The Shift At Microsoft | October 8th, 2007
The World As Best As I Remember It : Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Developers want to code. Maybe design once in a while. Then code. Invent a thing or two. Code. Oh, and if things line up this weekend, perchance ask that new coworker in Accounting out to a movie… seriously, though – code, code, code. Occasionally, one of the younger ones will mutter something about changing the world, better living through software, blah blah blah. But it really all translates to, “I want to code all day.” Not a single developer starts their career wanting to be the pointy-haired boss. It’s the last thing on their minds.
October 8th, 2007 at 12:27 pm (subscribed to comments)
I don’t think it’s just at MS…. I suspect it’s industrywide.
Development is about problem solving, not programming. It’s the reason universities with serious CS programs don’t bother teaching any languages and just dive right into data structures and software engineering principles…. any monkey can learn syntax on his own time in a couple of days.
But companies don’t want developers… they want programmers. All the abstract development work is being done by project managers, middle management types, or executive staff: “We need an X to do Y so Z will stop bothering me. Go do your C/ASP/PHP/Ruby/Java magic and make that happen.” But that C/ASP/PHP/Ruby/Java magic is, after 5 years, about as intellectually stimulating as flipping burgers because…
It’s the part of the job that any monkey could do.
Developers want into middle management because that’s where they see the development taking place. To fix it, companies either need to move development back down to the developers, or they need to just give up the pretext and call them “programmers” outright, make it a blue collar job 40-hour-a-week job, and get rid of those all-devouring IP agreements so the employees can slake their thirst for true development on SourceForge or maybe by starting up their own software development company.
The third option of “punt and maintain the status quo” is only going to result in that 80% number going up to 90%, then 95%, and then you’re really going to be shocked at the salaries people will be demanding for simply writing code. :)