Status of programmers in a company.

Question

In Germany a programmer is a person who is too silly to become manager.
They are the leafs in the hierarchy tree:
Receipients of order but not allowed to tell other people, what to do.
consequently young people with academical degree dont want to code.
maybe as entry for a manager career.
That is my personal experience after years of consultant and discussion with others.
But it is my verY own opinion.
What is yours?

Answer 1

In Germany you don't need to code to earn and live good. However in many other Countries this is the case for many young people with academic degrees. This is maybe not so bad, because everyone should do what they are the best suited for. Clearly, the coding jobs are not the best way to be manager in Germany. Clearly there are easier ways (BWL, LLM or MBA).

Answer 2

Edward yes...
I see the discuuuuuusssssiion about computer science in school.

i just did some Minecraft hacking with children aged 10 to 14. And most of them learned it from zero to hack in two days.
German Angst is not only in soccer.

Answer 3

Hi Oma. My industry is mechanical, so I do not have so much contact to programmers. But reading your description I can understand some behaviors. People around me are somewhat resistant to programming. I'm the only manager in the company (>1200 employees only in germany) that can program. Of course I'm proud of it and use it whenever I need to perform repetitive work, and get mobbed because of it by everybody, including my boss (that can not program but has also no clue how to do the job more efficiently than I do with programming). Trying to incentivate some young people in the team to program was also almost always waste of time. So yes, Germany lives in the stone age and is NOT prepared to face future digital challenges.

Answer 4

Edward, I think when revolution finally comes, managers will obtain necessary skills. It is already easier now to learn applicable skills than in the past. 20 years ago to learn law or programming was extremely difficult. Now, as Oma wrote, you can learn something valueble just in few days.

Answer 5

i hope this won't the condition when i graduate

Answer 6

the relation between managers and IT dept is often of reciprocally perceived incompetence:
the IT sees the manager as tyrannical and not able to express his needs and the manager sees the IT as a bunch of nerds disconnected from reality of the company.
this relationship is due to the complete separation of the roles for better control over security of the company.

trying to solve this issue is why programming is shoved in everybody's throat recently. a manager and employees that can code, can cooperate more actively with an IT dept that is becoming more and more a vital section of a company.