I feel like everywhere I work, we have this term, and it’s become increasingly more common over the past decade as the USA becomes more and more hateful and aggressive towards the working class people… The offshore team. I really, really hate hearing about the offshore team. It’s from a certain country in Asia that starts with I But I have nothing against those people that come from that country, it’s simply out of concern for my well-being and my survival that it bothers me…
You look at a country like Germany, and how they have a workers council, and a country like France that has proper retirement, then you see the USA and how We have millions of computer science grads who struggle to find work, can’t get a job, universities churning out new students in the tens of thousands per year… We shouldn’t have an offshore team, at a company that makes billions of dollars, led by people that have so much money amassed up that they could survive for a thousand years spending millions.
It’s just embarrassing, that as a society, we are so horrible to each other.
It’ll only get worse. Part of being in the corporate world is seeing it normalized so much, but then also you won’t ever make a decent living unless you’re in the corporate world. We’re hurtling towards a cyberpunk dystopia, but there’s more than likely not much you individually you can do.
Even the major push for computer science you’re seeing is thanks to FAANG companies pushing for more students to enter the field, not to give them a better living, but to flood the market so this exact thing happens, too much talent so they can pay them less.
Find something, get paid, and make a living for yourself. Corporate world sucks, but we’re forced into it
The problem is that it is still relatively rare for someone to have the patience and attention to detail to be able to tell the computer exactly what they want from it. The fraction of people that have that kind of natural ability hasn’t changed that much, and it’s not really something you can train.
So while the schools are pumping out more grads, the average quality of those entry level junior engineers is going down, down, down.
This heartens me that there will still be a place those who can produce quality software. But the current situation is not going to do any favours for average software quality any time soon.
Edit: I want to clarify something. I think anyone can be trained to write computer programs. The natural ability I’m talking about is actually the ability to tolerate programming day in and day out, as an occupation.
