Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

blog.shutdown.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 139 posts

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#31

Post by Chinjut »

throwaway90446 wrote: post #9
anateus wrote: post #8

This always happens when a scene/subculture hits the mainstream. You could madlibs this article and get a description of every musical genre. It's sad to see what you were so passionate about appear in a diluted form, and external perception be distorted by this new image. But there always remains an underground where true innovation and passion thrives.

This isn't music, or anything like it. The article touches on the Millenials' refusal to learn anything below their chosen layer of abstraction to be a systemic risk to anything they build. It's more akin to every bridge engineer not bothering with materials science or integral calculus because they know how to throw a bunch of trusses together than it is akin to every hipster on the planet learning to play Stairway…

Everyone's knowledge is at some layer of abstraction. Very few people know all the details of every field connected to every other field. There's no reason the person who understands the details of band bending, the person who understands the details of Hindley-Milner type inference, the person who knows the ins and outs of the unified shader model in both OpenGL and Direct3D, and the expert in routing algorithms need to all be the same person, even if all their fields may ultimately play a role in one product. And bridge engineers, quantum physicists, automobile engineers, geologists, politicians, emergency rescue personnel, etc., all work together to keep your favorite bridge functioning smoothly and our understanding of the behavior around it progressing, with only a partial or even negligible understanding of the areas of expertise of each other.

Refusal to learn is no great virtue, but that one is specialized in their knowledge is no great vice either; the world is large and no one can wrap their arms around the whole thing. You grab a piece and trust your neighbors will help you out with theirs.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#32

Post by jacquesm »

cromwellian wrote: post #22

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 a…

I don't think that is his main point. I think it is far more about the fact that just the surface layers aren't enough to build good solutions to problems, that's good enough for demos and mock-ups but not good enough for production. For that you need some deeper level of insight.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#34

Post by saschajustin »

typicalrunt wrote: post #24
saschajustin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's insane to think that the least powerful members of a field are the ones controlling it. Is the medical field controlled by medical students, or by 60 year old medical authorities? Is chemical engineering controlled by new graduates, or by 60 year old engineering authorities? It's completely ludicrous to imply that programming is somehow being led astray by young people. Young people have no power. They do what t…

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 tak…

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 NOT all the same.

There are different kinds of greybeards. There is especially a wide gulf between the greybeards that have POWER and INFLUENCE and the ones that have been SIDELINED by other greybeards.

The field is not run by the young. The young dance to the tune of money and expertise. But not all greybeards are allowed into the club of influence.

The ageism is not something that is pushed by 20-somethings. it is pushed by employers and those holding the purse-strings. The employers also pull the strings of the teachers, like my computer science professors (greybeards) who taught us that we should not worry about peeking into the black box. Who taught me the waterfall method. Who taught me the agile method too. Who taught me everything I know.

Powerful and influential greybeards (money & position) taught me everything I know. Other greybeards then get mad at me when they don't like what I was taught.

>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.

This is just absurd. No one is free to change the rules of the game, or those rules wouldn't be rules.

The rules of this game are set down by those with the most power. A small handful of elite tech winners at the top of industry, academia, and finance.

C'est la vie

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#35

Post by navyrain »

What is omitted from the article is the difference in the _size_ of the tech industry during the last 20 years. In 1995, the year the author romances, he emphasizes that doing anything in tech was hard. Two decades later, the hard problems have not gone away; the industry has broadened such that there are more opportunities across the entire spectrum of "noble challenge". There are more opportunities in making fluff, and more opportunities for even more difficult, admirable, and impactful undertakings than were ever possible before.

The industry has not been overtaken by the get-rich-quick charlatans, it has expanded enough that they can find a place.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#37

Post by solarmist »

jacquesm wrote: post #32
cromwellian wrote: post #22

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 a…

I don't think that is his main point. I think it is far more about the fact that just the surface layers aren't enough to build good solutions to problems, that's good enough for demos and mock-ups but not good enough for production. For that you need some deeper level of insight.

I think it's a bit of both (more of the first though), but the second one is only a temporary problem. Given another 10 years (I say 10, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's less than 5) of development the surface layers will be enough to build all except the amazon's or apple's of the world.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#38

Post by fat0wl »

BatFastard wrote: post #13

Seems like some people are missing the point. He loved it when people enjoyed tech for the pure "creation" and "exploration" aspect. Not the money money money that it has often become. I also disagree with him on this point. I see a huge amount of new ideas and work from people who just like to create, but it tends to be at a more grass roots level like the Arduino community, or the hackerspace groups. So I say to hi…

i went on a rant about this stuff in a recent comment asking about Tech Bootcamps that i deleted half of cuz i knew it would just piss ppl off & was a waste of breath (all other comments were pretty much from ppl who lOoooOooOove 'em, half commenters had vested interest).

but yeah tech bootcamps, consultant scammers, open source hipsters.... i see this stuff is rampant & it seems to be a downer in cyberspace. I code because its a passion, got a web dev job because one was offered & am desperately trying to get out of it so i can get some of the bloody CRUD out of my eyes (though thankfully I'm in Java web services which is much more expansive/rewarding than previous web technologies i've used).

my coworkers complain that no one will throw raises/promotions at them. I look around & think "Why would you want to continue down this path? You're making well above a living wage and you claim to hate being in such a dispassionate workplace, why not just look for something more rewarding?" The response is always some utter bollocks about wanting to have a house so that when their parents visit they can have a nice place to spend time (for the sake of those 3 days/year, a major lifestyle choice is made).

These ppl are pure scum and I see completely unqualified devs with this mindset making more money than myself & other much more intellectual programmers (the high rate guys are generally migrant consultants who blow with the wind). Then I see bootcamp classes advertised to overpriveleged failure-to-launch types, teaching them to be just as scummy/desperate.

There is a joy to coding as there is to other creative disciplines, but the market doesn't encourage it so you need to look elsewhere. It's true that its there, but I bet it was much more prevalent in the cowboy days when the whole industry was a hacker movement. I also bet it was more difficult to sort things out when you couldn't just Google easily for the trending libs, so I suspect the concentration of pseudo-intellectuals was much lower.

And in fact the venom I have against tech bootcamps is that the greatest takeaway I have from years of programming is the ability to self-educate. If I didn't gain this wonderful skill, I would not want to be in this industry at all. Programming without the ability to go above & beyond is a recipe for a dead-end job.

Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

#39

Post by jacquesm »

saschajustin wrote: post #17
typicalrunt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit, settle down for a second. The guy equates working for a paycheck with entitlement... how out of touch can you be? I didn't read any of what you said in the author's blog. He even mentions, at the end, about "waxing nostalgic". So his argument going to be a bit one-sided but then, it is his argument after all. I agree with the overall sentiment of the author's rant. I miss some of the geeking out that was d…

Young people, new programmers, and other groups who have no power are not responsible for the nature of a field. Old people control the nature of every field. Old greybeards are the ones who made computer science this way--it's just those greybeards that this man disaproves of. This man isn't a billionaire VC, a tenured Comp Sci professor, an author of programming books, or a CEO hiring and training the kinds of empl…

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 to do their jobs properly and as a cause he sees that they are money oriented first, and tech oriented second.

Post reply on HN