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Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

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Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#71

Post by freetime2 »

js2 wrote: post #54

Where are these horrible places that people work and hang out? I’ve worked at places as small as a tiny ISP where I was basically the only tech employee, startups with a dozen employees to companies as large as HP and everything in between. I’ve worked on the east coast and west coast. I’ve worked for private companies and public ones. Ive been on small teams and large. Ive had dozens of managers. I’ve been an SA and…

I think the author was exaggerating a bit, or perhaps is more sensitive to other peoples' opinions than most (e.g. the bit about crying in the bathroom). In the past I have definitely worked at companies where "web developer" was a completely different job title than "software engineer" (back-end developer), and paid less money. Definitely second-class citizens. The industry seems to have turned a corner with the advent of single page app frameworks, npm, etc, and everyone these days seems to be "full stack", but I'm sure there are still plenty of companies out there still doing it this way.

Also, from what I can tell people in academia and certain open source circles are brutal to each other (e.g. Linus Torvalds). I'm sure they would shit on the work I do every day... but I'm too busy to care.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#72

Post by nodesocket »

The same is mostly true of two candidates one with go experience and one with Node. The one with go will either get the position, or recieve a higher offer.

The exception might be demand based. PHP for example is generally sneered and looked down upon, but if a successful startup is built using PHP (there are lot's) then demand will be high for that specific expertise.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#73

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dkarl wrote: post #46
SCdF wrote: post #3

> when I told other software people I’m a web developer, I got treated like shit. I was a lower class of coder because I wasn’t “solving cool problems” because making web sites is easy. Of all the stupid arrogant awfulness in tech that has crossed my path this one is definitely high on the list of the most baffling. Web dev is the hardest and most intimidating dev work I've ever done, by a country mile. (Whether that…

The attitude has changed as people have realized the web isn't going away and isn't qualitatively changing. Fifteen years ago you could ask, "Why on earth would a programmer put up with that incoherent mishmash of shitty technologies? For God's sake, if you have any taste at all, work in a different domain." Now the why is clear, and anyone who had a snobbish attitude (I won't hold my breath while the rest of us out…

Given the model that the web has committed to, I also don’t think it is going to get much better.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#74

Post by RandomInteger4 »

SCdF wrote: post #3

> when I told other software people I’m a web developer, I got treated like shit. I was a lower class of coder because I wasn’t “solving cool problems” because making web sites is easy. Of all the stupid arrogant awfulness in tech that has crossed my path this one is definitely high on the list of the most baffling. Web dev is the hardest and most intimidating dev work I've ever done, by a country mile. (Whether that…

The worst part for me is trying to find work as a self-taught web developer and people somehow magically hear the word 'designer' instead of 'developer'.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#75

Post by idontpost »

dizzystar wrote: post #64

As a Clojure dev, I find this attitude absolutely baffling as well. I can assure you that nothing at all about Clojure makes you a good dev. Nothing about any language makes you a good dev. Want to fast-track a new project into a convoluted legacy codebase few humans can grok? Hire a bad dev and have them write in any language, it doesn't matter. I've seen Clojure code bases passed through a dozen hands that no one c…

I think the attitude comes from the fact that Clojure is almost never someone's first language, and someone that went out of their way to learn it probably learned it to solve some problem they had with another platform.

Those two factors right there weed out a certain bottom percentile of developers.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#76

Post by bokonon12 »

themagician wrote: post #35
SCdF wrote: post #3

> when I told other software people I’m a web developer, I got treated like shit. I was a lower class of coder because I wasn’t “solving cool problems” because making web sites is easy. Of all the stupid arrogant awfulness in tech that has crossed my path this one is definitely high on the list of the most baffling. Web dev is the hardest and most intimidating dev work I've ever done, by a country mile. (Whether that…

The inflated sense of ego associated with “saving the world” and “solving tough problems” has almost completely turned me off from tech, in the Bay Area in particular. My problem isn’t with the sentiment—it’s that 99 out of 100 times it’s pure bullshit. There are a few people out their doing really amazing things, but the vast majority of people who have big egos aren’t the people working on that stuff. Tech is the n…

As a web developer I've even come across other web devs who are chasing "hard problems" and claim CRUD apps are easy and boring. Yet many of them still manage to write nearly-unmaintainable and rigid APIs etc. They haven't even figured out the "basics" but want to go straight for the "hard problems".

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#77

Post by Tade0 »

portal_narlish wrote: post #32

This type of signaling is very real and present in functional programming languages specifically. Java programmers feel insecure because they're not writing Scala, the Scala people wish they were as functional as the Haskell people, the Haskell people wish they were as advanced as the academic Idris people. It's a never ending comparison contest. And despite functional programming having an objectively higher barrier…

it is entirely possible to write absolute garbage code in an FP language as well.

I can attest to that as I in college had a course on functional programming with Haskell and the way I did my assignment was awful to say the least.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#78

Post by s3nnyy »

ender7 wrote: post #70
iwangulenko wrote: post #20

As someone running a technical recruitment agency, I can assure you that it is true that someone having built stuff in Clojure is more likely to be considered as a good engineer than someone who did JQuery all the time. Recruiters use an intuitive approach to conditional probability. Given only the info alone (if someone did JQuery or Clojure) exposes you to two bell curves, with the X-axis being "programming ability…

It's true that, based on my interviewing experience, candidates with only a jQuery background are unlikely to have the skills to cut it developing large-scale software at a large-scale company, which is what I am hiring for. At the moment I interview mostly front-end candidates, and it takes a lot of sifting to find qualified hires. However, the implicit companion assumption that a resume with lots of clojure experie…

Oh yes. Based on my experience hiring on behalf of different firms, arrogance among engineers correlates with the degree of mathy-ness of a stack.

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#79

Post by jacques_chester »

BurningFrog wrote: post #33
SCdF wrote: post #3

> when I told other software people I’m a web developer, I got treated like shit. I was a lower class of coder because I wasn’t “solving cool problems” because making web sites is easy. Of all the stupid arrogant awfulness in tech that has crossed my path this one is definitely high on the list of the most baffling. Web dev is the hardest and most intimidating dev work I've ever done, by a country mile. (Whether that…

The problem is that you're both right. Putting up a simple web site that does something basic, that you then walk away from is easy, and is what a lot of people who call themselves web developers do. Building something like Gmail or Facebook OTOH are endeavors only slightly below the moon landing in complexity and “solving cool problems”. And it is equally legitimately "web development"...

I am not sure I would class either of Gmail or Facebook with the Apollo Program in terms of headcount (est. 400k), total cost (estimates from $100-200 Bn), complexity (hundreds of contractors, millions of moving parts, dozens of directly-operated sites, thousands of projects), or novelty (landing on the fricking moon).

Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)

#80

Post by algeom »

BurningFrog wrote: post #33
SCdF wrote: post #3

> when I told other software people I’m a web developer, I got treated like shit. I was a lower class of coder because I wasn’t “solving cool problems” because making web sites is easy. Of all the stupid arrogant awfulness in tech that has crossed my path this one is definitely high on the list of the most baffling. Web dev is the hardest and most intimidating dev work I've ever done, by a country mile. (Whether that…

The problem is that you're both right. Putting up a simple web site that does something basic, that you then walk away from is easy, and is what a lot of people who call themselves web developers do. Building something like Gmail or Facebook OTOH are endeavors only slightly below the moon landing in complexity and “solving cool problems”. And it is equally legitimately "web development"...

Can you explain what you mean when you compare Gmail and Facebook to the moon landing? On its face that comment looks way out of whack to someone who is outside the tech industry.
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