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Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

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Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#111

Post by at-fates-hands »

freedomben wrote: post #20

This is a really terrible article. I suspect the HN comment section will be good, but TFA is not worth reading IMHO (though it is quite short so can be read in a minute or two). > For years, companies like Google, Facebook/Meta, and Amazon hired too many developers. They knew they were hiring too many developers, but they did it anyway because of corporate greed. They wanted to control the talent pool. Aside from all…

I'm not buying the idea that "corporate greed" led to over hiring to control the labor market. In fact, if the companies were really greedy, they would only hire the LEAST amount of developers and actually increase their bottom line and ergo, more profit for their shareholders. Which makes far more sense then expanding your overhead which actually reduces the amount of money your company profits.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#112

Post by icedchai »

blehn wrote: post #98
lokar wrote: post #32

I’ve seen this claim that Google and others had some plan to over hire. From my time there that was not the case. There was the natural demand for more people on existing projects and lots of (often good) ideas for new projects. The money just poured in. We could never actually hire close to the approved levels. Internal “fights” were over actual people, not headcount, everyone had tons of open headcount. I think the…

Counterpoint: I worked there for years and the demand for more people wasn't natural. It came from (1) typical employees not getting much done because they were either not very motivated, not very competent, or stuck in meetings all day, (2) proliferation of people managers who weren't producing anything — product teams of 200 with 50 of them being managers, (3) managers playing the headcount game because it was a pa…

This sort of corporate rot even infected smaller companies. Teams where we have a 1:1 PM to Engineer ratio, 3 person dev teams with a dedicated "engineering manager" that invents useless meetings to justify their position, individuals claiming they have no time for hands-on work due to all the meetings...

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#113

Post by neuroplots »

freedomben wrote: post #20

This is a really terrible article. I suspect the HN comment section will be good, but TFA is not worth reading IMHO (though it is quite short so can be read in a minute or two). > For years, companies like Google, Facebook/Meta, and Amazon hired too many developers. They knew they were hiring too many developers, but they did it anyway because of corporate greed. They wanted to control the talent pool. Aside from all…

TFA is simplistic and combative, but not entirely incorrect. When companies are cash-rich, they hire generously but invest in vanity projects that do nothing for the careers of the people staffed in them. When they’re poor, they fire people and use the fear factor to extract even more work.

This all said, it makes no sense to attack corporate greed without using the C word: Capitalism. Corporations do exactly what their owners designed them to do.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#114

Post by [deleted] »

mjr00 wrote: post #17
jeffbee wrote: post #6

The author doesn't appear to have any industry experience whatsoever, which might have contributed to the post being a series of baseless assertions, followed by a non sequitur.

From the main site it appears they've been working full-time since 2021, after graduating. Which is, from their perspective, pretty brutal. Imagine spending 4-5 years at university watching people slightly older than you getting $250k TC offers at BigTech right out of school, then as soon as you graduate the rug is pulled, hiring freezes up and you're stuck at a no-name dev shop getting paid a much more modest salary…

[deleted]

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#115

Post by klik99 »

ffsm8 wrote: post #79
tickettotranai wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your framing is unfalsifiable, I question its utility.

Ultimately, all actions multinational companies take are rooted in greed. Questioning that feels a lil naive? Are you honestly of the opinion that big tech isn't primarily motivated by money and is instead being run like a family business with an upstanding owner that has the well-being of their employees at heart?

Yeah, the parent comments feel confused, it's kind of a truism that corporations make decisions based on greed. Capitalism, at it's best, tries to align personal/corporate self-interest with the interests of society. If you can't beat 'em, try to direct their interest towards things that benefit society. Keyword here is "try", I mean it's better than feudal lords pursuing self interest by constantly killing each other. The article does a good job of showing how that drive has really made a mess of the job market, and criticizing it because it blames all this stuff on corporate greed is really confusing since both critics and proponents of capitalism agree corporate decisions are all driven by self-interest, they just disagree on the outcomes.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#116

Post by wahern »

ffsm8 wrote: post #79
tickettotranai wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your framing is unfalsifiable, I question its utility.

Ultimately, all actions multinational companies take are rooted in greed. Questioning that feels a lil naive? Are you honestly of the opinion that big tech isn't primarily motivated by money and is instead being run like a family business with an upstanding owner that has the well-being of their employees at heart?

Being motivated by money isn't greed. Per Merriam-Webster, greed is an "excessive desire for more of something (such as money) than is needed". The key qualifiers there are excessive and more than is needed. How do we determine what excessive employment is?

I'm not even sure how companies can be greedy. Many animals will gorge themselves on food far beyond what they "need" in the moment. There's nothing guaranteeing their next meal, so it's an adaptive strategy. In a competitive free market, growth is a survival strategy. Companies can and do die when their old sources of revenue decline and they failed to discover and grow new sources. Not only do they lose out on profits, but they have to fire employees. Avoiding or minimizing layoffs and the toll they take on lives is absolutely something many executives and managers have in mind, even at large corporations, when running a business.

We don't normally ascribe greed to animals, and it doesn't make much sense to do so for corporations, particularly commercial corporations. But to the extent we can equivocate the entity and the people who manage it, underlying motivations are mixed, complicated, and varied.

And I'd argue that not all corporations, even multinationals, are similarly aggressive and "ruthless", so clearly there are complex social dynamics beyond profit maximization. Corporations aren't moral agents in the same way we consider people, yet they're not pure profit maximizing automatons, either.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#117

Post by klik99 »

rkozik1989 wrote: post #12
zwnow wrote: post #3

It also caused the "Golden Age of Programming". It's only been a golden age because of high salaries for relatively low effort. So if their needs change, obviously the industry changes. This article has nothing to say really.

>It's only been a golden age because of high salaries for relatively low effort. Money is how you define a Golden Age of Programming? I consider the late 1990s and early 2000s more of a Golden Age, and my reasons for it have nothing to do with making money. The time was of Golden Age because that's when programming became more accessible to the masses. Yes it wasn't without its fault, namely with regards to cyber sec…

Open source really flourished due to lots of sponsoring of projects, I could see an argument that money caused a golden age in 2010s, but money also attracted the type of person who could, without irony, say "It's only been a golden age because of high salaries for relatively low effort."

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#118

Post by freedomben »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #64
freedomben wrote: post #20

This is a really terrible article. I suspect the HN comment section will be good, but TFA is not worth reading IMHO (though it is quite short so can be read in a minute or two). > For years, companies like Google, Facebook/Meta, and Amazon hired too many developers. They knew they were hiring too many developers, but they did it anyway because of corporate greed. They wanted to control the talent pool. Aside from all…

> This is a really terrible article. I suspect the HN comment section will be good, but TFA is not worth reading IMHO The "article" is just a blog post - an extended comment, if you will. It's no different than if you barged in here and told someone their comment was "terrible, but I'm sure the rest will be better". That would get you flagged, but how is that measurably different than what you said? Who are you to cr…

> The "article" is just a blog post - an extended comment, if you will.

If you posted a comment on HN making huge claims with no evidence, it would be pushed back on. That happens constantly. You can say, "well, that's just like, my opinion, man" and that's fine, but I could easily say, "I think there's a teapot, too small to be seen by telescopes, orbiting the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars" and offer no evidence, and reply identically. Does that magically put my comment above criticism?

> It's no different than if you barged in here and told someone their comment was "terrible, but I'm sure the rest will be better". That would get you flagged, but how is that measurably different than what you said?

I agree my language was a little harsh and I could have been nicer. However, there are mountains of comments like "this is a terrible take" on HN comments all the time and they don't get flagged as long as they offer some justification (and otherwise follow the guidelines). If that was all I said, then that's a terrible comment and should be flagged, but I did offer some justification.

> Who are you to critique the author? You're not smarter than everyone else, I assure you.

Great point. So should I stop trying to think critically and just accept any opinion without questioning? Or is it just the discussion around it that offends you? What is the bar for critical thinking? 95th percentile in intelligence? 99th? Below that we should shut our brains off and accept whatever we see on the internet?

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#119

Post by [deleted] »

freedomben wrote: post #118
sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a really terrible article. I suspect the HN comment section will be good, but TFA is not worth reading IMHO The "article" is just a blog post - an extended comment, if you will. It's no different than if you barged in here and told someone their comment was "terrible, but I'm sure the rest will be better". That would get you flagged, but how is that measurably different than what you said? Who are you to cr…

> The "article" is just a blog post - an extended comment, if you will. If you posted a comment on HN making huge claims with no evidence, it would be pushed back on. That happens constantly. You can say, "well, that's just like, my opinion, man" and that's fine, but I could easily say, "I think there's a teapot, too small to be seen by telescopes, orbiting the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars" and o…

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