Discussion on answer by Ertai87: How can a company recover after a Glassdoor debacle?

@Agent_L Just because some technologies make it easier to ignore issues other technologies allow you to focus on, doesn't mean they are easier or lower level. They simply have a different focus. Java may hide a lot of "fiddly details" under the hood, but you still need to tune its engine (jvm), you need different knowledge and you can focus on different aspects, e.g. business logic and algorithms. They are both tools and as a good dev you should know what tools to use for your problem. But that's also my problem with this answer, C++ as an example for "old legacy tech stack" is ridiculous.

@Agent_L I also work for a bank and our main in-house risk pricing engine is about 10 million lines of C and C++. It has legacy pieces from the 90s and it has new parts written in C++14 leveraging GPUs with an emphasis on performance. Hiring bright young C engineers who understand pointers doesn't seem to be difficult at all. Across the financial sector there are many other big players (e.g., Bloomberg) who have large C++ codebases that aren't going to be deleted any time soon. Not saying your experience is invalid; but I am saying that I don't think it's completely indicative of the industry.

@Agent_L "memory security is provided at the firewall" Wait, what? Firewalls have nothing to do with memory security.

I want add that pointers are not limited to C and C++, modern languages like Golang and Rust also have pointers, it is unlikely that pointers will be forgotten anytime soon.

@AndyJ 40% of developers not having a CS (or related) degree does surprise me, yes, but only because most employers are snobbish about wanting people to have a degree. The fact 40+% developers can develop without a degree is not surprising. Most of the best devs I know are self-taught, not college taught. I have worked on many projects, from custom NoSQL databases to GUI, from video games to complex military software... I have never had a task I could not have done with the knowledge I had in high school. My CS degree was never needed. All you need is a few good books and a little practice.