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I love programming but I hate the programming industry

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Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#21

Post by ricardo81 »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

>corporate world

That was my take, and an unwillingness to compromise on their principles.

Sometimes the compromise may be less money but a more fulfilling role.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#22

Post by lolinder »

> 90% of the time when I read descriptions it is excruciatingly obvious to me that whatever code the chosen candidates will end up writing at this job will be completely removed from any important problem not only humanity, but even any individual human has ever had. Startup culture is shamelessly at the forefront of this industry’s ‘produce more code and ask less questions’ policy.

I would suggest that part of the problem is that many developers wish they could work on meaningful projects with good people at the pay rate that they are currently getting at $FAANG or with the amount of equity they'd be getting at $STARTUP.

In practice, employees treat meaning, independence, agency, and work-life balance as currency and are willing to take a pay cut in order to secure a meaningful job. Better jobs are out there (I found one), but if you're currently working for an adtech company or an AI startup you will almost certainly need to be willing to look at a much lower salary than you might be accustomed to.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#24

Post by nmoadev »

There are people like you. All is not lost.

You may find the world of “Civic Tech” better aligned with your values. Look into organizations like

Code for America, Center for Humane Technology, the U.S Digital Service, 18F, The Berkman Klein Center, and the Public Interest Technology Initiative at UMass.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#25

Post by the_real_cher »

msephton wrote: post #3

Solution: go independent, work on your own ideas, and sell them to consumers. That might be your own start-up, but for me it was to become an indie game developer. One of my games, YOYOZO, was featured in Ars Technica's "Best Video Games of 2023" so I feel my decision was the right one.

what game Dev stack do you use?

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#26

Post by andy99 »

ricardo81 wrote: post #21
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

>corporate world That was my take, and an unwillingness to compromise on their principles. Sometimes the compromise may be less money but a more fulfilling role.

> Sometimes the compromise may be less money but a more fulfilling role

Once one reaches a point in their career where they have options this is almost universally true. It's in fact the reason why some jobs pay more, because they need to for people to do them instead of something more fulfilling.

I've had jobs where I thought with a few changes this would be awesome, but eventually realized it's those few differences that mean someone is going to pay me well to do it. Depending on many things, this may be worth it to you or not.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#27

Post by rileymat2 »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #15
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #2

It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. I’ve worked with (and have been) developers who have mismatched expectations on what “the real world” wants out of them. The corporate world doesn’t give a shit about finesse, abstractions, witty or beautiful code. They care about finding developers who will pump out features to the business requirements. Some human beings in that cog (man…

Yeah, maybe they don't care about abstraction and beautiful code, but they suddenly start caring when technical debt caused by absence of these things starts to hit, but they are too often unable to see that the two are related. In my personal project I spend a huge amount of time tidying things up, abstracting, cleaning, commenting and that has really started to pay off as the project grew. If I'd let it deteriorate…

Yes, many people present a choice between “code quality” and speed, but this choice is false because tickets are not independent.

Choices made with the current one affect the speed of the next.

Sure you may make a tradeoff between speed and quality in a particular task, but that does not hold over a week or month of work.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#28

Post by __jambo »

in 1950 in the book "the human use of human beings", the famous mathematician Norbert Weiner pointed out your exact sentiment. Complaining that instead of solving problems, or doing anything new or interesting, people were using these "computing machines" to increase the efficiency of the parts of the capitalist machine that caused the problems in the first place.

Nobody listened, and nothing has changed.

Re: I love programming but I hate the programming industry

#30

Post by lpapez »

ponector wrote: post #5

After 10+ years of work in enterprise software development I don't care about the results or where the circus is heading. Only thing I care now is a paycheck with ridiculously high salary.

> Only thing I care now is a paycheck with ridiculously high salary.

... and also about minimizing the amount of stress experienced. Mostly through simply doing the bare possible minimum, but sometimes also doing a bit more to prevent stress down the line.

Caring-just-enough-to-not-care-a-lot-later-driven development I call it.

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