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

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#161

Post by DaSHacka » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 10:30 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #89

DaSHacka wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time most see as being the "golden age" was in the 1990's, before many of these big tech companies existed. Or at the very least, before all of them truly got to be "big" tech.

> The time most see as being the "golden age" was in the 1990's I think everyone's idea of the "golden age" of programming happens to coincide when they were young and everything was exciting. Ask people of different ages and you'll get different answers.

I don't agree, I was born in the 2000s and I still think the 90s (or 80s) was the golden age of computing at large (and programming, with it).

So many dedicated, intelligent people who loved computing for computing's sake. The opportunities they created from that mentality attracted a ton of business-eyed bros with no appreciated of technologists that slowly rotted the industry into what we have today.

Whenever setting up a system and dealing with sluggish 500MB electron apps filled with slow-loading JS and baked-in ads, I wish I could go back to the time when systems were simpler and made by intelligent people that actually cared, at least more than they do now.

Sure I have a fondness and nostalgia for the games and tech I grew up with (in the 2010s) like the Wii, 3DS, Windows 7, Poptropica, Club Penguin, and the earlyish iteration of Chromebooks we used in Elementary school, but I can't even try to lie by claiming they have anywhere *near* the soul of the games and systems that came before.

I have no idea what the real 'culture' of nerds and hackers was like in the 90s, I can only go by people's first-hand accounts. However, I've had plenty of opportunities to interact with the technology from that era, and can't even imagine arguing what we have now is of a better 'quality', even if more technologically advanced.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#162

Post by cptskippy » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

overstood wrote: post #9

Times aren’t tight, the premise of this article is flawed. Big tech is insanely profitable and investors are loving it. The cuts are not a hard necessity but a choice made for a different reason.

In the last 30 years the frequency of layoffs from major tech firms has been accelerating. Starting back in 1997 with Apple, through the dot-com bubble, recession, real-estate crisis, pandemic, and post-pandemic the justifications have varied from boom-bust cycles, post acquisition restructurings, to not meeting market expectations. These layoffs have been intermixed with major hiring booms, the most recent around AI.

Many folks are aware of these cycles, but having worked for a non-profit I can say we're always the first to feel and last to recover from any fiscal belt tightening. Right now we're starting the fiscal belt tightening phase and anticipating we'll have to do layoffs in the fall.

I'm not sure when this golden age occurred exactly...

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#163

Post by throwmeaway222 » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 12:32 AM UTC

wiseowise wrote: post #157

throwmeaway222 wrote: post #56

When you pull a large portion of people that would normally be doing the following jobs: * maintenance on buildings * growing corn * building homes * making tacos at taco bell * roll your own guess And make them have job titles like "Head of Equity" or "People Partner Team Member" or "roll your own here too" and give them a 100k-200k+ salary, then everyone making Corn, Tacos, Homes are going to demand more money beca…

> We should expect to all being doing hard fucking work Yeah, no, lol.

man our world is so fucked. hope you enjoy ww3

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#164

Post by quantumsequoia » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 1:36 AM UTC

castwide wrote: post #67

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…

In my experience, it felt that way from the outside. I got solicited by five different Amazon recruiters in 2022 alone. The one time I engaged, they didn't even have a specific role in mind. It definitely gave me the impression of blanket hiring with the primary (if not sole) purpose of increasing headcount.

It's called pooled hiring, and it makes sense when a company is hiring lots of people for lots of teams. Most large companies do this when hiring rates are high. You end up with better employee-team match when you interview a candidate first and then match them based on their skills/interest, rather than contacting them for a specific role they may or may not be interested in.

Has nothing to do with whether hiring is for headcount or other reasons

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#165

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 1:54 AM UTC

The title is "Big Tech killed the Golden Age of Programming"

But the author spends zero time explaining why he thinks internet-based data collection and surveillance is the "Golden Age" of programming.

A golden age, according to one definition, is a period of "peak achievement"

What exactly is the author's concept of achievement

Perhaps it is financial (not programming)

For example, the period may have been noteworthy for the so-called "tech" industry's ability to pay so many salaries from zero interest loans

Historically, data shows that interest rates fluctuate over time (Can we blame Big Tech for an increase in interest rates)

With respect to _programming_ some agree that innovation, improvement, progress, was actually stalled during this period (and still is) due to Big Tech's anti-competitive practices

From this end user's perspective the software created during this period, what the author calls a period of "fake jobs", is not the pinnacle of achievement in programming

To me, software quality is at an all-time low, and this "Big Tech" period does not stand as a "Golden Age of Programming"

Compared to the software I am using originally created in the 1970s it stinks

But opinions may differ

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#166

Post by Ferret7446 » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 2:07 AM UTC

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…

Define "natural". IMO the demand absolutely was natural, you just don't agree with it (perhaps for perfectly good reasons)

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#167

Post by bryan_w » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 5:40 AM UTC

johnfn wrote: post #61

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…

+1 "Corporate greed" is a thought-terminating cliché. Why did "corporate greed" start happening all of the sudden? Why did those companies overhire, and why aren't they doing that any more - did the corporate greed go away? I suspect that what OP nebulously refers to as "corporate greed" is actually multifactorial - a behavior determined by a complex interaction of incentives and factors. Someone else mentioned tax l…

Cost of capital

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#168

Post by GreenWatermelon » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 10:38 AM UTC

Ferret7446 wrote: post #166

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…

Define "natural". IMO the demand absolutely was natural, you just don't agree with it (perhaps for perfectly good reasons)

I think "natural" here would refer to genuine project rrquirequirements that will translte directly to value to customers e.g. customers demand x features in y time and we don't have enough manpower to handle it. This is natural, it's business survival.

Contrast with the Unnatural cause of "manager just wants a promotion at any cost" which, in a sense, is akin to Embezzlement. The manager worsens business prospects and contributes to organizational rot for their personal gain.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#169

Post by TheNewsIsHere » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 10:45 AM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #130

arethuza wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have said the Golden Age started about the time Linux distros allowed you replicate the full Unix workstation experience on a basic PC - which I think in my case was around '93 or '94 - right around the same time as the Web starting to become a standard technology.

Agreed, and importantly the increasing availabilty of open source compilers/interpreters that made it possible for the broke kid to sling real code.

It wasn’t just programming either. It was anything with computing. I remember when you could walk into a book store and find a wall of books on Linux, so many of which came with “the Publisher’s Edition” of a Linux distro. That’s how I learned (and obtained!) Linux for the first time. I was hooked.

Where else was a kid going to get a full Linux suite (with just a dial up connection) and a sound basic education for it, in 2003?

I never quite took that for granted, but I still miss being able to walk into a bookstore and walk out with a book with software included. There was something really special about that.

Re: Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming

#170

Post by antonvs » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

afthonos wrote: post #93

antonvs wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're identifying a driving force, greed, behind a range of actions. That's no more "unfalsifiable" than the claim that gravity is variously responsible for objects falling, orbits, spherically symmetric bodies, and stars collapsing.

So what would be impossible to explain in a world where “corporate greed” is indeed what causes all these things? The answer can’t be “nothing”—or “corporate greed” doesn’t mean anything. I can say, for example, that under gravity, an object will not accelerate upwards when entering else stays down; if you show me that happening, I either have to say gravity didn’t cause it, or that gravity is not what we thought it…

Any corporate behavior that doesn’t lead fairly directly to increased share price, profit, revenues, or market share would qualify.

But in the American corporate model, corporations almost by definition don’t do muck of that, because there’s an entrenched belief that increasing shareholder value is their primary mission. Positions to the contrary, like https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v..., are not widely understood or accepted.