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Discussion on: You Deserve to be a Software Developer

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defiance profile image
Defiance Black • Edited

TL;DR: You don't need permission to develop software.

If you're looking for one key takeaway from this post, ...

The takeaway that was key for me is this; everyone is afraid. It essentially boils down to, "I don't want to hire the wrong person." (one of "I don't want to make a mistake"'s many children) which reintroduces the catch-22 of needing to get experience and not being hired due to lack of experience. The more money involved/bigger the company, the greater that fear and the more things people will do to try and ensure "hiring the wrong person" ("making a mistake") doesn't happen.

It's probably impossible to change the mentalities of these job-fearing people. After all, "you should be thankful for a job". We still tell kids to get jobs. This is wrong, imo. The problem starts there. Maybe if a job wasn't placed on a pedestal, people might feel confident enough to branch out on their own more often.

No one cares about your experience if you create a functional something that they like.

I get it, bills, food, etc. So, jobs. It just seems disconnected from a domain with such low barrier to entry and unlimited range of application. The next "Blahblahblah" can be written by a 20 year old in their dorm room, they'll then quit college/uni and continue building the thing full time -- this pattern has happened so many times it can be called a pattern. Everything that is Minecraft was essentially started by one man.

So, why lay prostrate for a job?

I say, "Would be software developer, you deserve better."

Not quite a solution, just a different perspective.

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lethargilistic profile image
Michael MacTaggert

I find the Jeffersonian outlook comforting at times. (He believed that America should be comprised of individualist and independent yeoman farmers.) However, the reality on the ground is that working for corporations is the way to make money in software unless/until you have an idea of your own. Barring something like a universal basic income (I'm hesitant) or a radical reversion of our global relationship with corporations (they used to not be so scary), I don't think appealing to the market's lottery-like system is so much more realistic and stable for most people.

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defiance profile image
Defiance Black

I don't think appealing to the market's lottery-like system is so much more realistic and stable for most people.

It isn't. :(

If everyone said, "F this, rolling my own." we'd have too many chiefs, not enough indians. Is that analogy even PC anymore? Anyway, every ecosystem in every industry would look like JavaScript, and we most definitely can't have that.

the reality on the ground is that working for corporations is the way to make money in software

This reminds me of Pandora's Box. A corporation isn't what it used to be, but, now that it is what it is, there's no going back. That's... unfortunate, even if someone can say, "But look at how many jobs Acme made!" ... kinda like Wal-Mart.