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Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

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Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

#151

Post by vipbackchannel »

Not done, but hedging my bets. I started licensed life insurance business, also a licensed day trader. I have 40 years of experience. Got laid of in 2003, 2021, and recently 2025 a few months ago. Software development is now just a hobby for me now. From what I have seen the job market is very specific. The recruiters are only looking for rare skill sets, but also folks who have the update skill sets for cloud migration projects. What has made the field bad is fragmentation of development. C/C++ was the meal ticket years ago. I remember in 2003 I had to get a java programmers cert just to get a job, back then 1000 people would apply for 1 job, then in 2004 the job market opened back up.

After a few months I finally got a job interview this week. Someone called back from a previous job I worked on.

I have noticed that a lot of places development is offshore in India or eastern europe.

It's not just ai that is taken jobs, but also cutbacks in government contracting. The tech layoff wave that started in 2022 was partially fueled by a change in the US tax code, specifically Section 174 of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). This change significantly altered how companies could deduct research and development (R&D) expenses. Previously, companies could fully deduct R&D costs in the year they were incurred, but the TCJA mandated that these expenses be amortized over several years (5 years for domestic and 15 years for foreign). This resulted in higher tax burdens for tech companies, especially those heavily invested in R&D.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

#152

Post by kasey_junk »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #123
_virtu wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the grandparent poster isn’t wrong. This whole system is stacked against us. It’s difficult to keep moving knowing that we don’t have the ability to opt out of the way our whole society works. This is a very broad discussion that I know has many different facets to it, but the grandparent poster seems to be calling out what a lot of people believe is true.

> It’s difficult to keep moving knowing that we don’t have the ability to opt out of the way our whole society works. Pretty much nobody ever did, in any society, with few exceptions. "Going to America" was one exception, and then "going west". But for most people, for most of civilization, that has never been an option. And, in fact, the whole system is stacked against us less than it has been for most of the histor…

> There was a time when the system worked better for people (at least for white males) - say the 1950s or 1960s

Even before adding qualifiers like “in America, in certain industries”, etc. You have to be very specific about what you mean by better and how you measure it.

There are certainly things that are worse now than then, but most of the time when someone actually measures it’s mostly true things were worse in the 50s and 60s.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

#153

Post by owebmaster »

msgodel wrote: post #148
DWBH wrote: post #147

Software engineer from the 1970s here - it's run its course. It's like the music industry; it was what it was until it no longer was anymore. AI replaces processes, which replaces people. Qualified and educated software engineers coming out of Asia are cheap and plentiful, and the majors are stocking up on them and dumping the end of career Caucasians. Don't waste your time; unless you have a great idea then code tha…

I actually don't think AI is nearly as much an issue as office admins taking over and making professional collaboration somewhere between intractable and impossible. Have better tools made software engineers irrelevant before? Lol no. They've meant more software which meant people needed more software engineers. AI is exactly the same. It's like saying Ford's assembly line killed the automobile industry.

> Have better tools made software engineers irrelevant before? Lol no.

Yes that is true. But now we have a situation where in 5 years, the pool of available software engineers might grow from, I don't know, 10million people to 200million. Just like every person became a photographer with smartphones. This makes being a software engineer not a great career anymore. Unless you are a great programmer, just like the great photographers. But that will be a way smaller pool than the current highly paid software engineers.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

#154

Post by msgodel »

owebmaster wrote: post #153
msgodel wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't think AI is nearly as much an issue as office admins taking over and making professional collaboration somewhere between intractable and impossible. Have better tools made software engineers irrelevant before? Lol no. They've meant more software which meant people needed more software engineers. AI is exactly the same. It's like saying Ford's assembly line killed the automobile industry.

> Have better tools made software engineers irrelevant before? Lol no. Yes that is true. But now we have a situation where in 5 years, the pool of available software engineers might grow from, I don't know, 10million people to 200million. Just like every person became a photographer with smartphones. This makes being a software engineer not a great career anymore. Unless you are a great programmer, just like the grea…

Yeah I don't know, you already have to be really good (like able to do distributed systems architecture) just get a job. No one is paying script kiddies.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

#155

Post by roarcher »

ryandrake wrote: post #145
roarcher wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, there are plenty of things to complain about and I personally find HN to be a tough, even cynical, audience. The guidelines don't say you can't be negative, you just have to explain your reasoning. One doesn't have to subscribe to toxic positivity to see the childish absurdity of a statement like "It’s difficult to keep moving knowing that we don’t have the ability to opt out of the way our whole soc…

Regarding the childish statement: I think we’ve all felt like that at some point in our lives. If you haven’t, I kind of envy you. I can admit that when I had a child I agonized over the fact that I was bringing a life into this pretty terrible world without considering whether that new life wanted to be in it. Nobody actively consented to being part of society, it’s just a default. And it is extremely difficult to o…

I have felt like that. When I was a child.

And you totally can opt out. You can go live in a mud hut in the woods. People do it all the time. But we both know that's not what the original commenter means by "opting out of society". They mean "I want to opt out of contributing to society while somehow still enjoying its benefits". Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way, and it is indeed childish to think that it should, at least as long as those benefits come from the contributions of other people.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

#156

Post by sopresatta »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #35
sopresatta wrote: post #31

No. But I live and breathe tech even in my spare time[1]. You gotta learn to roll with the sh-t and set boundaries. I hate to say it but turn off HN, this place a hype machine designed to make you feel bad. It's like "Roast and Toast" x 1000 on here, not reality. It's toxic in a very passive-aggressive way (rather than reddit toxic, which is just aggressive). I've been at this since 1988. (Made a few personal bad cho…

> Find smaller companies, that's what I started doing 20 years ago. I started a new job as a senior director at a 5000 person company 3 years ago That's a smaller company? The biggest company I've ever worked for was 400 people The smallest was 4

Lol you're right. :)

I worked at FAANGs so I consider 5000 small.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

#157

Post by sopresatta »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #50
sopresatta wrote: post #31

No. But I live and breathe tech even in my spare time[1]. You gotta learn to roll with the sh-t and set boundaries. I hate to say it but turn off HN, this place a hype machine designed to make you feel bad. It's like "Roast and Toast" x 1000 on here, not reality. It's toxic in a very passive-aggressive way (rather than reddit toxic, which is just aggressive). I've been at this since 1988. (Made a few personal bad cho…

> I hate to say it but turn off HN, this place a hype machine designed to make you feel bad. It's like "Roast and Toast" x 1000 on here, not reality. It's toxic in a very passive-aggressive way I have a completely different experience of HN than you do. There are the stray toxic folks, sure, but overall, this is one of the best dev forums--actively moderated, generally filled with intelligent comments, and often offe…

http://bradconte.com/files/misc/HackerNewsParodyThread/

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

#158

Post by sopresatta »

MongooseStudios wrote: post #63
ternaryoperator wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate to say it but turn off HN, this place a hype machine designed to make you feel bad. It's like "Roast and Toast" x 1000 on here, not reality. It's toxic in a very passive-aggressive way I have a completely different experience of HN than you do. There are the stray toxic folks, sure, but overall, this is one of the best dev forums--actively moderated, generally filled with intelligent comments, and often offe…

Yeah, it's currently full of AI shovelware because that's what the hype bubble demands, but there's a lot more good stuff here than not. But they also have only had an account for an hour and clearly didn't read the whole post so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

OTA.

One time accounts.

HN ain't safe from stylometry.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

#159

Post by owebmaster »

msgodel wrote: post #154
owebmaster wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have better tools made software engineers irrelevant before? Lol no. Yes that is true. But now we have a situation where in 5 years, the pool of available software engineers might grow from, I don't know, 10million people to 200million. Just like every person became a photographer with smartphones. This makes being a software engineer not a great career anymore. Unless you are a great programmer, just like the grea…

Yeah I don't know, you already have to be really good (like able to do distributed systems architecture) just get a job. No one is paying script kiddies.

> No one is paying script kiddies.

Aren't they? I work with a few people that I'm sure the productivity would be higher without them, and that is not my first team like that. As I'm not the owner, I don't care, better to get this money out of tech to people's pocket. Stocks are already too high.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

#160

Post by owebmaster »

octo888 wrote: post #117
sbt wrote: post #39

Note that many companies are pretending to hire in order to look successful/growing. They might be willing to hire if some unicorn candidate comes along, but in practice the job ad is just marketing.

I think it's basically become de rigueur, standard HR advice at this point. The the amount of fake job listings is off the charts, to the point you should assume it's fake until proven otherwise (on this side of the pond anyway)

It is funny how 10 years ago, this situation would be perfect for some startup to disrupt the market but they just don't come anymore. Innovation is dead.
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