This is what happens when planning in an economy is left up to price signals rather than actual scheduling.
You get cycles of
High commodity price -> High investment -> High production -> Low price
And the frequency of the cycle is largely based on the time it takes to go from investment to production (so 4-6 years for college graduation).
In any rational economy, the number of seats available at colleges would have been pre-proportioned based on projected future demand given the economic plan.
Keynes as a capitalist even got this and suggested to save some money in boom times and spend it in the downfall but anything other than line go up is heresy now
Yeah, even other capitalists have criticized this business as usual: Keynesian and Georgism in particular. I don’t agree with either group, but they’re a lot more pleasant to speak with and debate than pure hogs.
Even the whole “porky gets the money and his consumption will create jobs” tacitly endorses that demand drives growth. Thus making income inequality undesirable because rich people underconsume.
It’ll swing back. It’s not like we’re going to stop needing software, and frankly the software is out there is kind of crap and needs work.
But important lesson for people thinking about getting into the field is to not do it for the money. Do it because you love it.
Supply will fall, demand will rise, salaries will increase, supply will rise, there will be a crash, demand will fall, salaries will fall, supply will fall…
And with each bust in the cycle, conditions for workers will get worse, while billionaires get ever richer, a process not at all offset by the boom cycles, because clawing back concessions is way harder then accepting them cuz you’d starve otherwise.
The best system at work. No way could there be a better one.
Working for a publicly-traded company will always make this as bad as possible. People sometimes have better luck with private companies which aren’t beholden to shareholder value.
I don’t think it’ll bounce back to the same levels as before. Big wigs are content with good enough (Brian Merchant wrote about this) especially since it’s cheaper, so less developers implementing good enough solutions.
We had a student graduate and take a job out the gate for $430k about 3 years ago. With a BS. Just an insane number equivalent to $250k in 2001, a number none of my peers were near at the time.
Large salaries like that are certainly a sign of unhealth, and this industry likes to push itself there periodically.
So maybe it doesn’t get back to that point, but I suspect it will return to previous normal levels. TBH, though, I think it will someday go insane again.
This is what happens when planning in an economy is left up to price signals rather than actual scheduling.
You get cycles of
High commodity price -> High investment -> High production -> Low price
And the frequency of the cycle is largely based on the time it takes to go from investment to production (so 4-6 years for college graduation).
In any rational economy, the number of seats available at colleges would have been pre-proportioned based on projected future demand given the economic plan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle
the most efficient way to allocate ressources
Keynes as a capitalist even got this and suggested to save some money in boom times and spend it in the downfall but anything other than line go up is heresy now
Yeah, even other capitalists have criticized this business as usual: Keynesian and Georgism in particular. I don’t agree with either group, but they’re a lot more pleasant to speak with and debate than pure hogs.
Even the whole “porky gets the money and his consumption will create jobs” tacitly endorses that demand drives growth. Thus making income inequality undesirable because rich people underconsume.
I thought you edited the link to “pork cycle” to mock the capitalists, but no, reality itself has made fools of the porkies.
It’ll swing back. It’s not like we’re going to stop needing software, and frankly the software is out there is kind of crap and needs work.
But important lesson for people thinking about getting into the field is to not do it for the money. Do it because you love it.
Supply will fall, demand will rise, salaries will increase, supply will rise, there will be a crash, demand will fall, salaries will fall, supply will fall…
And with each bust in the cycle, conditions for workers will get worse, while billionaires get ever richer, a process not at all offset by the boom cycles, because clawing back concessions is way harder then accepting them cuz you’d starve otherwise.
The best system at work. No way could there be a better one.
Nothing teaches you quite like ‘jobs are a concession porky hates making’ than being a teenager looking for your first job.
Working for a publicly-traded company will always make this as bad as possible. People sometimes have better luck with private companies which aren’t beholden to shareholder value.
I don’t think it’ll bounce back to the same levels as before. Big wigs are content with good enough (Brian Merchant wrote about this) especially since it’s cheaper, so less developers implementing good enough solutions.
We had a student graduate and take a job out the gate for $430k about 3 years ago. With a BS. Just an insane number equivalent to $250k in 2001, a number none of my peers were near at the time.
Large salaries like that are certainly a sign of unhealth, and this industry likes to push itself there periodically.
So maybe it doesn’t get back to that point, but I suspect it will return to previous normal levels. TBH, though, I think it will someday go insane again.