Basically everyone wants security, but nobody wants to pay for it.
Maybe the market equilibrium means people don't get hurt enough yet.
I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
31–40 of 335 posts
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#32If you work in security, this resonates so much. No one really cares about security except to check a box or pay lip service to it. That's why so called security products ship without logging and clients don't want to make the smallest effort to enable you to improve their security. It's why companies that sell security products invest more in marketing than the product. The industry is full of conmen and marketeers.…
I work as a contractor for a bank. A few months ago everybody was up in arms about a "major" security issue discovered by an auditor (you could see the settings of random users by changing an id in a url). I've just shown them you can credit money to your account, yet this is low priority and they provided a fix that I'm 100% percent sure didn't fix anything, unfortunately the functionality is down on all but the pro…
Sometimes it matters who finds the issue more than what it is....
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software costs ~0 to copy and distribute absolutely perfect copies, world-wide. To drive the price up you create artificial scarcity, mostly rooted in IP law. Important note for HN readers: 'driving the price up' is a net benefit for programmers. Artificial scarcity is why you get paid big bucks. Interestingly, data is legitimately scarce. But that's a discussion for another time...
Copy and distribution costs are just a part of the cost. Development and maintenance does require real flesh and blood people spending their days working on developing, building, and deployment. That part costs money.
The artificial scarcity applies to copies of an individual piece of software, rather than the scarcity of different pieces of software.
Once you build it, almost the only way to achieve scarcity is through IP law.
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#34I asked my SO recently how she view the Internet, what it is and how it works. She was honest and told me that, "If I click this button, this websites loads. If that works I'm fine! If it doesn't I will call you. Don't stop working with IT please, if you get it, we need you badly!" I believe that is a good reason to be accepting towards the current state of affairs. People just don't care. They have more important is…
Thing is, it took me a long time to accept that people not caring was ok. Now I realize that my dad is frustrated I never learned something as simple as changing the oil on my car. My mom does not understand how I can't name more than two flowers and can't bake a pie. My legal-minded friends are astounded I do not take a day to work on my legal status to pay less taxes. Hell, my wife does the paperwork I am not even…
Just wanted to say this is a really good comment, thanks for putting it out there.
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#35This is the down-side of artificial scarcity for software. The upside is that sweet sweet green. If you could remain cynical a few years longer, scrimp and save like 10 years of a comfy mid 6 figure salary, you'd stop caring about the BS, and you'd might even learn to love it (or even contribute to it!) After all, nothing quite feels as good as being a well-paid expert in a complicated field, especially when it grows…
What about those of us who don't get crazy compensations, but instead work at a midsized company selling a "security" product? All of the complexity in my field comes from stupidity, either by certifiers, or legacy protocols that can't die or sales people playing "defect/defect" with oneanother so nobody fucking talks with each other. If the complexity at least came from software I would have a reason for my knowledge to feel valuable outside my specific domain.
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> artificial scarcity for software Can you elaborate on this? Why would you say there is artificial scarcity for software?
Software costs ~0 to copy and distribute absolutely perfect copies, world-wide. To drive the price up you create artificial scarcity, mostly rooted in IP law. Important note for HN readers: 'driving the price up' is a net benefit for programmers. Artificial scarcity is why you get paid big bucks. Interestingly, data is legitimately scarce. But that's a discussion for another time...
There is a ton of free software. Price is not up just because of IP law. It's up because running and maintaining Wikipedia for example has a price even though most of the stack is free.
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#37You are not pissed off, you are burned out.
When all the people around you are fine and you can't cope with the environment, it's time to look for professional help, for your sake.
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> artificial scarcity for software Can you elaborate on this? Why would you say there is artificial scarcity for software?
Software costs ~0 to copy and distribute absolutely perfect copies, world-wide. To drive the price up you create artificial scarcity, mostly rooted in IP law. Important note for HN readers: 'driving the price up' is a net benefit for programmers. Artificial scarcity is why you get paid big bucks. Interestingly, data is legitimately scarce. But that's a discussion for another time...
> Artificial scarcity is why you get paid big bucks.
You are assuming that my software is distributed.
Look 50 years ago you got a catalog from sears. You mailed a check, someone opened it, your order went to the warehouse, the check went to the bank, your items got picked packed and shipped.
The software I spent a good part of my career writing got rid of a LOT of people from that scenario. The hardware and software combination that is the ATM got rid of many tellers. MP3's killed record stores.
If you find a programer old enough, they will insult you by saying "I will replace you with a very small shell script". Many of us built software to replace people, many of us continue that. Our value is literally reducing costs and "enabling scale" at a massive discount. For those of us that do this sort of work, we are massively underpaid when compared to the manual processes that are replaced or never have to happen.
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#39If you work in security, this resonates so much. No one really cares about security except to check a box or pay lip service to it. That's why so called security products ship without logging and clients don't want to make the smallest effort to enable you to improve their security. It's why companies that sell security products invest more in marketing than the product. The industry is full of conmen and marketeers.…
I've heard from someone selling security products that some companies prefer to pay ransonware to a hacker, instead of investing in building up their defense and paying for security products
Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> artificial scarcity for software Can you elaborate on this? Why would you say there is artificial scarcity for software?
Software costs ~0 to copy and distribute absolutely perfect copies, world-wide. To drive the price up you create artificial scarcity, mostly rooted in IP law. Important note for HN readers: 'driving the price up' is a net benefit for programmers. Artificial scarcity is why you get paid big bucks. Interestingly, data is legitimately scarce. But that's a discussion for another time...
> Important note for HN readers: 'driving the price up' is a net benefit for programmers.
Well no, if it is hard to get software written people just won't bother. Most programmers will benefit from a commoditise-the-complement strategy where everyone is using software and need to hire programmers to tweak it to their exact needs.
The money is in support & hardware. Trying to primarily compete on software price is pretty risky; Open Source is quite competitive. The big paying companies in software (Googles, etc, of the world) don't particularly leverage IP law in their strategies. Even with players like Microsoft, artificial scarcity of their traditional primary products (Windows, Office) would be the kiss of death to the company.