Will programming skills be valuable in the future or are we in another tech bubble?
06-25-2014, 11:47 PM
as someone who was a programmer ( never that good) there are two things that work against you:
1) There is no guild to protect you. It takes years to get a license to practice my health care profession. Someone could be twice as good as me and could not possibly get hired because they only hire licensed people. Politically, many may not like this but it is the reality. Older professions, unlike programming, like medicine, law, real estate agents, have barriers to entry that keep people out.
2) As you age new languages get harder to learn and there is age discrimination for sure which members of this board don't encounter because they're under 40. I've had friends go in for job interviews who are in their 40s and the interviewer was 25, and the job seeker knew right off they were blown out. Cool young people want to be around young cool people.
You can make a LOT if you get situated right-- If you really knew Python, or whatever is hot now, you could make enough in the next 10 years to retire probably-- if you are 25.
However, for the most part, unless you are really elite, only programmers that get stock options make what the psychiatrists where I work (California) do: 300K per year plus. It is 100% impossible to get hired there without a license; and they will hire ANYONE with a license who is not completely incoherent.
All of the following doctors I work with are from foreign ( lower status) medical schools: There are very fat older women who are not native speakers of English, VERY old ( late 70s) doctors who are not native speakers of English. All the employers care about is the license. NONE of these people would EVER get hired at Facebook or Google or any cool SF startup even as a janitor. They are hired immediately in health care for 300k+, there are even signing bonuses of 100K. The guild protects itself. (American Medical Association.) Admittedly, that is the most successful guild in the country probably.
The human body doesn't change, except incrementally as new things like nano tech therapy emerge-- still the millennia old systems-- heart, lungs, etc-- remain exactly the same. New information found is incremental.
Technology by its very nature changes quickly and continuously.
No one is going to abandon the heart in the near future for some other "app".
A somewhat similar system is in place for actuaries. There are levels of testing you pass. Once a system like that is in place it gives you much more job security as the companies will generally stop hiring people who _haven't_ passed the guild system of testing. Why take the risk?
1) There is no guild to protect you. It takes years to get a license to practice my health care profession. Someone could be twice as good as me and could not possibly get hired because they only hire licensed people. Politically, many may not like this but it is the reality. Older professions, unlike programming, like medicine, law, real estate agents, have barriers to entry that keep people out.
2) As you age new languages get harder to learn and there is age discrimination for sure which members of this board don't encounter because they're under 40. I've had friends go in for job interviews who are in their 40s and the interviewer was 25, and the job seeker knew right off they were blown out. Cool young people want to be around young cool people.
You can make a LOT if you get situated right-- If you really knew Python, or whatever is hot now, you could make enough in the next 10 years to retire probably-- if you are 25.
However, for the most part, unless you are really elite, only programmers that get stock options make what the psychiatrists where I work (California) do: 300K per year plus. It is 100% impossible to get hired there without a license; and they will hire ANYONE with a license who is not completely incoherent.
All of the following doctors I work with are from foreign ( lower status) medical schools: There are very fat older women who are not native speakers of English, VERY old ( late 70s) doctors who are not native speakers of English. All the employers care about is the license. NONE of these people would EVER get hired at Facebook or Google or any cool SF startup even as a janitor. They are hired immediately in health care for 300k+, there are even signing bonuses of 100K. The guild protects itself. (American Medical Association.) Admittedly, that is the most successful guild in the country probably.
The human body doesn't change, except incrementally as new things like nano tech therapy emerge-- still the millennia old systems-- heart, lungs, etc-- remain exactly the same. New information found is incremental.
Technology by its very nature changes quickly and continuously.
No one is going to abandon the heart in the near future for some other "app".
A somewhat similar system is in place for actuaries. There are levels of testing you pass. Once a system like that is in place it gives you much more job security as the companies will generally stop hiring people who _haven't_ passed the guild system of testing. Why take the risk?