It’s certainly not perfect, but I genuinely think it’s much better than being an FTE anywhere else. Of course I’m biased.
I mentioned benefits in another post, so I wouldn’t say it’s gig economy.
What other environment could give a developer $100+/hr, ability to make their own schedule, and essentially all legal protections to work on side projects, work for other companies, etc. at the same time?
Is it for everyone? No. But we’ve had more quality devs interested than we can employ at this point, so I’d say it’s attractive to a good portion of the market.
You've forgotten the core tenet of every engineering discipline is the master-apprentice relationship. The reason why what you describe is really the gig economy is because you've turned contractors into autodidacts to cut costs. You're not only expecting engineers to work for you, you're expecting them to learn their craft without capitalizing that yourself. Someone has to pay for that too; it probably won't be your other contractors -- otherwise you'd be something like a real company again.
Your success in this direction to turn software development into some kind of cattle feedlot is only a mirage. Let me make it clear in economic terms: you're up a few chips at the casino, for now, because the market allows you to be. In the long run it's not sustainable, and won't yield any major feats of engineering with any level of competence.
At what point did I say or lead anyone to believe that we 1.) expect developers to be autodidacts? Because we don’t have meetings? Seems an odd way to measure engineering culture and 2.) this had anything to do with cutting cost? Our hourly wages are high enough to where the cost savings is negligible compared to fully loaded salaries. I’d be happy to share the numbers over email.
Your idea of the master-apprentice relationship seems overtly romantic. I never said we don’t train staff, or haven’t brought on younger engineers. I literally onboarded an intern last week. They’ll likely make more working less than any intern at any FAANG is making this summer.
> Your success in this direction to turn software development into some kind of cattle feedlot is only a mirage.
I have to straight up disagree on the premise that it’s a mirage. Nevertheless, this is certainly an experiment, and one where we’ll adapt as needed.
I feel as if you’re focusing too much on the contractor concept. Would you be as opposed to this model if say I hired FTEs at 20 hours per week? So essentially half salary. How is this any different (note my previous comments about benefits).
College is not job training. I'm not sure why this misconception is so widespread. I have a degree but my employers do pay for relevant training for my job. It's not like the industry stopped evolving 10 years ago.
It's what we want. I wouldn't work any other way ever again. I don't think FTE jobs are going anywhere (companies always push to have us as FTE, not the other way around), let us be.
If you would treat devs like warehouse workers right now,all devs would run away. I mean force them to be 100% effective all the 8 hours and track every move they make. On the other hand allow warehouse workers flexible schedule and decent pay so they could live decent life by puting in 20 hours a week (even while measuring every move they make) and i bet there would be devs who would convert to warehouse workers.
If you would treat devs like warehouse workers right now,all devs would run away. I mean force them to be 100% effective all the 8 hours and track every move they make.
CleverControl employee monitoring pitch: "This software offers powerful features: keylogging, screen recording, live viewing, remote settings, clipboard control, Skype monitoring, and more. The software records time that was spent on this or that activity and shows you stats in graphs. Besides, the app captures screenshots at all important events like right-clicking and window change, and it can record activity near the device with the help of a webcam and microphone. Moreover, CleverControl records employees’ active and inactive time, letting you detect lazybones and reward hard work."
This would trigger Italian strike in me (as a dev) immediately :)
"Another unconventional tactic is work-to-rule (also known as an Italian strike, in Italian: Sciopero bianco), in which workers perform their tasks exactly as they are required to but no better."
I heard about these tracking software and I sincerely hope they won't get any more prevalent. As I see they are somewhat present in the contracting world.
I treat it as a total, humiliating devaluation of creative engineering work (and thus their identity!) to that of unskilled factory workers.
Eventually, maybe developers will realize that they have a lot more in common with those "unskilled" workers they disdain than they do with their capitalist owners.
can they already do this with all the data they have in github? Not that I would endorse it, but that sounds like better data for tracking. Instead of enforcing time you enforce activities.
No this is massively more invasive than checking your commit history. Github doesn't know moment to moment what you're doing while these invasive tracking programs do.
Commit history only tells them when you do commits... these tools tell you what people are doing between commits. There's no way a single tool's history gives more information than logging every keystroke and monitoring the screen... At best it's a less noisy stream but doesn't contain nearly as much information.
You missed the OPs point in all your heavily laden snark.
There are (sad, imo) people whose entire lives revolve around work. Their friends are there, and they enjoy social outings with their work colleagues.
To me, social outings are just an unnecessary risk. I do not talk to my coworkers like I talk to my friends, I do not want my coworkers knowing too much about my personal life, and especially when booze is involved it's too easy to find yourself on the receiving end of something awkward, or witness to something awkward.
Meetings are simple: if it's important enough to take an hour of my day it's important enough to count as seat time. When my productivity drops and my manager asks why I tell them that meetings are taking up too much time. It's their job to make sure I have what I need to do my best work. If they tell me to work later I start looking for other jobs. It's so easy to get a senior developer job now, and there's really no long term benefit staying anywhere, that I'm not exactly sorry for leaving in this case.
I have literally zero interest in "culture". I wouldn't even work for a company if I didnt need the money to live. I don't understand how you've derived the dichotomy that you can either have mindless time sink "culture" bullshit OR an amazon warehouse slaveshop.
Call me a pessimist. I think people obsessed with "work culture" are sad. You shouldn't hate the 8 hours of work you do, but you also shouldn't center your entire life on it. Afterall, it could be taken away from you with a penstroke the next time the CEO needs to make room in the budget for their salary.
So, gig economy. Or, at best, hourly wage at Amazon warehouse, but for developers. I heard those warehouses are super extra no-bullshit efficient.