Why programmers are valued that much?
Programming became so popular for the last few years, it’s just insane. Everybody are talking about it, everybody want to learn how to code because it feels appealing. Moreover, I also study as a programmer, which is an amazing coincidence.
I’ve heard so many people are talking about this industry as something unbelievable, and it is. I have a friend who is working as a freelancer, and he is earning up to $2000 per project, that he can finish in 2 weeks. The most mind-blowing is that he is only 20. Pretty cool, huh?
This and lots of other stories made me concerned of why people are giving so much money to develop some platforms, services, apps, websites, games and so forth?
This question forced me to make a great research, including reading countless of blogs, interviewing people on conferences, interviewing programmers itself, learning human psychology, asking teachers and friends from university about this and of course sitting and considering this by myself.
During my research I found an answer. It consists of combination of multiple reasons. Let’s take a close look into them.
Apps that are created by programmers are used by the whole world
Accuracy, security, speed and quality has to be met in every single program, especially if millions of users are going to use it. This realization alone can be an answer for my question.
Because if for instance Google is going to have a major crash or even a slight problem with one of their products, it will need to be fixed fast. And only the smartest people who really know the cause of the problem can eliminated it.
Obviously it would be a lot better to predict all of the problems that may occur but it simply impossible in software industry, believe me.
Besides, even if we are not talking about giant corporations, still those apps will be used by a huge amount of people.
IT industry is going to dominate the world, if not already
This one pretty obvious but not everybody are realizing how true it is. We already have passed the time when the first phone was invented, when the Internet was discovered. Now we can create organs on 3D printer, we can send the money instantly to any part of the world (thanks for the Bitcoin), we can observe how a robot is repeating the exact moves that we’ve just done, we can wear a device that tracks every sensation of our body and alerts us when we are about to feel not okay. That’s crazy.
The rapid pace of invention is staggering. The most interesting though here is that the more powerful technologies become, the easier it is to create new stuff on top of that.
Question – who is going to make this a reality? Yeah, programmers, engineers.
They have so much things to do, it’s not even a joke. Since the Internet appeared, everything became possible. That’s why people are hungry enough to make every single dream accomplished.
I recently was at IoT (Internet of things) conference, where I found that there is a project called “smart city” where basically all of the cameras, transportation system, hospitals, educational and community centers, power plants, and literally everything can exchange information about every single event that has ever happened to any part of the city/to any human being in the city. All of these data will be synced in the cloud for simplifying the access and the amount of data that will be generated.
To be honest, I not against technologies but this one made me scared. I don’t want the government to know so much info about me. It destroys privacy.
Anyway, somebody is going to do that. With enough money offered, programmers are going to make somebody’s dream possible.
Programmers are solving problems
One day while I was watching one of Jim Rohn’s seminars, I heard this phrase, “We are getting paid by the value that we bring to the market place”.
I truly understand the meaning of it. But I never was concerned what kind of value programmers are adding to the marketplace. Now, it is the right time to think about it.
At first it was really hard to answer this question because basically programmers are writing the code. However I dived deeper, and now understand that the main objective of the programmer is to solve some problem in a particular industry.
Unfortunately not all of the guys in IT sphere are realizing that, and they just learn a certain skillset to create apps. For instance, creating a website via some template (usually that is made in Photoshop) is not solving anything. It’s just a work that can be done by enough repetition. There is nothing new to be created, or no particular obstacle to overcome.
That’s why, I believe programmers that are getting paid the most are innovators and risk-takers; they figure out a challenge in the industry and try to do their best to execute upon it.
Never-ending learning
As years go by, more and more apps are being developed. Due to this lots of new branches have been created (web, mobile, IoT), which leads to new skills and technologies to grasp.
It seems like you learned one language but there are lots of features that are adding every 3-6 months. I’m not talking about the frameworks that are getting released so often, you can’t even keep track of them.
However there is a positive side of it. The more IT is progressed, the easier the tools become. It is very important because earlier it was kind of messy and took quite a bit to even launch a small program for test purposes.
Lastly, it is a hard mental work
If you’re a programmer, you know that for sure. If you’re not, your opinion can diversify.
The first crowd will think that programming is a rocket science, so that not everyone can become such. Of course that is untrue, because programming is nothing but pure practice. Yes, you need to be able to think logically, to resolve difficult tasks but in the core it is attainable for everybody.
The second crowd will think that it’s just writing some code, not big of a challenge. Of course it’s not just about that. In fact, almost all of the top developers with a decent experience (seniors) will tell you that writing a code is the least amount of time that is required to create a successful software. There is so much more time dedicated towards finding the most effective and optimal solution, to find bugs at the early stages, maintenance of the app etc.
Let’s take Steemit developers as an example.
Those guys are creating something that has never been done before. They are the leaders of cryptocurrency space in my opinion. Not only they have managed to use Blockchain technology, they are also bringing it to the masses.
I bet there are lots of obstacles in front of them right now. The servers got overloaded from time to time because of the amount of new users, the hackers are trying to steal money from the platform, bots are created for no good reason. But I do believe in them, I believe in every single team member, they are changing our lives and thousands of people can related to that.
To maintain and develop such great platform, it requires a lot of time, patience, persistence and hard work. Thank you @dan and @ned for such a blessing.
In any case, I’m going to bring thousands of guys from IT industry into Steemit, it turns out they love it as well.
#steemit #steem #steemthought #opinion #blog #life #programming #steemit-thanks #money #lifestyle
BTW, my friend just returned from trip to Cuba. He meet a guy there, which also is a programmer (Python to be precise). He asked:
That was a shock to me, but it also proof a point, that software developer can automate your business and can be a leverage to economy of your country. So... a good programmer is just a multiplayer, which can be applied to the value of a businessman idea ;)
Absolutely agreed. That's why people are using outsoursing that much. About Cuba I was impessed, I didn't know that somebody can pay such low salary for a programmer.
However in Ukraine for instance you can get paid $100-$200 per month if you work for our company. If you choose to work for outsoursing company from U.S. or Europe, you'll get paid a lot more.
Besides it is a mind blowing idea to get your work done by somebody outside the U.S. Thanks for sharing your opinion. It means a lot to me.
I heard that all programmers in Cuba are hired by government - I think that is the reason.
2 weeks ago I wrote some tips how to get a remote job with livecoding. I think that will be the future - live here, work wherever you like :)
Yeah, totally true. Remote job is the future. Even now there are so many opportunities to do that from any part of the world.
I teach coding to children. I tell them they are problem solvers. Writing or copying code is easy, the real lesson we are learning is predicting and bug solving. more time is spent on working out why something doesn't work and fixing it. And as you pointed out, there is money to be made in being the smartest person to do that at speed.
I suppose you're a great parent if you're doing this for your children as well. It has a lot to say about your personality.
As in classrooms of children :)
But I think with code academy and hour of code resources then you can start teaching your children at home from a young age too!
I guess so. In the future when I will have children, it will be another level of education, simpler, remote and more practical. We'll see how it goes.
Great Post!! I am currently teaching myself Python.
I hope, that you are learning Python 3 :)
I am! I started learning in Python 2 for about a day, and then luckily, I quickly learned from others sources that support for it would be nixed in 2020. lol
Very true!
I guess so :)
Thanks for the post!!
Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
Hi! This post has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 8.0 and reading ease of 68%. This puts the writing level on par with Leo Tolstoy and David Foster Wallace.