| I’ve worked on and finished some extremely large programs over my years in non-tech enterprise. I’m also an external examiner for CS students, and I’ve regularly talked about how I think the curriculum is outdated. In Denmark where I’m from it’s rare to get a programming application from someone without a related degree. It wasn’t so rare 20 years ago, but I can’t remember when I saw one last. I agree that degrees, and especially CS, doesn’t guarantee that people can code. We use them mostly as a “safety net” in our hiring processes here in my region of the world. Basically you can view hiring the wrong person as the most expensive mistake you can make as a manager, and educations are a sort of risk management. You might think that the “can this person actually program” risk is worst for people who are fresh out of their education but there are a lot of factors which can play into it. Older devs may be set in their ways, maybe even religious about some sort of programming philosophy. On the flip side they will start producing value right away. Anyway, by far I think the biggest hurdle in our industry right now is pseudo-jobbers like project managers, business process owners, scrum masters, various architects and what not. Not everyone is a waste of time, some of them do excellent work and function as exponential productivity catalysts. The vast majority of them, however, spend so much time engineering the process, architecture, whatever that their teams never ship on time or within budget. In this sense I think “correct programs” is hard to value. Because often the “incorrect large program” that doesn’t scale, will be much more valuable for a business than a “correct program” which never even gets the chance because it took to long to get out there. |
| > pseudo-jobbers like project manager Just want to share my experience at the large, well-known tech company where I work: good product/project managers are worth their weight in gold, and I've never worked with a bad one. Ours work at the intersection of backend, frontend, design, and product and help those of us who work in just one of those areas to coordinate, cooperate, and collaborate. I can't imagine trying to build such an enormous product or suite of products without them. God bless them, every one. |
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| ▲ | RealityVoid 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I believe we're not at the productivity level that UBI requires, and those "pseudo-jobs" are a waste that could be redirected to some more constructive endeavor. Even if you oppose consumerism and building stuff or whatnot, that wasted effort could be directed towards making products more sustainable or making better recycling supply chains or building nuclear power plants or whatnot. | | |
| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | bee_rider 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If we’re productive enough to pay them to construct roadblocks, surely we’re productive enough to pay them to do nothing. | | |
| ▲ | Nevermark 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I do believe that a tiny uncomfortable UBI would increase the overall economy, and benefit individual businesses by pre-weeding out a lot of posers. If someone can get by on $500/month, and not feel the need to make the effort to live better, it would be a service to all to give that to them. And on the other hand, a small fallback that makes it easier for individuals going through a rough spot to come back also helps the overall economy and individual businesses. Finally, if we had a basic program like this started, the number could go up with overall economic productivity. Slow at first, but as the AI/machine economy takes off, especially with practical accessibility to off planet resources, a tiny fraction of the economic output would make everyone rich by today's standards, just at the time when human labor's economic value heads to zero. | | |
| ▲ | jart 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The US already spends $1000/month per citizen on entitlements. If you just give everyone $500/month instead, you'd eliminate the deficit and have a few hundred billion leftover to spend on colonizing planets. |
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| ▲ | andai 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think UBI will actually lead to the mass adoption of pseudo jobs, at least for a while. | |
| ▲ | bee_rider 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think this is true. At the time I’m writing this comment, yours is unfortunately getting downvoted, and I wonder if it is a wording issue or something. There definitely exist some people who do these sort of jobs in a way provides a negative/roadblock only type of contribution. This isn’t to say nobody produced a positive contribution in these jobs. And it isn’t to say these people who produce negative value are, like, bad (everybody needs to eat and they didn’t ask to get born into a capitalist society). But, there are definitely some folks who we’d be better off paying to not do anything. | | |
| ▲ | aleph_minus_one 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > But, there are definitely some folks who we’d be better off paying to not do anything. An even better idea: simply don't hire such people. | | |
| ▲ | bee_rider 2 days ago | parent [-] | | They are motivated to be hired (the alternative is no money, possibly no home or good). They aren’t dumber than the folks who really want to do engineering and make neat stuff, just differently motivated. And if those two groups get in an office politics battle, the group that isn’t distracted as much by engineering wins, right? | | |
| ▲ | Terretta a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > And if those two groups get in an office politics battle, the group that isn’t distracted as much by engineering wins, right? Wiser than the average wisecrack. | |
| ▲ | aleph_minus_one 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > They are motivated to be hired I am also very motivated to convince you to give me, say, 10,000 EUR or USD, will you hand me over the money? ;-) Seriously: if you see no value in giving me this money, you clearly won't do that. Also: if the person you could hire does not bring more value for the company than he/she costs you, you won't hore the person, no matter if he/she is motivated or not. | | |
| ▲ | immibis 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Have you ever watched a scam in action? It's in my best interests to convince you (a boss) that I'll bring lots of value, and then not bring it, and continue convincing you that I am bringing it. | | |
| ▲ | aleph_minus_one 2 days ago | parent [-] | | If the boss or HR falls for such a scam, I clearly opine that they are not suitable for their job. | | |
| ▲ | kaashif a day ago | parent [-] | | I agree, but the incentives are lopsided. The prospective hire has a huge incentive: they get the money. But the hiring manager doesn't have any such incentive: it's not their money they're spending. Even worse, they may in some way be compensated based on the number of people or teams they manage, in which case the incentives of useless hires and hiring managers are unfortunately all too aligned. |
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