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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

#121

Post by saschajustin »

typicalrunt wrote: post #58
saschajustin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good lord! Don't confuse envy with hatred. I don't hate old people, I envy them! I envy Wedge Martin who got into tech in a time when it was professionally acceptable and viable to drill down into details. I envy a time when you could have a career based on fundamentals rather than buzzwords and rapidly learning frameworks. I have tremendous respect for greybeard, which is precisely why I recognize that greybears are…

There's a fable, "The Scorpion and the Frog" [1] wherein the moral is (copied from Wikipedia): The fable is used to illustrate the position that no change can be made in the behavior of the fundamentally vicious. My point about changing the rules of the game is that if the oppressors are not changing because they have all the power, then don't try to change the oppressors. Instead, find a way to remove yourself from…

As a millenial who is very familiar with capitalist exploitation of myself and my peers, I am 100% in favor of unionization, regulation, and association.

It's the boomer and Gen X tech people that I talk to who are the most opposed to unionization, talking about labour relations, etc.

Gen X techies in particular have this strange and incomprehensible hatred for unions.

Anyway I absolutely would like to change the rules of the game through collective action. Doesn't seem like it's in the cards though--the tech industry is under the thumb of a much bigger neoliberal agenda--and the string pullers in tech are either:

1. Billionaires who oppose collective action for obvious selfish reasons

2. Strange Gen X anarchist cyberpunks (or something?) who oppose unionization because they think it's somehow associated with communism and goes against the hacker ethos.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#122

Post by JoeAltmaier »

saschajustin wrote: post #121
typicalrunt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a fable, "The Scorpion and the Frog" [1] wherein the moral is (copied from Wikipedia): The fable is used to illustrate the position that no change can be made in the behavior of the fundamentally vicious. My point about changing the rules of the game is that if the oppressors are not changing because they have all the power, then don't try to change the oppressors. Instead, find a way to remove yourself from…

As a millenial who is very familiar with capitalist exploitation of myself and my peers, I am 100% in favor of unionization, regulation, and association. It's the boomer and Gen X tech people that I talk to who are the most opposed to unionization, talking about labour relations, etc. Gen X techies in particular have this strange and incomprehensible hatred for unions. Anyway I absolutely would like to change the rul…

How about I speak for my demographic of tech people vs unions? Its not some blind hatred of communism, or an independent ethos. Its a professional being reduced to a dues-paying blue-collar guy. Dues that I don't get to say how they're being spent. Its workplaces where I cant start a build because that's another guy's job. Its payroll padding for guys that don't even work there but used to. Its somebody else negotiating my pay at a startup instead of me.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#123

Post by jacquesm »

saschajustin wrote: post #119
jacquesm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One young guy named Linus Torvalds upset a whole pile of holy applecarts, as a student, no less, a guy called Mark Zuckerberg built one of the most visited websites on the planet, two other guys built the most frequented search engine while still in college and so on. He doesn't care at all about not being in charge. He cares about people not wanting nor caring about getting some deeper levels of knowledge required t…

Linus is 45 years old. He's not a millenial, he's a greybeard. Zuckerberg never made any technological advances. His company was a market success but it was based on LAMP... nothing technologically novel about it. Not even the concept was novel--it was a direct myspace rip off. I'm sure there will be millenials who have an influence on the technology and direction of software. But they certainly aren't the people in…

If you think 45 years old is a greybeard then I think I've lost you, and Linus made most of his impact before he even had a beard.

Facebook was anything but a Myspace rip-off, Myspace was to Facebook as Geocities was to Digital Ocean or Altavista to Google.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#124

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

Blackthorn wrote: post #106
gaius wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but at least it was an actual technological product. These days you get Buzzfeed whose product is "lists" and Upworthy whose product is "misleading headlines".

Buzzfeed is an outlet that performs real journalism. If you cannot see what their product is and what they are doing, perhaps you need to open your eyes.

Is this sarcasm?

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#125

Post by saschajustin »

jacquesm wrote: post #123
saschajustin wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus is 45 years old. He's not a millenial, he's a greybeard. Zuckerberg never made any technological advances. His company was a market success but it was based on LAMP... nothing technologically novel about it. Not even the concept was novel--it was a direct myspace rip off. I'm sure there will be millenials who have an influence on the technology and direction of software. But they certainly aren't the people in…

If you think 45 years old is a greybeard then I think I've lost you, and Linus made most of his impact before he even had a beard. Facebook was anything but a Myspace rip-off, Myspace was to Facebook as Geocities was to Digital Ocean or Altavista to Google.

Linus' beard maybe isn't yet long enough to count as "grey" but, in any case, he's not a millenial. He entered the field circa 1990, whereas this self-proclaimed greybeard author started in 1995.

So for the discussion of this article Linus is even older/greyer than the self-proclaimed "get off my lawn" author.

Zuck is a millenial but he's far more of a businessman than he is a programmer.

Zuck hasn't really programmed since Facebook took off. He's a business owner/operator, not an engineer. Writing an MVP LAMP webapp that is then fixed up by others is NOT the same as having an influence on the processes and procedures used in the construction of software--which is what the OP is complaining about.

Facebook was a business success not a technology success.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#126

Post by saschajustin »

wpietri wrote: post #21
saschajustin wrote: post #7

So to summarize... a man born into privilege is annoyed by poor people. The guy equates working for a paycheck with entitlement... how out of touch can you be? Working for a paycheck is something you do out of economic neccessity--for survival, NOT entitlement. Getting paid to work on your hobbies in the tech industry in 1995 is basically winning the lottery. Most people would kill to have this chance. This guy is co…

I read your comment before the article, and was all set to agree. But then I read the article. The people who come here looking for riches and playing at entrepreneurship are not "working for a paycheck". They are people who crave social standing, who crave money. They don't want to be comfortably middle class; they want to be elite. There was a giant wave of them during Bubble 1.0, but come 2001 most of them went ba…

Millenials do not have a choice between "elite social status" and "comfortable middle class". They have a choice between middle class and lower class. What you are calling elite is actually just middle class.

Millenials are at the bottom of a pyramid in a stagnating economy that doesn't offer the same choice that was offered to their parents. We are a depression generation. Programming is one of the few lower middle class career paths still available. Most new jobs in this new economy (that are available to millenials) are working class as part of the service economy.

Jobs that do provide a middle class living are either dissapearing as the boomers retire from them, or require a lot of competition to win.

The amount of money you need to live a middle class life is much harder to achieve in 2015 than it was 40 years ago in 1975.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#127

Post by Blackthorn »

UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #124
Blackthorn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buzzfeed is an outlet that performs real journalism. If you cannot see what their product is and what they are doing, perhaps you need to open your eyes.

Is this sarcasm?

Have you ever read the site? Like, actually read it, not just glanced at something someone linked you or the front page?

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#128

Post by digisth »

fat0wl wrote: post #112
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

thanks... I think the reason I get a bit heated is because I come from an arts background actually. There are a lot of slippery slopes in industry, and now I am on one. It disgusts me when I see that my peers are just tumbling over one another to reach the bottom first, just to put another $5/hr on their rate whereas I used to work with people who didn't care if they spent their whole careers as penniless musicians s…

You (and others with real software development skills and drive) are in an incredible position today. You've graduated into a very exciting market (I went through the previous boom and it was frenzied, but this is one is even more so) with opportunities everywhere. If you can't seem to find anything on the 'art and design technology' side, take a look into organizations like EyeBeam [http://eyebeam.org/] and AdaFruit's job page [https://www.adafruit.com/jobs/] to start with; they may not be trivial to find, but some are out there. Before I became a software developer, I was in audio engineering (didn't last long) and am an occasional musician, so I've seen both sides. There is definitely an incredible amount of boring stuff out there, but there's also exciting stuff to be found.

Many people do just jump in for the money, and others in this thread have addressed it, so I won't except to say that there are people who start out in an industry because they need the money (for example, I had to live on my own and start work at 17, no familial support), but then realize they really enjoy it and stay for the other stuff: problem solving, puzzles, building elegant things, and all the rest. Perhaps not most, but there are some.

As far as the passion vs. profit stuff, there's no denying that there's a serious tension there, and that's not going anywhere anytime soon. I've dealt with this too, and I saw three choices:

1) You can live like a pauper in an expensive area/decently in a very cheap area and do what you enjoy, even if no one ever buys it. There are people who do this with code - I've seen plenty of indie game devs pick a cheap area in the US, work the occasional freelance job, and spend every other moment working on their games. This can be a totally valid path if you're OK with its limitations. You know what this is like from the art side already, too.

2) You can try to get wealthy and then do whatever you want - no more working terrible jobs, being paid a fraction of what you're worth, being engulfed in [other] company politics, working for others when you'd rather be working for yourself, etc. I'm sure many people of us here on HN are doing exactly that.

3) You can try to find a decent compromise - some companies will give you 5% time, others may pay you to just do research (a previous company I worked for paid a few people to do nothing but work on an audio/3D visual coding framework, for example), others simply hit that sweet spot of giving you interesting stuff to work on for decent money.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#129

Post by fat0wl »

digisth wrote: post #128
fat0wl wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks... I think the reason I get a bit heated is because I come from an arts background actually. There are a lot of slippery slopes in industry, and now I am on one. It disgusts me when I see that my peers are just tumbling over one another to reach the bottom first, just to put another $5/hr on their rate whereas I used to work with people who didn't care if they spent their whole careers as penniless musicians s…

You (and others with real software development skills and drive) are in an incredible position today. You've graduated into a very exciting market (I went through the previous boom and it was frenzied, but this is one is even more so) with opportunities everywhere. If you can't seem to find anything on the 'art and design technology' side, take a look into organizations like EyeBeam [ http://eyebeam.org/ ] and AdaFru…

thanks for the suggestions. I actually spent some time as an "intern" (hang out making art & doing whatever) at Harvestworks [http://www.harvestworks.org/], which is very similar to EyeBeam. I just decided it wasn't for me when I saw that artists spent so much time on grant-writing just for a chance at a sum of money most of them (they were pretty tech-savvy) could make through a few days of freelance if they sharpened their coding skills a bit.

I didn't mean to come off as a spoiled brat chastising hard-working people. I definitely understand that folks have to take jobs and make a wage, not always doing what they want. My criticism is much more directed toward those who have reached the intermediate level but then choose to excel at mediocrity. I work with some devs who are shining examples of this. They use a rapid dev tool that encourages awful programming practices, and they jump from shop to shop leaving piles of code-dung behind. They are slightly jealous as I refine my Java skills to becoming increasingly more powerful & effective, but not to the point where they would actually commit to learning. Instead, they are content knowing they have a niche skill and will be consistently overpaid for poor quality implementations.

Anyway I digress.... your breakdown seems pretty deadon. I wish I had the stomach for #1 but didn't, so I thought it would be easier to do #3 to pave the way for #2 (I had this idea that working corporate gigs was the only true test of and exercise for my coding skills)....

I guess I need to find a better #3 or jump ship to 1 or maybe even 2 if I can handle a startup run... it's just hard to leave because the current gig actually doesn't work us very hard its just too much politicking within a very dull talent pool, kinda lulls me to sleep (though trust me I would take a more challenging job in an instant, its not about being lazy just lack of opportunities thus far).

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#130

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

Blackthorn wrote: post #127
UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this sarcasm?

Have you ever read the site? Like, actually read it, not just glanced at something someone linked you or the front page?

My opinion on BuzzFeed isn't relevant. I was asking if it was sarcasm or not because I was interested in looking into it myself if it wasn't. Wasn't going to waste my time if you were trying to make a joke.
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