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Programming Still Sucks

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Re: Programming Still Sucks

#51

Post by rileymat2 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #50

I’m trying to piece together a thought. Is it right if my employer wants to “own” the gain in productivity from these tools? I’m being paid the same. I’m still doing 40 hours. The huge gains in productivity are not mine to enjoy, it seems.

Unless the method of increasing productivity increases it disproportionately for you or you find a way to outcompete in productivity gains, I am not sure that ever happens.

Edit: To put a finer point on this, generally,employed people don't get paid more for the excess value they produce, they get paid more for for the delta in perceived value between them and the next best option to fill the position (on a grand statistical scale for careers).

* There are exceptions to this in the form of commission based jobs.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#52

Post by yoyohello13 »

bluegatty wrote: post #48
yoyohello13 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He really put in to words what I’ve been feeling lately. I love programming and I’m quite good at it, but this industry is a cesspit. I’ve already decided to go back to school to get one of those ‘real’ jobs. I’m tired of working in an industry hell bent on the destruction of society.

'The industry' is not hellbent on destroying society - this is just so unhinged it's hard to know how to make of it.

True, I should have said an industry that will trample on anything that stands in the way of its pursuit of money.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#53

Post by nullsanity »

bluegatty wrote: post #48
yoyohello13 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He really put in to words what I’ve been feeling lately. I love programming and I’m quite good at it, but this industry is a cesspit. I’ve already decided to go back to school to get one of those ‘real’ jobs. I’m tired of working in an industry hell bent on the destruction of society.

'The industry' is not hellbent on destroying society - this is just so unhinged it's hard to know how to make of it.

We need to bring back consumer first design and destroy the incentives to prioritize shareholders over the much larger cohort of ordinary consumers whose lives were affecting.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#54

Post by Brian_K_White »

bluegatty wrote: post #48
yoyohello13 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He really put in to words what I’ve been feeling lately. I love programming and I’m quite good at it, but this industry is a cesspit. I’ve already decided to go back to school to get one of those ‘real’ jobs. I’m tired of working in an industry hell bent on the destruction of society.

'The industry' is not hellbent on destroying society - this is just so unhinged it's hard to know how to make of it.

There is a quote that goes something like "The purpose of any system is whatever it does."

Whatever any system does, it's someone's intention that it does so. It's like an unavoidable truism. You can't say anything that gets around it.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#55

Post by protocolture »

thisoneisreal wrote: post #45
protocolture wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The USB stick hints at a big problem in our trade though: how do you "reboot" your IT infrastructure if it literally burns to the ground? I'm not talking about Google-scale systems (which still couldn't restart from scratch IIUC but they're actually working on it?) but only about SMEs. Maersk ground to a halt because it got done nearly 100% by cryptolocker. IIRC they went to hard copy records, called everyone, got a…

How did you get into that line of work? Sounds really interesting.

Refusal to pick a silo, having a knack for troubleshooting, falling into consulting. It just sort of happened. Helps to be extremely jaded too. My kneekjerk disbelief that something is good, documented or even functional makes me well suited to taking over new clients and finding where all their bodies are buried.

One of my favorite jobs early in my career was working for a really shonky wireless isp. The majority of the network was built by sales people using terrible tools with no documentation. I actually cant overstate how bad they were originally, they had entire areas of network with no recorded network config or credentials. My daily workflow was getting a ticket from a customer I had never heard of > trying to figure out where they were and what services they had (2 of their 3 billing systems were offline, and I often had to grep out information from a sqldump to find this stuff) > performing a discovery, L2 upwards of their infrastructure > semi offensively trying to authenticate into their infrastructure > resolve and document so that other people can reliably service them. All while pretending this was absolutely normal to the customer. Turns out there were lots of ISPs in the same boat, and turns out there's lots of non isp businesses in the same boat.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#57

Post by monkeyballs »

> The truth is, working in tech always sucked, and never really was what they thought it was.

This is just not true. Working in tech was awesome for me for at least thirteen years from 1988 - 2000. Probably well beyond, actually. The main reason it began to suck was due to business -- corporate acquisitions and mergers -- not tech. Working for a good company, solving fun problems, making meaningful software, and having happy customers was tech heaven.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#58

Post by Brian_K_White »

bluegatty wrote: post #49
hsuduebc2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autor surely always could be journalist. He can write a exceptional story.

Don't like to go against everyone but this not particularly well written. It's a long winding absurdist metaphorical tale, that is really more or less a rant. It's not particularly well grounded. It's a nice piece of personalized fiction, but it's not particularly good writing and nothing approaching what we'd think of as 'journalism'.

It's not absurdist. It's shining a light on something that actually exists and is absurd.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#59

Post by stevenlangbroek »

monkeyballs wrote: post #57

> The truth is, working in tech always sucked, and never really was what they thought it was. This is just not true. Working in tech was awesome for me for at least thirteen years from 1988 - 2000. Probably well beyond, actually. The main reason it began to suck was due to business -- corporate acquisitions and mergers -- not tech. Working for a good company, solving fun problems, making meaningful software, and havi…

i'm glad you had a good time! i did too! the reason it began to suck wasn't that it began to suck, it's that you began to notice. technology isn't bad, the technology industry is bad. we were always bad to some people, now it seems we're just straight-up bad to everyone.

Re: Programming Still Sucks

#60

Post by monkeyballs »

> The truth is, working in tech always sucked, and never really was what they thought it was.

This is just not true. Working in tech (starting 1989) was awesome for me for at least 20 years, and tolerable for quite some time after. The main reason it began to suck was due to business -- corporate acquisitions and mergers and tech-ignorant MBA decisions, for example -- not tech. Working for a good company, solving fun problems, making meaningful software, collaborating with committed peers, and having (and directly supporting) happy customers was tech heaven.

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