Ask HN: Is “learn to code” now “learn to drive a big rig”?
We are all familiar with the layoffs in the tech sector. Will the people who have been laid off eventually have to find other avenues for employment in sectors of the economy where hiring is still strong?
92 comments
[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadEvery non major metro area mechanic, school teacher, city employee I know has a nice home.
People should really consider doing lower paying boring work in places your mortgage can be $2000 a month.
This is shockingly major metro-area-centric. I want you to know that, and I feel like people on this board really need to understand how HIGH urban and suburban costs are.
In many areas of the country, $2000/month is a seriously frighteningly massive home. For reference - in the middle of rural flyover, our 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, 1800 square foot, full basement, 2 car garage, 1100 square foot full workshop home mortgage is 15 years at $750/month. We pay that, plus another $400 /month for the 70 acres the home sits on as well.
In Spokane, WA 10-15 years ago you could get starter homes for under $100k. Now that price is at least $300k (after cooling off for the last 12 months).
If interest rates hadn’t risen it might be somewhere in between though.
Est. payment: $953/mo, 3bd, 2ba, 3,192 sq. ft., 1.31 acres -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1950-River-Rd-Forest-City...
Est. payment: $1,097/mo, 3bd, 2ba, 2,326 sq. ft. -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/301-S-Warren-St-Watertown...
Est. payment: $1,139/mo, 4bd, 2ba, 2,148 sq. ft. -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/522-Clifty-St-Harriman-TN...
Est. payment: $887/mo, 4bd, 2ba, 3,123 sq. ft. -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/172-Nebraska-Ave-SW-Huron...
Est. payment: $1,107/mo, 3bd, 2ba, 2,957 sq. ft. -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/415-W-Parrish-Ave-Owensbo...
He "called" that it wouldn't last that a lot of people were making "big" tech money + not really working 8 hours a day.
Maybe that's what this whole "big tech layoff" is. A reset to lower overheated wages. Make 500,000 unemployed programmers compete for paycuts.
Have you taken a look at the year over year headcount growth of some of these companies? If anything, you could make the argument that 7% isn't enough :/
In his defense, he does own a small tech startup ($1m/yr I think?) and that has like 10 employees (3-4 engineers), so he has his finger on the pulse (or at least he thinks he does) when it comes to tech hiring.
That's a big problem, right? You think his claims are unsubstantiated, he thinks he knows it all and he's seen it with his own eyes. Who is telling the truth?
There's no doubt in my mind that a lot of this is a power-play by profitable companies to push back against developers who've collectively gained more power at the negotiating table. Paying dividends and doing stock buybacks while saying "tough economic headwinds require us to lay off 6-8% of you" can only be a power move, as far as I'm concerned.
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-noth...
How would you breakdown the distribution of projects inside of Apple from a return perspective?
Some will be 0% or negative due to R&D.
Some will be massively profitable (net 20-40% margins).
How do you decide what the right amount of loss-leading R&D projects to have is?
> As time goes on, businesses are continuing to rely on more software, not less software.
> AI tools are very fascinating, but are nowhere near ready to replace most programmers for most tasks.
If those points are true enough, developers as a group aren't going away, though some individuals might choose a different path.
It doesn't replace programming, it _is_ programming. It's useful because it makes programming more accessible and in some cases the visual representation has benefits over text.
I see more and more professional fields and application interfaces adopting things like SQL, Python, Notebooks (Jupyter etc.), JavaScript etc. Excel is obviously huge. A ton of technicians that work with physical stuff are also writing code in embedded interfaces or on large screens even. Programming is not a thing only software developers do.
Think of it this way, even if it were possible to run an enterprise through lowcode tools, an enterprise would still hire an agency or consulting firm to build it, and so the decision of what tools to use still goes to the specialists.
It has so far. We might have expected the massive gains in developer productivity over the last 70 years to have resulted in the demand for new developers slowing down at some point, but it hasn't. In a very typical way, more supply just gets eaten up by more demand - if at any point we can afford to have fewer developers, we'll just end up writing even more software with the excess capacity.
It's hard to imagine a point of diminishing returns on software, since it's so useful in basically every walk of life.
Recently there has been an explosive transformation from software as a user and productivity focused industry into an adtech one, which has increased demand temporarily.
> In a very typical way, more supply just gets eaten up by more demand
Sure, but increasing supply also means decreasing price by that same model. Decreasing price means less money for developers, meaning less people are incentivized to become developers, leading to equilibrium. Of course, that's a very simplistic model.
People always think this about their own trade. But let me assure you that I am dumb as shit and a pretty decent programmer as well. I've taught programming to beginner adults, who were coming out of prison or the military, and out of hundreds I ran across maybe a handful that truly truly were not ever going to be able to learn it to competence.
The main skill at play from my experience is comfort with the state of not having a clue, and tolerance for frustration. That's an uncomfortable emotional zone for work; people will frequently abandon the pursuit. But that doesn't mean they can't learn it.
It's like playing a violin or something: you could, anyone could if they put the hundreds of hours in. Who does put those hours in may be a self-selecting group, but it doesn't mean there's anything inherent in the skill itself that limits who can learn it.
Programming is not special knowledge or technique wise. It’s having a super high tolerance to frustration and somewhat lesser to being comfortable not knowing a solution.
Even a person with far below average intelligence can do many things in physical space with enough training. They can be shown how to set a table for a fancy banquet, can physically understand what a knife/fork/spoon/plate/napkin/cup are, their relationship in physical space, and eventually learn to set a table as instructed with enough training and practice.
But there's no amount of training that works to help a dumb person understand abstract problems in programming. Things like understanding a variable represents something, you have many variables to keep track of that all represent different things, and working through the logic of even a simple function in a program that changes those variables are beyond dumb people. I wish this wasn't the case, but it's reality.
giraffe_lady is being too humble if she's a decent coder and genuinely thinks she's dumb. There is no such thing as a dumb coder: it's a complete contradiction. In reality, I'd bet that almost everybody on HN who seriously uses this site to discuss ideas is at least in the top 15% of IQ for their population group.
That's surprisingly rare from my personal experience.
Also, I don't tolerate frustration on a personal level as much as I would like but I'm really good at tolerating computers. Weird.
It absolutely wrecks you body. You can make a decent living, but it isn't the easy money that a lot of people think. A lot of the older tradies I know made sure that their kids went to college if that tells you anything
Trades are a decent entry into owning a small business with higher barrier to entry than say a restaurant but still pretty straightforward and can be made revenue stable with a small team (sometimes no permanent team, e.g. some builders). Especially if you grind when you and the business are young, you can end up in a good place fairly predictably.
But mostly people are financially successful here mostly by being business people, not trades people - with all that implies. Sure, there are some people who do well in a strong union, but it's a small fraction of the market.
Many people actually working a job the trades are more likely to end up with health problems and a sketchy retirement outlook.
I don't know why that is. But I assume that the combination of excellent trade/craftsmanship and organizational skills is very attractive.
I always hear the same story from my friends who have been working in small service businesses, whether they are gardeners, carpenters, electricians or cleaners etc:
When it's bad (fairly typical) it's the boss being stretched too thin between too many responsibilities, or its a person that has no clue about the actual trade. They are the both the bottleneck for solutions and the cause of compounding issues.
It ends up in overworked, stressed workers, missed deadlines and mistakes that snowball into more such problems.
A trade/service business that is run well, treats their workers well (which is their major asset) and does good work can charge more and will never run out of work. It seems there is no simple formula for this so you end up with a lot of what you describe above.
This. I'd say at least 25% lack one or the other. So many end up so over budget, very behind schedule, and do substandard or sloppy work.
I find this all hilarious because just like 5 years ago so many were quoting Bill Gates saying "programming knowledge will be the literacy of the 21st century" and it depends. If people are all so genuinely interested in tech and coding in the first place what's the problem?
I personally feel better about thinking of these lines of works as "very important to maintaining the status quo" rather than "recession-proof" but it's basically the same thing
20 years ago, it was just all about going to college. Go to college. Get a degree. Get a good job. That was the path.
10 years ago it became, go to college, but pick the right major. Finish that major. Get a good job.
5 years ago it became, go to college and major in engineering or cs. Finish those majors. Make money.
For the last year or two, it has really been all about trades. Welding, plumbing, HVAC, electrical.
It's just a matter of time before those graduates can't get jobs and it swings again. I'm betting ethics and philosophy and/or social work will be the next big push.
That being the case, there is no harm in learning another way to make a living. Having a fallback is always a good idea. If it becomes the main thing because your first career never came back, count yourself lucky and go with it.
... I don't think I'd specifically recommend "Learn to drive a big rig" though. In addition to the industry itself being a real bad deal for vehicle operators (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/business/truck-driver-sho...), it's the segment of the transportation sector centered in the crosshairs of disruption-through-automation.
The self-driving vehicle companies that laid off were, broadly speaking, the ones working on individual vehicles and taxi services, not the ones working on self-driving trucks. That sector is still going strong because the value proposition is simple and obvious (lives saved and money saved per mile).
And while that can be true, it is certainly only a very small part of the picture. You can't just say, I'm going to be a plumber, and bam, you're a plumber. You could, conceivably do that with something like rough frame carpentry, but those aren't the high paid trades people talk about. Most trades have required education and/or apprenticeships that aren't paid that great. If you can make it through that, then the pay gets better. But we're talking years, literally years to get there.
Then, once you're doing the skilled trade, you're working long (looooong) hours, long weeks, away from family (sometimes), in the heat and cold and rain.
These are good jobs, but they're not magic make money jobs like people tend to frame them. They're hard, and your career will get cut shorter than it should by either straight up injury or problems of accrued physical debt from repetitive strain.
And knows anyone calling him is likely over a barrel and willing to pay big money to make the problem go away. Odd hours, but a respectable hourly rate (assuming he has some skin in the game vis-a-vis owning the business).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teufz17PqoY
Ask an older tradie how their body is doing.
Ask a tradie how often clients don't pay their bills.
Ask a tradie how many paid sick days they get.
The trades are one way to make a living wage, but they definitely aren't an easy way to do it. There are some union jobs, but largely the trades require you to run your own business in one way or another. Even your average car mechanic employed by a garage has to provide their own tools at HUGE cost.
I think a lot of people don't realize just how hard it is to be in the trades.
Sure, be an electrician. But first try working an 8-hour day with your arms above shoulder level half the time.
[EDIT] Actually, that kinda goes for tech workers who aren't in the top part of the trimodal comp graph, too. You either move into management or start your own thing, if you want Real Money (else you'll see a bad mid-career plateau).
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/21/self-driving-truck-company...
The bigger issue really is that trucking is a bad deal. Super dangerous job that doesn't pay much of anything for the hours worked while your health is basically destroyed from sitting.
Stories from new big rig drivers are pretty terrifying. It sounds like the first year is spent hoping everyday that you don't kill someone as you learn to handle this 80,000lb monstrosity.
I think it would be a mistake to switch to trucking right now, as despite delays with no end in sight, it does feel like some substantial use of automated driving in the commercial driving industry is coming eventually. I would expect that to reduce the market value of drivers. If someone wanted to become a truck driver, I'd say he'd better do it for the love rather than the money. Even though both careers are going to get shaken up, it's still a lot easier to make six figures in software for now.
In general, I roll my eyes when politicians suggest that people who lose their jobs due to industries shifting out from under them can just go learn new skills and get back on track. I haven't seen that happen. It feels like a pat on the back as you're shoving them out the door.
One port change can cause truck routes to disappear. also simple routes will probably be replaced by self driving rigs in the future. I would highly not recommend lots of people jumping into that.
however, if this tech rekt lasts, I imagine people will be flocking to the next big thing until that crashes too. its like bulls on ice
I know I'm not the only one here who didn't enter tech immediately after college. Once upon a time I was an electrician. I've done framing, roofing, general farm work, I was a pharmacy technician and ran a photo processing lab. My hobbies today include things like machining.
The "problem" in tech isn't so much the availability of jobs, but the relative income. There's nothing I've found that I could do that would replace my income in a reasonable time frame. If I left tech I'd be looking at a >50% reduction in income.
Likewise, strangely, coding is also frictional. The business people who could "write their own code in COBOL" or "write their entire business in excel spreadsheets" would already be programmers if they could program which they can't so they don't AND management will not be up to the task of deploying profitable AI, so coders also have guaranteed work.
To some extent, labor only exists via mismanagement of capital. Humans CLEARLY aren't capable of properly managing a rail logistical infrastructure, so truck drivers have permanent employment. I would theorize that humans aren't capable of deploying AI generated programs, we've barely been able to deploy code written by competent humans, so coders should have permanent employment.
People are significantly overreacting to the current layoffs and ignoring all the massive hiring spree of the last 3 years. If you hire 100 people and then layoff 8, the narrative shouldn't be that the end is nigh.
I think the opposite will become increasingly true: folks that otherwise would not be found in a computer science/engineering undergraduate will find their way to tech.
Software/Tech is incredibly wide and deep. There's need all over the stack, and there is definitely lots of need at the medium-skill level. I spend a lot of time configuring AWS, and running simple db queries. Look at the heaps of programmers who are economically successful in a single framework like React.
I think the field will stratify and there's lots of room in the 50-80k/y range doing useful tech work for businesses in every sector. I can see it in FAANG where there's a clear distinction between those destined for Staff level and invent new things, and those who will plateau at SDE2 but do so much necessary work.
Long ago, people could get work as a scribe or scrivener -- knowing how to read and write was, on its own, enough to get you a job. As literacy became more prevalent, it wasn't enough to "just read". You had to "read and ____". Similar to business; I would not recommend someone get "just a business degree" so they can apply to any company in the world. I'd recommend they get a "business degree and ____" to target a specific industry or role.
The same is slowly happening with programming. As the spectrum of what "programming" means continues to widen, and as code-literacy becomes more and more common, it's going to be harder to get a job as "just a programmer". So learn to code, And.
They have a level of computer literacy that is shockingly bad. They use computers everyday, but only within the walled gardens of google classroom/iOs/Android.
I taught an after school HTML/CSS for grade school age kids, and the majority of them didn't know about the concept of a directory structure. Even just saving a text file (instead of having a file autosave to their google drive) was a foreign concept.
Kids these days very much are NOT digital natives in the way that millenials and Gen x were.
- coding
- architecting systems (if we're in the design phase of a project)
- writing design documentation
- researching business requirements (basically understanding the domain i'm working in)
- getting cross org support for my work and meeting stake holders
So yeah for most tech roles nowadays, learn to code is the equivalent of learn to send an email. I think the days are numbered for developers who just want a bunch of Jira tickets given to them and be left alone.
Also, just a note on the specific comparison: it's a lot easier to learn to code in one's spare time than to learn to drive a big rig. Learning to code is free, and can remain free until you ship your first product. The same is not true for most other career choices.