Programmer Productivity and Market Demand

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Darcy Burner recently posted her disagreement with Jim Fawcette’s analysis that tools such as Visual Studio increase productivity thus eliminating jobs. Darcy claims that there is no shortage of software that needs to be written which Darcy then extrapolates as to proof that the need for programmers has not diminished. I’m not so sure I agree. For instance, let’s look at the examples of software Darcy thinks is needed but there simply aren’t enough programmers to develop:

Medical diagnosis modeling: When I go to the doctor’s office, it ought to be true that a piece of software should be able to analyze my current symptoms, vital statistics, test results, medical history, and local epidemiology information in order to direct my medical professionals to the correct tests to perform to narrow down possibilities – or provide suggested diagnoses. This would be faster, substantially less expensive, and far more accurate than the current unassisted model of diagnosis – all that’s missing is the software. (And then, in countries where private insurance applies, billing of my insurance company should happen completely automatically, saving something like 65% of every healthcare dollar spent.) Potential payoff: billions.

There are many problems here that have nothing to do with software and someone who works in the field commented on Darcy’s blog indicating some of the issues. First, the medical field has never embraced software. How many companies failed during the dotcom era that were going to revolutionize the medical industry via wireless or paperless records? More than a few.

Of course, I think the irony here is that Darcy works at Microsoft. If this was a multi-billion dollar market just waiting for someone to write the code, wouldn’t Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and a whole slew of other companies be jumping all over themselves to corner this market?

Shipping systems: If I need to get some object from point A to point B anywhere in the world, I ought to be able to go online and have some software figure out for me what the most cost-effective shipping method will be based on my constraints, and that software should make all of the necessary arrangements on my behalf – even if what I’m shipping is an elephant or a ton of grain. Again, the software is missing.

Any company that does a lot of shipping probably already has something like this in place. The software does exist. I know because we had something similar at eToys with the added functionality of routing an order to a specific warehouse based on which warehouse could ship the product for the least cost.

The reason this software isn’t available at the consumer level is that it’s not in FedEx or UPS’ interests to tell you that you might be better off using a competitor. Also, most consumers don’t ship enough and wouldn’t realize enough savings in order to make this a viable market for a software developer. What would you pay to save .13 mailing that document via DHL rather than UPS?

Traffic: Why is it not already the case that I get told the fastest way home based on current traffic conditions? The GPS technology is good enough, the maps exist, we even monitor the traffic. Software, software, software.

Again, it’s not software, software, software. It’s money, money, money. Somebody either has to decide to undertake this project out of the kindness of their heart or somebody has to pay for it with the expectation of generating a positive return on their investment. If there’s a large enough market demand someone will step in and fill that demand. I highly doubt there’s some CEO sitting around crying because he would be the next Bill Gates if he could only find a few software developers to write some mapping technology to help people get home faster. And, really, depending on what Darcy means, this already exists. You can go to the CalTrans website you can see what the average speed is on freeways which is essentially showing you where the traffic jams are. The question is, would people pay for that service? Probably a few but not enough to make anybody rich.

Shopping: I want a new scanner – an HP 4670, to be precise, and I want it by the end of the week. Is it cheapest to get it at the local Staples, Office Depot, Fry’s, Circuit City, or Target? Or should I pay the shipping and get it from Buy.com or Amazon? Why isn’t it an easy thing for me to calculate? Software again could solve the problem.

Again, as with the shipping example, it’s highly unlikely that all these companies are going to allow themselves to be competitively bid against. They’ll bundle items so a direct comparison can’t be made, refuse to participate, etc. It’s simply not in their interests to allow consumers to price shop them unless they always have the lowest price. In other words, it has nothing to do with a lack of software and everything to do with a lack of motivation on the part of the people who would be supplying the data. Even today many tools like Froogle already exist but if you go talk to the people who run these comparison shopping engines I’m quite sure you’ll find that the problem is not software but some other business roadblock.

Now, forgetting the fact that Darcy’s examples don’t seem to support the case being made, let’s look at the bigger question; are tools like Visual Studio that increase productivity eliminating jobs? The reason this article caught my eye was I was thinking about this very question as it relates to outsourcing. In other words, is outsourcing simply accelerating a trend that was likely to happen anyway as software development tools decreased the demand for programmers?

As is becoming evident via the salary trends of programmers, the actual act of writing code is increasingly being viewed as grunt labor. The more productive the tools make the workers, the fewer workers are needed. Darcy would probably argue that it’s not a zero sum game. If less workers are needed on my project that means that programmers have been freed up to work on another project. I think that’s an interesting point to ponder because what we’re really looking at is not people but programming hours. The more programming hours that are available in the labor pool, the cheaper they will become. And any tool that increases productivity, decreases the demand for programming hours.

In Darcy’s view, more work simply appears. It’s almost as if Darcy is saying that the reason nobody has developed the Shopping Price Comparinator is because I’m hogging up all the programmers with my software development projects. But am I? I know way too many top-notch programmers who are either not working or completely underutilized. Why are they not in demand to work on the Shopping Price Comparinator? If what Darcy is proposing were true, in this time of massive unemployment in the tech sector, some of the most innovative and amazing software would be in development right now. But the reality is, that the reason most of these people are unemployed is that companies quit funding innovative and amazing software development projects. Instead, what most companies have done is to focus on their core systems and pursue projects that help automate or streamline a process so the company can squeeze out more profit.

Even looking at some of the new products hitting the market like Oracle’s 10g database and IBM’s self-healing servers, the trend, across the board, is to diminish the need for human beings or to reduce the skills required in order to use their products. In a way it’s no different from desktop publishing. There was a time when people who mastered that black art were highly paid and well respected. Today, the job doesn’t even exist because tools like MS Word or MS Publisher make everybody a desktop publisher. In other words, the tool eliminated the need for the job; the very thing that Darcy claims isn’t possible.

Even approaching this from a different angle, think about how many people are spreadsheet wizards. Go into any company and there’s usually some guy in finance who has some monster financial modeling spreadsheet. The marketing guy has an amazing ad tracking spreadsheet. In HR they have a cost/benefit spreadsheet. Well, in many cases, no “programmer” was involved as the tools have become so easy to use and so much documentation (i.e. books, websites, etc.) exist that for simple mini-applications like this, one does not need to be a software engineer to write useful applications. What happens when writing a simple VB application can be done by someone with the same general intelligence as the guy who can write complicated formulas in a spreadsheet? Just drag this module from here, this module from there, create a link, compile, and presto, the HR guy just wrote his own app to compare health plans from various providers.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. I just think it’s dangerous to make it seem that people don’t have to worry about their job because they know how to write code, or admin a server, or configure a router, etc. The fact of the matter is that the demand for certain skills is going to decline. Some decline will be the result of less funding for certain types of projects. Some of the decline will come from better tools which mean that people can do more work in the same amount of time thus less people are needed. Some of the decline will come in the form of outsourcing to cheaper labor markets. How these scenarios play out individually and in concert is yet to be seen but the fact that these factors are going to have an impact on demand seems obvious. In the end, the real deciding factor will be whether or not demand will increase at a pace that is lesser or greater than the productivity savings generated by the previously mentioned factors.

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