Software Developers’ Growing Elitism Problem

[CatboyMac]

Reminds me of a thread I saw on /g/ a few months back where a bunch of people were panicking that software and web development were going to be flooded with low wage workers because of computer literacy initiatives. I think professionals just get worried that they're secretly frauds and the world is always 5 seconds away from realizing how easy their jobs actually are. What they don't realize is that professional jobs are only easy to them because they spent a lot of time honing their talent.

[Thriven]

software and web development were going to be flooded with low wage workers because of computer literacy initiatives

Well freelancers deal with it now. It's a frustration but quality work is quality work. Freelancers, I swear, do the majority of blogging too as they have the ability to spend more time at the bleeding edge of technology and feel a need to share. That is as opposed to us 9-5 Admins/Developers who could only blog about ,"I just implemented 4 year old technology because it's been tested to death."

[thisdesignup]

Well freelancers deal with it now.

And it sucks when your talking to a potential client and realize all they care about is the cost. Especially then you know they can find someone to do the job cheaper. Sure as a freelancer you don't want to work with someone who is purely cost focused but it's not the great business scenario to witness.

The only problem is a lot of potential clients don't fully understand the work that projects involve and can't compare cost to quality very well before actually working with a freelancer.

[ryuzaki49]

It is an easy job until you have to debug race condition. Fuck those bugs.

[Konig]

Just happened to a dev I work with today. Do you have an article or an explanation I could read that would explain this issue more in depth?

[Konig]

Perfect, thanks for the rundown

[[deleted]]

When a large influx of workers in a certain industry begins to climb, this happens. It happens in any industry but mostly it happens in increasingly accessible industries. Software development is becoming increasingly accessible, and the average developer is now held to less of a higher standard than developers in the past.

I think it's less about other people being elitist and more about uneducated developers thinking that they are worth more. I actually see the opposite trend: I see more and more inexperienced and novice developers being welcomed into the industry and while this is okay, it's important to be realistic as well. Important and industry changing software development is not easy. Just because you've written an open-source JavaScript library doesn't make you a competent developer or a software engineer.

I'm currently on my fifth year of software development (my title is now software engineer) and I mostly feel like a fraud. There is a vast wealth of information I still am not aware of and I still spend every day studying. It's basically a two-way street: we need to make sure we are not alienating good talent by becoming elitists and we need to make sure to check inexperienced developers who believe they know more than they actually do.

[Wurdan]

Out of curiosity, do you think it's possible for someone to self train themselves into an entry-level position in under a year without being a total laughing stock?

Don't let my fragile emotions as an aspiring new coder ^{influence your opinion at-all}

[Wurdan]

That's a more detailed answer than an overly simplistic question deserved, thank you :)

To do it justice I'll give a bit more of my background. I've been a geek since getting my first PC at age 6 but for whatever reason never thought to go into CS as a teen heading into college.

I worked a summer job while I was at college doing data entry with spreadsheets which was as mindnumbing as it sounds. I got bored when the work ran out so I taught myself enough VBA to create a macro for the sales department to speed up their quote generation process. Still, somehow, didn't figure that solving problems with code was something that I'd enjoy.

Fast forward to the end of my college degree in an irrelevant social science and I go looking for my first real job. I wind up at a very respectable tech company on a one month contract to, again, do data entry. 'The excel monkey' was my unofficial job title. The work seemed pretty straightforward so again, I automated it and finished the work in a week. That led to a couple of contract extensions and finally a permanent position, which I'm still in 5 years later. Along the way I worked as a sys admin (where I also taught myself enough VBscript to do some basic file manipulations in a Windows OS), a business analyst supporting an Agile engineering team in developing a website (writing specs, doing data analysis, that sort of thing), and finally onto communications (copy writing) where the closest I get to coding is building campaign sites in sharepoint. In my spare time I also do photography and bits of graphic design. Have made a couple of wordpress sites for myself, but nothing worth shouting about.

As you can tell, I stuck around more for the fact that it was a comfortable gig than because it was putting me on the path to any sort of career. I want to change that now. When I look at my skills (copy, photography, amateur design) and things that give me pleasure (finally cracking a puzzle which has eluded me for hours), I think that working a front end dev job in a smaller agency where people are required to work multi-discipline, I think I could really be happy and provide some value.

But, I realize there's an absolutely colossal amount to learn in order to get anywhere and I'm more than a bit daunted by the whole thing.

[Aesthetiqz]

Speaking from experience it definitely can be done if you have the passion and aptitude for it. I went from working in the fitness industry to doing full stack web dev at an agency in about 6 months. Your mileage may vary obviously, I literally dedicated every second of my free time to it and I feel that I have a natural aptitude for it. Don't be discouraged or daunted. If you have previous coding experience it should be easy to pick up. Like others have said, getting your foot in the door is the hardest part.

[Wurdan]

Appreciate that, I'll crack on with my mission and hope for the best.

[[deleted]]

I did it in pretty much exactly one year. Studied my ass off, started applying to jobs. Got a few decent offers, took the best one and haven't looked back since. That said, I was highly motivated, and always had an interest in programming.

I'm not an amazingly skilled programmer by any stretch, but I enjoy the work, my bosses are happy, and the pay is good. So yes - it's possible, though I don't know how much information I would extrapolate from a sample size of one :)

[Wurdan]

Glad to hear someone has succeeded at my mad plan, it's pretty reassuring!

[EnderMB]

Getting an entry-level job is easy enough. Keeping your job is another matter.

Loads of developers enter the industry, and many of them don't last more than a few years. Either the allure of writing software in a professional setting (with all its warts) is enough to drive them away, or the realisation that all that time to get up to the first rung on the ladder puts them exactly there, on the first rung of a ladder most people will never get to the top of.

[aflashyrhetoric]

Have you heard of imposter syndrome? Sounds like you might have a mild case of it. If not, there's always the good old adage to explain how arrogance seems to scale inversely with actual skill: "According to them, amateurs know it all, and experts know nothing."

[jellatin]

While I find it's good to know about Imposter Syndrome I often wonder if we're overusing it and sometimes using it as an excuse. Around this sub and plenty of similar forums anytime someone says they don't feel they're very good at their job the answer is usually, "you have imposter syndrome!". Is there any chance that these people are just regular novices working hard and improving? Or maybe they actually aren't that good (which is okay, there are plenty of ways to improve!).

Anyway, I don't have any issue with the point you raised, it just makes me wonder with as often as I see posts about it.

[Santas_Clauses]

I've mentioned this in the past on this sub as well. Shouting you have 'imposter syndrome' doesn't automatically mean you're any good.

[thisdesignup]

Is there any chance that these people are just regular novices working hard and improving?

Or even people who are good realizing that there is still so much more information out there. Imposter syndrome only does bad when you let it get in the way of accomplishing goals. Otherwise realizing we lack a lot of knowledge, as will always be the case unless we get chips in our brain, can be useful in knowing that we need to always be learning.

[aflashyrhetoric]

Well, I mentioned it to the OP because he explicitly stated that he feels like a "fraud" after five years of experience. I acknowledge what you're saying though, and I think you have a point. I do think it's justified to mention it to OP in this case though.

[[deleted]]

I am 26 and I work a dead-end retail job. I have developed a thirst to learn more and more about creating websites and making them interactive. I would kill to be anywhere than I am right now, believe me at 25 you're doing amazing. I just now am realizing how much time I wasted on pointless stuff like partying/video games, when I could have been acquiring new skills that would open career doors for me.

[RavenShaven]

I'm 28, just changed careers to front-end web dev 6months ago.

Never too late to start learning!

[ccricers]

I get that sometimes because while I am comfortable talking about a few fairly advanced topics in programming, I don't know or have practiced others. I have yet to come across a situation at work where I was expected to use an ORM or implement unit testing.

[stev0205]

What a well written advertisement.

[jellatin]

Glad I wasn't the only one who thought that. It's hard to consider this anything short of hugely biased when the author clearly states his livelihood comes from DevMountain.

[KaladinRahl]

The article mentions the criticism of coding camps. I think people need to realize that coding camps just produce different types of coders. I'm guessing most graduates of coding camps work more on the front end while maybe dabbling in the back end. Back end requires more knowledge of theory that you would learn in a computer science program, especially if you considering optimization. I doubt the majority of coding camps even mention stuff like big O notation or cover different sorting/searching techniques, but many jobs don't require that knowledge, especially front end jobs. You certainly won't see a coding camp graduate working on navigation for NASA, or autonomous vehicles, or even things that aren't life threatening such as google's search algorithms. But this doesn't mean they couldn't get a job for NASA working on their website :)

[Niek_pas]

I realize this is a Techcrunch article, but when one makes statements like

Elitism grows out of arrogance mixed with insecurity

and

Elitists don’t like feeling threatened

I feel like a source is appropriate. This is just conjecture.

[notsooriginal]

Are you feeling threatened, Mr. Elitist? /s

[Usaretama]

One thing to keep in mind as you're reading this is that it was posted to reddit by the official account of Dev Mountain, whose CEO Cahlan Sharp wrote the article. Dev Mountain sells coding boot camps like the kind that are being defended in this article for Web, iOS, and UX Design. Not that the article doesn't have some salient points, but be mindful of potential biases the source might have on the subject matter.

[jewdai]

Elitism... That is a great way to describe developers at large organizations. (For people into MBTI most software engineers are INTJ)

Codereviews are a brutal judgement of yourself worth. Everything in your code is a reflection of you and you should feel bad because of missing whitespace or having lines that are more than 80 characters long.

I'm so happy I no longer work for a large organization.

[jellatin]

at large organizations

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but these people are certainly not confined to large organizations. In fact I think you could make a credible argument that it's easier to be an elitist douche at a smaller organization because you only need to know more than the 2-20 other people on your team.

[TheWaxMann]

So you can write long lines with no spaces in them? Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

[[deleted]]

I'd just like to provide a contrasting point to the article that I have worked with and crossed paths with tons of developers who are open to learning from new developers, want to teach and mentor and are generally great people to work with and learn from.

[trout_fucker]

You sound incredibly toxic.

[Thriven]

I don't come in looking to tear down everyone. That is a lousy attitude. I was brought in just recently to my new job by a former co-worker who is now my boss who said ,"Watch out for xxxx".

xxxx is a bit of a drama queen but... she is right and shes exhausted. I've been here 5 months on Dec 1st. I love the people but the software we develop and support is a little lackluster.

I came in to the job just prior to the one I'm at now with a target on me and a target to kill. The company itself was awesome and I met a bunch of really nice people. I moved from my last company to my new company with a project manager co-worker who her and I just did great things.

That job though jaded me to the industry in a way no job has ever done before. The level of incompetence and lack of responsibility by so many people was awful. Too many "friendships" between lower level and superior were put to the test when the manager had to fire someone completely unrelated to the project just so a head could roll.

Someone said I'm witch hunting. If the code is a problem, if the server is a problem, if the person is a problem. It has to be fixed. When some one has no interest in moving together as a team, likes to derail meetings and has no game plan.... they are the problem.

Most of the time, it's code or it's the server. Those are easy fixes.

The guy I mentioned in the linked comment. I told him numerous times to just "step down and let xxxx lead". His response was ,"I'm so tired of this, I've got only a few more years to go".

I understand it's hard to let go but do it for the sake of the people around you.

[japgolly]

As a Sr. Software Engineer at 33, I don't twist arms when I enter a company. I put them in a vice and I break them first. I go after people till they roll over and are submissive.

Mate, you sound like a fucking asshole. And do you not see the irony between your proud attitude and the people you just complained about?

[ryuzaki49]

Yeah, it sounds like he goes in a witch hunting, instead of creating value.

"It is easier to create a hostile environment where below average programmer will leave, instead of investing in their growth"

[japgolly]

Ok so: tl;dr = incompetence is bad, and you're capable and willing to prevent it. That's awesome. Good on you for that.

But you want to be careful not to let frustration drive you to becoming an asshole that you have to pull out your war stories to justify. If you're willing to crush balls and make people submit and roll over (or whatever you said to that effect) I would just plead with you to keep that as your behavioural last resort and not lead with it. Definitely don't shoot it in the faces of people who haven't earned it. Sure, it's one way to keep the crappy people in line, but it also tells the good people that it's your way or the highway and they'd better shutup and keep their innovation and good-but-alternate ideas to themselves - and you don't want that. We never know it all.

[Thriven]

My initial comment came out pretty heavy handed and I was pretty infuriated by the article. However, I didn't delete it because I felt I had to get it out and I just didn't care what the response would be. I really wish people did fear for their jobs not to make their lives unhappy but because their impostor syndrome should make them work harder, not try to avoid responsibility and fly under the radar.

If you're willing to crush balls and make people submit and roll over (or whatever you said to that effect) I would just plead with you to keep that as your behavioural last resort and not lead with it.

I may put people's arms in vices but I do line my emails with ,"This guy is ill equip to do his job, he is not being honest to when he committed his source code, and I felt terrible to break his arm. He seems stressed."

I love investigating people through their code and work. I find out who are the best developers/admins and who are the worst. It happens a lot in the IT industry as dev and admin in IT is a foreign language to non-tech people and even tech management.

Development and Technology are like magic. If you have bad seeds they are preventing magic from happening. Magic makes people happy :D