Hey, this is Overpass Insights! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today,
let's ask the question, is the software market too saturated?
Alright, so today, I want to respond to a couple of comments on yesterday's video. Yesterday's
video was called "Can anyone become a software developer?" where I had a little bit of a rant
about the developers I was working with. The fact that they were asking these questions on stuff
that I was just able to Google and I said that basically, you have to have the right mindset
to become a software developer rather than the mental capacity. I think anybody could do it,
but they need to be able to dig and really put into long hours and the digging and not many
people are willing or prepared to do that. So, but there were some really good comments that came
from Matt. First of all I said I may have talked about that topic before and sure enough Byron
lovelace said number 239 January 19th 2019 can anyone be an app developer same story dude I'm
sorry dude sometimes I say the same thing again and again it's not our purpose my kids say the
same thing to dad you told us this already so sorry about that it wasn't yet told I'm guilty
right I'm sorry about that however you Biron also came with another comment which was really good he
said real question is is it still worth becoming a software developer 21 million devs in the world
does supply outstrip demand labor can be found cheaply jobs are scarce only a select few make
it fame companies entrepreneurship is hard nobody wants to pay for apps only SAS generates the kind
of revenue to make it worthwhile but many fail at that jobs are slavery contracting is a hollow
experience and client work is just another form of working for somebody else software dev takes
a lot of time and effort to get good at it is it really worth it okay this is a really good
question Byron this is something that I've been thinking about a lot too it's almost like we're
on the same wavelength because a lot of times I'm working with developers and I work with so many
developers and I again a lot of times it's like I will you know I'll talk to developers like I'm not
not working with this guy like it's just he doesn't know anything a lot of times I'll be
working with companies and I'll start working with somebody and I'll say we got to be I got
to get rid of this guy no I'm not working with him he's you know he's terrible and it's over
the course of my career and you've been a lot of times where people try to assess how I am
as a software developer you try to assess how somebody else's as a software developer and it's
not really a good way of doing it I've done the the tests the you know the exams writing sample
code sending code samples all that kind of stuff and I've had people do that when I was hiring
them and it's really difficult to do but when you work with other software developers in the
team like when I when I was working in software teams you knew who the good people were and who
the people were who you know and it was always there was always one real hotshot right and he
was usually like the manager never knew how good he was right the manager never knew how good he
was but the other developers knew how good he was or they would go to him and ask questions
because he was really you know him or her it could have been her but we're really good at what they
do and there was always a few people that you would go to and there was other people who were
just like you know phoning it in right but I do think it's getting more saturated where we have
more and more people coming into the market which is one of the reasons why I never go on up work
I mean every time I've gone on up work I've had a bad experience well most of I've had a I've had a
couple good experiences but for the most part it seems like it's a lot of people who claim to be
really good at something but when you really drill down they're not and I'm worried about people who
don't know anything about software or code to even be able to tell the difference right you know it's
it's scary when you talk to somebody and they go oh you know our developer told us it was gonna
be young six months to do that or this wasn't possible or that was possible or that's just the
way this works and you're like but that that's not true they're obviously not doing it the right way
no because they don't they don't know any better and that's the scary thing about upwork this is
scary thing about hiring somebody when you don't know what you're looking for and that's why if you
have somebody who's really good at what they're doing a lot of times they if they're in a job then
you know they're well paid or if they can you know nobody wants to get rid of him there was another
really good comment though that came in from from Leo Fonseca which kind of follows on from it I
just think this is really fascinating point for discussion I don't really have a solution to it
but leo says sure just as an infinite number of monkeys sitting at typewriters might eventually
turn out the entire works of Shakespeare to add to Byron's point below the fact that the industry
is saturated with LMG tfy let me google that for you hacks and IP theft plagiarism is rampant and
certifications demonstrate mostly memorization ability and not critical thinking and problem
solving the market is getting saturated with junk slash clone software apps - ok again I struggled
with this - when my application was doing well and it kept getting removed from Google because it was
six because it was successful but it was unique when I came up with it and every week I had to
go through and remove the copycats and now the copycats run it and I don't meet copycats like
it's a similar idea or whatever but you know the same icon the same description the same everything
and I've seen that everywhere I've seen it on LinkedIn where someone copies my profile word
for word and changes my name to their name right which is like which was just ridiculous why would
you check why would you do that and and you do see this IP theft and plagiarism all over the
place and when I write you guys's comments I do I do sometimes I do think about that
I think is it even worth doing anymore is it is it become too saturated is it you know software
development isn't you know isn't like some super successful job it's a job you people are good at
it and people are bad at it it's not um it's not magic and and it really is if you find a software
developer who's good and again it's not a it's not a high percentage of them right it's not then you
you you cling to that person because they're worth their weight in gold but there's so many
people out there who are just hacks who are just phoning it in and I talk to them all the time and
it does get depressing and maybe it is getting too saturated I mentioned before I have two kids who
started University this year one of them started a bit later you went in the army but one of them
studying film production which is you know good I guess you know I'm sure that's that's really
saturated too and the other one has gone into cyber forensics which I just thought was badass
I thought was really cool because you if he told me he wanted to be an app developer I would have
been a bit concerned because I think it might be hard to get a job in that field or in software or
whatever because there's so many people who claim to do it right unless you unless you could stand
out in a crowd right I worry about that I worry about the fact that there's so many people going
into software that the really good ones can't stand out because they're not thinking about
the marketing how they're gonna market themselves I could tell you okay with no pride I will tell
you this I know that there are jobs there were contracts I worked at where there were people
who are far more talented than I was like they were the the guy right they were like I would
I learned so much from them right or you know I could just see how good they were but the manager
didn't know it how are ya like I was better paid than they were I was a go-to guy and it should
have probably been the other guy right because he wasn't he was he was not interested in it's
a problem say I always say the politics you could say the brown-nosing whatever it was he was like
you know he wasn't interested in how good a CV looked he was interested in the technology he
was a player he was a guy who did what he was supposed to do he was a guy you know the guy
you want on your team and my if I had to pick my all-star team of developers you know there's a lot
of these guys who would have been on it but like you know they were unsung they would just didn't
do it and this is the problem with the saturation of the markets like I know I'm kind of ranting and
rambling on a little bit today it's it's it's an interesting topic to think about it's interesting
to think about is it too saturated you know I think a lot of markets are saturated especially
when they have a low barrier to entry software actually does have a high barrier to entry but
it's easy to for anybody to learn the basics and then claim to be an expert because I see it all
the time. Thank you very much, Byron and Leah, for your comments, you know, really interesting. Let
me know what the rest of you guys think. I'm a little bit depressed now. What are we gonna
do? What are we gonna do with this saturated market? But honestly, I think every market is
getting saturated. I know cyber forensics isn't but don't go into that because I want my son to
be able to get a job. I hope you guys are having a great day! I'll talk to you again tomorrow.