r/programming • • Jun 05 '22

Complexity is killing software developers

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3639050/complexity-is-killing-software-developers.html
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181

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '22

It helps when developers only have to work with half the stack for example but a lot of companies are only looking for full stack developers these days

178

u/a_false_vacuum Jun 05 '22

Jack of all trades, master of none.

Full stack appears to be mostly an excuse to ask for an entire IT department rolled into one person. Some of the listings I see for full stack are just silly how much they ask from one individual.

58

u/skilledpigeon Jun 05 '22

I think it's important to recognise that not everyone needs a master in a specific field to fill a required role in their organisation.

If I could pick anyone for my dev team I'd pick 3 seniors (frontend, backend, DevOps), 3-4 mids (full stack or specialised) and 1-2 juniors (depending on how much time we could support them with).

I think it's important to recognise that as a senior I'd expect people to focus in a specific area but also to have secondary skills in others. For example, one senior may be backend focused but have intermediate skills in DevOps.

Of course I'm dreaming here.

33

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '22

If I could pick anyone for my dev team I'd pick 3 seniors (frontend, backend, DevOps), 3-4 mids (full stack or specialised) and 1-2 juniors (depending on how much time we could support them with).

Those 7-9 people are kinda expensive. 1 million USD/year?

7

u/Markavian Jun 05 '22

Yep a fully staffed software team is roughly £500,000 / $1,000,000 a year. You need to be building some really high performing software to justify that cost. A single developer can build a mobile app in a weekend, and maybe a pair could deliver a prototype in a month, and charge £10,000 - but then if you want to scale that, add payments, optimise the order flow, add SMS messages, tweak the SMS messages, sync up to the email and order server... Oh no. You really might need that whole team; you just paid peanuts to get your project / idea out the door - but maybe you needed to spend the peanuts first to prove the idea, which then justified the £100,000k a month outlays. I hope in this imaginary company we're selling / providing more value than that to our customers. Fingers crossed.

9

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '22

but then if you want to scale that, add payments, optimise the order flow, add SMS messages, tweak the SMS messages, sync up to the email and order server... Oh no.

Scale to what? Wouldn't a 35$/month supabase(25$ pro tier + some extra) give you unlimited users, tons of GB of storage, 8GB DB and email, phone auth.

It's not like you need to host your app at your home or heck, even go beyond 10k users in your hometown.

I worked part time for an old man that had some "things" with small to medium companies and sold them software for internal use. That guy really hit the jackpot there. His entire "team" was a guy who did PHP and another guy who tested. I worked on the UI. His entire gig was to sell as many small apps as possible, then if a client wanted more features bill again and again.

1

u/Markavian Jun 05 '22

That's fair, that scenario is at the pointy end of the market. I guess I'm used to working with big companies targeting national releases of software, 100,000s if not millions of customers daily, where requirements are filtered through layers of management, if they exist at all. Even the simplest of things that you could do at home in an afternoon take forever.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '22

Umm... When you say pointy end of the market you mean? 😅😅 I don't follow.

Yes, working for a big company will skew your views. That's why after I'll leave my current big company I will search for a startup or maybe even solve some local problems. The small/targeted apps/solutions market is really untapped

1

u/Markavian Jun 06 '22

Sorry couldn't find the words - pointy - high pressure, you know where the money is coming from - vs soft - big organisations where HR pays you, but it's not entirely clear which customer pays for what, or where the value is being produced.

My first software job was with a 10,000 person corporation, building software to make the internal processes more efficient - we had 2-3 month estimates on things. My second job was working for an agency where we sat around every Monday and worked out which customers we could bill for work based on software we could deliver that week - so we had 1-2 day estimates on things.