Code. To me this is the essence what I do on a daily basis. I’ve been doing for about 6 years, roughly 10 hours a day. Surprisingly I still like it. And probably will for a long time. But don’t you think sometimes all code is just the same thing?
If you think back to the days of punch cards you’d hardly think we’d be in a world where 30 years later computers is still not doing everything all by themselves. In fact we are still a long ways from the I, Robot scenarios. Some researchers are getting creepily close to making it a reality, but that’s not the point I’m making today.
What I am trying to say it that as coders our jobs are secure. Because there will always need to be someone that knows what makes something tick. Most people today take it for granted and it’s rare to find a personality with an insatiable thirst for knowledge on how things work. The world needs these people, and they’ll remain needed for a long time.
The IT industry is a non-stop moshpit of ideas – some better than others – that’s constantly being torn apart and welded together by experts who do the same thing day in and day out. Sure you get applications whose interfaces are better than others. The point is, as long as there is software, there will always be someone who thinks they can do it better. And they have to convince one person whose hand can apply the cash, and then you have to do conversion from old to new to get the better product and then eight years later once the dude with the original idea has moved on, some new guy with some new technology will come and replace the old system, thinking that he can do it better.
It’s an amazing machine.
Personally, I prefer being the guy with the ideas. The guy who finds the niche and exploits it for coin. It actually happens rarely. But I mean if you use worm shit to develop a revolutionary fertilizer then kudos to you dude. Fukin eh.
Another funny thing is major corporations moving local jobs to other countries to save money. Quite the motivation you got there chief. Couple of notes on that though…
Outsource to people who can speak your language – communication will cost more than just the phone bills in the long run if your staff is stressed due to miscommunication.
If you think it’s going to be cheaper, you’ll find the outsourced companies staff in your outsourcing country of choice will have a booming economy and sooner or later, these people will need raises. And it will be a bit more difficult for you to downsize with an entire country squeezing your balls. Better read the fine print on the contracts buddy.
Again there is always going to be people who is peeved with the system. They will in turn, start a consulting company to sell you a new system, which you will not not have the people for, and you’ll have to hire students to come and figure out whats going on – which will take a while, but you’ll end up just getting the project back home anyway, due to resistance from people using the existing system.
Boy I’m happy to be a contractor.