Do you have model to back the claim up of inexperienced software engineers not contributing?
Kinda sorta? I was basing it off a vague intuition that productivity is probably distributed as a power law, so the top few percent of people would account for most of the useful (economic/research) output. Looking it up, if we use income as a proxy for productivity, that seems to be the case.
Now, granted, what this says is “the few most productive developers account for most of the value”, not “the few most competent developers account for most of the value”. But I think it’s reasonable to assume that the two are strongly correlated. Alternative models would imply a software industry in which the bulk of the gains is generated by superstar novices in their first years of programming, who then burn out and stop contributing much. Pretty sure that’s not how it works.
Another intuition I had is that the bulk of programmer-hours is probably experienced-programmer-hours, because, again, novices either quit or quickly become experienced programmers. So again, unless we assume that the value-generation is skewed towards a person’s first months/years of programming, we have to assume that most of the value is generated by experienced people.
But that’s all admittedly pure intuitive theorizing. I did say “presumably” in my initial statement.
I mean you’re obviously correct about the value distribution of experienced software engineers.
I should have made it more clear but I was more considering things like upskilling management or like more direct operational research on how it affects other parts of the firm itself.
Operational research can be quite complex but power laws are a thing and as a first approximation I would agree. It is just that I think it might be a bit more complex than that in reality since a manager without coding experience might be helped by it still.
Why would we use income as a proxy for productivity, given that a) companies’ pay grades are only half matching each other, b) there exists an open source community?
Now, granted, what this says is “the few most productive developers account for most of the value”, not “the few most competent developers account for most of the value”. But I think it’s reasonable to assume that the two are strongly correlated.
I don’t think that holds either. Say, existence of Windows is a large chunk of value (which enables other software and so on), but Windows is not written competently—e.g. from what we see when it, upon an update, crashes a bunch of computers.
Another intuition I had is that the bulk of programmer-hours is probably experienced-programmer-hours, because, again, novices either quit or quickly become experienced programmers.
What I’m saying is that ‘experienced’ is not precisely equal to ‘competent’; as long as your code works somehow, you are not under large pressure to make it maintainable or even valid for all cases.
Kinda sorta? I was basing it off a vague intuition that productivity is probably distributed as a power law, so the top few percent of people would account for most of the useful (economic/research) output. Looking it up, if we use income as a proxy for productivity, that seems to be the case.
Now, granted, what this says is “the few most productive developers account for most of the value”, not “the few most competent developers account for most of the value”. But I think it’s reasonable to assume that the two are strongly correlated. Alternative models would imply a software industry in which the bulk of the gains is generated by superstar novices in their first years of programming, who then burn out and stop contributing much. Pretty sure that’s not how it works.
Another intuition I had is that the bulk of programmer-hours is probably experienced-programmer-hours, because, again, novices either quit or quickly become experienced programmers. So again, unless we assume that the value-generation is skewed towards a person’s first months/years of programming, we have to assume that most of the value is generated by experienced people.
But that’s all admittedly pure intuitive theorizing. I did say “presumably” in my initial statement.
I mean you’re obviously correct about the value distribution of experienced software engineers.
I should have made it more clear but I was more considering things like upskilling management or like more direct operational research on how it affects other parts of the firm itself.
Operational research can be quite complex but power laws are a thing and as a first approximation I would agree. It is just that I think it might be a bit more complex than that in reality since a manager without coding experience might be helped by it still.
Why would we use income as a proxy for productivity, given that
a) companies’ pay grades are only half matching each other,
b) there exists an open source community?
I don’t think that holds either. Say, existence of Windows is a large chunk of value (which enables other software and so on), but Windows is not written competently—e.g. from what we see when it, upon an update, crashes a bunch of computers.
What I’m saying is that ‘experienced’ is not precisely equal to ‘competent’; as long as your code works somehow, you are not under large pressure to make it maintainable or even valid for all cases.