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What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

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Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#61

Post by logfromblammo »

fat0wl wrote: post #51
fat0wl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i went on a rant about this stuff in a recent comment asking about Tech Bootcamps that i deleted half of cuz i knew it would just piss ppl off & was a waste of breath (all other comments were pretty much from ppl who lOoooOooOove 'em, half commenters had vested interest). but yeah tech bootcamps, consultant scammers, open source hipsters.... i see this stuff is rampant & it seems to be a downer in cyberspace. I code…

if you downvoted this can you please explain why? I am actually desperate for reasons not to be so cynical about my job so i can at least scrape something out of my days until i find a better place... I wish I had a sunnier view of things but I am someone who wants to work hard but feels like an ant on an ant farm. ppl have advised me to go into startup scene but all the startups i've interviewed at in NY are mock co…

Consider revising your writing style to be more formal and less conversational. Make an attempt to use punctuation where appropriate, especially with respect to commas and capitalization.

Grammar errors will impact a reader's perception of you, regardless of whether your original intent had true merit or not. Your goal should be to communicate exactly the ideas you wish you convey, as concisely as possible.

Natural language is the transfer protocol for ideas between humans. If you do not adhere to the published standards, you risk experiencing data loss in strict clients.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#62

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

jacquesm wrote: post #32
cromwellian wrote: post #22

I started two companies and I am not sad to see the days of renting rack space, buying hardware, and sys-admining everything yourself disappear, anymore than I'm sad to see that I don't need to build my own power plant to run my stuff, or farm my own food. The innovation in the cloud space in the last couple of years has removed an enormous burden from working on ideas. You could waste enormous time just setting up a…

I don't think that is his main point. I think it is far more about the fact that just the surface layers aren't enough to build good solutions to problems, that's good enough for demos and mock-ups but not good enough for production. For that you need some deeper level of insight.

Look at some of Facebook's early code:

https://gist.github.com/philfreo/7257723

https://gist.github.com/nikcub/3833406

There are plenty of people in this industry who would have told you this code wasn't fit for production.

People frequently overestimate both what's needed to build commercially-viable solutions and how easy it becomes to recruit the right people to improve (or reimplement) poorly-architected solutions if they become popular.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#63

Post by eastbayjake »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #57
eastbayjake wrote: post #19

tl;dr: People are suddenly interested in something I'm passionate about, they're all poseur johnny-come-latelys, I'm the authentic hacker This is maybe the tenth HN post I've read that's some iteration of this gut feeling by people who entered tech after a life-long obsession with computers. It's really cool that you're passionate about CS -- there are also a lot of people who are rational actors making rational deci…

'Rational Self Interest' is a myth. For self interest to be truly rational you'd have to be able to model long term consequences of short term decisions extremely well. This would be a useful way to make sure you wouldn't do something incredibly stupid and ultimately self-defeating just so you could to make a quick buck in the next quarter, if the ultimately consequence was that the same 'rational decision' was going…

This is a strawman of my argument. If you can make $40k in one job or $85k in another by completing a 12-week course, it is a purely rational decision. (You may be passionate enough about your $40k job to turn down more money in other areas, but only you are capable of weighing that trade-off. It's still a rational process.) I'm not making the claim that all humans are purely rational all the time.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#64

Post by coldcode »

benihana wrote: post #47

Yawn. A whiny, arrogant, grass-is-always-greener post with a bunch of hypotheticals about the filthy unwashed masses encroaching on "our" turf and how much greater it was "back in the day." Bonus points for laying out the criteria for a "true" hacker is (spoiler alert: it's anyone who spent their time almost identically as the author).

I started my career in 1981 so I predate the author. While I often use examples from back or tell stories in my blog I have zero desire to go backwards in time. To me the good old days are in the future. Worshipping the past just makes you old.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#65

Post by fat0wl »

logfromblammo wrote: post #61
fat0wl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you downvoted this can you please explain why? I am actually desperate for reasons not to be so cynical about my job so i can at least scrape something out of my days until i find a better place... I wish I had a sunnier view of things but I am someone who wants to work hard but feels like an ant on an ant farm. ppl have advised me to go into startup scene but all the startups i've interviewed at in NY are mock co…

Consider revising your writing style to be more formal and less conversational. Make an attempt to use punctuation where appropriate, especially with respect to commas and capitalization. Grammar errors will impact a reader's perception of you, regardless of whether your original intent had true merit or not. Your goal should be to communicate exactly the ideas you wish you convey, as concisely as possible. Natural l…

lol that is too true.... i don't mind conversational hippie-styling but HN is the one forum where i get regularly shredded for it

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#66

Post by astrodust »

navyrain wrote: post #35

What is omitted from the article is the difference in the _size_ of the tech industry during the last 20 years. In 1995, the year the author romances, he emphasizes that doing anything in tech was hard. Two decades later, the hard problems have not gone away; the industry has broadened such that there are more opportunities across the entire spectrum of "noble challenge". There are more opportunities in making fluff,…

It did seem like everyone plus dog had a startup in 1995 and most were working on the absolutely stupidest ideas possible just that they were more B2B focused than B2C in that era.

I'd argue the CueCat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat) was the iconic culmination of five years of feverish insanity.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#68

Post by bjelkeman-again »

fat0wl wrote: post #51
fat0wl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i went on a rant about this stuff in a recent comment asking about Tech Bootcamps that i deleted half of cuz i knew it would just piss ppl off & was a waste of breath (all other comments were pretty much from ppl who lOoooOooOove 'em, half commenters had vested interest). but yeah tech bootcamps, consultant scammers, open source hipsters.... i see this stuff is rampant & it seems to be a downer in cyberspace. I code…

if you downvoted this can you please explain why? I am actually desperate for reasons not to be so cynical about my job so i can at least scrape something out of my days until i find a better place... I wish I had a sunnier view of things but I am someone who wants to work hard but feels like an ant on an ant farm. ppl have advised me to go into startup scene but all the startups i've interviewed at in NY are mock co…

I didn't downvote, but maybe it was the tone. "These ppl are pure scum" qualifies for me for others than some devs with other motivations than what I have.

There are definitely good jobs which one can be passionate about out there. I didn't easily find that job myself when I was sick of my job and ended up creating it instead. This industry offers so much potential that I feel it is nearly only a matter of looking around to see what needs to be done. Not a given one will be successful, but doing ok so far. Done give up, look around yourself, the good stuff is out there.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#69

Post by dlhdesign »

cromwellian wrote: post #42
jacquesm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is his main point. I think it is far more about the fact that just the surface layers aren't enough to build good solutions to problems, that's good enough for demos and mock-ups but not good enough for production. For that you need some deeper level of insight.

I think that is application specific. The same points are often made about programming, and there are certainly circumstances where you need to know how your code is compiled to assembly, or how the kernel works, for many, this isn't an issue. Sure, if you need to hit a target 30fps or 60fps in a game, then that implies what much be understood in the whole stack. Since 99+% of all startup ideas will fail, it makes no…

> You should consider the first version a throwaway.

If you start out knowing that you are writing something that will be trashed, why would you invest yourself in it? It's hard to tell someone to build something that will be thrown away; to trade the time they can never get back for something that will most likely fail. That will almost certainly _not_ get their best work - which means your odds of success go down; perhaps drastically. And if the first version DOES happen to work, you still have to throw it away at some point and start over (or else live in pain for the life of the product). Either way; you loose.

Now think about the approach where you take the time to think through your ideas. Where you expect the best from your people right from the start because you're all building to last. When you earnestly expect the best of people, they generally give you that (or close to it, at least). You get a better result. So then the first version doesn't work. But you've learned a lot, because the thought process you went through taught you things; things you took the time to learn. Things you can leverage in your next venture; things that will speed it up, make it stronger, get it quicker. But what if it worked? Now you're not fettered with the task of rebuilding what you've just built because what you have is solid. It can be built on. So that momentum you have as the first version works can be leveraged into the second, third and fourth versions. And momentum means something; it means happier employees and - ultimately - better returns.

The former (get it quick) is (for the most part) the world of today. The latter (get it right) was the world the author remembers - and pines for.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#70

Post by woah »

throwaway90446 wrote: post #9
anateus wrote: post #8

This always happens when a scene/subculture hits the mainstream. You could madlibs this article and get a description of every musical genre. It's sad to see what you were so passionate about appear in a diluted form, and external perception be distorted by this new image. But there always remains an underground where true innovation and passion thrives.

This isn't music, or anything like it. The article touches on the Millenials' refusal to learn anything below their chosen layer of abstraction to be a systemic risk to anything they build. It's more akin to every bridge engineer not bothering with materials science or integral calculus because they know how to throw a bunch of trusses together than it is akin to every hipster on the planet learning to play Stairway…

God, you people who don't understand silicon culture and polishing make me sick. A bunch of hipster poseurs who just want to play with their little "programs" without even understanding the wafers that make it all possible! Get a clue!
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