Why Coders Are Broke
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an employer with a job to fill is in search of a candidate with a diploma in exactly the skills he is looking for. But is this in fact the case?
This excellently produced video is introduced by a very good joke.
“Scientists ask why does this work?”
“Engineers ask how does this work?”
“Businessmen ask how much will it cost to get this working?”
“Liberal arts students ask ‘do you want fries with that’”
The idea that STEM subjects make you employable while studying the arts is somehow ‘soft’ and self-indulgent is a very deep seated one. It is certainly one that I accepted as a fact at the point in my life when I had to make decisions about what subjects to study. As it happened, my natural inclinations tend towards science. So there was never any great conflict in my mind about where to direct my efforts. That it was supposedly more lucrative was just the cherry on the top. But I do remember my history teacher expressing, unsolicited, the opinon that I’d do better not pursuing science.
I never really understood whether he meant I was better at arts despite what I thought, or that science wasn’t as good a career as I had seemed to believe.
Anyway, although I have always liked science and continue to keep up with it to this day, I have never had any particular dislike of the arts. Far from it. I like music and books. I enjoy learning foreign languages badly. In fact I don’t really see a huge gap between them. I enjoy finding out something about rainbows that I didn’t know. But I enjoy an observation in Madame Bovary that is a wry observation on human nature that I hadn’t previously noticed just as much. Since graduating I have worked on a lot of science stuff that I was never taught in formal education. I’ve simply learnt it in the same way I’ve learnt to (just about ) read French.
Another thing I’ve learnt is that the value of knowledge is very much a function of its scarcity rather than the intrinsic difficulty of acquiring that knowledge in the first place. I noticed this early on in my life but it’s particularly noticeable to me right now. My business depends on having rare knowledge in two areas. If you wanted to compete with me in one of them you’d need to spend at least 20 and probably 30 years to reach the level I’ve got to. The other one you could master to my level in 5 years with a bit of diligence. But as it is the second of those that is in shortest supply, that is the one that gets me more orders, and more lucrative ones. I didn’t need to study economics to work that out. (Economics is one of the few subjects that I regard as genuinely useless.)
So the news that computer science graduates are now finding it hard to get work doesn’t really surprise me. Learning to code is a very good training of the mind. I don’t think anyone who has studied it should regard it as time wasted. You’ll have learnt a lot of highly valuable skills that you can transfer elsewhere. But if the world doesn’t need as many coders as it used to, don’t hang on trying use your knowledge. Find something else to do. There’s another joke that is relevant here.
A well established high court barrister in London whose services were among the most sought after had a leak in his bathroom one Sunday night. It needed urgent attention, so he rang a 24 hour a day plumber. “No problem sir, that’ll be £600 per hour.” The lawyer was astonished. “I’m a high court barrister, and I can’t charge £600 an hour.” The reply – “Neither could I when I was a high court barrister.” It’s not what you know, it’s how many people know it.
