what's wrong with blue-collar work? tech elitism never fails to amuse me.

anyway, there is a push to do the same for doctors [1] and lawyers [2], so your point is moot anyway. the problem is that with credentialed backgrounds it will never be as easy so it will always seem like tech is more accessible, which it is inherently.

finally, with respect to incarceration and being a part of a profession, unfortunately many hospitals and law firms will not hire felons, which is a problem in itself, but it's a fact. so this kind of website would be difficult for those fields. so even if med school and law school respectively weren't necessary, it would still be difficult. tech companies are very liberal in this aspect, actually.

[1] https://www.ama-assn.org/about/leadership/ama-s-strategic-pl...

[2] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/publications/l...

You literally directly contradict yourself. You link to two pages that have absolutely nothing to do with getting formerly incarcerated people into law/medicine, then immediately concede that there isn’t an effort to do so because they’re not welcome in those fields.

Your failure to keep two paragraphs of texts consistent and coherent badly undermines your overall point. It’s pretty clear tech as a whole is a lot less elitist than law/medicine.

People are “elitist” because there is non stop pressure to drive down wages of engineers and it’s often disguised as progressivism. It can also undermine the professional and political power of engineers if the field is constantly portrayed as easy for anyone to enter. The AMA knows this better than anyone as they’ve tightly restricted the number of new doctors for decades, so it’s highly ironic you’d even link to them at all.

oh goodness, there's a lot to unpack here.

>You literally directly contradict yourself. You link to two pages that have absolutely nothing to do with getting formerly incarcerated people into law/medicine, then immediately concede that there isn’t an effort to do so because they’re not welcome in those fields.

I linked to the two respective institutions that lobby for physicians and lawyers respectively. They cannot be compared to some crappy random website for ex-felons going to tech. If that's what you're looking for I can find those for you, too.

Furthermore, it's disadvantaged or incarcerated. Or do you believe that people with disabilities (as referred to by both organizations explicitly) are not disadvantaged?

> People are “elitist” because there is non stop pressure to drive down wages of engineers and it’s often disguised as progressivism. It can also undermine the professional and political power of engineers if the field is constantly portrayed as easy for anyone to enter. The AMA knows this better than anyone as they’ve tightly restricted the number of new doctors for decades, so it’s highly ironic you’d even link to them at all.

there's a lot of problems with the AMA and medicine in general but it's a profession that inherently needs to be credentialed, as is law, due to the fact that failure to perform leads to more severe consequences as compared to tech.

finally you cannot compare doctors specifically to all of tech. if you're talking about health in general there has been a huge push to get more nurse practitioners and physicians assistants in the field to replace many of the doctors that PCPs have.

> failure to perform leads to more severe consequences as compared to tech.

When “we” (people who write code) fuck up, things like this can and have happened:

- people die of radiation poisoning (Therac 25)

- cars crash (Toyota unintended acceleration, Tesla autopilot fails)

- rockets explode (Ariane 5)

- hundreds of millions of dollars are lost (Knight Capital)

- the financial information of millions is exposed (Equifax)

Isn't this why we have unit testing, code review, CI?

Also most of us aren't working in these industries. Most software developers build consumer apps for buying stuff or serving ads.

All of Facebook was just down from a single error. No one died.

This is crystal clear, to the point, and well put. The response to your comment makes no sense and is all over the place.

Anything that starts with 'there's a lot to unpack ' is going to be mental gymnastics communicated in a patronizing tone to defend someone's ego.

Just wanted to say I agree with all of your points and think it does tech a disservice to treat it like a blue collar job instead of a profession but at the same time the lack of professional strictness has led to alot of rapid innovation.

So it's hard to tell what's right.

> treat it like a blue collar job instead of a profession

Blue collar work isn’t a profession?

it's my impression that professionals are business people lawyers doctors etc

Trades people are certainly professionals.

Not saying that trades people aren't professional and work with professionalism.

But there's a common understanding of the noun professional as the upper tier White collar jobs.

accountants lawyers doctors etc

There is nothing wrong, except that, usually in a blue collar job, everyone is replaceable and the salaries are low to average.

Yes, all of this come from fear of not being able to make a living as a programmer in 10 years

> Yes, all of this come from fear of not being able to make a living as a programmer in 10 years

Caveat: I'm in the USA, so what I'm about to say may only apply here. I don't know the market for software engineers outside the USA.

In 10 years, you and I will have 10 more years of experience than we do now. We will probably be twice as valuable to a company. Anyone who joins the field today will forever be behind us in years of experience. Years of experience means nothing if the experience isn't valuable, so we need to continue improving. That's a good thing.

I don't know the exact distribution, but not everyone who joins the field today will even be able to compete with us for jobs in 10 years. I'm just guessing here, but I think the majority of people, or at least a very large minority, don't make it to senior level. Some quit and change careers, others don't want to or can't get there.

I'm in no way concerned about job security in 10 years. I see AI being a larger threat to our jobs than other developers. But I doubt it will be a threat to my career. I have about 30 years left, and each year I have more experience than before. So AI would have to overtake me at some point in the next 30 years, and in the meantime also overtake /lots/ of others. The software engineering field would be fairly decimated by AI before it took my job.

Does experience matter in technology that much?

Exactly. We see it again and again that years of experience don't matter unless it is with a specific tech, and tech gets replaced all the time.

Yes but from the frame that the amount of diff problems you experience matters. Not your 10 years of experience solving 1 set of problems

everyone is replaceable in tech too (or basically any job for that matter).

Eager, but not "too." Reading this site I see very little interest from developers in professionalizing their industry. That would require standards bodies, licensing, and many other layers of management and cruft.

Personally, I'd say good on developers for welcoming all comers. Hack the planet, you know?

<3

This comment just doesn't sit right with me. Obviously there's the issue that it reeks of tech elitism but there's more to it than that.

Like not everyone needs to pass a FAANG hiring crap shoot. You can give someone useful skills with which they can earn a living.

As for accountants, well there are levels here too. Bookkeeping being one entry-level route. "Accountant" also means many things, like it's often conflated with "consultant" in, say, a Big Four (is it still Big Four?) case.

Lawyers actually do have a path to practice law without getting a law degree via a sort of apprenticeship program. It's not often used but it does exist.

And then there's doctors. If you ignore college and just focus on medical school plus required on-the-job training (ie residency program, possibly a fellowship), it can take 6-12 years to fully train a doctor.

Whatever you may think of us software engineers, we're nowhere near the same level as a doctor in terms of required training. And that's all there is to it. I mean no one figures out how to remove an appendix when they're 12 in their parents' garage.

But the US criminal "justice" system is really a human rights abomination for all the well-documented reasons (eg incarceration rate, racial bias, institutional rape, unjustifiably long sentences for possession of substances that are now legal in ~15 states, etc) but the big one is scarlet letter cruelty that most Americans seem to be OK with.

I am of course talking about the nefarious "are you a felon?" question on job and other applications. I'm of the view that once someone has served their time, you should no longer hold it over their head such that they can't get many jobs, rent an apartment, etc.

We should all be concerned about that if we care at all about recidivism. Unfortunately many Americans take a purely punitive view.

> required on-the-job training (ie residency program, possibly a fellowship), it can take 6-12 years to fully train a doctor.

> Whatever you may think of us software engineers, we're nowhere near the same level as a doctor in terms of required training.

I don't know about that.

Residency takes years, but I'm not convinced it couldn't be done faster (there are cultural reasons why it's done that way). Basically, there's a strict pecking order among residents (first years are taught and evaluated by second years and so on) and every "level" basically tries to show off to his boss (because most coveted spots are competitive).

That often degenerates into a contest of who can sleep the least and be the hero that keeps the floor from "falling apart". I've seen fourth year residents undo work from third years, who themselves re-did work the second year did, who himself re-did something the first year resident had done. Everyone "saved the day" that night, except when the attending came in the morning he agreed with the diagnosis and treatment the first year resident implemented. You get the picture.

The long years of schooling with little, expensive residency matching trips and interviews and unrelated undergrad required to even apply are all pretty good gatekeeping mechanism to keep poor people out however.

>Whatever you may think of us software engineers, we're nowhere near the same level as a doctor in terms of required training. And that's all there is to it. I mean no one figures out how to remove an appendix when they're 12 in their parents' garage

Kids arent chopping organs out in a garage because thats a future serial killer.

Kids make make medical breakthroughs all the time.

https://www.cnn.com/2014/08/14/health/8-whiz-kids-future-med...

Don't sell yourself short. I was a premed and comp sci dual degree. Computer Science was way more challenging than the pre med stuff.

The short answer is yes, the bar for a developer is much, much lower than for a lawyer, a doctor, or an accountant, requiring much less training. Doesn't mean that there aren't some forms of development that require considerable skill and experience, but many positions just don't.

The bar is lower because we don’t have formal testing like they do, e.g. the bar exam or med school.

So, would you require someone to get formal testing before they can code a website for someone for pay? Why?

You have heard of the tech interview process, yes? :-)

Possibly. It could prove that a dev knows what they’re doing. It might even eliminate the need for Leetcode style interview questions.

The parent mentioned regulated professions, but there is a flurry of roles surrounding lawyers, nurses and accountants that don't require certification.

Now, I'm sure there are programs to try to help ex-convicts to get into generic company roles like assistants, data operators etc.

The bar is lower, because we don't need such procedures for was majority of tech positions.

Good lord this hurts to see. Writing html and css isn't surgery or arguing a case in court. However many similar programs exist for paralegals and accountants. I don't think there are a lot of jail to rocket science programs but coding isnt rocket science.

Is scaling a high performance financial platform that needs to have .000001 downtime simple? No. Is this program trying to train anyone to do that? No. There are plenty, and I'd argue the majority, of software jobs that are pretty simple and can be picked up by most folks with average intelligence and interested/effort.

Aren't we too eager to gatekeep the profession?

> Aren’t we too eager to commoditize the profession?

On the other hand, the USA opens around 500,000 coding jobs per year and graduates only 50,000 CS grads. Lots of room for inviting more people into the profession.

I had to research this recently for my greencard application. More context with sources: https://swizec.com/blog/software-engineering-best-job/

For lawyers, passing the Bar and education are just one requirement. In some cases your criminal record simply classes you as not "good moral character" and you are denied admission to the Bar or school (w/o significant effort)

Blue-collar literally means manual labor. So no, developers are by definition not blue collar.

There aren't similar programs for other professions you listed because (1) all of them are highly regulated and have significant education requirements as well as additional certifications/licenses/board approvals, and (2) tech is in general more progressive and liberal when it comes to social issues.

For the last part, I feel like tech has actually proven that you don't need to artificially gatekeep your profession in order to make your members more valuable. If tech was commoditized then wages would be coming down, but in reality it's the opposite.

Why would that bother you? If they can do the job then why not? Lawyers, doctors and accountants have deep certification moats protecting them, perhaps appropriately, but software development is still relatively free from credentialism.

I don't think so, the only thing that separates lawyers/Dr's etc vs. developers is there is no requirement for a degree or certification for a developer. With the other professions there is.

What's wrong with being a blue-collar worker / commoditizing the profession? Seems fine, in and of itself.

If you mean it as a proxy for salaries going down because of competition - so many engineering orgs are understaffed, I don't think that's realistic. And tech is, as they say, eating the world. Demand for software engineers seems to be steadily growing; I'm not concerned about supply catching up, at least within my lifetime.

If you're concerned about working with formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged people - that's on you, buddy. Seems great to me. (And yes, that's on most doctors, lawyers, and accountants too. The legal profession in particular, as another commenter pointed out, is awfully gatekeepy. The medical profession requires a whole bunch of formal training, which we have culturally never been excited about imposing. And so forth.)

Wouldn't be bad to have more lawyers and doctors.

I don’t understand how including people who’ve been incarcerated commodifies the profession. But I also continue to identify as a worker and have solidarity with my fellow workers, so I’m probably not your intended audience.

There's been decades to make a decent and well recognized credential like lawyers/doctors but the industry was having none of it, so I guess we are getting "commoditized".

Haha, A+ certification from the late 90s has entered the chat. MCSE anyone?

Someone who fixes cars isn't the same as someone who builds prototypes, despite the fact they both know their way around engine parts. Lumping all developers into the same category is just as ridiculous. There are blue collar development jobs, doesn't mean all developers are blue-collar workers.

The equivalent for doctors would be nursing programs, and I'm pretty sure there are similar programs for nurses - like developers, there are a lack of nurses right now.

I would love to become a doctor, I was an EMT before I was incarcerated. No medical institution would ever take on the liability of hiring me. Legal is very much the same way, the board can deny you licensure based on your "moral character."

People who think devs can become blue collar workers don't understand that you actually have to be smart to be a good developer regardless of credentials.

The only difference between a programmer and a lawyer is a lawyer can't practice law on his own and get feedback without hurting anyone, and a programmer can get feedback from his laptop.

But you can get surprisingly far in the field without being a good programmer.

Incompetent people sliding by is hardly limited to programming

Yeah but look at the ease of breaking in + how much it pays (even in worse jobs). Its probably the best value.

I think you are overestimating the ease of breaking in. Out of 800 job posts in the ask HN hiring thread this month, only 2-3 mentioned they are willing to hire junior devs.

This is a biased data set of course but you will see similar patterns across the board. Even people with degrees, it's getting hard to break in because most companies have realized that hiring senior developers is better value for money.

In tech, you are also constantly tested regardless of how many years of experience you have. This doesn't happen in other field at the same frequency so you don't get to slack off if you want to switch jobs.

I agree generally, but I think the reason executives lean on seniority is because they have no confidence in their own team to make a good technical hire, or spending a lot time/money/effort on the hiring process isn't a priority. They assume if someone has had a job for a few years, that they can't be that bad. Nobody ever got fired for hiring a former FAANG employee.

They started adding tests after this approach failed, and they're making the same mistake in a different way. Having the motivation to grind leetcode is not the same as having the motivation to finish a software project. You'll end up with a lot of people who really want the money, and will suffer any number of hoops, but in the end they really hate the work.

I have no idea how someone totally incompetent could break through. Like, what do they say in the interviews? Or do they just memorize the answers?

> Or do they just memorize the answers

Yes, and guess where they learned it from? Regurgitation and handing in "something" on time can pretty easily get you a degree, even at a top tier school. That will get you further at most organizations than a resume with completed software projects and no college degree. Once you are in, it's easy to do enough to avoid getting fired. No one wants to take the blame for a bad hire.

After a few years, they're a mid-level engineer and maybe they make good looking diagrams. They answer all of their emails, they show up for the meetings that actual engineers don't want to attend. They have a purpose and fill a role, even if they still fundamentally don't understand what's going on.

No matter where you go, or how high up the chain you get, they will be on every team and in every meeting. What they lack in technical understanding they cover with political and social skills. Which also means they will be your management.

I can't reply to your most recent response, so I'm replying here instead.

You have gone from saying

- "you actually have to be smart to be a good developer", to

- "Incompetent people sliding by is hardly limited to programming", to

- "I have no idea how someone totally incompetent could break through".

The original statement was not "totally incompetent people can break through". The original statement was "Are developers the new blue-collar workers?" And your response assumes that blue-collar workers are not smart. In fact, it seems like you think blue collar workers are "totally incompetent" since you created an equivalency between "blue collar workers", "not smart", then "incompetent", and lastly "totally incompetent." That is incredibly ignorant and prejudiced.

I don't like the implicit statement that trades workers are not smart.

I think about that a lot. It's interesting though, that you make the suggestion with a reference to three professions which require a certain level of security clearance, and an adherence to a legally upheld standard, in order to hold practice.

They always were, it's just they got fooled by the free snacks and occasional ballpit. The fact "no one " get hired past 40 is another indication.

Blue-collar worker means labor ( both skilled and unskilled ), but deep down they are nothing more than a cog in the machine ( just look at any Jira board ).

Lawyers, doctors or accountants are valued as they grow old. Programmers? apart from the anecdotes they are mostly viewed as tired beasts of burden. Our industry is infantile and as long as there's fresh meat coming-in in droves it will never change and that's one of the main reasons you are a blue-collar worker.

The golden watch is the promise of fuck-you-money. How many workers get golden watches these days?

"Developer" is not a profession.

you dont need a license or any degree to make a web page

wow, what a jerk. this is some seriously classist BS right here..

I’m ashamed that it gives that impression