
State of Software Engineers 2019 - ksec
https://hired.com/page/state-of-software-engineers/key-takeaways/
======
gregdoesit
What a silly report. Looking at the top two key takeaways:

>Global demand for blockchain engineers is up 517%

Was, you meant to say. It's dropping steeply. Also, 517% compared too what?
Previously, barely anyone hiring, and now 5 in 10,000 positions mentioning
blockchain?

>Search engineers in San Francisco are paid the most, earning $157K on average

WHAT? Search engineers? What is “search engineers”? And $157K in SF being the
most? This is false. You probably meant to say "senior engineers in San
Francisco are earning the most". I only know engineers in San Francisco
earning (in base, not counting stock or bonus) above $157K. My sample size is
small, but 20/20.

Compare this with the Levels.FYI report: Highest Paying Tech Companies of
2019[1]. You see how the top tech companies are paying over $200K for entry
level engineers in SF, well above $400K for senior levels.

Who writes this report? Or does this reflect how e.g. some of the top roles -
FAANG and other tech companies - steer clear from places like Hired.com?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21804509](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21804509)

~~~
nogabebop23
The sillyness continues:

Headline: "1/2 of programmers prefer to work at a company that does pair
programming"

Actual Question: "If pair programming was a common practice at a company,
would it affect your interest in working there?"

The headline suggests 1/2 people are explicitly choosing paired workplaces
over solo; the question just says "is this something on your radar?" and is
way more passive.

~~~
lowercased
that doesn't even seen to ask what effect the practice would have. would i be
more interested in working some place where pairing was common? many people
might not - they'd still put 'yes' on that question, as it would 'affect their
interest'.

------
maxaf
> Half of engineers prefer to work at a company that does pair programming

Well, I’m glad that it’s only half. Isn’t that neat?

I wish this meme of “company that does pair programming” would die a slow and
agonizing death. Not everyone’s brain is wired for pair programming. I do
plenty of presenting at work, where I share my screen and write code, Twitch-
style, for an audience of coworkers. I do this in order to convey material to
a captive audience, not as a baseline method of doing work. “Teaching” and
“programming” are two non-overlapping activities for me, as the communications
aspect tends to overtake most of my mental capacity, leaving only a precious
few cycles for problem solving and creativity.

Any company that considers itself special enough to change how people work is
not only delusional, but will also burn through good people who are
neurologically different from the type that enjoys pair programming.

In short, flexibility is the name of the game.

~~~
pts_
I loathe pair programming. Do people play pair chess?

~~~
maxaf
There’s “pair tennis” (I know nothing about tennis, so apologies if that’s not
what it’s called) which seems to flow alright, but tennis is a much more
tightly constrained activity than programming. There are only a few actions
each player appears to perform, with all other actions explicitly falling out
of bounds set by rules of the game.

Chess is a much wider problem domain. I can’t imagine anyone playing pair
chess.

~~~
nicoburns
Really? You've never seen two people on a team playing chess (discussing the
best move, etc)?

~~~
rightbyte
Each player has his own board side so you wouldn't notice.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess)

I assume that's what he meant.

------
gamesbrainiac
This report is bogus, there is no way in hell Search Engineers are only making
157K in San Fran.

~~~
knocte
Wtf is a search engineer?

~~~
pheug
A google engineer in search PA?

Actually $157k salary sounds plausible, it's in the range of base salary for
L4 band which is the most common level at google AFAIK. Of course, there
should be like an extra $100k in stocks and bonuses on top of it, and noone
from FAANG cares about base salary figure alone.

------
ar_lan
All I can say is I really, really despise Python and also I don’t think this
is a good report.

------
odiroot
> Half of engineers prefer to work at a company that does pair programming.

Oh please god, no. Don't make it a trend.

~~~
swiley
For really junior people and interns it’s nice. It’s probably not so great for
everyone else.

~~~
klyrs
I've found pair programming to be very effective for mixing two non-
overlapping senior-level skillsets. For example, one person with deep domain
knowledge but little experience in a particular language can pair with a
language expert with little knowledge of the specific domain, to quickly
produce a high quality solution in a fraction of the time as either could
manage alone.

------
ksahin
Very interesting report! I was a bit shocked by these answers:

"What’s your 10-year goal? \- 36% just want to continue building cool things
\- 23% want to become a technology leader (SVP, CTO) \- 19% want to start
their own company \- 15% want to be a product leader \- 8% want to be able to
retire"

Only 19% want to start their own company in 10 years??

A few years ago when I was working in a big bank, I had the impression that
about 70% of my co-workers wanted to create their own company and 30% wanted
to become managers.

~~~
excerionsforte
Wasn't my impression at a smaller company I worked. I asked around about start
up ideas people had and no one had any. They liked their jobs and work. Some
said they are saving for retirement.

People who wanted to start their own company has been a minority. Sounds cool
to have your own company, but I think people realize it is really grueling
work and encompasses more than engineering. 10 years seems like a long stretch
for me tbh, I can't think past 1-2 years for my own. 2 years down the road,
sure I would like to has released a product that a team can be built around.

It is also conflated by age/economics. Is it more younger than older or older
than younger who want to start companies? Is it that people who have a safety
net feel more comfortable starting a company vs people who don't have a safety
net?

------
thundergolfer
Reading the info in this I had the thought that I’d love to get a report like
this when considering a company or a specific team within a company. A subset
of the questions would really help me assess fit quite quickly.

Has anyone talked about this or even tried to have this become a thing?

The alternative is having to tease this out during the ‘question time’ of
interviews, or in rare circumstances having prior knowledge of the people
you’ll be working with.

------
baydonFlyer
If only the term "engineer" was a protected term (as it is in Germany) then
we'd understand programming isn't engineering and this report would be titled
"State of Programming" \- and still be a click-bait report (I'm guilty as
charged!)

------
santoriv
Why are there so many interviews per Scala developer? I love Scala but I have
a hard time finding very many companies who actually use it (I'm in Austin,
TX). It seems like its usage is dwarfed by folks using Ruby, Node.js, PHP,
Python, C#, Java etc.

------
astura
What's up with hired.com? When I was looking for a new job last year they
posted a lot of jobs I'm very qualified for near me on sites like ziprecruiter
yet when I actually made an account they said no they had no jobs for me.

------
jorgeleo
I think this is a report specially prepared for recruiters, not a real
statistical significant one

------
867-5309
PHP most hated?? what's wrong with PHP? it's a great introductory language

~~~
nogabebop23
People also "Hate" Basic, but it was the gateway drug for almost everyone who
discovered computers in the 80's

It seems really weird to Hate something you can easily make irrelevant to your
life - maybe people mean they hate maintenance programming on old, cruddy
code, of which there would be a lot of PHP - that's not really on the language
though...

~~~
TeMPOraL
Like a lot of things in our industry, I believe hate for programming languages
is just another fashion. Few people have some actual reasons or experiences,
everyone else is just mimicking.

In case of BASIC, I think the source of the hate is mostly Dijkstra saying
things like:

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have
had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally
mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."

or: "teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the
mind beyond recovery."

Dijkstra is one of the ancient saints of computing, so people read this as
gospel.

PHP is a more complex case. The language had (last I checked, which was years
ago) legitimate issues. But on top of that, because of the LAMP stack, it
enabled easy web development, which opened the floodgates for novices.
Suddenly, you had an influx of people with no experience and little
understanding, all writing production code and - more importantly - _tutorials
for each other_. This was self-reinforcing, so there was a period in which
your average PHP code base was a steaming pile of garbage, and educational
resources Google led you to weren't any better. That time is, in my
experience, the source of PHP hate.

Why no hate for Ruby or Python or other stacks? I think because they've
managed to rein in their respective communities better (they actually _had_
communities, not mobs), and perhaps also because PHP was where most mistakes
of backend development were made - so newer stacks had the benefit of
hindsight.

You can see the same pattern repeating now with hate of JavaScript. One of the
big reasons is, again, the flood of inexperienced novices producing garbage
code and tutorials for each other, creating noise that drowns out both good
libraries and good educational material. All the mistakes of frontend
development are being made as we speak.

(The other big source of hate is the fear of the mob expanding to encompass
other areas than web development. In the LAMP stack days, no one really tried
to code PHP for microcontrollers. But attempts at running JavaScript or even
Node itself on microcontrollers abound. Or, see how Electron is sucking out
not just your computing resources, but also the proverbial oxygen from the
native app development room.)

~~~
klyrs
> or: "teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates
> the mind beyond recovery."

> Dijkstra is one of the ancient saints of computing, so people read this as
> gospel.

Can confirm. Learned BASIC (a very limited subset) at age 7. GOTO was the
second concept I learned after PRINT. Have not stopped using either and kinda
wish Python had a goto (except that I've worked through what that would
actually entail; not worth it). Strict adherence to Dijkstra's hobgoblins is
considered harmful.

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remmargorp64
There are so many things wrong with this report, I'm flagging the post.

