A concern mentioned on 8000hours.org is a possible oversupply due to bootcamps. MOOCs might also contribute to this—you can learn programming anywhere without formal education. To what extent is this true?
I think it’s highly unlikely that macro-level job prospects for generic software development will continue to look as good as they do right now:
Venture investment in software is large and growing extremely quickly right now (more than 50% yearly last year). Annual venture capital investment is now equal to about 5% of technology industry revenue (~$50b on ~$1T) and probably has an outsized effect on jobs, so a slowdown could put downward pressure on salaries.
Right now, bootcamps are small (~10% of newly-educated entrants into the tech industry). I’m not sure on what timescale 80k is worried about a “short-term oversupply”—bootcamp graduates won’t be a large fraction of tech industry workers for at least 10 years, since college grads are growing as well.
I’d be more worried about a long-term equilibration of supply: right now there appears to be a substantial amount of money lying on the ground (as bootcamps demonstrate), which suggests the market is not in equilibrium and we should expect equilibrium wages of tech workers to be lower.
A concern mentioned on 8000hours.org is a possible oversupply due to bootcamps. MOOCs might also contribute to this—you can learn programming anywhere without formal education. To what extent is this true?
I think it’s highly unlikely that macro-level job prospects for generic software development will continue to look as good as they do right now:
Venture investment in software is large and growing extremely quickly right now (more than 50% yearly last year). Annual venture capital investment is now equal to about 5% of technology industry revenue (~$50b on ~$1T) and probably has an outsized effect on jobs, so a slowdown could put downward pressure on salaries.
Right now, bootcamps are small (~10% of newly-educated entrants into the tech industry). I’m not sure on what timescale 80k is worried about a “short-term oversupply”—bootcamp graduates won’t be a large fraction of tech industry workers for at least 10 years, since college grads are growing as well.
I’d be more worried about a long-term equilibration of supply: right now there appears to be a substantial amount of money lying on the ground (as bootcamps demonstrate), which suggests the market is not in equilibrium and we should expect equilibrium wages of tech workers to be lower.