Part of the problem with telling people “learn to code” is that a lot of them are bad at it. There may be some diamonds in the rough, but there is a lot of rough out there.
Author seems to think that starting salary for developers working for Google is representative as well. The average computer science graduate does not get a job at Google.
People who learn to code because it means job security are not the ones we look to hire. We look for people who are passionate about it, whose interest in the subject is deeper than skin deep.
Not looking for people who live and breathe code, but you need to like to solve problems and like to learn new things.
Where I work we haven’t really shut down any projects in the last six years.
We’ve had some smaller projects which got parked due to shifting priorities, but other than that we’ve shipped everything else.
But inevitably, over a career in software there will be projects that don’t make it to production for one reason or another.
Personally I’m very pragmatic about it, but I know people who get very attached to the code they write.
I’m the kind of guy that is passionate about what I’m doing when I’m doing it, not necessarily for all eternity. I’ve written stuff that I’d be more than happy for someone to come and replace, but the thing about revenue generating systems (most people say “legacy”, but I prefer this term) is that they aren’t always easy to replace.
I know we’re not all wired that way, and some people find it harder to see an older system get retired. A consultant I use is more attached to my code than I am, for instance.
Part of the problem with telling people “learn to code” is that a lot of them are bad at it. There may be some diamonds in the rough, but there is a lot of rough out there.
Author seems to think that starting salary for developers working for Google is representative as well. The average computer science graduate does not get a job at Google.
People who learn to code because it means job security are not the ones we look to hire. We look for people who are passionate about it, whose interest in the subject is deeper than skin deep.
Not looking for people who live and breathe code, but you need to like to solve problems and like to learn new things.
Doesn’t it hurt those people a lot more when their project nearly inevitably gets shut down?
I’m still bitter about the project I worked on that got killed at my company three years ago.
Where I work we haven’t really shut down any projects in the last six years.
We’ve had some smaller projects which got parked due to shifting priorities, but other than that we’ve shipped everything else.
But inevitably, over a career in software there will be projects that don’t make it to production for one reason or another.
Personally I’m very pragmatic about it, but I know people who get very attached to the code they write.
I’m the kind of guy that is passionate about what I’m doing when I’m doing it, not necessarily for all eternity. I’ve written stuff that I’d be more than happy for someone to come and replace, but the thing about revenue generating systems (most people say “legacy”, but I prefer this term) is that they aren’t always easy to replace.
I know we’re not all wired that way, and some people find it harder to see an older system get retired. A consultant I use is more attached to my code than I am, for instance.