- Alpha male posturing - People expect you to care about your job.
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Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?
21–30 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?
#22Being viewed as a cost center rather than a revenue generator if you're not in a tech centric company. Having best practice and common sense ignored by management in the name of expediency and then being blamed for the results (going over budget, building something the client doesn't want, being late on delivery)
I had someone call us the Expense team. I put an end to that pretty quickly. It is an easy wedge to drive between sales and engineering.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?
#23[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?
#24Intentional dehumanization in the name of delivery/progress/development.
Well put.. strong words. I sometimes wonder if this happens only in the tech industry or has this virus spread from tech to other industries as well.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?
#25Creative license: the trend i have seen at startups is moving more in the direction of product and designer control over the things a company creates. For developers seeking control over their creations, this can be a frustrating thing to be a part of. Even at small startups, the value of designers and product managers is pretty obvious. It can be tough to find the right balance of control there. Sexism: this is a to…
Product and design should own products most of the time. I think most startups would be better off outsourcing their builds.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?
#26there is always difficulty of balancing your learning/growth and the work that you have to do for the company
I had similar concerns and had reached out to the HN community quite a while ago. Seems like this issue is felt across the industry!
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?
#27Constant worry about ageism, discrimination, and making a living once you to get to late 30s/early 40s. In particular SV but this is a concern everywhere.
What can you do then if you love programming and don't want to be a manager? It's just terrifying.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?
#28I don't like the idea that tech comes first and people last. That is often the case when the automation is simply meant to replace inefficient humans, without really thinking to the consequences. I'm of course pro-automation as I think it's an improvement for humanity, but I'm always worried about the end result.
Also I don't like that most companies have this kind of double-speak when they say that they are working to improve everyone lives while they simply want to automate work away, avoid rules (simply because Internet is not regulated as the rest of the economy) to make more money than in other ways.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?
#29There's an under-appreciation of the psychological toll that content moderators face.
Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?
#30There is an expectation and honestly a need to keep up with changes to the industry that I haven't seen in other fields. Any older dev has had to transition at least 1-2 languages and it's not an easy step. That doesn't even start covering how fast javascript frameworks are moving. Oh, hey you learned Angular, that's so 3 years ago we don't do that here. We use Vue.js which is better because _________. Vue will be re…
> Any older dev has had to transition at least 1-2 languages and it's not an easy step
Most devs I know have been through a whole bunch more than 2. I've had to use at least 8 over the last 10 years of dev. I didn't have to learn all of them well, but I did have to learn them.