
Ask HN: Is open source reducing engineer's jobs? - noteanddata
while lots of the software would need lots of engineer&#x27;s jobs to create them, today a lot of them are just taken from github. 
I think at one point it was creating more jobs because it makes the history progress faster, 
however now is it reducing jobs ?
======
protoduction
I think it reduces jobs the same way as having tools like electronic
screwdrivers available cheaply reduces jobs.

Instead of everybody having to create their own screwdrivers prior to starting
a construction job, they can focus on building whatever they want to build.

I would argue that's a good thing: it increases productivity and decreases
duplicated effort.

~~~
noteanddata
many people have a statement like this, however most of the jobs would
probably not be needed any more because of the new tools and new end to end
automated systems. and there are not so many new jobs to be created all the
time.

once the productivity is high enough, most of people in the world would
probably not able to find a job.

people who control the asset would probably control most things and others can
hardly live.

open source is kind of accelerating the process

------
saluki
Open source gives engineers better frameworks and components to use so you can
develop better apps than if you started from scratch on your own.

It still takes engineers to use the frameworks even if they are open source.

I think open source and the web have created more jobs rather than reducing
them.

With open source you can learn from existing projects, pull in projects to
your work to save time.

This time savings can be used to create and improve other custom features in
what you are building.

If anything I would say open source is creating jobs and empowering developers
to learn new techniques, create better apps and level up in knowledge and
earning power.

I think it's also allowing people to get in to programming that wouldn't have
a chance otherwise if you had to pay for every framemork/tool you wanted to
use so open source creating more opportunities than it's reducing.

And open source can be a full time job. [https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit-
dollar-100000yr-on-github...](https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit-
dollar-100000yr-on-github-sponsors-heres-how-i-did-it)

I think open source is great for the industry/world.

So many amazing frameworks, tools, packages out there.

Kudos to everyone who maintains an open source project.

~~~
noteanddata
"Open source gives engineers better frameworks and components to use so you
can develop better apps than if you started from scratch on your own. " \--->
I totally agree on this. however, if it originally takes 100 years for all
engineers to fully realize all the features to be developed, now it may only
takes 50 years, after that there probably only need very few engineers to
write the software

------
muzani
Four years ago, I did a startup. Payment gateways were too complex back then
and had too many legal restrictions. Logistics were not mature. We had to do
all of this in house. But we didn't have economy of scale, so it was too
expensive to build our own payment gateway and logistics, and the startup
faced financial difficulties when scaling.

Today, it would have been a lot easier to do the same startup. We would have
made more money, hired more people, paid above market average.

The goal of a business is to just focus on whatever they built and reach out
to as many people as possible. Netflix does one thing. They don't build their
own DRM or CA. They also pay the highest salaries in the range where possible.
Maybe there would have been more Netflix jobs if one component wasn't done or
if they had to build their own browsers. But they likely wouldn't have scaled
as big or made as much profit, and would have been cutting salaries or
reluctant to hire, trying to compete with something like HBO.

React is another example. Now there are countless React jobs instead of people
using HTML+jQuery to build the same things. Has it increased productivity? It
probably has, else why would people use it. But it's opened even more jobs.

Software is just never done. There's always more features to add and refine,
more wealth to create.

~~~
noteanddata
the productivity is definitely increased. but I do have a question about
"software is just never done", many software jobs reduced over time, one day
there might only be very few jobs needed.

------
burntoutfire
Not neccessarily, because, thanks to the free opensource tools and libraries,
people can be hired to work on lower-value or speculative (startups) projects,
which wouldn't otherwise have economic merit. E.g. Facebook wouldn't probably
have happened if Linux and PHP were not free.

