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Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

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Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#181

Post by tomc1985 »

i_like_waiting wrote: post #75
theirishgoodbuy wrote: post #34

The way I look at it is: there are more tools in the toolbox than ever before. Which makes our judgement (the thing they really pay us for) even more important. Kubernetes, for example, is a specific solution to a specific problem. The solution is complex but so is the problem. If k8s give you the right trade-offs for your situation, then it’s not busy work. Of course, there are plenty of project where judgement Is t…

Promotion based architecture is self fulfilling prophecy at least in BI/ data world. I see everybody around me moving to cloud, without really good explanation why. Only reasonable thing I can see as an pattern is that cloud experience on top of data things gets paid 30% more. It made me consider cloud a lot. I was considering switching to cloud, just so I can put in my CV "experience with migration to cloud". For ne…

There's a finance angle behind cloud stuff too that's irrestible for the bean counters: cloud stuff is operations expense, on-prem is a capital expense. Unfortunately these folks are heavily incentivized to favor OpEx

I'm not a bean counter, all I know is those guys at my last job would rattle off about it like zombies. IIRC its a tax thing

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#182

Post by johnwheeler »

Are you kidding? It has always been this way in one form or another.

It’s a peculiar feature of human nature that we want to make things more complicated than they need to be. The more something relies upon a combination of our skills, and the more esoteric those skills, the more insulated that thing is from outside influence, ownership, and control.

My bet is the frustration you feel is less about complexity and more about your inability to affect change. You’re just one of many competing solutions to the same set of problems, and people will think your ideas are just as complicated because they’re not their ideas. They understand their own ideas better than they understand yours. Vice versa.

And we all live under this umbrella, together. I think that’s why the biggest asset you have as an engineer is to influence people who make decisions. Unfortunately, the best way to influence them is to convince them you have important, complicated knowledge they don’t. Self reinforcing loop.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#183

Post by gfodor »

phkahler wrote: post #38
viraptor wrote: post #11

If you believe that's all there is to those ideas, maybe you need to step away and think about them for a while. Sure, there's going to be some resume padding happening in larger orgs. But all those ideas solve real problems too. I think you're just in a very negative space if you start with "Distributed systems" as something overly complicated. At some scale getting a bigger machine either doesn't make financial sen…

>> If you believe that's all there is to those ideas, maybe you need to step away and think about them for a while. Sure, there's going to be some resume padding happening in larger orgs. But all those ideas solve real problems too. They do solve real problems. The question is whether or not they solve the problem at hand, and if they create other issues in doing so. I was re-decking a back yard bridge with a friend…

I’ve never liked this best-tool-for-the-job mental model with software engineering. A given project has multiple needs, and unlike more physical tools there is a very high marginal cost for each incremental tool you use. So there is a huge balance between many well suited tools or a few but more generalized, less fit tools. This isn’t to say there’s an obvious place where to strike the balance, but the “best tool for the job” metaphor undermines recognizing it, and I’ve found this balance to be at the core of good tool picking for a given project.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#185

Post by rglover »

bsaul wrote: post #168

My advice is : work with more senior people. It seems to me that people with 10/15+ years of experience will judge this hype train more severely than younger ones. The dangerous spot is engineers with 5-10 years of xp who have become good enough at writing huge piles of unecessary code and have them work.

100% yes.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#186

Post by giantg2 »

The problem isn't with the tools you list. In my experience, management is looking for a silver bullet to solve all their problems or to use something as a marketing term. It seems many non-tech companies are chasing the tech that actual tech companies use even if their use cases don't justify it.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#187

Post by rk2 »

Before you categorise something as 'unncessary complexity' maybe it is worth taking some time to understand whether or not the problem that your company is trying to solve aligns with the goals of idea being presented.

We probably are doomed if there is no push back and debate with the vocal minority. Silence is often mistaken for complicity.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#188

Post by oneplane »

i_like_waiting wrote: post #75
theirishgoodbuy wrote: post #34

The way I look at it is: there are more tools in the toolbox than ever before. Which makes our judgement (the thing they really pay us for) even more important. Kubernetes, for example, is a specific solution to a specific problem. The solution is complex but so is the problem. If k8s give you the right trade-offs for your situation, then it’s not busy work. Of course, there are plenty of project where judgement Is t…

Promotion based architecture is self fulfilling prophecy at least in BI/ data world. I see everybody around me moving to cloud, without really good explanation why. Only reasonable thing I can see as an pattern is that cloud experience on top of data things gets paid 30% more. It made me consider cloud a lot. I was considering switching to cloud, just so I can put in my CV "experience with migration to cloud". For ne…

It makes sense when you aren't a datacenter hosting company as your core business. Once you're done with your DRP and BCP it's highly unlikely that your server-under-the-desk (as it usually is) is worth the risk.

By the way, moving 'to the cloud' never means a specific thing because people have made words (intentionally?) vague to the point where you have to explicitly specify all the factors you take into account with your work in order to figure out which 'cloud' they had in mind.

Running a static workload doesn't require elasticity, but a 'cloud' isn't just elasticity. If you want "a program on a server with some storage that is always there" without having to deal with hardware, software, networking, storage, backup, maintenance, upgrades, service contracts etc. then an arbitrary virtual machine where someone else takes care of the rest makes total sense.

Re: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

#190

Post by ryanjkirk »

antris wrote: post #76
philipov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But all those ideas solve real problems too. All of them, except for blockchain. That one can go die on the trash heap of history.

Well, it's a good tool for money laundering and purchasing drugs.

It's not.
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