Hear hear!
I love programming but I hate the programming industry
171–180 of 209 posts
Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how you build big important, expensive things, though. It all depends on the context.
Do you know that the big expensive thing is what your customers actually need? Do you actually know what your customers need? That’s basically the only important context. If you can’t deliver that, it doesn’t matter how well thought through, extensible, or scalable it is.
Do the customers know what they actually need?
Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think “industry” strongly implies “corporate world”. However > The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. Guess I’m the corporate world then! Listen here, dear colleagues: Before attempting any finesse, abstraction, wit or beauty, maybe first try to make it work to spec. Because otherwise it is entirely worthless . If you are reasonably good at making it work, you…
Counterpoint: The MVP is usually what ends up in production. If your code is a heap of garbage but chocolate-coated on the outside, you're gonna impress management and they'll want to push it live asap. Then the issues start exploding.
Um, yeah, that's… IMHO exactly where an MVP is supposed to end up. The “VP” says that.
Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry
#174I have experienced these sentiments at various jobs and times. I've also varied my types of jobs to be exploring new areas and higher challenges. Other times, I've found interesting/challenging ways to get work done which may (or may not) pay off in the future--things like code analyzers/generators, etc. On the other extreme, I was terminated early from a contract position for "doing math at work after hours"--I was bored and doing Project Euler with a random new language. I totally understood my work was done and was highly paid, so any excuse to cut costs made sense.
There's many kinds of 'programming' and the OP only seems to have done standard applications. Maybe get a job at Jane Street and they might be challenged. I myself don't think I'd qualify but I don't complain about the banality of mundane tasks--I find interesting and challenging ways to make software tools that help devs and/or help customers.
Somehow I've almost always managed to find a balance of keeping employers happy while carving out time to do experimental work. It's probably a combination of communication, alignment, and trust. Start small, show value in the kinds of things you're talking about, and demonstration is key--talk/complaining won't move the needle. And don't delay key deliverables to do something excessively unusual.
Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes, a shitty foundation leads to shitty feature implementation. I've seen this everywhere from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Nobody cares about code quality, except maybe the one self-annointed gatekeeper who thinks he's making a difference and shitting on everyone's PRs delaying features. Get rid of that guy he serves no purpose
That guy keeps everything from collapsing.
Yeah, if the indentation style, variable name capitalization rules, structure of commits, 100% unit test coverage the guy knows is the absolute truth and top priority, a collapse of everything is imminent.
Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn’t you think this would mean government-made code would be of higher quality (in theory, and ignoring when govt code is made by private contractors)? It seems to be the opposite
Not all developers are equal. Government work pays a third or less what private industry pays. You’re never going to get extreme competence from a government software employee.
Not all competent people are driven by pay. I'd say the most competent usually are not. There are a lot easier and safer ways to get paid well than competence.
Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
And this is general approach, nothing malevolent against IT geeks like some less experienced try to project themselves. They want plumbers also just to keep things running and implement requirements, not have academic discussions about fine art of optimized water flow. Companies are there to make money for the owners and thats it, not on some altruistic missions. I think OP could be better served in academia as long…
Nope. Academia has a very sad bottom line as well. What OP needs is enough financial stability and political will that they can do whatever they want. This can be slowly achieved by grinding at a corporation, taking political control and grinding or by violence / threat of violence.
Academia can be pretty great if you can live with economic uncertainty, non-unreasonable pay and aren't interested in careerism or that your work has any real impact outside handful of other academics.
There's of course a lot of bullshit, but you can sort of choose the tradeoff between bullshit and career development/stability. If you're OK with a high chance of never getting a permanent job, in many places you can do practically whatever you want.
And if you e.g. know how to code, you can usually go to the industry churn as a backup when your grant streak runs out.
But yes, in the bigger picture, the latter are the sustainable course of action. There's only so many, or rather frew, grants.
Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry
#178I've been a developer for 30+ years and unfortunately there's not a lot in the OP that I can disagree with. I wish I could. Young people get told that building tech and software is a creative endeavour where they can apply their innate passion. Certain kinds of minds get attracted to work that is based on symbols and abstraction and repetitive activities. Years pass and the shareholders get fat. The truth is that sof…
> And in fact they mostly think we're losers for wasting our time doing it
True, this happens enough places to be a thing.
Of the people who think the software "little people" are losers, I think there's at least two versions:
* They think the work is skilled, and that the worker has valuable expertise, and is worth listening to. Even though they still think the person is a loser for being a salaried commodity rather than a "smartest guy in the room" or "leader", like them, who's a real player with the big rewards.
* They think software work is low-skilled grunt, the workers are a temporary evil, are uppity about compensation and loyalty (this is 'improving' recently) and don't know their place, and their input has no value. And of course software workers are losers in the world of business, because they don't operate and profit personally like real players do.
The latter is a worse situation to be in. :)
Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> almost all of us are hacking code out of the code-face merely to enrich other people Colloquially known as "work". The thing we all do in order to have nice things and a society. > to enrich other people: the people with the corner offices, and the people above them with the yachts Good! That would mean the thing I produced had value . I hope everything I create has value. One day I hope that I've practiced enough,…
> If I have good ideas and do it right, there's a chance that I could have that yacht. It's what we call economic incentive, or "motivation". I dunno man, but you're clearly a believer. I hope it sustains you over the long-term.
A believer? In what?
An economic system that, for all its flaws, has proven to be the most successful for the most people in all of human history? I guess so. But happy to hear about proven alternatives.
> I hope it sustains you over the long-term
Well, I'm about 50, started from very little, worked hard my whole life, and have managed to find a degree of success. Seems to have worked out so far. I hope it continues.
Certainly better than the alternative - blaming everyone else, the successful, and "the system" and not doing as much as I could to take responsibility and better myself.
Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry
#180I would describe "where the industry is heading" and has been heading as becoming infiltrated by imposters. There is tremendous value to be created by writing software, and the high salaries in tech reflect that. That wealth attracts all sorts of imposters. We see this most straightforwardly as the cat and mouse game that is hiring qualified engineers. Top of funnel to bottom of funnel ratio has never been higher. Le…
The imposter invasion has an even more insidious effect: the creation of software that sounds great (because making it sound great was its authors' forte) but actually sucks to work with (because making good software was not their forte). It has performance issues, security holes, no observability, doesn't scale well, has insane configuration or dependency issues, etc. FAANG companies in particular are full of this crap, written for the "brag post" so the author could get their promotion, then effectively abandoned as they went elsewhere before all the cheesy shortcuts became apparent. Slick talking has replaced sound design as the most valuable skill a software engineer can have, and it shows everywhere.