Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#141

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 6:03 PM UTC

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…

Every company and every team I've ever worked for has had somewhere between 3X and 10X the amount of work in the backlog that they were staffed to do. Entire projects that were seen as priorities, but never even started because there was just no staff available to do them. Hundreds of "P1 important" bugs not getting fixed (and never getting fixed) because the limited staff was working on "P0 emergencies" all the time.

For a brief period of time, the company I worked for "overhired" which allowed them to move that multiple down to maybe 2X-5X instead of 3X-10X. We went from severely shortstaffed to very shortstaffed, but we could at least get one or two more projects done than we could before. Well, that's over now, and we're back to being severely shortstaffed.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#142

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 6:16 PM UTC

skirmish wrote: post #138

blehn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also: telling a senior SWE (L5) that for good performance reviews they must act as a tech lead and spend most of their time in "alignment" meetings with other TLs and managers. Also: a team of 3 SWEs where each claims to be a tech lead of an area, purely for good performance reviews.

> Also: a team of 3 SWEs where each claims to be a tech lead of an area, purely for good performance reviews.

This kind of forced role inflation is infuriating, and happens at every company I've worked for, big or small. You can't just get by on technical mastery anymore--you always have to be seen as a "leader" of some group or "leading" some project. Even if you just want to stand still in your career and get cost-of-living raises, there is this widely held expectation that you're always cosplaying as a leader of something.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#143

Post by OldfieldFund » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #141

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…

Every company and every team I've ever worked for has had somewhere between 3X and 10X the amount of work in the backlog that they were staffed to do. Entire projects that were seen as priorities, but never even started because there was just no staff available to do them. Hundreds of "P1 important" bugs not getting fixed (and never getting fixed) because the limited staff was working on "P0 emergencies" all the time…

> 3X and 10X the amount of work in the backlog

This is an old trick to get people to work hard. It's no accident that every tech company does this.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#144

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #127

ecb_penguin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, all those things could be "corporate greed". Opposite actions in different environments don't change the intent. > Aside from all the claims with no sources/references whatsoever It's an opinion piece about many of our shared experiences. > blaming "corporate greed" for hiring employees? They explained their argument. > Isn't it also "corporate greed" to lay people off? It depends. A struggling company that nee…

>> Isn't it also "corporate greed" to lay people off? >It depends. A struggling company that needs to reduce workforce to survive? No. A company worth trillions laying off en-mass because stock rates are down? Yes, probably. >> Let me guess, if they started cutting salaries, that is also corporate greed? >It depends. A struggling company that needs to reduce salaries to survive? No. A company worth trillions cutting…

Per the banker analogy, it'd be like if the banker hired all of the personal trainers so other bankers wouldn't have access to them, give most of them nothing to do because it turns out the banker only needs one, and then fire them all once the other bankers won't be able to hire them as easily, all without any regard for the impact this strategy has on the trainers' lives and without being upfront and honest with the trainers about the strategy.

Yes, that's greedy.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#145

Post by ponector » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 6:53 PM UTC

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…

> 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

I also don't buy this argument. They can control talent pool in some locations. But globally, their workforce is a drop in a bucket. I bet one TCS is bigger than all FAANGs by body count.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#146

Post by nosefrog » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 6:56 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #90

nosefrog wrote: post #22

My first programming job in SF paid $60k/year 10 years ago. I'd like to thank big tech for driving salaries up.

In 2015? That seems low for an entry-level job at a startup, then. $60k is more like 2010.

It was low. I got a bump to 90k that year, then 130k when I jumped companies, which I thought was a mind boggling amount. Do entry level devs even get out of bed for $130k these days?

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#147

Post by surgical_fire » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:00 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #134

surgical_fire wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's your metric, then the golden age never ended, and we are still in the upward trend. There were never as many tools, programming languages, IDEs, framework, services and tools available for programming. And with the advancement in technology, even a pretty old laptop is still powerful enough to run it all. You now even gave LLMs that are interesting (even if very flawed) code assistants. If anything, the gol…

That's true, but I think you need to account for the state of hardware and operating systems too. Unless you're on Linux, the hackability and control over your own computing environment has never been worse (aside from when those things weren't accessible at all). Yes I can build almost anything nowadays, but actually using it is a different story, even just for personal use (ask people with iPhones and increasingly…

> Unless you're on Linux

Why would anyone interested in programming use anything else?

I am forced to use a Mac at work, but I digress.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#148

Post by rozap » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

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…

Volatility caused by short term thinking is bad for workers. Over hiring and layoffs are a symptom of that.

That being said, yes the article is just a rant. But that doesn't mean it's wrong generally. I think it ascribes a bit more intent than was actually present. I think big tech is more like a school of fish than an elite cabal of serious thinkers.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#149

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:19 PM UTC

OldfieldFund wrote: post #143

ryandrake wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every company and every team I've ever worked for has had somewhere between 3X and 10X the amount of work in the backlog that they were staffed to do. Entire projects that were seen as priorities, but never even started because there was just no staff available to do them. Hundreds of "P1 important" bugs not getting fixed (and never getting fixed) because the limited staff was working on "P0 emergencies" all the time…

> 3X and 10X the amount of work in the backlog This is an old trick to get people to work hard. It's no accident that every tech company does this.

I mean, if you worked at any of these companies, you could see the bug list for yourself. These are not fake bugs filed by corporate conspirators. They're actual software defects that affect real users.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#150

Post by zwnow » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 7:23 PM UTC

klik99 wrote: post #117

rkozik1989 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

Because my industry experience has been exactly that. It's importing stuff and puzzling packages together. There really isn't a lot of jobs where you actually have to implement interesting algorithms yourself.