What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

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 an email or web machine in the past that these days is just a click away. Knowing how to configure BGP has little to do with most people's ability to deliver their core product.

I don't know what brogrammers are. Maybe he's talking about what I used to call tech-carpetbaggers in the dot-com boom. Essentially, every area of human endeavor starts out with the truly passionate, the truly dedicated, and later becomes mainstreamed if successful. Some percentage of those who arrive later will have other motivations, and won't care for the same reason you do. It's not unique to tech. You see it the gaming community ("you're not a real gamer!", "fake geek girls", etc)

As tech becomes easier, and the barriers fall, more and more people will be able to participate. Geeks and neckbeards will become a minority. I don't think we should mourn for the era when tech required priestly dedication. We should be happy another 4 billion people are now getting access, and greater and greater numbers of people can translate ideas to products efficiently.

Your writing reads like you have a chip on your shoulder. It beats around the bush, but you should just come out an say that you don't like people over a certain age. But be careful, because there's a good chance you will soon be that age (or older) and start griping at younger people who don't seem to hold your viewpoint. Your account is 20 minutes old with only 2 comments, both of which are inflammatory. Please take a breath before clicking Submit.

It's completely ludicrous to imply that programming is somehow being led astray by young people. Young people have no power. They do what they are told.

Young people don't have to do what their told. We are raised to listen to our parents so, yes, we do what we're told for fear of being punished (grounded, yelled at, etc.). Though that doesn't mean you can't break out of that mold.

The "black box" programming philosophy was not invented by Gen Y. It was invented in the 80s at least and taught by greybeard professors.

This doesn't even make sense. You are being insensitive towards people. The entire point of learning how to program and understanding computer science is to open the black box and peer inside.

The ageism in the field is not something that is coming from young people either. It is coming from employers with the purse strings who recognize that young people are MORE EXPLOITABLE than old people and so they can get more work for their dollars.

Ageism exists in every field, but let's just focus on tech. Do you see many 50+ year old programmers? Ever wonder why? There is a bias for younger people because, yes, they can be molded (or exploited, as you put it), but it is up to that young person to identify any exploitation and resolve it. That's the only way it can change.

Old people lead every field. Young people do what they're told. Old people lead programming too--this guy just isn't one of the influencers. He isn't a 50 year old VC, a 50 year old Comp Sci prof, a 50 year old CEO, a 50 year old BDFL.

If you don't like the way you perceive the game being played, then you are completely free to change the rules of the game. It will mean you need to break out on your own, and take your lumps, but just throwing your hands up and complaining that the "old people" own everything isn't going to change anything. You are simply allowing the problem to persist and then complaining that it exists.

Now that "nerd" is no a gendered insult, "bro{anything}" and "neckbeard" have taken their place.

Ya, I agree with extracting useful things from your experience. It seems the OP fails to do so by realizing that having extremely cheap and available resources for getting a product to market is historically rare and also constitutes a golden age.

I'll think about it. My reputation as a cranky old guy doesn't need any further boosting either.

What struck me from this essay is the point that if you do something because you love it (rather than just that you get paid for it) you tend to dive deeper and your degree of understanding will over time increase. If money is what motivates you all you will care about is shortcuts to the point where you can invoice, or in the case of the so called 'entrepreneurs' how you can screw your customers/co-founders/investors best.

So we get this collision of two worlds: one group wants to make cool stuff and learn, one group sees dollar bills in large quantities. And somehow the one group is able to co-opt the other and as a side effect pulls in vast numbers of people that have no idea what this is all about but that start to crank out stuff in unprecedented quantity. It's like landing in an ikea when you come from a carpentry shop, only the furniture is made of bits instead of wood.