
The Rise of Developeronomics - ryanackley
http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2011/12/05/the-rise-of-developeronomics/
======
bambax
> _if you are a baker with a small business, you are effectively useless, not
> because bread isn’t important, but because surviving in the bread business
> is now a matter of having developers on your side who can help you win in a
> game that Yelp, Groupon and other software companies are running to their
> advantage_

I don't think this is true right now; I very much doubt it will ever be true.

I live within walking distance of not less than five excellent _boulangeries_
and have never used any sort of "social" tool or other technology to select
the one I'm going to buy bread from. I try them all regularly, know what they
do well or less well (one is better at _croissants_ than the others) and
basically go to the one that offers the best version of the product I'm
looking for.

Looking for "bargains" in bakery is asking for trouble; choosing your bread
according to your "social network" (who's composed of people who do not live
right next to you) sounds completely useless.

It doesn't seem like bakers need to worry about Groupon, or Yelp. Is this just
a poor example or am I missing something?

~~~
quanticle
>It doesn't seem like bakers need to worry about Groupon, or Yelp. Is this
just a poor example or am I missing something?

You're missing the leverage that software gives you. A bakery that keeps track
of its Yelp reputation and works hard to maintain a 5-star rating will attract
customers from all over the city. It might even start attracting out-of-
towners who are in for a visit. This bakery's "market" is effectively
unlimited because in any major city, there are going to be out-of-towners
flowing in and out on a regular basis, and some of them will be looking for a
bakery.

A bakery that doesn't do as well at maintaining a good reputation on Yelp will
have its market limited to reach of its advertising and the word-of-mouth of
its customers. Now, in a relatively tech-heavy town like San Francisco, that
might be fine. If you provide good croissants, you'll get mentions on blogs
and Twitter, which would magnify the word of mouth effect in a manner similar
to Yelp. But if your customers aren't bloggers or heavy users of social
networks? You could have the best bread in the world and not be rewarded
commensurately, simply because not enough people know that you have the best
bread in the world.

~~~
gizzlon
_"A bakery that keeps track of its Yelp reputation and works hard to maintain
a 5-star rating will attract customers.."_

Never used Yelp, but do you really need a developer to do that? Would think
the easiest way to get a good rating would be to hire some people to write
good reviews for you and trash the competition.

(OT, but I bet sites like that will get less and less useful as more companies
start gaming them)

~~~
arctangent
Hiring people to "write good reviews for you and trash the competition" is a
quick way to establish a very short-lived repuation boost.

However, it's inevitable (or at least hugely likely) that you will be found
out and your repution ruined. Competitors will likely sue.

It's probably cheaper and easier to hire a developer who can write tools to
monitor reviews posted online, manage a website, run your facebook group/app,
write an app to make it easy for customers to order bread from their mobiles,
and so on.

All of those things are legitimate activities and add genuine value to your
business. They are also things that are impossible to achieve if you don't
have technical knowledge.

~~~
gnosis

      > > Hiring people to "write good reviews for you and trash the
      > > competition" is a quick way to establish a very short-lived
      > > repuation boost.
      >
      > However, it's inevitable (or at least hugely likely) that you will
      > be found out and your repution ruined.
    

Short of your reviewers deliberately snitching on you, how exactly is anyone
ever going to find out?

I'd really, sincerely like to know -- as I can't tell which strongly positive
or negative reviews on various sites like Amazon, IMDB, etc, are written by
hired reviewers and which are real.

Of course, I have my suspicions.. but no real proof. And I don't see any way
to ever get real proof -- unless the reviewer confesses.

So.. what's the secret?

~~~
arctangent
First of all, I think it's very likely that one of your own (ex-)employees
will either go public with the information or blackmail you in order to buy
your silence.

Secondly, a sudden increase in the number of positive reviews should be fairly
easy to spot by a competitor who has already hired a developer to watch for
such things and do automated sentiment analysis on the reviews of competitors.

Thirdly, it's entirely possible that a broader-spectrum monitoring of reviews
(perhaps provided by a third-party service) could identify common authors
and/or text that is likely to be fake by analysing the content of the reviews
themselves. This would help pick up paid reviews that were placed over a long
period of time.

~~~
gnosis
_"First of all, I think it's very likely that one of your own (ex-)employees
will either go public with the information or blackmail you in order to buy
your silence."_

Why would they go public? They're presumably making (what they consider to be)
good money writing fake reviews. By going public they'd be 1 - losing their
revenue from you, 2 - undermining the public's confidence in reviews, which
would translate in to a less lucrative business for the provider of fake
reviews.

As for blackmail, I'm sure it happens from time to time. But I don't know how
to estimate the frequency with which fake reviewers blackmail their clients.
What is your basis for estimating the probability of such blackmail as "very
likely"?

Furthermore, blackmail is an obvious risk for any secret/illegal undertaking,
and yet people attempt try to do things in secret and break the law all the
time. Clearly, for them the risk seems worth it (at the time).

 _"Secondly, a sudden increase in the number of positive reviews should be
fairly easy to spot by a competitor who has already hired a developer to watch
for such things and do automated sentiment analysis on the reviews of
competitors."_

So, the fake positive reviews might be staggered over a reasonable period of
time. But even the business receives many positive reviews in a short period
of time, that's not proof the reviews were fake.

 _"Thirdly, it's entirely possible that a broader-spectrum monitoring of
reviews (perhaps provided by a third-party service) could identify common
authors and/or text that is likely to be fake by analyzing the content of the
reviews themselves. This would help pick up paid reviews that were placed over
a long period of time."_

Are there any such services which claim to be able to detect fake reviews? Or
is this mere speculation on your part? Regardless, just because some service
or algorithm claims a review is fake doesn't mean it is. Once again, their
guess/estimate is not proof.

~~~
arctangent
> Why would they go public?

Sorry, my bracketed "(ex-)employees" wasn't really clear enough. I was trying
to suggest a vengeful motive after they had been fired.

> What is your basis for estimating the probability of such blackmail as "very
> likely"?

Basic human nature. If you're directly employing people whose job is clearly
unethical then you're painting yourself into a corner. Either they do in fact
_actively_ blackmail you or else you will feel unable to fire them in case
they start telling people what you're up to - I'm regarding this implicit
threat as _passive_ blackmail here.

I agree with you that there are lots of people who seem perfectly happy to do
unethical or illegal things in order to make a living. They calculate (if not
always very accurately) that the potential gains outweigh the potential costs.

However, a lot of these people make such a decision in light of particular
circumstances e.g. their low intelligence, or their lack of employability (due
in part perhaps to an existing criminal record), or their unwillingness to
work.

Someone who has established a business that is making enough money to pay the
bills should clearly be reaching a different conclusion to these sorts of
people (at least most of the time). Their potential losses are much higher
(i.e. loss of the business) and the potential gains are actually not all that
favourable compared to doing things the "right way" - for example, by hiring a
developer who can boost your business in other ways.

> But even the business receives many positive reviews in a short period of
> time, that's not proof the reviews were fake.

It's evidence. What a business owner might do if they suspected a competitor
had hired someone to "opinion spam" is up to them. If they though a competitor
was paying someone to post negative reviews of their own business then they
could very well sue, and request access logs etc. from the review site in
order to further the investigation.

> Are there any such services which claim to be able to detect fake reviews?

I haven't looked. But it would certainly be possible to create such a service
without too much difficulty.

------
sumeetjain
At the end of the article, the author explains how "once a good developer
recognizes his/her own value, [she turns] to either an individualist-mercenary
mindset or a collectivist guild-like mindset."

He elaborates on the "guild-like mindset":

> _The other kind of developer turns to guild-like structures, which serve as
> centers of balance-of-power politics in the constant wars against the
> developer-capitalists. Except that instead of taking on the dynamics of
> class warfare along an upper-lower dimension, the conflict takes the form of
> exit warfare along an inside-outside dimension. Rather than form a union to
> negotiate with management, the talented developer will simply exit a
> situation he/she does not like, and use guild-like resources to move to a
> better situation. Stock options are simply not as effective in limiting
> mobility as the power of Russian nobility to whip serfs into immobility once
> was._

I've tried to make sense of what that means, but I'm lost in the balance-of-
power, upper-lower/inside-outside, and guild references. If someone has a
moment, could they please explain this paragraph in clearer terms? Perhaps as
a basic narrative of what a guild-minded developer would do when she
recognizes her value?

~~~
vgr
In political science, a fairly well-known basic idea is that the two ways to
dissent are exit and voice. Exit means you leave and go somewhere else, and
was common in early political eras when most civilizations were small and
surrounded by plenty of nomadic/lawless regions to retreat to. As populations
increased, voice (i.e. protest, class warfare etc.) became increasingly
common. The classic reference on this is "Exit, Voice and Loyalty" by Albert
O. Hirschman. It's been on my reading list for a while.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty>

For developers, it is swinging back towards exit, since the Internet can be
considered a kind of virtual equivalent of the nomad regions to retreat to.

"Center-periphery" dynamics is the common term in geopolitics for dissent
dynamics driven by movement inside/outside a core. Class warfare is the better
known kind of dissent involving unionization etc. and involves fighting up and
down a class structure.

Guilds, historically, were a medieval kind of institution that had
characteristics of both exit and voice. The classic guild professions
(weaving, masonry and in more recent times, things like typesetting in pre-
lithography days) used their portable skills to leave kingdoms/cities and move
elsewhere if they didn't like their current situation. This option was not
really available to laborers tied to the land, and was essentially an urban
phenomenon. This is the origin of the term "journeyman" for instance...
apprentices who would follow master craftsmen around until they became masters
in their own right.

~~~
chalst
_This is the origin of the term "journeyman" for instance... apprentices who
would follow master craftsmen around until they became masters in their own
right._

No, that's not right. When an apprentice finished their apprenticeship, they
would usually have to leave their master's service. The openings for masters
would be fixed per town by the guild, so journeymen would work itinerantly
until they found an opening to become a master. Journeymen would work for a
series of masters, and their relationship to these masters was entirely
different to the relationship of apprentices.

The status of journeyman became institutionalised, so that the criterion for
taking up a mastership was that one had travelled widely enough as a
journeyman for some length of time and had crafted a masterpiece.

I've never heard of the idea of guilds organising flights: I should think that
master guildsmen had more to lose than agricultural laborers from relocation.
Perhaps if several guilds coordinated, it could be less than massively
destructive. Where did you get this idea?

~~~
stan_rogers
It may help to know that while _journeyman_ and _journey_ come from the same
French word, _journée_ (meaning, essentially, _day_ ), that _journeyman_
simply means someone who is entitled to charge a day rate for his work.
(Masters were the "contractors" of their day; they were paid for the project,
and apprentices got to eat -- they usually paid for the privilege.)

Yes, the guild system and town laws often made the journeyman itinerant, but
it wasn't travel that put the "journey" in "journeyman".

~~~
vgr
Interesting, thanks for clarifying. I assumed too quickly that journey in
journeyman meant what it means to us today.

------
msluyter
_As a developer ages, and finds it harder and harder to switch technologies,
at some point, he or she is considered hooked for the rest of their natural
lives to some technology — Java or C++ or the Facebook API say — that they can
be expected to grow old with._

Sigh. ::Closes eclipse. Googles "ruby tutorials"::

~~~
httpitis
thanx for the laugh, made my day!

------
jerf
My "telling me what I want to hear" cognitive alarm bells are going off.

On the other hand, this is simply the flip side of the frequently-heard
argument around here that technology is driving people who can't cope out of
the ability to hold a job at all, because they become unable to produce value
in excess of what they cost. If that is true, then it follows that as the
supply of people who can still be productive in the new economy drops, then
they must also go up in price.

~~~
shasta
I don't think that's right. If 50% of people became replaceable by robots, the
other half doesn't become more valuable. Rather the value shifts to the robot
owners.

The article paints a simplistic picture, which is probably not correct even to
first order, but it may be a useful viewpoint. The stratification should only
increase, with the super devs obsoleting the ordinary code monkeys, but the
time frame on that might be large.

~~~
jerf
You hypothesize an either-or where it's a both-and. The robot owners need
somebody to program the robots, too, or they're expensive-yet-worthless hunks
of metal. And if that talent is scarce compared to demand, the price is going
to go up.

~~~
shasta
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I'd say that effect is due to an increase in demand
for robot programmers, not due to a decrease in the supply of the productive
workers.

------
lazyBilly
Ok, I'm calling it-- when I find myself getting a bunch of hot air blown up my
skirt by Forbes, we're officially in a tech bubble.

That said, I found the point about being a capitalist or a commodity relevant
to the startup scene in many important ways. There are a lot of people who
want me to be very smart with code and very stupid with money.

------
pnathan
There are several layers the author is arguing.

First, he is telling developers that they are awesome. That's nice to hear,
and of course will guarantee a friendly reception by developers. :-)

Secondly, he is arguing that all businesses will be heavily software driven,
and if they don't invest in IT, they _will_ be winding up buying from a
"cloud" provider.

Thirdly, he is arguing that management needs to take a long position on
hiring(non-pedantic note: a long position is where you expect a stock to go
up, it is the "buy low sell high" approach), because it will pay off
massively. Investing into software creators on the 50-year plan will provide
heavy returns, _because_ business are becoming software-ized, and it will pay
off.

I think in the scope of the next fifty years, the author is correct in that
software will be one of the core strata of societies across the board (I don't
see us there yet by a long shot - some places don't even have electricity
still).

~~~
mahyarm
They don't necessarily need electricity:

[http://www.salon.com/2011/10/13/the_tribesman_who_facebook_f...](http://www.salon.com/2011/10/13/the_tribesman_who_facebook_friended_me/)

~~~
pnathan
That's pretty amazing!

But, you know, I would argue that _someone_ in that region needs electricity
to hook up the facebook. :-)

------
dpritchett
_The individualists turn into hard bargainers as they carefully probe their
own market value and frequently re-negotiate relationships. They carefully
invest in keeping their skill-base current and avoiding being shunted into the
sunset end of the ecosystem for as long as possible. This sort of developer
likes to hedge bets, stay invested in multiple projects and keep one foot in
the open source world at all times. They position themselves for massive
upsides when that is a possibility, and the ability to walk away from failures
with their own reputations intact where there is real risk._

Full agreement on this point. Once I started looking at my own career from
this perspective I couldn't stop. Books like _The Passionate Programmer_ and
_The Pragmatic Programmer_ as well as heaps of prose from pg, patio11, edw519,
and tptacek guide my continuing quest for increased leverage.

~~~
gitah
The article described old-guard programmers who mastered a technology and then
couldn't find work when the technology died off.

I have a hard time understanding this: programming skills are extremely
transferable and learning the hot language/platform of the month isn't
extremely difficult. Is it just inertia that prevents them from doing this?

~~~
paganel
> Is it just inertia that prevents them from doing this?

I don't think it's just inertia, at least not in my case. I know that my
example it's just anecdotical, but I'll write it down anyway.

I'm in my early '30s, I've been programming in Python for 7 years now (and
during the last 6 years I even got paid for the privilege), along with other
languages (PHP, JS etc.)

The thing is there's only so much that you can learn about the world around
you by focusing on only learning programming- or tech-related subjects. Of
course that, for example, learning Erlang or Caml are extremely interesting
things to do, intellectually speaking, but when I realized that by learning to
speak Arabic of Farsi I could potentially be able to interact with and to
better understand the culture of tens if not hundreds of millions of people
then my interests slightly changed.

Of course that it wouldn't help me one bit if I were to tell my potential
future interviewer "hey, I learned to speak Farsi so now I can really read
Hafiz's poetry the way it's supposed to be read", but as long as that
experience enhances my understanding of the world around me it's all for the
best.

Re-reading what I wrote I realize maybe it doesn't make much sense, anyway,
what I wanted to say it's that most of us, programmers, are (really) smart
people, it comes a point in one's life when you realize that there are other
things in life worth spending your time on.

~~~
vital_sol
Good point. I learned to dance tango in similar situation. And I never danced
anything in my life before that. I'm approaching the magic 42 number of my
age.

------
brc
I enjoyed this article, with the mindset of there are kernels of truth
overlaid with layers of rhetoric and bandwagon hitching.

I think though, that for the general audience it is intended for, it might
wake a few people up to the fact that software is a core competency for just
about every business and not a cost centre, and that competitors who can use
software well are well positioned to outstrip those who can't.

Further to that point is that, to get good software, you need good developers.
And if you aren't actively trying to work out how to get the best developers,
you're getting the leftovers.

This fits neatly into the point I was making recently about government
projects always being doomed because they end up with bad developers on
projects with too many owners, and that governments everywhere should just buy
off-the-shelf solutions and fit their way of working to them, rather than the
other way around.

~~~
djKianoosh
_"This fits neatly into the point I was making recently about government
projects always being doomed because they end up with bad developers on
projects with too many owners, and that governments everywhere should just buy
off-the-shelf solutions and fit their way of working to them, rather than the
other way around."_

Initially I had a strong reaction against what you're saying here, but I see
you chose your words carefully, saying gov projects "end up with bad
developers on projects with too many owners". Sadly I have to agree, since I
am in that world in the federal gov and see it first hand. But there are many
highly talented developers here! They typically don't stay on projects long
enough, so "end up with..." is exactly right.

And that does tie in to your point that "to get good software, you need good
developers", so it's a never-ending challenge trying to find and keep those
10xers engaged and happy with their work so they tend to produce that 'good
software'...

~~~
httpitis
...or "buy off-the-shelf solutions" as brc suggested?

~~~
djKianoosh
I don't think buying COTS or GOTS actually saves the government money in the
long term. I dont have actual facts to back this claim of course, but it's
just from many years of experience in this scene.

Many times the requirements of an agency/office/mission are too specific for
something off the shelf. The solution has to be either completely custom or a
mix of COTS/GOTS. And when you have a mix you have integration. Software is a
smaaaaalll part of the equation in government. It's the solution engineering
(read: consultants/contractors) that cost the most. And I bet you'll always
need/want highly skilled engineers for all sorts of roles. innovation is one,
but keeping missing critical systems alive and operational is important too.
what qualifies as 'mission critical' is another subject for another day, and
can vary wildly depending on who you talk to...

However, a lot of times, the requirements are truly simple, or simply met. And
I think that's why you see a TON of Drupal being used in the gov these days.
For many offices, that's all they ever needed. But even that's a smaaaaaal
part of the pie. The government is huge! You can't imagine how many thousands
of software projects are all going on at the same time right now...

~~~
brc
This is my original point.

The vast majority of government IT systems are very ordinary things that are
used all over the place.

Things like: payroll, issue tracking, asset tracking, emergency services
management, waste disposal, vehicle registration, fines management and payment
- the list goes on and on and on.

Yet time after time we find a government department insisting that _their_
payroll system is unique because of x, y and z, and that _their_ asset
tracking system requires a custom solution.

This should be flipped on it's head and instead it should be : here are the
top 3 _whatever purpose_ systems available in the market. We will choose which
one suits our needs the best, then _we will change our work practices_ to best
match the system.

Because changing the work practices will be easier and more successful than
trying to build out (or customise) their own IT project.

But this requires people to think about practical solution, and to no have IT
empire builders.

No government tries to re-invent railways, roads or sewage to their own needs-
they look at what works elsewhere, and adapt to the technology available. Yet
they go in the opposite direction when it comes to building computer systems.
When you look at the graveyard of wasted billions on customised government
computer systems - it's time for a new approach.

~~~
nkassis
"Things like: payroll, issue tracking, asset tracking, emergency services
management, waste disposal, vehicle registration, fines management and payment
- the list goes on and on and on."

Most of those on the list are things that the gov already buys off the shell
software for (I have worked as a network administrator at a large state
university in the past). Our payroll system was off the shelf from Oracle,
asset tracking was part of that erp system, our course management system was
the off the shelf blackboard, security access system was from another vendor.
It was rare that a project would be 100% built in house.

Using payroll as an example, for the size of these organization, the off the
shelf components you will find are usually built with the expectation that it
will be customized anyway. (Not all organization in government work the same
way for very good reason. Laws) They are incomplete in a lot of cases and
require integration with various system. The above poster was right, the
problem is often integration. How to I plug my directory services into my erp
system that connects to system for another agency somewhere. You will have a
hard time getting a unified system across all agencies when you go by a biding
system that is anywhere close to fair.

The companies that play in that space Oracle/SAP/HP/Novell whatever are all
built on the assumption that you will buy something and need their help with
it for years to come.

The problem is huge I feel you are underestimating it.

------
hn_reader
I'm on page two of the story but I am already starting to doubt the writer's
basic understanding of technology and question whether continuing to read it
is a waste of time:

1) "If your bakery doesn’t have an iPhone, it will soon be at the mercy of
outfits like Yelp." - What does that even mean?

2) "A little known fact about Google, for instance, is that its investment in
Python (one of the three languages the company uses for its work)" - Gonna go
out on a limb here and state that Google uses more than three languages.

~~~
olefoo
For 1. I'm being generous and reading it as shorthand for; "If your bakery
doesn't manage it's presence on the network and patrol it's reviews and it's
image online; it's business will be eaten by those of your competitors who
'get it'." I'm not sure why an iPhone is required equipment, but the point
he's reaching for isn't entirely lost.

For 2. I'd say he's right in that python has played a fairly large role in
Google's developer outreach and seems to be the lingua franca for expressing
ideas in code within Google.

The first point is just sloppy, and suggests that Forbes doesn't engage in the
outdated and unfashionable practice of editing it's writers. The second is a
fairly pedestrian observation about the software industry, that languages and
technologies are identified with some entities more than others. That the
languages a person who is a developer knows may affect his view of companies
that use them is not in question, whether it's a benefit to the companies in
question is unknowable.

~~~
hn_reader
I think the intent of #1 is clear (I agree with your reading of it) but the
sloppiness of the statement is distracting. Same really for #2, though it
looks like I'm wrong and Google does have three official languages..still I
have a hard time believe a 30,000 employee company would not use many more
languages internally in some capacity.

~~~
ryanmolden
>still I have a hard time believe a 30,000 employee company would not use many
more languages internally in some capacity.

There are likely uses of other languages internally for small projects or one-
off kind of things, but large companies generally prefer some standard
practices/patterns/languages. For well written code, you have to realize, your
code will likely outlast your employment. That means someone must maintain it,
fix bugs, augment its functionality, etc... It is MUCH easier to manage that
whole flow with strict(ish) stylistic standards (Google has these) and a small
range of possible languages. If you've ever seen code written 15 years ago in
the (then) language du jour, with no sort of consistent/recognizable
style/coding patterns, etc.. you will understand why companies do this kind of
thing.

------
zwieback
After the first page I was waiting for the "but seriously" part of the
article. Are we already too young to remeber WebVan? And the promised method
of investing in developers never really materialized.

Anyway, I don't think this article is going to help the author find the
"technical cofounder" he's looking for. The fact that he even uses that term
pretty much guarantees that he's not going to find a 10xer, even if that
mythical creature existed.

I for one can't wait for the social bubble to burst so programmers can flow
back into the currently neglected branches of software development - we're
getting old and lonely and could use some fresh talent.

------
localhost3000
if this guy believes what he writes, why isn't he a developer? certainly these
are skills that would be worth investing _his_ time in. is it because he
fancies himself a 'capitalist'? The cat fell out on this one when I reached
his parenthetical, half-joking-but-not-really- _wink_ - _wink_ plea for a
'star' iOS developer to come out of the woodwork and build whatever ipad app
is on his mind...nice of the forbes people to give him an audience for his
recruitment pitch... content on the web has become so self-serving... i miss
reading, and awkwardly trying to fold, the printed nytimes. yea, i said it.

~~~
kls
For the same reason that there is a maximum of people that will go into math
and science. It is looked at as one of the hard jobs, where smart technical
people go to. A majority of the population does not fancy themselves as
technically smart and hate logical puzzles. They view the market as something
other people do.

It is the same mindset of the founder "just looking for someone to build it".
The though of learning it themselves, literally never crosses their mind
because, they are not of that personality type.

It's akin to saying people that go into finance where worth their weight in
gold in the 90's, why didn't you go into finance, may of us did in a way, but
most of us used a wealth manager, broker, mutual fund to do so. Developers are
like that wealth manager, they do all the technical work that investors do not
want to do. Some people take the time to learn the models and self direct
their investments, but they are the minority.

Most use a professional, though I doubt many investment professionals had to
deal with the: "hey I have an idea I want you to build, I have no money, but I
will cut you in for 10% propositions".

------
victorbstan
For a Forbes article on developers, there sure are a lot of markup mistakes
showing up throughout the text...

------
moocow01
This guy is a bit too heavy handed in technology is everything and provides
some not so convincing examples. I get his point but I'm pretty skeptical that
the bakery's core business is now software - in fact I'd rather not taste the
products of a bakery that has a core business of software. Yes software is
becoming increasingly important to business but many times (ouside SV)
software is a tool to better the core service but not the core service itself.

~~~
kareemm
If you run a bakery and know how to write software (or convince other talented
people to do so for you), do you think you'll be more or less competitive than
a bakery owner that doesn't?

Think about what software can do for a bakery:

\- use the web to sell more product

\- save gas money and time when delivering to wholesale customers

\- make production more efficient

\- use just-in-time ingredient ordering to keep spoilage and inventory costs
down

Perhaps you build those systems in-house and they (in addition to a killer
baguette) are what makes you special.

Or perhaps you productize your software and make millions selling it to
bakeries (or spin off a company to do so).

How will the baker who knows how to make good bread but doesn't know how to
leverage software compete with you?

~~~
moocow01
The emphasis is on "core" - software is just a tool to enhance the core
business as you're pointing out. If the bakery's core business sucks but they
are great at software they will still suck as a bakery.

~~~
kareemm
I may have missed this, but I didn't get that the article talked about every
company's core business now being software.

I understood his argument to be that software developers are becoming
increasingly valuable, and outsized returns will go to firms that understand
this and learn how to treat software developers well to leverage what they're
able to do to any industry.

~~~
yourapostasy
_...but I didn't get that the article talked about every company's core
business now being software._

Here is a quote from the article where he lays out the Andreessen
Hypothesis[1], and links to David Kirpatrick's article that restates that
hypothesis into a format more readily grasped by business readers[2].

 _Which brings us to David Kirpatrick’s now famous line that every company is
now a software company.

We are only just beginning to understand how software is now the core function
of every company, no matter what it makes or what service it actually
provides._

I have some reservations about these kinds of sweeping proclamations (which if
I posted would turn into a tl;dr for most people), as they miss a __lot __of
the nuance of the situation on the ground. That might be deliberate, as part
of consulting at these guys' level is to get clients hooked on the sizzle of a
catchy idea, then sell them the steak of the nuances you've worked out.

[1]
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190348090457651...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.html)
Not that Andreessen was the first to realize this of course, but he just
happened to catch the news cycle with his verbalization of this observation at
the right time to break into a more mainstream meme, that many in the industry
already either tacitly or explicitly acknowledge.

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/techonomy/2011/11/30/now-
every-c...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/techonomy/2011/11/30/now-every-
company-is-a-software-company/)

~~~
kareemm
Thanks for this. I think there's a subtle distinction at play here: having
software as a core _function_ of your company vs its core _business_.

I think you're still in the publishing / music / insert_industry _business_ ;
software becomes a core function of your business.

But I don't think your core _business_ necessarily becomes software (though it
could).

------
TheRevoltingX
I've noticed in my industry that those who can't program, manage.

Those who manage, tend to blog more because they have less to do in front of a
computer.

Kind of a useless and filled with false assumptions.

------
veyron
Key takeaway: "For practical purposes, [developers] are [products], since the
vast majority of them haven’t found a way to use their own scarcity to their
advantage"

------
devilant
The ideas in this article are eerily reminiscent of what people were saying in
the late '90s/early '00s, particularly with respect to companies like Enron.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article making the opposite point to this one.
<http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_07_22_a_talent.htm>

I suspect after the bubble pops we'll be reading 'the talent myth'-type
articles in Forbes.

~~~
brohee
The article you linked is so much better that the one we discuss, there's no
comparison.

------
tryitnow
I think this "Developeronomics" article is a perfect example of what this
other article was referring to: [http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2011/12/i-dont-
understand-what...](http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2011/12/i-dont-understand-
what-anyone.html)

Honestly, I think there are some interesting ideas there but I am not sure if
those ideas are the author's or just a random collection of memes he picked up
from the Internet.

------
mncolinlee
Clearly, there's one thing critically wrong with his hypothesis. A developer
is never actually tied down to any one technology. We're human beings, not
cogs, and our fundamental programming technologies are all derived from the
same basic, mathematical algorithms.

I started programming when I was six years old. BASIC on the TRS-80 Model 1. I
aggressively studied programming because I thought computer games were cool,
not because job prospects were hot.

If a recruiter today tried to tell me that I had to stick to BASIC on TRS-80
because I started out there, I'd think he was nuts. Many recruiters actually
believe this ludicrous idea and ARE nuts. It's not "re-inventing yourself" to
learn a new programming language mid-career or at any time. Good hackers know
it's simply learning another way to apply your skills to a new set of
challenges.

------
pw
Anyone know how to toggle a single-page/print view for this?

~~~
jwr
Amazing — I came to the point where I will actually refuse to read an article
if I can't get it into Instapaper easily. I guess I won't read that one, then…

~~~
chris123
I skip those articles, too. Same for the "top xyz" lists/galleries. They
should be one page, like <http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/>

------
IsItSafe
He may not get every single detail right, but his overarching thesis is
correct (or at least very useful), IMO. The author provides a good model for
/thinking/ about these issues, even if some things could use a cleanup
(including the formatting.)

------
kandu
How hard is to convert to developers adults with training in other areas, but
with presumed cognitive skills suitable for programming? I am thinking of
people of 35-50 years old, that would be intelligent enough (i.e., there would
be just a percentage of this cohort that would be fit for becoming
developers), but who, from various historical and personal reasons, work in
industries where the prospects are less interesting than in programming.

Are there any studies showing how the potential to learn programming decreases
(or not) with age? I have looked on Google Scholar but I found nothing.

~~~
blacksmythe

      >> thinking of people of 35-50 years old ...
    

You are in a tough situation if you are in your 40s and need to retrain,
because there is not a long period of time to amortize the investment over.

<http://norvig.com/21-days.html> (Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years)

------
josscrowcroft
I read all of this but had the uncanny feeling that it could have been said in
about 10% of the space. Lots of waffle and fluff. Good points though ... I
think? I can't hardly even remember what page 1 was about.

------
siculars
"When the last veterans of the earliest still-in-use software layers start to
die, we will be in historically unprecedented territory."

So true, so true. We have already seen a spate of that this Fall,
unfortunately.

------
cliftonk
> Risk Management in Software Talent Investment

Stopped reading one paragraph into that section.

------
berntb
Reading stuff like this reminds me of 1999, when the bottom fell out of the
job market a few years later:

>> _You need to find a way to invest in software developers._

Sigh, the gold rush will start again...

