This is textbook alienation of work. Unfortunately Marx only describes it and does not really provide a solution that could work for us (unless you believe his view that history will naturally progress to something better).
Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?
21–30 of 350 posts
Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?
#22What I hate about the industry is politics, short-term thinking, selfishness, dogmatism and other forms of irrationality. If you care about your craft, spend time learning and cultivating your skills and want to do the right thing, once you try to put things into practice you'll find a bunch of people along the way that hate programming and don't care about quality. You will also find people that will try hard to gam…
Yea I hate watching all the political shit. Like people taking screen shots of themselves in virtual meetings smiling and laughing to like message to higher ups "how good they work together" when really they are huge assholes lol.
Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?
#23I think most people here can. That's why, when people have enough money to retire, they DO retire, and not continue working. Work for most people is trading time and physical and mental health for money. In our profession, we got it better than most, but the underlying principle is still the same. Also, there are definitely better and worse companies. I'm currently in the best job of my life (well paying, fully remot…
> That's why, when people have enough money to retire, they DO retire, and not continue working.
We also see devs just flat out going into new fields altogether.
Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?
#24The problem with software is a state of warfare between management which sees developers as disposable tools and a plurality of developers that just want things to bitch about (thereby becoming the disposable tools). Much of that problem is due to a lack of regulation and missing industry wide definitions. Employers deliberately don’t want to solve this problem because it will reduce the size of the available candidate pool and probably make developers more expensive. Most developers don’t want this problem solved because they don’t want to be exposed as not qualified.
I got lucky and found a dream employer recently. What makes an employer great is their culture and willingness to cultivate and retain people. Culture is defined by the quality of people you work with.
> Yet I can't bare it. I can't bare the devs that go out of their way to work weekends without being asked
If something is truly a passion you will do it more than asked. For some people they have time to fill and instead of throwing that time away they fill the time with something they enjoy.
Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?
#25When I was in university, I had a coworker at the book store who casually mentioned that he used Linux on his home computer. I asked if he was in computer science or engineering.
Neither. He loved computers, loved programming, but when he took the classes and imagined the jobs, he found it revolting. So he switched majors, and software became his hobby instead.
He seemed very happy with the decision.
Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?
#26> Yet I can't bare it. I can't bare the devs that go out of their way to work weekends without being asked Wait... You love programming but you can't stand those that code during the week-ends?
There’s a difference between programming for fun on personal projects etc in your own time vs. doing work without compensation. Working overtime for free is not only allowing your employer to steal from you, but sets unreasonable expectations on all of your colleagues, too.
there isn't much difference if your company allows you to open source some of the results of your work under your own name afterward.
Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?
#27my longest held job was the one that wasn't in tech - at a relatively small manufacturer that had 3 coders inside of a 6 person IT dept building custom/internal tools and apps. It was so so different from working in tech (I left because I moved and the longer commute got old)
Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?
#28There's a difference between Programming and Software Development and I think it's important to recognise that difference when looking at your career. Programming is one small aspect of software development. It's an absolutely essential part, and it's the part you probably enjoy the most. But despite being an essential core part, it's also a part which only occupies maybe 20% of your time. Some software developers de…
If the meetings are useful, that's fine, but I have a hard time taking pride in a long series of meetings to decide the contents of a 15-page document describing the design for feature that could be like 200LOC but now must be 2000LOC and involve integration between multiple teams' services because the promo criteria says "collaboration."
Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?
#29Great dev environments in companies are rare. If you currently can't afford switching to work on your own thing, focus on finding those outliers. It can take some time and luck, but it's not impossible.
Re: Ask HN: I love programming but hate the industry. Can anyone relate?
#30The problem with software is a state of warfare between management which sees developers as disposable tools and a plurality of developers that just want things to bitch about (thereby becoming the disposable tools). Much of that problem is due to a lack of regulation and missing industry wide definitions. Employers deliberately don’t want to solve this problem because it will reduce the size of the available candida…
> a plurality of developers that just want things to bitch about (thereby becoming the disposable tools)
I think there should be a sane amount of bitching, but it's all in how you do it and the purpose, if its to get people motivated to improve things, go for it, if its just to always be salty, nah no thanks. I usually tell my team "idk why this is this way, but we can definitely make it better, so why not?" till something catches enough of my managers attention.