[el_dev_hell]

> Employment, and employees, are not fungible - why do people (and more importantly: the news-media and the people elected to direct the economy) continue to speak of it as though it is?

I've seen this mentioned a few times on HN. I find it a confusing concept.

My position is 100% fungible. I write code to solve problems. There are thousands of people that can write equivalent code to solve the same problems.

I'm legitimately interested: can you expand on how my position isn't fungible?

[DaiPlusPlus]

> My position is 100% fungible

It's fungible only when the entire set of available workers shares your competence (i.e. your skill-set, relevant experience, and business domain knowledge) - or - can be quickly trained to acquire such competence.

...and I'll wager that the vast majority (90%-ish?) of the working-age and almost-working-age population in your country is both unqualified to write software professionally and is not interested in spending 2-4 years of their life to study CS or SE to a level sufficient to do the work you currently do. Of the other 10% at least 9.95% of them won't have your business domain knowledge needed to do your job such that you make the right decisions early-on or slow down others by bringing them in for help, and so on.

----------------

What I was complaining about was when it's reported in the news, or ever really said by anyone, that "opening this new coal-mine in Greenhippieville, CA will create 5,000 jobs!" or that "the economy added 10,000 jobs this month" - because the "jobs" those numbers refer to could be anything without further qualification, and doing that will make the conversation too technical for a general audience.

[himinlomax]

> ...and I'll wager that the vast majority (90%-ish?) of the working-age and almost-working-age population in your country is both unqualified to write software professionally and is not interested in spending 2-4 years of their life to study CS or SE

You left out the most salient point here, most people are entirely unable to write software even if their life depended on it. Just like I doubt I'd be able to write a symphony in 4 years even with a ticking time bomb strapped to my skull.

[railsgirls112]

Eh, maybe at a senior dev 10x level. I'd wager that a large segment of the population is totally capable of writing relatively non complex code, given the training/resources that many software devs have (university, internships, online bootcamps, time for side projects). Just like I bet you could write a symphony in 4 years- It probably wouldn't be Mozart, but good enough to meet whatever time bomb requirements.

[datavirtue]

I have never seen any non-complicated code in business. There are droves of people working overtime to complicate nearly every corner of software and systems to unmaintainable levels. The developers, the good ones, simply try to fulfill requirements and mitigate the mess the best they can in the time allowed while learning enough new material each day to scare anyone.

A developers' core skill is not getting overwhelmed after being blindsided by new shit from every angle on a constant basis.

We have 30% of out team just dealing with auto-reported vulnerabilities in our code base. No choice. Getting an "exception" takes an architect about a week for a vuln that has no material impact and which can't be mitigated with a simple library update. Tip of the ice berg.

This is at an excellent tech focused company (relatively great place to work).

[himinlomax]

Poor programmers are worse than no programmer for most if not all projects.

[XargonEnder]

I agree with all of your facts about why engineers aren't fungible. However most jobs I've had management behaves as though they are fungible. For example I've seen companies fail to give raises needed to retain top talent and lose millions of dollars but they don't seem to be able to acknowledge that. They just act as though the replacement is just as good as the last one.

[himinlomax]

> My position is 100% fungible. I write code to solve problems. There are thousands of people that can write equivalent code to solve the same problems.

Gold is fungible. You can mine gold anywhere in the world and it's worth the same.

The level of skill to be able to code effectively is not something a large proportion of the population has. People have scoffed at the idea that programming requires a high IQ (let's call it what it is), calling it elitist or something, but you don't expect any random joe to be able to be a professional illustrator, musician, juggler, diver, climber, writer or mathematician.

The real problem, has Jordan Peterson points out, is what will society do with people on the low end of the IQ curve, as more and more skills are required and unskilled labor is being eliminated by technology?