What happens when programmers don’t want to program

Coding bootcamps, summer sessions, online classes: everyone should learn to code, we’re told. It’s a tool of empowerment, but it’s also a solution to an industry challenge. We’ve got programmer demand, but a lot less supply.

I’m worried about the other end of funnel. A shocking number of some of the best professional programmers I know aren’t interested in programming for the rest of their careers: 40+ hours a week for 40 more years. Sure, the high comp and benefits will keep a lot of them around for a while. But that doesn’t seem like a permanent solution, especially as we lose our most experienced engineers.

It seems like we have a few options:

• Make programming more fun. Can we improve the tooling around programming to allow people to focus on the fun problems, reducing the amount of boilerplate and silly bugs?
• Create hybrid jobs where people program as part of their job, but not all of it. Think hybrid designer/coders, analyst/coders, product manager/coders, etc.
• Allow people to work part time. Some folks would work 20 hour weeks in exchange for half-pay. This would probably improve productivity per hour as well.
• More career paths for programmers. Different organization designs might allow more programmers to combine the senior roles of architect and manager in new and different ways. For example, keeping teams in small pods would allow individuals to better balance the two roles.
• Make programming more accessible. Can we continue to increase the level of abstraction to allow non-programmers to solve some their own problems? I.e., can we help software eat software?

Not every programmer feels this fatigue, but we should be thinking about the ones who do. There is no silver bullet and the solution will likely be a combination of the above. I’d love to get your take, too.