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> I don't see an excess supply of skilled polyglot programmers

> with a solid computing culture and some keen interest in

> software performance and quality.

And where would such a person even be invited for an interview, let alone get hired?

Demand for non-drone skills is asymptotically approaching zero.

I have just rewritten a ~2800 loc sized module for an open source python framework. There are around 300 such modules/plugins and the maintainer of the framework said he had never seen anything like mine, nobody would ever do it as thoroughly, correctly and neatly.

Yet, the total accumulated time of python programming I have done in my life is probably less than 200 hours, thinly stretched over a period of over 10 years, once 10+ years ago, once 5+ years ago, and once recently.

Nobody would ever hire me to do any python work.

Replace python with a host of other languages I have worked with briefly over time and a similar story could be told. I wouldn't stand a chance getting hired for programming work in any of those languages.

Hiring managers are looking for subject matter idiots. Virtually nobody hires renaissance men/women.

Where there is no demand for renaissance men/women, few renaissance men/women will emerge. Where there is huge demand for subject matter idiots, large numbers of subject matter idiots will be nurtured and produced. That's the reality of it.

regards

benjamin

On 16 March 2015 at 12:37, Nicolas Limare <nicolas+tlug@example.com> wrote:

Hi everyone,

> besides Stephen's point about how good the Japanese economy (and
> maybe North America's and Europe's?) was back then, the world
> population has grown a lot worldwide [...] there's just more people
> looking for work. More competition means lower wages and longer
> hours. If a Japanese employer doesn't look at an overseas
> workforce, then the company will risk get swallowed up by another
> company.

That can't be the only explanation. Why would Japan IT be doomed to be
reduced to stupid/boring/cheap jobs and outsourced to digital sweat
shops while US IT still dominates the tech world with innovation and
money? I don't have the feeling that Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple,
Microsoft have given up being industry leaders and recruiting talented
people for interesting and well paid jobs, so there must be a way in
Japan too.

The population/competition thing is probably true for low
qualification jobs, such as the usual PHP and Java stuff where one is
only asked to be able to read and write in the company chosen
language; these are the assembly line workers of the IT factory. But
the factory also needs inventors and designers and I don't see an
excess supply of skilled polyglot programmers with a solid computing
culture and some keen interest in software performance and
quality. The one from Knuth, not the one from the Gang of Four.

--
Nicolas LIMARE
http://nicolas.limare.net/

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