have deep technical skills and can't find work, it's probably because you have under-developed interview/social skills. These are just as important as your technical skills and only become more important as you work at higher levels. Calling everyone else a kiss-ass just shows that you haven't bothered to recognise the value of other skills, probably because of your arrogance about the superiority of your technical skills.

              Coffee requires both ground Coffee Beans and hot water. Having one without the other is deeply unsatisfying to the drinker.

              • (Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday March 23 2020, @05:37PM (1 child)

                by shrewdsheep (5215) on Monday March 23 2020, @05:37PM (#974489)

                These (soft skills) are just as important as your technical skills and only become more important as you work at higher levels. Calling everyone else a kiss-ass just shows that you haven't bothered to recognise the value of other skills, probably because of your arrogance about the superiority of your technical skills.

                Thank you for providing some nuance and quite correctly characterizing my personality traits :-).

                You mention the skills "diplomacy, negotiation and managing upward" (the latter I do not understand). Going into reflective mode, you will recoginise that these skills all include dispositions making it easier for you as a manager. The ideal worker is rough on the edges though, is independently thinking and would have the manager serving him instead of the other way round. My point being that the filters in place are never geared towards the technical goal, but towards the accountability to the next level in the hierarchy. This, almost by definition, will result in unjust decisions. I am personally on both sides, trying to rise through the ranks, but also being responsible for hiring and managing of people (not at your order of magnitude though). Honestly, after an interview I am most the time at a complete loss at whom to hire and how to do justice to the situation, and I am certain that most of my decisions were suboptimal.

                • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday March 30 2020, @01:51PM

                  by PiMuNu (3823) on Monday March 30 2020, @01:51PM (#977197)

                  > would have the manager serving him

                  I think managing upward means helping the manager to know what worker needs to more effectively do his job. "Sorry to nag, but my laptop is busted so my project is gonna be late. Could you chase IT to get me a new one?" ... "I notice Jimbob's stuff is running a bit late, I can't get started on my thing without his stuff. Would it be okay if I lended him a hand?" etc

                  > would have the manager serving him instead of the other way round

                  Sure, and good workers will make this happen (without being too irritating to the manager). This is "managing upward".

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @11:49PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @11:49PM (#977061)

                Any day of the week I'd take an 'average' developer who is willing to work collaboratively with others over a 'skilled' asshole who acts like a prima donna.

                This. So much this. I've run development teams off and on for 25 years and this is absolutely true.

              • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Monday March 30 2020, @04:25PM

                by TheRaven (270) on Monday March 30 2020, @04:25PM (#977268) Journal

                I like to frame this as additive impact versus multiplicative impact. Additive impact is the amount that you contribute by yourself, multiplicative impact is the amount that you increase other people's productivity, including things like mentorship, constructive feedback, and so on. On medium to large teams, a slightly above average multiplicative factor makes a huge impact, much more than a large additive impact. Imagine a team of 20 people. You have one developer who is a great hacker, 50% more effective than normal but doesn't contribute to the team. You have another developer who is an average developer but makes everyone 10% more efficient by improving CI systems, doing useful code reviews, and so on. One has an additive effect of 1.5 and a multiplicative effect of 1, the other has an additive effect of 1 and a multiplicative effect of 1.1. With 20 people on the team, one developer adds 1.5 to your team, the other adds 2.

                In practice, it's actually worse because a lot of those 'highly skilled' developers are toxic and so their multiplicative factor is closer to 0.8, or even lower. On a team of 20, they demotivate the team and make life harder for everyone else enough that they are costing the equivalent of four people's worth of productivity. They need to be four times as productive as your average just to break even and that factor increases the larger your team gets. They are simply not worth hiring.

                There is a corollary, of course, that some people have a negative additive effect: they introduce bugs or design flaws that take more time to fix than their overall positive contributions and if they'd just stop writing code then the project would move faster.

                --
                sudo mod me up
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 08 2020, @04:51PM (4 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 08 2020, @04:51PM (#968209) Journal

        Ya know - your post is almost sorta kinda satisfying, to me, a working craftsman. Back when the illegals were pouring across the border, and taking away tradesmen's jobs, everyone in tech chortled, "Well, you should have gone to school, and learned a tech job! We're safe where we are!"

        Heh. Trickle down really works. A lot of those displaced trademen and their kids moved on to tech jobs. And, the mediocrities already in those jobs are being displaced.

        Meanwhile, the best of the best in the trades, as well as the tech industry still have good, solid careers ahead of them. Provided, of course, they are willing to play the office games, and maybe kiss the right asses.

        Maybe you really are as good as you say you are. I can't judge that, but I know that beating your own drum isn't an indicator that you can be believed.

        Another poster, further down, suggested that maybe you can't get a good job because you're an asshole. Possibly true. Think about it. And, if you're an asshole, just own up to it, and be proud. If cocksuckers can cavort around the streets of our cities playing proud, then assholes can do the same.

        • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 08 2020, @07:18PM (3 children)

          by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday March 08 2020, @07:18PM (#968257) Homepage

          95% of San Diego's technician jobs are ratfucked by cheap beaners literally making minimum wage. The situation is so bad you have common legal grey areas of noncitizens and DACA caca's working in ITAR environments and even in facilities with closed areas. As if you can really trust cartel-owned Sephardic Jews masquerading as Mexicans around your national secrets.

          These were jobs that were formerly at least $20/hr jobs. If it's a case of being in a union and so a nice wage is guaranteed, only U.S. citizens should be hired. It should be illegal for unions to hire illegals. And when it comes to hiring minorities, well, Whites should be hired first.

          • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 09 2020, @05:42PM (2 children)

            by Freeman (732) on Monday March 09 2020, @05:42PM (#968560) Journal

            It should be illegal for unions to hire illegals.

            . . . by definition, isn't it . . . ?

            --
            Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @08:14PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @08:14PM (#968647)

              Yeah, but big business pays big lobbyists to bribe the right politicians to take the teeth out of employer sanctions for hiring illegals. You'd think if the conservatives really hated illegal immigrants so much, they'd push for harsher penalties on employers. But they also know that the businesses employing trades are hanging on by a thread overall and are some of the most sensitive markets overall because of the time scales and total costs involved.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday March 09 2020, @12:40PM

        Six figures? Six figures is what I make when I feel like building up a nest egg but still want some fishing time. Seven figures isn't complicated, it's just more work and responsibility than I care for. On the low side of mid five figures, what I generally aim for nowadays, is working about one week out of six and turning all other offers down in favor of napping by the river with bells on my poles (or working on a church remodel of late). You too could partake in this lifestyle but you can't get it out of your head that working means punching a clock and having a boss.

        That or you're too much of a coward to take the risk. That's often the case with folks who spend their lives as someone else's bitch and then whine about it all the time.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2020, @06:58AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2020, @06:58AM (#973426)

        Then why not work for a shit soul sucking corporation at the bottom like the fast food and retail industries and use your programming powers to further the GNU project and/or free software? If it doesn't make a damn bit of difference? I'd love to see a replacement for Linux (the kernel), that is GPLv3. And make sure to donate to organizations that represent free software projects so we can defend ourselves in court when the need arises.

        Learn C and start hacking! You shouldn't have been working for shitty corporations in the first place, they contribute nothing to society except dependence on ignorance and convenience at the last, and at the worst they are actively working to build a totalitarian nightmare where we will be governed and controlled by facial recognition, behavior anlysis/modification/manipulation, and yablah blah...

        Ask the customer if they want frys with that, and go home and have FUN programming on REAL projects that serve the interest of the people.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday March 15 2020, @10:29PM (2 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday March 15 2020, @10:29PM (#971687)

      I learned to code in 1982, and seem to be valuable enough to my current employer today.

      We've got one guy who's pushing 70, and they keep him on for as many hours as he wants working remotely from 300 miles away.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:36AM (1 child)

        by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:36AM (#972671) Journal

        COBOL ?

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 18 2020, @01:30PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @01:30PM (#972747)

          Almost as bad: C/C++ in embedded and x86 systems.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:21AM

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:21AM (#972067)

      I'm pretty sure that's our new resident A/C troll.

      As well as being an exploited master coder he's a flat-earther, an anti-vaxxer, and a believer in Plasma cosmology.

      Are you not entertained?

      No, I'm not either.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Cosmic Debris on Monday March 09 2020, @12:34AM

    by Cosmic Debris (2086) on Monday March 09 2020, @12:34AM (#968349)

    I prefer the old chestnut "Crime doesn't pay. Neither does coding."

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday March 09 2020, @03:30PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 09 2020, @03:30PM (#968502) Journal

    Maybe you're coding the wrong thing.

    At one point in my career (1987) I co-wrote this thing for the (classic) Macintosh called Timbuktu. It got our small company acquired by a bigger company. We had built this to help us support our accounting software over the phone. There was "Carbon Copy" for PCs, but nothing like that for Macintosh. When I started building it, my coworker and I weren't even sure if this could be done to have a remote GUI.

    For a few years it was a fantastic meteoric rise. Trade shows. Full page ads in MacWorld, etc. Awards at trade shows. (Aside: my coworker and I went to present at a larger Mac user group meeting in the midwest near us. We heard people talking excitedly about "real Mac programmers!". We snickered to ourselves. We were just a couple ordinary guys who started in a small town.)

    But eventually it leveled off.

    I ended up working on accounting products again. At the time I wondered if this wasn't a blessing in disguise. These products were stable. The customers for them weren't going away, soon, maybe never. It wasn't as glamorous as Timbuktu and related products that were developed. But it was steady and stable. I'm still doing that today.

    It more than adequately pays the bills. Through a number of changes, I'm now at a much larger corporation -- but I never changed jobs. Everything changed around me.

    The point

    Being a rockstar programmer on some glamorous award-winning product is fun, and for a time profitable, but boring business software is what makes the world go around. Today's glamorous thing might be to work at Google, or Facebook.

    There is more boring business software than most people realize. Every type of business needs specialized software. Several levels above my business unit, my employer makes software for cities, government, schools, lawyers, cabinet makers, hospitals, and other things. It's all boring. But it is stable, makes money, and isn't going away in the near future. How do they keep the store shelves stocked? Exchange medical records between offices? Send out natural gas utility bills, and keep track of meter readings, which meters are where in inventory or at what addresses, etc. There's more to computerize than is obvious.

    You might not get rich, but it is a living.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday April 02 2020, @10:01PM (1 child)

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Thursday April 02 2020, @10:01PM (#978463)

      There is more boring business software than most people realize. Every type of business needs specialized software.

      In my usage of said boring software over the years it seems to me that an awful lot of it is written poorly by people who have no idea what the end user is trying to or has to accomplish on a daily basis. Usually it works in a generic manner, it sort of does everything but does nothing well or completely. This is probably due to the fact that the buying decisions are made by people who have no idea what the end user is trying to or has to accomplish on a daily basis, or do and no longer care as they no longer have to do it themselves.

      If one could make software that is quickly customizable to a particular customer's needs it seems to me there could be a large market for that. Of course, it has to survive my point about who makes the buying decisions...

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 03 2020, @03:20PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 03 2020, @03:20PM (#978736) Journal

        That is true.

        From the early stages of my product's development (eg, the product I work on, but my employer owns it) we already had decades of experience in this market and understood our customers' business. We had already been through two green-screen text versions (eg, first and then major rewrite), one desktop GUI version (major rewrite), and then to the web. We pay attention to customer feedback. I am interested in feedback, especially negative feedback. In short, we've been doing this for a long time (decades). It's not some johnny-come-lately web application.

        The more customizable you make software, the more complex it is to design, maintain, then configure for a customer, and then use by the user. Definitely have necessary customizability. Avoid that which is unnecessary. Understand the customer's business and workflow. Design workflows around that.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.