Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource? - bdv500
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greenyoda
It depends a lot on what you're hiring developers for. If you need a developer
to add some new UI features to a web app, there will be thousands of junior
developers you can hire. On the other hand, if you need to reduce the time it
takes to execute a stock trade by 0.25 microseconds, there may many fewer
developers in the world with the domain knowledge (high frequency trading) and
programming skills (high performance C++ programming) to do that. Even fewer
developers will have the skills needed to write the flight control software
for a new spacecraft.

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Foober223
Yes and no. Being a computer programmer covers a wide range of skills and
roles. It's like construction. There's a huge range. Some people cut and nail
up dry wall. They do their work without having to invent things, using skills
that can be executed rote. Other builders have to design a custom bridge for a
unique mountain range that must handle stress not normally found in cookie
cutter bridge designs.

A big part of the market is making CRUD apps. The skills to develop these
kinds of apps can be reliably learned. But even still, it's not quite as rote
a skill as being a cog on an assembly line. There's still a lot of
variability, and lots of parts to master (front end, databases, etc),
interpretation of requirements. It's hard to just hire an army of peons and
expect them to participate in CRUD.

If the development is exploring out new territory, then the workers will never
be a commodity. Making new things never done before. Facial recognition, OCR
with high reliability for crumby hand writing, etc. For these workers to be a
commodity, you will have to create an AI with human level creativity to do
exploratory creation. That will likely not happen in our great great great
grand children's lifetimes.

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paulcole
> Other builders have to design a custom bridge for a unique mountain range
> that must handle stress not normally found in cookie cutter bridge designs.

Aren’t you confusing builders and engineers?

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Foober223
No, that's actually the point of the post. That programmers, developers, or
what have you are all clumped together. When in reality there are many
distinct kinds of programmers with different skills, just like in the world of
physical structures.

The term "computer programmer" gets assigned to everyone who makes software.
Some programmers invent little like a dry wall worker. All average people
could become this kind of programmer.

Other programmers invent with skills out of reach of most common people.

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paulcole
Actually I don’t think it is. Nobody thinks the guy that installs my fence
designed the Golden Gate Bridge.

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Foober223
It seems you are arguing agianst a point that you are trying to make yourself.

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paulcole
> Other builders have to design a custom bridge for a unique mountain range

These are not builders and nobody would ever call them builders.

Well one person would, I guess.

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jarjarbinks455
To me it is clear he is saying dry wall work and bridge design are separate
skill sets. Contrasting that with the general term "developers" where
different skill sets fall under one umbrella term.

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notjustanymike
No, but the most common problems become commoditised. 15 years ago I could
make money building a restaurant website, now it's just squarespace or Wix. I
could build a CMS or set up an ecommerce site. There was enough demand that
companies like Shopify grew into existence.

But while the baseline expectation is higher, so is the complexity of new
problems. Being a developer is to constantly be learning and adapting,
changing direction and always trying new things.

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danny_sf45
Not really. Sure, programmers that only know HTML, CSS and JS and that
were/are making money by building restaurant websites are having a hard time
because there exists Wix and the like. But the IT world evolves: Docker,
Kubernetes, Go, Terraform, React etc., and developers are hired if and only if
they know the new stuff. In 20 years probably all the stuff we usually do now
(manually) will be automated, but again in 20 years we will probably program
in $NEW_FRAMEWORK and $NEW_LANGUAGE, so Docker, Go, Kubernetes, VueJS will all
look like plain HTML + CSS + JS today.

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wprapido
There's a huge stratification going on, between developers as commodities and
developers as assets.

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k1t
Absolutely.

If you're a tech company, looking to grow by building new products or
significantly expanding existing ones, then your developers are assets and you
treasure them.

If you're looking to grow in other ways (e.g. by acquisition) then you can put
all your products in maintenance mode, and your developers are a cost that you
want to cut as much as possible.

Developers as a whole are not a commoditised resource, but certainly can be
treated that way depending on the company and its business plan.

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ilaksh
The reality is that there are different markets and different market segments.

There is actually a large segment of the online marketplace where I would say
"commoditized" is almost accurate especially when compared with some Silicon
Valley rates. And this does in fact include a significant percentage of highly
skilled programmers.

Of course, when you are in the commodity rate range, finding the highly
skilled programmers is a challenge. But as I said, they do exist.

But there is a limit to how far that goes. You will see massive discounts when
comparing some markets, but the less common knowledge still is at a premium
rate.

One caveat is that there will often be a minor concession in terms of
something like English language proficiency for example.

But I think that us programmers actually should try to take proactive steps to
slow the race to the bottom in terms of compensation. Especially as remote
becomes mainstream and markets open up to online and overseas programmers even
more.

My own personal belief, which is really just pure speculation, is that
ordinary types of programming will be automated by artificial general
intelligence within one or two decades. So I personally think that the wage
labor paradigm and other core aspects of our economic system will be
completely obsoleted.

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seibelj
Certain businesses see developers as a commodity and work to further
commoditize them by using cookie-cutter tooling that turns programming as
closely as possible into plugging cords into outlets. However this can only
take you so far.

If you have developers that use ever-more-simplified-tools and languages,
there are companies that make those tools, and cloud companies that make the
infrastructure and build all the things that make life easier for other
companies. They still need strong programmers.

There will always be the need for extremely good programmers. If you are an
extremely good programmer then you should be able to earn outsized monetary
rewards and find intellectually stimulating projects if you are able to move
to the right location (SF, Boston) and interview well.

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sushshshsh
I don't think so. For large corporations, the hiring process is still very
qualitative and selective and the pay is high and variable based on how good
of a fit the developer is for the specific project needs.

If you compare this to the average McDonald's worker who is just expected to
fulfill the same generic duties for the same generic pay, you can see most
devs don't fit this definition.

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mettamage
Partial answer:

Hmm... given in the interviews I've been as a web developer... No.

If I could redo my whole thing again, I'd focus much more at making people
laugh and like me. That might get some "you passed the coding challenge but
you don't have enough experience" out of the way.

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wolco
Agile did it. Developers became resources to be pluged into existing projects
sprints.

Want it quickier just add more resources.

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afarrell
Huh? How does that even work?

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wolco
Usually adding one new resource subtracts a resource overall because they take
other resources time. In the best case it may give you half a resource boost
but it puts pressure on supporting units.

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afarrell
Especially if you only think of them as ‘units’ rather than individuals with
strengths and weaknesses.

