Software Development a Dead-End Career?

oscarBravo

I don't get how some software developers don't feel the need to use proper syntax and grammar, for reasons that really ought to be self-evident.

Trojan

I can forgive spelling and grammar errors from under-12s, non-native speakers, and the occasional person clearly using a phone keyboard.

All the rest, I Judge.

The Corinthian

All careers are dead ends if you don't pay attention to them.

As you grow older, in any career, two things happen:

• Your physical and social circumstances change. You are less able (and willing) to work the aforementioned 80 hour weeks and your salary expectations increase (you may well have a family to support, after all). In some countries, company pension contributions jump after a certain age too, which also makes you more expensive to them, and thus less attractive to hire.
• Your skills and experience expand. Your estimates become far more accurate. You can draw from years of experience to be able to solve problems almost instantly, because you've seen it all before. You have cross-discipline knowledge of the business that juniors are completely ignorant of.

The first makes you less attractive to an employer and so needs to be countered by the second if you want anyone to still want to hire you. In this regard, there's a lot of developers out there who don't seem to put much effort in their careers and fail to offer any incentives to any potential employers to make up for the inevitable disincentives that come with age.

Then there is the reality of business; you only need one Sargent to run a group of newly minted privates out of boot camp. Younger developers are less experienced, make more mistakes and take longer to code something that an experienced experienced developer could do in a fraction of the time.

But they'll still get the job done, will put in the overtime with hardly a murmur and cost a lot less - at most, all they need is one experienced senior developer or team leader to guide and monitor several of them.

So you need fewer senior developers, which means some are redundant for the work they used to do. Where does that leave them?

1. Cross-training. Possibly the most common route is that they become project managers, business analysts, architects, CTO, DW or BI experts and so on. There's plenty of incentive for this, not least that the salaries tend to be much higher.
2. Expertise. They're fortunate enough to latch onto one long-lived specific technology and accumulate an unassailable expertise in it. This means that if you want to develop something really, really complicated in it, you can't use more junior developers and you have to go to an expert and pay the big bucks.
3. Legacy Development. This is like expertise for developers who were not fortunate enough to latch onto one long-lived specific technology, but one that will still have systems in use, perhaps for decades to come, that'll need maintenance.

So, unless you want to essentially stop being a pure developer at some stage in your career (the first option above), you need to constantly keep an eye on your career and build up an expertise in something that makes you difficult, if not impossible, to replace with a 25 year old who'll just take longer to do what you do (yet still work out cheaper).

durkin33

As someone nearing the dreaded 40 ( that went fast!) cross training worked out for me.

Started in C/C++,VB, .Net then went to database development. Found I really enjoyed the DB world and am now a lead Business Intelligence Developer. Which, IMHO, is still a true developer role.

It's always best to align your skills with an internal business need and then you have a chance of protecting yourself position from outsourcing. Senior management's view where I work ( in a Healthcare Multinational) is that all they need is a credit card to establish software as a service in the cloud. I always counter the argument stating short term value is gained but not long term.

You can either compete with external suppliers or collaborate with them.
IT people ( we have to) need to learn how to market themselves as a business within a business in order to gain buy in for their projects. Need to be seen/measured as adding value to the bottom line.

ChRoMe

The Corinthian wrote: »

Younger developers are less experienced, make more mistakes and take longer to code something that an experienced experienced developer could do in a fraction of the time.

Two words come to mind when reading that:

Technical debt.

yawhat!

Probably the best career you can have at the moment.

And No you won't be discriminated against because of your age. Some employers might prefer someone that is older. You will only be starting in graduate roles obviously at around 25K to 30k and you will need good grades in your college exams and perhaps a masters.

The Corinthian

ChRoMe wrote: »

Two words come to mind when reading that:

Technical debt.

True, but you'd be thinking like a programmer, not a business person, and guess who controls the purse strings?

For example, imagine a project is composed of six modules. You have four weeks to complete it. You can hire either junior or senior developers.

Senior developers cost 60k per year, but are only willing to do a maximum of 50 hours per week. One can complete a module in 200 hours.

Junior developers cost only 30k per year, but are willing to do a maximum of 90 hours per week. One can complete a module in 300 hours, at a quality level of, say, 60% that of a senior developer.

Six senior developers will get the job done on time. Annual salary bill 360k (28k for the duration of the project).
Five junior developers will get the same job done on time. Annual salary bill 150k (12k for the duration of the project).
Even if the junior developers only did 50 hour weeks, it still works out cheaper (Nine of them with a total bill of 270k - 21k for the duration of the project).

Of course the junior developers will still end up producing a software product at 60% the quality of the senior developers, but to both the software house and the client, this is very often acceptable, because of the salary savings, which translate to savings in billables.

Now while the above is a rather simplistic model, it's really meant only to demonstrate the kind of choices that employers and their clients make. And these choices have an impact on the resources that are ultimately employed.

The Corinthian

yawhat! wrote: »

And No you won't be discriminated against because of your age.

I'm afraid you're wrong. I've seen it happen and been present in HR meetings where it is actively discussed.

ChRoMe

The Corinthian wrote: »

True, but you'd be thinking like a programmer, not a business person, and guess who controls the purse strings?

For example, imagine a project is composed of six modules. You have four weeks to complete it. You can hire either junior or senior developers.

Senior developers cost 60k per year, but are only willing to do a maximum of 50 hours per week. One can complete a module in 200 hours.

Junior developers cost only 30k per year, but are willing to do a maximum of 90 hours per week. One can complete a module in 300 hours, at a quality level of, say, 60% that of a senior developer.

Six senior developers will get the job done on time. Annual salary bill 360k (28k for the duration of the project).
Five junior developers will get the same job done on time. Annual salary bill 150k (12k for the duration of the project).
Even if the junior developers only did 50 hour weeks, it still works out cheaper (Nine of them with a total bill of 270k - 21k for the duration of the project).

Of course the junior developers will still end up producing a software product at 60% the quality of the senior developers, but to both the software house and the client, this is very often acceptable, because of the salary savings, which translate to savings in billables.

Now while the above is a rather simplistic model, it's really meant only to demonstrate the kind of choices that employers and their clients make. And these choices have an impact on the resources that are ultimately employed.

No, you are conflating a client/employer where software is a cost centre rather than revenue generator. Clients/employers who understand the implications will not go the route you use. You also seem to be assuming that development is the whole cost, those margins will be completely destroyed by support costs if its done incorrectly. The project doesn't end once its shipped.

Sparks

ChRoMe wrote: »

No, you are conflating a client/employer where software is a cost centre rather than revenue generator. Clients/employers who understand the implications will not go the route you use.

Yeah, but it's not enough to understand them, they have to care enough about them to act on them.
Example - management takes a decision that earns profits this quarter and next quarter, but which causes such losses in the third quarter that the company goes out of business. To you or me, that'd be stupid. To an executive who takes his bonus and quits half-way through the second quarter, that's a great decision especially if he knows it will ruin the company in the third quarter, and a year later he'll be earning even more money elsewhere because he drove up profits before his successor destroyed the company...

Sparks

BTW, the real problem with TC's quick example is that it ignores long-term support for the project. So it works with things like offshoring companies (where, gosh, this actually is almost exactly what they do), but bites hard on any company in the services sector (just read the news, you'll find examples of this happening btw).

ChRoMe

Sparks wrote: »

Yeah, but it's not enough to understand them, they have to care enough about them to act on them.
Example - management takes a decision that earns profits this quarter and next quarter, but which causes such losses in the third quarter that the company goes out of business. To you or me, that'd be stupid. To an executive who takes his bonus and quits half-way through the second quarter, that's a great decision especially if he knows it will ruin the company in the third quarter, and a year later he'll be earning even more money elsewhere because he drove up profits before his successor destroyed the company...

Malicious people can do malicious things.. thats true of any situation.

ChRoMe

Sparks wrote: »

BTW, the real problem with TC's quick example is that it ignores long-term support for the project. So it works with things like offshoring companies (where, gosh, this actually is almost exactly what they do), but bites hard on any company in the services sector (just read the news, you'll find examples of this happening btw).

Quite, you must have missed my edit. He is talking how I'd expect a consultant to

yawhat!

The Corinthian wrote: »

I'm afraid you're wrong. I've seen it happen and been present in HR meetings where it is actively discussed.

Depends on the company so!

The Corinthian

ChRoMe wrote: »

No, you are conflating a client/employer where software is a cost centre rather than revenue generator. Clients/employers who understand the implications will not go the route you use. You also seem to be assuming that development is the whole cost, those margins will be completely destroyed by support costs if its done incorrectly. The project doesn't end once its shipped.

The purpose of the example was not to be accurate, but to illustrate that business decisions are often made that would run counter-intuitive to how a good developer would think.

And unfortunately, both at the employer and client levels, they will take these routes, more often than I care to think.

Sparks wrote: »

BTW, the real problem with TC's quick example is that it ignores long-term support for the project.

There's plenty of real-life scenarios where a client would be willing to pay more later for a cheaper deal in the short-term; that the client's project owner is counting on being promoted/moving by the time the long-term costs come to roost or that budget is limited in the short term and so the client is willing to deal with the consequences, otherwise they'll never get to market.

Let's face it, lease purchase wouldn't exist if people always really cared about the long term costs.

ChRoMe wrote: »

Quite, you must have missed my edit. He is talking how I'd expect a consultant to

Meaoo! I'll consider a fitting reply next time I'm on the beach...

Actually, I'm talking how I've seen business owners and executives do so. It's not nice, but as I said at the start, they're the one's who hold the purse strings that commission such work.

srsly78

Trojan wrote: »

I can forgive spelling and grammar errors from under-12s, non-native speakers, and the occasional person clearly using a phone keyboard.

All the rest, I Judge.

Me too.. But maybe someday you will end up in a situation like mine... My boss is a very experienced native english developer, and he writes excellent code. However, he is mildly dyslexic - so I constantly come across spelling and grammar errors!! I have to rage silently about this, and my ocd forces me to fix the spelling in each file I touch It's pretty funny, because he is the ultimate code style nazi - and has forced me to adopt good habits.

Sparks

ChRoMe wrote: »

Malicious people can do malicious things.. thats true of any situation.

Yes, but in business, it's rewarded. Most of the time anyway. Which means that rational logical argument is usually ignored and you get things like Nokia taking on Windows Phone right after releasing the N9, which was widely hailed as the best mobile on the market when released.

moycullen14

The Corinthian wrote: »

I'm afraid you're wrong. I've seen it happen and been present in HR meetings where it is actively discussed.

So let me get this straight. You were in a meeting, HR were there, they were determining IT hiring policy .... and you didn't shoot the whole bloody lot of them? What happened?

moycullen14

The Corinthian wrote: »

True, but you'd be thinking like a programmer, not a business person, and guess who controls the purse strings?

For example, imagine a project is composed of six modules. You have four weeks to complete it. You can hire either junior or senior developers.

Senior developers cost 60k per year, but are only willing to do a maximum of 50 hours per week. One can complete a module in 200 hours.

Junior developers cost only 30k per year, but are willing to do a maximum of 90 hours per week. One can complete a module in 300 hours, at a quality level of, say, 60% that of a senior developer.

Six senior developers will get the job done on time. Annual salary bill 360k (28k for the duration of the project).
Five junior developers will get the same job done on time. Annual salary bill 150k (12k for the duration of the project).
Even if the junior developers only did 50 hour weeks, it still works out cheaper (Nine of them with a total bill of 270k - 21k for the duration of the project).

Of course the junior developers will still end up producing a software product at 60% the quality of the senior developers, but to both the software house and the client, this is very often acceptable, because of the salary savings, which translate to savings in billables.

Now while the above is a rather simplistic model, it's really meant only to demonstrate the kind of choices that employers and their clients make. And these choices have an impact on the resources that are ultimately employed.

And they'll end up f**king it up. Nothing surer. I have no doubt that some companies act like this but they are not and never will be successful.

If you have the misfortune to work somewhere where IT strategy is predicated solely on cost then my advice would be leave, now. Someday they will discover someone cheaper than you and then you'll be turfed out. (Outsourcing, anyone?)

pgmcpq

Interesting topic, and one close to my heart.

I'm not in Ireland so I cannot speak to the specifics there but generally it is harder to make a good living in software now compared to 20 years ago.
I am probably one of the youngest guys aground who worked primarily in mainframe assembler (yes, I am that old!).

So much basic technology is in "frameworks", be it jvms, jvm based frameworks, the "browser as operating system", mobile frameworks ....that it takes little skill to knock together a perfectly respectable application. Great in terms of technical development, great in terms of breaking down the effective monopolies of e.g IBM in the 1980s, but not so great in terms of leveraging software skills to make a living.

The open source movement has really changed the landscape. No longer can anyone expect to write a "payroll" system - it's been done - multiple times ! So the days of the generalist is over. Career development now means focusing on expertise in specific technical areas. Otherwise programming jobs will eventually become gloried burger flipping and paid appropriately.

I've been in Voip for the last 8 years, and now I see the end of the road in terms of being able to make a living as the market is saturating now.

Hiring is tough. I've found it hard to interview effectively. Many of the interviews really are geared to the teaching methods in colleges these days (I bombed the technical interviews at Google). It's hard for the 40+ guys to do it. I have spent a fair amount of time in small companies and startups. This recent article is a pretty fair reflection of my experience http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/silicon-valleys-youth-problem.html?_r=0

Reading the earlier comments. Look, I work hard, but no - I have a life outside the office, I do not go home and work on my own projects (I see ads asking to see your home projects which is funny as the the same companies will have you sign away rights to anything you develop while in their employment anyway). Much as I enjoy working with 20 years olds - I don't want to spend my weekend paintballing with them !

Outsourcing. It's here to stay. I'm in the US - so to me Ireland is one of the places my work might get outsourced to !! Either way it pays to focus on areas that companies consider central to their business - lots of companies have been stung in outsourcing core technologies but will continue to outsource the more peripheral stuff.

Is it a dead end career ? If you expect to make a living purely as a technologist - you better be damn good. Otherwise you need to develop a expertise outside software (where I am most of the financial firms hire maths graduates who can code a bit and figure they can train them to program rather than hire computer science graduates ). tbh, most 16 year old can probably code faster than me.

Certainly you can no longer take even a CS degree and expect it to guarantee a decent living anymore.

The Corinthian

moycullen14 wrote: »

And they'll end up f**king it up. Nothing surer. I have no doubt that some companies act like this but they are not and never will be successful.

Some of them are actually very successful.

I'm not condoning such approaches, only pointing out that they happen. Sometimes because the 'company' is inefficient or unduly influenced by politics (particularly true of large blue-chips or the public sector), and often because modern capitalism is regrettably driven by short-termism nowadays.

But sometimes it also makes commercial sense. If you don't have the capital to get to market 'properly', are you just going to not bother? Or are you going to do so anyway and factor in the long term cost of having to deal with your having cut corners to get there? Or it's all very well to hire only the best and most senior resources and produce the best software out there, but how does that help you when you're being outbid on every contract or no one buys your product because it's priced out of the market?

We don't live in a perfect World where we only need to choose between one and zero.

If you have the misfortune to work somewhere where IT strategy is predicated solely on cost then my advice would be leave, now. Someday they will discover someone cheaper than you and then you'll be turfed out. (Outsourcing, anyone?)

I suppose that companies where they don't do that sort of thing will never think of replacing you? Bless you and your innocence.

Calina

I'm with pgmcpq in that a significant amount of my life has been devoted to assembler and the IBM mainframe.

I'm coming to the conclusion that software dev is a problematic career as well, for various reasons. There's a big push to get more people programming - I tend to see this as a predictable reaction to higher wages in a skillset which people feel shut out of. So there is a push on salaries - downwards - there is a push on importing people - there has been discussions in both the US and Ireland regarding talent import for example. We allegedly have 4000 odd IT vacancies available but from having looked at them, the overwhelming issue I have is not too many of them are interesting.

As a skillset, it's not that well valued by the people doing the paying, from what I can see. I'm back in college on a MSc at the moment. I am considering not going back into development or programing for various reasons.

However, one of the points that I would raise - regarding it being a young man's game - is that the elements that make it a young man's game have very little to do with software engineering, and a lot more to do with the culture around it. I used many years ago, to fund college studies, work as a typist in a lawfirm in the UK and some of their more driven lawyers used to work 20 hour days, operate on the balance of presenteeism to a completely unhealthy extent. So a few of those features that make SW dev a young man's game are not unique to it and could justifiably be removed. They are non-intrinsic.

GreeBo

ChRoMe wrote: »

Two words come to mind when reading that:

Technical debt.

Technical Debt usually comes out of the next guys budget, not the current guys.
Current guy will be long gone (probably promoted on the back of it) before someone with a budget asks why its so expensive and takes so long to make even the simplest of changes to a system.

This is only true in badly run companies, however its difficult to find a large multi-national that doesnt, inevitably get run in this manner.

moycullen14

Calina wrote: »

I'm with pgmcpq in that a significant amount of my life has been devoted to assembler and the IBM mainframe.

I'm coming to the conclusion that software dev is a problematic career as well, for various reasons. There's a big push to get more people programming - I tend to see this as a predictable reaction to higher wages in a skillset which people feel shut out of. So there is a push on salaries - downwards - there is a push on importing people - there has been discussions in both the US and Ireland regarding talent import for example. We allegedly have 4000 odd IT vacancies available but from having looked at them, the overwhelming issue I have is not too many of them are interesting.

As a skillset, it's not that well valued by the people doing the paying, from what I can see. I'm back in college on a MSc at the moment. I am considering not going back into development or programing for various reasons.

However, one of the points that I would raise - regarding it being a young man's game - is that the elements that make it a young man's game have very little to do with software engineering, and a lot more to do with the culture around it. I used many years ago, to fund college studies, work as a typist in a lawfirm in the UK and some of their more driven lawyers used to work 20 hour days, operate on the balance of presenteeism to a completely unhealthy extent. So a few of those features that make SW dev a young man's game are not unique to it and could justifiably be removed. They are non-intrinsic.

Well the 40,000 vacancies in IT are pure hogwash. How many of them are customer/client management roles with strong language requirements? How much core product development are LinkedIn, Google, DropBox et al actually doing in Ireland?

I've been hearing the mantra of 'IT skills shortage' for years now. What there is is a shortage of people willing and able to work for low money. It's like cheap beer - there's always a shortage of that!

One thing for sure is that the downward pressure on salaries is real and will continue. If you are unfortunate enough to work for a company where IT is non core, it's even worse: You're regarded as an 'expense' to be reduced by accounting and HR droids.

As stated above, if you haven't got a specific technical or domain skill, you will struggle as a developer in the long run. That's not solely down to age either.

beauf

Calina wrote: »

...- is that the elements that make it a young man's game have very little to do with software engineering, and a lot more to do with the culture around it. I used many years ago, to fund college studies, work as a typist in a lawfirm in the UK and some of their more driven lawyers used to work 20 hour days, operate on the balance of presenteeism to a completely unhealthy extent. So a few of those features that make SW dev a young man's game are not unique to it and could justifiably be removed. They are non-intrinsic.

+1

I didn't always work in IT and the other industries I worked in always had a similar pattern to this.

Stark

ChRoMe wrote: »

No, you are conflating a client/employer where software is a cost centre rather than revenue generator. Clients/employers who understand the implications will not go the route you use. You also seem to be assuming that development is the whole cost, those margins will be completely destroyed by support costs if its done incorrectly. The project doesn't end once its shipped.

Where I work, the development department is explicitly labelled as a "cost centre". It's stupid, especially for a company who likes to brand themselves as a "technology company" but it's the way it is.

On the upside I've never been asked to work one of these 80 hour week thingies.

Calina

4,000 rather than 40,000 and as someone with multiple foreign languages, that skillset has always been the subject of people just not wanting to pay for it in this country. You'll see the same with data analytics, the next big thing in this knowledge economy of ours. I watch those vacancies at the moment.

Ultimately, the point is in the technology sector, an awful lot of the jobs are not technology jobs.

ChRoMe

moycullen14 wrote: »

Well the 40,000 vacancies in IT are pure hogwash. How many of them are customer/client management roles with strong language requirements? How much core product development are LinkedIn, Google, DropBox et al actually doing in Ireland?

I've been hearing the mantra of 'IT skills shortage' for years now. What there is is a shortage of people willing and able to work for low money. It's like cheap beer - there's always a shortage of that!

One thing for sure is that the downward pressure on salaries is real and will continue. If you are unfortunate enough to work for a company where IT is non core, it's even worse: You're regarded as an 'expense' to be reduced by accounting and HR droids.

As stated above, if you haven't got a specific technical or domain skill, you will struggle as a developer in the long run. That's not solely down to age either.

There definitely is a IT skills shortage in regards to pure technical roles. I'm not messing when I saw that when I returned to Ireland in January, the phone rang 15 minutes after sending out my first CV. I'd apply for one job and the recruiter would sent back a selection of five or more, all dev jobs.

IRLConor

ChRoMe wrote: »

There definitely is a IT skills shortage in regards to pure technical roles. I'm not messing when I saw that when I returned to Ireland in January, the phone rang 15 minutes after sending out my first CV. I'd apply for one job and the recruiter would sent back a selection of five or more, all dev jobs.

Yup, though it's very uneven. I've lost count of the number of recruiters who've contacted me saying stuff like "Hi, I wonder if you'd be interested in a role with <boring non-tech company> working with <crappy technology>? The company is based in <the arse end of nowhere> and the salary ranges from <one third of my salary> to <half my salary>. If you're not interested, perhaps you could pass this on to your friends?"

I suspect a lot of the vacancies are based on unrealistically low budgets too. It's very easy to say you want to hire 10 developers if you're thinking you'll get them for €25k each. If those 10 developers cost an average of €50k then suddenly it'll be "oh... right... well... we didn't really need to do that project..." and the 10 vacancies evaporates pretty quickly.

To go back a little closer to the topic, I'm in my early thirties, roughly a decade of full time experience and I'm still writing software (and doing about 40 hours a week at that!). I'm lucky because it's a regularly scheduled thing for my boss to sit down and talk to everyone on his team about their career and what they want to do. I've been very clear that I don't want to move into management and they're cool with that. I know it's somewhat unusual for a company to be actively involved in career development, but there are companies out there who make an effort to retain their staff.

I've worked for companies in the past where there were developers who started their careers around the time I was born and at least one of them is still working as a developer. Certainly, I've met a bunch of developers who've been 40+ and still happily working away as a senior, non-managing developer. It's rare, but it's definitely not impossible.

Trojan

IRLConor wrote: »

I'm lucky because it's a regularly scheduled thing for my boss to sit down and talk to everyone on his team about their career and what they want to do. I've been very clear that I don't want to move into management and they're cool with that. I know it's somewhat unusual for a company to be actively involved in career development, but there are companies out there who make an effort to retain their staff.

They probably get the same productivity out of you that others will get short term out of someone working 50-70 hour weeks, because your hours will be far more productive as you're working on what you like, and to a plan that you trust. But they will get that longer term.

I think that kind of thinking is the difference between software companies that do ok and companies that do incredibly well.