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ChipNDip posted:drat near every job "shortage" you hear about comes down to a lack of pay, in wages and/or covering the cost of actually training people how to do the job. If your compensation package is good enough, you will find people to do the job. If there isn't anyone who can do it, then covering their training is part of the compensation. Or they want to grab someone on an H1-B.  "Dang, we just can't find anyone that has 10 years experience with Server 2008 that's also proficient in scripting, red hat and (whatever monstrous legacy program they have thrown in) that'll do it for $30k a year, time to call up Wipro!"
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Aug 20, 2015 04:57
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-Troika- posted:Part of the shortage of tech workers are dumb hiring requirements, as well. No one wants to run some company's entire everything for 25-30 grand a year. When CEOs and other blowhards claim that there is a shortage of tech workers, what they are really saying is that there is a shortage of tech workers at a wage that they are willing to pay. Companies no longer pay relocation for technical workers, only managers. Even without raising wages, there would be a huge increase in available workers if companies went back to paying relocation. The "dumb hiring requirements" are a by-product of using technology-illiterate idiots in the HR/recruiting cycle. So if the tech manager says something like "we need someone with 5 years experience in SQL Server" then the idiots in HR turn it into "required: 5 years experience with SQL Server 2012".
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Aug 20, 2015 05:02
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I really hope the tech/programmer bubble bursts soon so I can hear about some other bullshit field I should have gone into in college.
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Aug 20, 2015 05:07
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No one in HR actually takes that poo poo seriously. It's always a "best case scenario". "Must have 3 years experience" means entry level. "Must have 5-8 years experience" means around 3 years, give-or-take. HR don't give a gently caress, the actual manager at the hiring department makes it work. That said, recruiters are important because they can get you around the "algorithm" stage where your resume ends up in the wrong folder. Never pay for a recruiter (also a huge scrub move). I mean, if you are hilariously overqualified, skip the recruiter and let the computer algorithm decide. Either way you are losing out on some theoretical pay (recruiters do good work, they deserve their commission), likewise, taking a job that is below your qualifications because it matches a bullshit algorithm is also costing you money. The best is to be good enough to be recruited directly by someone at the company or to know someone in management to make it happen. Every job boils down to having some relevant skills, knowing the right people and social engineering. That's all.
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Aug 20, 2015 05:54
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Those insane requirements also give them an air-tight reason to avoid equal opportunity lawsuits as well. Rand alPaul posted:I really hope the tech/programmer bubble bursts soon so I can hear about some other bullshit field I should have gone into in college. Same, but we'll never stop hearing people who write computer code called "engineers" I'm afraid.
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Aug 20, 2015 12:18
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ChipNDip posted:Those insane requirements also give them an air-tight reason to avoid equal opportunity lawsuits as well. No it doesn't, not even close
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Aug 20, 2015 12:35
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So this article has continued to spur discussion at the mid-size software company I work as a software engineer in. For reference, we don't pay like Google, etc. Our engineers (myself included) make a good living but are not in the six figures range regularly. That being said, the discussions have been about the culture of software development and the overall and how our company's culture fits in on the continuum (from being completely overworked to barely putting in 40 hours a week). I know that the Amazon article was pretty much showcasing how badly the business side of the business is treated (most Engineers at Amazon I've talked to report a completely different culture), but there is a push out there to get developers to write code for 12 hours a day seven days a week. You can see it in the idea of startup culture being enshrined, you can see it in the celebration of the "rock star" coder who stays up all night to churn out a deliverable, you can see it in the questions that HR managers and CEOs are asking (How do I emulate the culture Google has?) and you can see it in the types of benefits offered (dinner to stay late, laptops becoming the norm so people can work from home, video games and such so that people spend more free time at work). There's a natural tendency for a software engineer working on an interesting or complex problem to get in "the zone" too, which can legitimately cause us to lose track of time. I clocked a 60 work week once because I kept getting sucked into interesting problems, and they just took a lot of time to test and solve. I suffered for it, my health was bad and I gained a pound just in that week from eating crap. I think the interesting thing is that our company has tried to strike the balance in the opposite way from Amazon. We offer very high levels of vacation, managers constantly reinforce the need for us to use the vacation, and there is a culture of "work hard during the day but stop when you go home" in Engineering. This seems to be caused by a few things: 1. The ramp up time for a new engineer in our division is measured in years, thus making long tenure really important. 2. Competition for developers in our area is fierce, especially for mature developers. Mature developers (who may have a family and such) seem to appreciate work-life balance more than a go-fast burn-quick mentality. 3. There have been a few studies that show fatigue sets in after about 8-9 hours during a mentally taxing job, so the longer you work the more mistakes you make
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Aug 20, 2015 15:01
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ChipNDip posted:Same, but we'll never stop hearing people who write computer code called "engineers" I'm afraid. I've finally joined this venerated brotherhood of highly-educated and trustworthy individuals who are vetted by licensing boards that are governed by law. Time to get to work on my dumpster fuckbuddy app
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Aug 20, 2015 17:01
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H.P. Hovercraft posted:I've finally joined this venerated brotherhood of highly-educated and trustworthy individuals who are vetted by licensing boards that are governed by law. Time to get to work on my dumpster fuckbuddy app I'm a computer doctor.
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Aug 20, 2015 17:02
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One hopes that over time 'software engineering' takes on the rigor of other engineering professions. A bridge collapsing can kill a bunch of people, and poorly designed software can kill people too, especially as it gets more and more pervasive in the future. Disclaimer, my job title is 'Software Engineer', I am not a goddamn engineer. I majored in Chinese. I really don't understand why my job is called that.
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Aug 20, 2015 17:39
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Mozi posted:One hopes that over time 'software engineering' takes on the rigor of other engineering professions. A bridge collapsing can kill a bunch of people, and poorly designed software can kill people too, especially as it gets more and more pervasive in the future. This came up back in 2003 in Texas (and didn't go anywhere). The state engineering board chairman had a pretty good explanation: AUSTIN -- One of the oddest battles of the 78th Legislature is pitting Texas' licensed professional engineers against the high-tech industry's software dudes. At issue is just who in Texas can call himself an engineer. "It's one of the silliest issues we're having to deal with this session, but it's also one of the most important," said Steven Kester, legislative director of the American Electronics Association, an organization of computer companies. Texas has one of the nation's strictest engineering practices acts and limits the title of engineer to those people who have studied engineering and passed a licensing exam. And that law puts most of the "engineers" in the high-tech industry out of the field. Kester said the restriction threatens high-tech growth in Texas. But Ken Rigsbee, chairman of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers legislative committee, said the restriction is needed to protect the public. Rigsbee said state restrictions on who can call themselves engineers were set up decades ago after someone misengineered a heating pipe system at the New London Junior-Senior High School. An explosion of natural gas in the pipe system killed 300 students and teachers in 1937. Rigsbee said the licensed professional engineers of Texas have been protecting their title from encroachment ever since. There are 49,000 state-licensed professional engineers. Rigsbee said the high-tech problem mostly involves computer programmers whom the industry likes to call computer engineers. Rigsbee said the industry holds out its products as having been "engineered." And he said there is a belief that the computer companies are in a better position to win contracts if they can say they have 150 engineers on staff instead of 150 programmers. "What we have a problem with is a graduate of a two-year computer programming school or some technicians ... holding themselves out as engineers when they clearly are not," Rigsbee said. The computer industry had been happy to function under an exemption in state law that allowed a company to call in-house personnel whatever it wanted to so long as the engineering title was not held out to the public. But the Texas Board of Professional Engineers sent cease-and-desist letters to some high-tech industry specialists who used the title of engineer in correspondence. That led to a request to former Attorney General John Cornyn to clarify the issue. Cornyn last July said the matter is simple when it comes to state law. "The Texas Engineering Practice Act ... does not allow an in-house employee of a private corporation, though classified internally as an `engineer' or under another engineering title, to use the title `engineer' on business cards, cover letters or other forms of correspondence that are made available to the public," Cornyn said. Boom. In a single sentence, the computer programming engineers of Texas became software dudes. Actually, while software programmers make up the bulk of the high-tech industry's engineers, the industry also uses the title for electrical and mechanical engineers not licensed by the state. Texas Instruments also has "customer support engineers." "Texas is becoming a laughingstock of the global high-technology community," said Steve Taylor, director of corporate affairs for Applied Materials. Taylor said there are about 100,000 high-tech personnel in Texas who have "engineer" in their title, but they are not licensed by the state. "They risk fines of up to $3,000 a day for handing out business cards to a supplier or even dropping it in a fish bowl at a restaurant for a chance at a free lunch," Taylor said. AEA's Kester said electronics professionals from around the country are called engineers within their firms and in the industry. Suddenly, he said, they are now required to carry one set of business cards for Texas and another for the other 49 states. "It's a matter of professional pride," Kester said. "They've built up a lot of experience and earned the title of engineer in their industry." Kester said the electronics industry has made changing the state law a top priority because it is making it difficult to recruit employees from other states and around the world. "We run the risk of not having them move here," Kester said. "That puts us at a significant disadvantage." Legislation to loosen the title requirements is being carried by Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, and Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa.
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Aug 20, 2015 17:56
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SquadronROE posted:There's a natural tendency for a software engineer working on an interesting or complex problem to get in "the zone" too, which can legitimately cause us to lose track of time. I clocked a 60 work week once because I kept getting sucked into interesting problems, and they just took a lot of time to test and solve. I suffered for it, my health was bad and I gained a pound just in that week from eating crap. This is actually backed up by data, for what it's worth. Working long hours is bad for your health, and I suspect that the negative effects probably extend into the regular 40 hour work week as well.
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Aug 20, 2015 18:43
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Paradoxish posted:This is actually backed up by data, for what it's worth. Working long hours is bad for your health, and I suspect that the negative effects probably extend into the regular 40 hour work week as well. I seem to remember 8 hours being around the peak output, so not so much. What is true is that there's a decrease in productivity per unit time if you don't work long enough - in other words, someone who works for two hours will get more than twice as much done as someone who works for one hour.
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Aug 20, 2015 18:50
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I'm sure there are a lot of recipes for productivity. The key, I think, is that there's a "zone" of productivity that you have to get into, and that's where virtually everything gets done. If you work on too many projects, you never have time to get in the zone on one task. If you work too long, you are probably not in the zone beyond the 8th hour so you're just wasting your time. If someone is having a good week where they're spending 10 out of 12 hours a day in the zone, for a straight week, they're going to be super productive. But it's unreasonable to expect that every week, it's unsustainable.
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Aug 20, 2015 18:58
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computer parts posted:I seem to remember 8 hours being around the peak output, so not so much. Not sure I follow what you're saying here. The article I linked is discussing a study on the health effects of working more than 40 hours per week, not productivity. It boils down to an increased risk of strokes and cardiovascular disease.
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Aug 20, 2015 19:05
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Yeah, I think part of the problem is that our working culture seems to really have evolved around manufacturing, where it's easier to say more hours=more things=more value. Yes, there are quality issues, but when you've reduced an individual job down to screw in these bolts, pass it on to the next point in the assembly line, then it's less of a problem. However, that type of repetitive work is perfect for automation, and we're left with the more wishy-washy mental work, where that does not apply. A creative thought had when showering could have vastly more value than an entire week of implementing a lovely solution.
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Aug 20, 2015 19:18
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Paradoxish posted:Not sure I follow what you're saying here. The article I linked is discussing a study on the health effects of working more than 40 hours per week, not productivity. It boils down to an increased risk of strokes and cardiovascular disease. Oh, well then yeah any amount of exertion will cause health effects but I don't know if it's actually seen in significant/troublesome amounts before 8 hours/day (discounting obvious things like skipping lunch).
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Aug 20, 2015 19:30
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Doesn't help that it's by definition a sedentary profession.
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Aug 20, 2015 19:38
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I am a software developer and actually worked in a company with unrealistic expectations. While people in this thread paint the picture of randroids putting insane hours to show how badass they are, my experiences suggest something else. The place where I worked was a mobile phone development company. It was 2008 and their main source of income were JavaME ports on concrete models - they were only dabbling with producing their own content on smartphones. This changed very quickly, as their initial market shrank. When I started working there, they were already trying to produce games and applications from the scratch, mostly outsourced by bigger studios. First thing first, such companies usually employ young people - freshly graduated, or even ones that still study. Most of them don't know what the gently caress they are getting into, what they may expect from the new job and how much money they should demand. The utmost secrecy about salaries pretty much every company tries to enforce now doesn't help. During my interview I was asked if I can stay several hours longer when there's an emergency and I answered positively. What I didn't know was that "emergencies" were actually pretty common at the end of the project, and sometimes in the middle. Which required putting 10-12 hours daily and often showing up to work on Saturday. I wish I could say it was worth it, but they paid me half what other companies normally offer. When I worked there, I met maybe several insane libertarians who were really proud of their ability to put insane hours for pittance (and one of them were actually compensated much better than the rest). Most just wanted to get over with this. They worked overtime when demanded, but weren't too happy about it. The turnover rate was, of course, insane. People came to the company initially full of enthusiasm, which you could almost see evaporating from them month by month. First they thought the difficulties were only temporary and, once everything gets normal again, the company will surely see and appreciate their dedication. After realizing they can only get a pat in the back and maybe a pittance of money more, they were starting to search for a new job pretty fast. Some of them were really pissed - I remember a team leader resigning in the middle of the project and not giving a poo poo about it through his notice period, or a tester who wrote an e-mail sent to pretty much every coworker comparing the company to a cotton plantation. There was a small minority of people who actually stayed there more than 1,5 year - I suspect it was because they believed themselves unemployable, or just were too scared to seek for a new job. Even they didn't try to pretend they have a future in this company - they were planning to give it up just like you give up smoking. No, really, maybe 6 months and I'm going to find another job! Things that the article presents as Amazon ideology, I actually heard from my coworkers sometimes - but it never felt sincere. The management, of course, encouraged such a viewpoint. For fellow software developers it was more a coping mechanism, a way to find a bright side of a very lovely situation. Once they realized they actually can find a better job for more money where they only need to put 40 hours a week, they hosed off without hesitation. The company tried to keep them mostly by patting them in the back when they (rarely) succeeded and constantly telling them they are lovely developers otherwise, which never works too long. I'm somewhat curious how much Amazon work ethos is actually something they believe in, and how much this is just their method of dealing with the fact they are a lovely company where most people don't want to work for too long. If asked why qualified people are really leaving them, this way they can respond that it was the wrong kind of people they never wanted anyway.
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Aug 20, 2015 20:49
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Computer engineering is a legitimate field that is pretty much electrical engineering and computer science. Software engineering is some shaky ground, though.
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Aug 20, 2015 20:55
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H.P. Hovercraft posted:This came up back in 2003 in Texas (and didn't go anywhere). The state engineering board chairman had a pretty good explanation: loving hell this is the irl version of the dickwaving contest between the CS program and Software Engineering program at my school
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Aug 20, 2015 20:58
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H.P. Hovercraft posted:This came up back in 2003 in Texas (and didn't go anywhere). The state engineering board chairman had a pretty good explanation: I passed the FE exam and in general having a PE license is pretty useless for most types of engineering. It's only useful for certain types of engineering such as civil in which signing off final drawings and other types of design documents is common place.
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Aug 21, 2015 00:35
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etalian posted:
By which you mean legally required.
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Aug 21, 2015 00:59
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At least we aren't discussing the gig economy
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Aug 21, 2015 01:02
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computer parts posted:By which you mean legally required. Also the largest contingent of engineers. And you typically need one for other types if you're in management, particularly for mechanical and electrical.
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Aug 21, 2015 01:03
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If you don't drive a train, you're not an engineer.
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Aug 21, 2015 01:06
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Eskaton posted:Computer engineering is a legitimate field that is pretty much electrical engineering and computer science. Software engineering is some shaky ground, though. It sounds like having signature authority would be meaningful if the software was used to control vehicles (airplanes especially), medical devices, traffic signals, power plants, etc. The sort of thing where a bug would kill lots of people. Do I have the wrong idea here?
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Aug 21, 2015 01:08
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Solkanar512 posted:It sounds like having signature authority would be meaningful if the software was used to control vehicles (airplanes especially), medical devices, traffic signals, power plants, etc. The sort of thing where a bug would kill lots of people. Oh, there's already licensure for that sort of software design in order to attach legit engineering liability
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Aug 21, 2015 01:14
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computer parts posted:By which you mean legally required. Yeah certain types of engineering require being able to stamp and seal documents.
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Aug 21, 2015 01:19
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This gets brought up a lot, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 is an interesting story of software controls gone awry.quote:[Therac-25] was involved in at least six accidents between 1985 and 1987, in which patients were given massive overdoses of radiation.[1]:425 Because of concurrent programming errors, it sometimes gave its patients radiation doses that were thousands of times greater than normal, resulting in death or serious injury.[2] These accidents highlighted the dangers of software control of safety-critical systems, and they have become a standard case study in health informatics and software engineering.
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Aug 21, 2015 01:21
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Malcolm posted:This gets brought up a lot, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 is an interesting story of software controls gone awry. Here's an article about engineered software. NASA knows how good the software has to be. Before every flight, Ted Keller, the senior technical manager of the on-board shuttle group, flies to Florida where he signs a document certifying that the software will not endanger the shuttle. If Keller can't go, a formal line of succession dictates who can sign in his place. Bill Pate, who's worked on the space flight software over the last 22 years, says the group understands the stakes: "If the software isn't perfect, some of the people we go to meetings with might die.
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Aug 21, 2015 01:36
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H.P. Hovercraft posted:Oh, there's already licensure for that sort of software design in order to attach legit engineering liability Oh cool, thanks for clearing that up! Solkanar512 fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 01:48
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H.P. Hovercraft posted:Here's an article about engineered software. The on-board software team has been more the exception than the rule for the Shuttle even compared to groups comprised of engineers. The engine control computers had all but completed emergency shut down of the main engines in response to inadequate fuel flow when the shuttle disintegrated. Meanwhile the engines themselves were being used with known flaws that could result in engine failure. While contingency plans for such failures existed, they were completely untested. The RTLS profile in particular was considered for testing before the first orbital flight but decided against with the literal words "let's not practice Russian Roulette". Another astronaut considered it "just something to keep you busy while you're waiting to die." However in many of the possible scenarios, there was no way to prevent loss of crew and vehicle even with "two miracles followed by an act of God." In spite of knowing this and that the engines had unresolved issues the engineers were willing to certify that the shuttle was good to go. This was all made moot by Morton Thiokol's engineers assigning a safety factor of 3 to O-rings acting as the rocket motor equivalent of load-bearing drywall. The on-board shuttle group's methodology is also being compared to industry practice from almost 20 years ago with some rhetorical flourish about those Gen X whippersnappers with their rocking and their rolling. Having an independent QA team testing the code is standard practice. So is code review. So is having a source code repository. So is recording any defects in a bug tracking system like Jira and referencing the ticket when committing a fix to the source code repository. Where they diverge is that most companies don't have $35 million to spend every year maintaining a 420 KLOC codebase. Most companies also don't have stakeholders willing to commit to a 40,000 page spec to make a piece of software with the absolute minimal set of features possible that will only run by itself on exactly one model of computer based on the IBM System/360 mainframe. That and it's common to have suites of automated tests that run after any change to ensure it doesn't break anything long before a human tester ever sets eyes on it. And that's the fundamental problem: As much as NASA said that it wanted something safe enough to suffer one loss of crew and vehicle per 100,000 flights, they really wanted something with all the cool features and pushed their contractors' engineers to deliver that. People say they want reliable software but they really want features so long as it doesn't kill anyone, or at least so long as it doesn't kill them and doesn't cost anything.
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Aug 21, 2015 10:04
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SquadronROE posted:I know that the Amazon article was pretty much showcasing how badly the business side of the business is treated (most Engineers at Amazon I've talked to report a completely different culture), but there is a push out there to get developers to write code for 12 hours a day seven days a week. You can see it in the idea of startup culture being enshrined, you can see it in the celebration of the "rock star" coder who stays up all night to churn out a deliverable, you can see it in the questions that HR managers and CEOs are asking (How do I emulate the culture Google has?) and you can see it in the types of benefits offered (dinner to stay late, laptops becoming the norm so people can work from home, video games and such so that people spend more free time at work). This is retarded though, if I worked at a poo poo company like that I would milk them for all they're worth by essentially doing all my non-work stuff on the clock and even if I didn't actively offering people distraction during work time may or may not be a good idea 
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Aug 21, 2015 13:44
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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blowfish posted:This is retarded though, if I worked at a poo poo company like that I would milk them for all they're worth by essentially doing all my non-work stuff on the clock and even if I didn't actively offering people distraction during work time may or may not be a good idea A mere retarded idea drop in the sea of retarded ideas had by the managerial class throughout history. Huzanko fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 14:13
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