381–390 of 496 posts
I wish I could leave. The tech industry nowadays is no longer about solving real-world problems and making the world a better place, instead it's all about screwing the end user in every single way possible, whether it's ads, stalking and privacy violations, spam ("marketing" as they call it) or just plain fraud where the company is happy to take the money but can't make it right if things don't go to plan and the cu…
I left it before I really got started, and looking back at it now, I don't regret it. In my mid-twenties I decided I'd rather be an electrician. I don't sit on my ass all day. I get to meet new people, and see new places all the time. Some places that few ever get to see. Power plants, clock towers, police stations, homeless shelters, church attics. All sorts of stuff. Not all of it equally exciting, but a lot of it…
In a parellell universe, this would've been me. Electrician seem to be the perfect "manual" labor - not a lot of heavy lifts, work with your head a lot, good mix of in- and outdoors. Ps. Love the username/post combo.
I am ready to leave. 18 years experience. My Current job the tech lead is a diva, doesn't listen to anyone else and just add more and more to our enormous codbase. There are now 3 devs. The other two just basically clean up behind him as he builds technical debt. Trying to discuss is likely to end up in an argument. I have had a could of technical test recently and failed them both. Today I was given a number of reas…
So much of our mental state in programming has nothing to do with the code or our work and so much to do with the people we work with. I think regardless of whether you stay or leave the industry, you've gotta leave any jobs where the people are that toxic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IEEE Code of Ethics: https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html ACM Code of Ethics: https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics There are incompetent people in every industry. So what. Hiring is an arcane mystery in every industry where productivity can't be quantified. So what.
Those are nice. Thanks for sharing that! I have never seen anything remotely close to that in a place of corporate employment ever. I have been doing this in the corporate world since 2006, but if you count my time as a security analyst in the military than I could push that date back to 2001. The military does force feed you (memorization verbatim) ethical standards, though, at a huge contrast to the loosey goosey c…
I wish I could leave. The tech industry nowadays is no longer about solving real-world problems and making the world a better place, instead it's all about screwing the end user in every single way possible, whether it's ads, stalking and privacy violations, spam ("marketing" as they call it) or just plain fraud where the company is happy to take the money but can't make it right if things don't go to plan and the cu…
Your complaints are legitimate problems with the industry, but it should come as no surprise that a free market does not always make ethical decisions.
> Unfortunately there's just nothing out there that pays as well so I have no choice but to tough it out.
You always have a choice. Nobody ever promised that a choice which "makes the world a better place" would necessarily be the one that's best for any individual's own wallet. It usually isn't.
As long as tech workers continue to choose to do work purely based on salary, even when it "screws the end user in every single way possible", employers are incentivized to continue to pay them to do so. The job market works both ways.
It's hard to muster much pity for someone who uses "toughing it out" to describe making a great salary and (by their own admission) screwing their customers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which makes me wonder how much faster we'd be seeing progress in the world if companies were better managed.
I suspect we were far too quick to get rid of secretaries as actual job-performing useful people rather than just status-signaling living perks. Also I think much of our workforce is wildly over-qualified and over-educated for what they actually do. I suspect there are more people than ever in the proverbial "mail room" that are plenty capable of rising to CEO or President of a region or division and doing a fine job…
Our AA saved us countless thousands of hours each year. She was worth her weight in platinum.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds a lot like toxic work culture, but unfortunately there’s a lot of that in tech
To me, it sounds like their problem is they aren't introverted enough for the job (which is totally fine, but just an observation). All jobs will have x% of nonsense and y% of what you actually really enjoy doing, and I think as long as y >= 10% then you'll do okay. Honestly, I like sitting by myself and grappling with tech problems. It's nice that I'm allowed to sit inside my own head and think all day. Maybe it's b…
I have some bad news for you. As you become a more senior developer you will spend most of your time interacting with people, and a lot less time just "sitting and thinking".
Just can't get any respect for it, I was trying to quit smoking, a friend who I did some projects with asked if I could do this boring thing in a language I don't know, 3 times I politely declined the job, got angry and lit a sigaret in my living room, so I took his make shift astray and threw it the garbage, he left after that saying I wasn't a team player, all the other contract I helped to secure he took with him…
I started out in technical writing a little more than 20 years ago with a masters degree, which turned into building websites. I built websites for a few years, when I became involved in a lawsuit with family/community/environmental org in a really novel and interesting area of law at the time. I thought that was quite enjoyable. So I decided to go to law school and become a lawyer, which I did. Then I was a lawyer f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, people worry about age discrimination a lot because there aren't a ton of older programmers around. But when the discussion comes up, people don't talk much about the reasons you describe. Sure, bad programmers age out because they were never great at programming in the first place. But I would assume the HN crowd falls in the top half of competence because there are so many people here who seem smarter abo…
The changing nature of the job is definitely part of it. When you're on the steepest part of the learning curve, that makes up for a lot. I still learn plenty, but less than I used to. Instead, I spend a good deal of my time correcting mistakes made by those who hadn't learned yet. Mistakes happen, that's OK, but it's still less fun than learning new things myself. At my age/experience there's also an expectation tha…