spratzt

They’re also completely illegal in Europe under GDPR regulations.

Isn’t strange that this talent shortage never translates itself into decent rates?

Rubbish!

I have an iPhone 16 and it has a sim slot.

The silence is deafening

I used to do similar work. Back in the day I used 25 TB as the cut off point for single node design. It’s certainly larger now.

You’re absolutely right about the organizational dynamics.

Many mangers in large companies, derive their status and power from a knowledge of existing business processes and procedures. Any substantive changes to those procedures obviously represent an existential threat to that position and they generally resist it, often very vigorously.

Kent’s original book is a masterpiece. He pretty much defined data modelling nearly fifty years ago. It’s depressing how little of real interest has been added since.

For the reasons you rightly pointed out, the current edition is a disaster.

Even as an entry level business analyst you’re probably make more than a COBOL programmer. Don’t touch it.

As somebody who has written both COBOL and APL, I can assure you that they are both obsolete.

You certainly won’t hit it with most corporate OLAP processing, which is nearly all read-only SQlite. Writes are generally batched and processed outside ‘normal’ business hours, where the limitations of SQlite writing are irrelevant.

No. The issue is whether you NEED to not whether you want to.

10 to 15 years ago, you could argue, however implausibly, that hardware constraints meant vertical scaling was impossible, and you were forced to adopt a distributed architecture. Subsequent improvement in hardware performance, means that in 2025, vertical scaling is perfect acceptable in nearly all areas, relegating distributed architecture to the most niche and marginal applications. The type of applications that the vast majority of businesses will never encounter.

I would go even further and argue that vast majority of businesses will never need to think about distributed systems. Modern hardware makes them irrelevant to all but the most niche of applications.

Genuinely curious about what sort of business stores and processes 14 PB on a 60 node cluster.

I absolutely agree.

It’s also a silly to believe that because it’s old it’s culturally significant. There’s plenty of ancient dross in the back catalogues.

Frankly, these words are too kind.

It’s slightly more nuanced than that. Investment banks and consultancy companies are really interested in graduates who are smart and articulate. The nature of their degree is not that relevant.

I know an extremely clever young woman who graduated in performance arts. She had no difficulty in getting a job at a top tier consultancy company. This company was far more interested in her than some mediocre plodder who hacked his way through a comp. Sci degree.

The vast majority of jobs on LinkedIn are fake. Even so your figures confirm my claim; 24k graduates versus 15k jobs. The supply is greater than the demand.

As a sibling comment has pointed out, there are too many software engineers in the UK.

Unfortunately in 2025 you can probably add software engineering to the list of degrees to avoid.

The vast majority of businesses will never need more than single node architecture. Hardware advances are continually increasing that percentage.

SPARK and its modern counterpart Databricks are essentially obsolete for these organizations. Whatever justification they may have had in the past is no longer true.

I’ve recently closed down several in house SPARK clusters and replaced them with single nodes.

In addition to the simplicity of the design and reduction in cost there was a massive increase in performance. I expect this will become more common in the future; leaving distributed architecture for a small and increasingly niche group.

The market can remain depressed for longer than you can remain solvent.

We should be encouraging people to look at alternative careers to tech. Life after tech.

We should also be making it clear to students that while there are exciting things happening in tech this is not going to translate into large scale demand for people.

Large parts of technology are mature, indeed moribund. This is not a message that the technology industry wants to hear.

It’s extraordinary how frequently companies discuss the cost of a bad hire and never consider the opportunity cost of a no-hire.

Companies that keep waiting for Mr. Right are really saying that the opportunity cost of not completing their project is very low. In other words it’s not really that important at all.

This was wonderfully explored in the following paper

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/668166

Extraordinary!

I can’t think of any of the advent of code questions this year where a database would have been of any use.

Do tell us more.

I suggest you come over to the UK.

I know several guys with postgraduate STEM degrees and 10 years of development experience who can’t even get interviews.

It’s very bad here.

You’re too kind. There’s nothing borderline about it.

The requirement for programmer’s is absolutely going to decline.

Some will undoubtably transition to broader based business consultancy services. For those unable or unwilling to do so the future is bleak.

You don’t have to go to China. I live and work in the UK and use Apple Pay for everything. I haven’t carried a wallet in years.

For those interested in escaping the Hacker Prison where ‘Weeks of coding can save hours of thinking’ I strongly recommend William Kent’s book “Data and Reality’.

I’ve always liked Foucault’s inversion of the old cliche: ‘Power is knowledge’

Try this.

https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/