A Rescue for Software Engineers?
Software Engineers are the life-blood of a high-tech company. The ability to write clean, scalable code is part art and part science, and those who do it well, should be not a rung lower than the top of the totem pole. Instead, they are paid nothing, treated badly, expected to work like slaves on projects that insult their intelligence.
Joel (of Fogcreek fame) has a brilliant solution.
Upgrade your career – Joel on Software
At one of the recent DevDays events, I asked the audience (almost 100% programmers) how many of them were incredibly satisfied with their job, found it fulfilling, and were treated well by their employers. Only about 25% of the hands went up. I asked how many people either hated their job and couldn’t wait to find something better, or were actually actively on the job market. Again, about 25%. The rest were somewhere in the middle: maybe they can tolerate their job, but they’re keeping an eye open for something better.
Who is this DevDays audience? They’re the elite of the elite of the best programmers out there. They’re the people who participate in Stack Overflow, the people who read, the people who are constantly trying to learn more about programming and software development. More than half of them paid their own money to attend a one day conference. They’re the most desirable software developers on the planet. And 75% of them are not delighted with their job.
That’s unacceptable. I’ve been saying for ten years that the top developers have a choice of where to work, and the top employers need to work harder to attract them, because the top developers get ten times as much work done as the average developers.
And yet, I still keep meeting ridiculously productive developers working in shitholes.
We’re going to fix this, right now. Thus, Stack Overflow Careers.
Tags: Careers, Fogcreek, Software Engineers, Stack Overflow