More like the English major will be taking their order.
Posted on 04/28/2012 12:48:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
This is an article from Bloomberg, but since Bloomberg articles cannot be posted here, another website summarizes the article.
Original article here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-22/software-engineers-will-work-one-day-for-english-majors.html
To summarize the article: Although entry level software engineering jobs are extremely attractive for young graduating college students, their employability often starts to decline at age 35. There are two main reasons for this: 1. older employees may no longer be up-to-date with the latest technologies 2. they're too expensive. Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40. Moving into management roles can allay this problem, but these jobs are limited.
Something to think about if you're considering a career in software development.
Click above link for the complete article.
The original article starts with this question:
Which of the following describes careers in software engineering?
A. Intellectually stimulating and gratifying.
B. Excellent pay for new bachelor’s degree grads.
C. A career dead-end.
The correct answer (with a “your mileage may vary” disclaimer) is: D. All of the above.
READ THE PROVIDED LINK TO KNOW WHY.
If you plan on developing cutting edge games until you are 65, this article is probably true. If you move on to more mature pursuits as you age, you can keep up with the younglings.
But, the money part is very true. Software development is not a high-paying job anymore unless you are a “rock star” game developer. But, the same skills and talents can lead into system administration or information security and you’ll be able to find decent work for life...as long as you keep those skills and technologies current. Get stagnant and you become a “Netware guru in a MS Server world”. Been there. Did that. :(
English majors who natively speak English will still be asking "would you like fries with that".
These days you can’t really stay in middle management in your 50’s and its getting very hard to stay in middle management in your 40’s. You have to move up or out to form your own business.
Well, $65 games are pretty much a dead end as it takes millions in research alone. (I used to work for Rockstar as an intern years ago), but just like in business, if you are 40 plus you should be able to head your own department. My brother’s pal used to work for EA and from what he told me, they pay sh*t (less than 12/hr on texture rendition as an example) and the only reason why dudes work for EA is the culture. After you hit 30, you are pretty much ostracized.
yawn. the quantnet people are a good bunch. FE is a fad.
B. Excellent pay for new bachelor’s degree grads.
C. A career dead-end.
With A and B, who cares about C? I don't buy the early exit theory.
Plus, software engineering is always best as augmentation to something else.
Such as an accountant that can build reports and extracts is way better than one who has to write a specification to be developed after long meetings.
Getting personal. I'm that guy above, I'm 60. I have more offers for jobs and projects than ever before.
My son in law, with art training, not even a degree; is in high demand in California. However, he is relied on to go into the server room and troubleshoot issues; as well as render a tour through a virtual refinery.
If he wants, he can do this indefinitely.
That’s what I meant by “more mature pursuits”. You can’t be a game developer at age 40. You need to be doing something boring like databases, industrial apps, or analysis long before then.
As for running your own department, you aren’t going to do that in today’s world if you are a white male.
Written by someone with no experience in the industry.
I write software for a living, and have been doing it for over 25 years- so I know a little about this.
If you want a young college grad designing your embedded systems controllers for your hardware inside an F-15 or a railroad signalling system or some battleship hardware then be prepared to watch a lot of expensive hardware crash and burn and melt
I used to worry all the time that younger and less expensive kids fresh out of school would replace me, but then I get hired all the time now to fix their mistakes, often having to re-write their stuff from scratch...
You don’t know what experience is until you get some.
I am working on some software right now that had a young kid wth 5 years experience as the ‘system architect’ (the lead designer) Once I figure out what they WANTED to do I will be able to fix it all. It is a mess, and it is what the government is paying $millions for, to sort out the foreclosure mess.
It all looks like it was written by a beginner.
“As for running your own department, you aren’t going to do that in today’s world if you are a white male.”
LOl roger that. I still remember the time I was answering to management in India and his name was Poondang.
Maybe he wanted to be something else.
More like the English major will be taking their order.
I have been in IT (DP as we called it back then) since 1977 — I am in my 50s and my field is begging for people with a good solid software background who can do technical management.
I agree a pure coder is passe — I can get a roomful of programmers for $20 an hour. Getting someone to tell them what needs to be done and in what order: there’s the rub.
Connecting problems to technology — especially before the problem is even known — that won’t go away for quite some time.
Of course it is up to the individual to stay up on what is happening and keep their toolkit “sharp.” I’ll always be hands-on” but that lets me know how to keep all the hands productive.
The only reason software engineers are considered overpriced past 40 is the outsourcing of coding work. Yet the debugging is often an American pursuit, given the mediocre quality of international coders.
Youngest is a Comp. Sci. major, looking at Software Engineering. I’ll have to send him a link to the article, then let him read these comments when he gets home for the summer.
Yeah, let’s hate on English majors! They’re stupid!
After all, the study of language and literature only develops reading, writing, and analytical skills, that’s all. Just the skills you need for just about anything — including science.
Most people don’t know it, but lots of doctors — good ones — were English majors. Similar analytical skill sets needed to succeed.
One of the problems I see in “keeping up to date” in software is that much of what is recently deemed as “progress” is nothing more than some PhD candidate’s re-hash of stuff we had before.
How many languages used today could we eliminate... if we just told the people who whined about the non-C/C++ syntax of Lisp and Smalltalk to STFU and get to work? It appears to my curmudgeonly eyes that most modern interpreted languages are just as re-hash of Lisp or ST-80.
Further, none of the “innovations” in software recently are addressing the most expensive and embarrassing elephant in the room: Security, and by extension, reliability. Everyone wants to address issues like rapid deployment, reusability, etc, but no one wants to address security from the metal upwards - at least, no one has since MULTICS.
I agree that keeping one’s skills up to date is a necessary part of being a professional. However, in software, I assert that much of this effort is being sunk into bottomless pits of irrelevance.
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