I think if I had had an easy out I might have left the profession. But I didn't and so I've done a lot of somewhat scary but ultimately really rewarding things: took the hardest jobs I could get, then went out contracting, then founded a start up myself, then got into AI. My career has been fascinating and fun, with some genuine difficult patches. I'm grateful I didn't have a family farm to escape to.
Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs
41–50 of 59 posts
Re: Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Nowhere is this more true than Silicon Valley.
I think that Americans are extremely optimistic. It seems that many Americans believe in fate, at least on a subconscious level; that everything happens for a reason and that everything will work out in the end. Maybe it's related to the kinds of movies that Americans watch? I love watching Hollywood movies sometimes, but I have to say that compared to international films, the characters in American movies tend to be…
Then why just go outside and experience your unsatisfying life instead of paying to see a movie about it?
Re: Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs
#43The article barely touches on the bullshit factor. Sure every workplace has BS people have to deal with, that doesn't matter if it is a tech company.
I would venture a guess that the majority, perhaps vast majority (i.e. 75% or greater), of software development jobs are doing CRUD with data in a RDBMS. Even if you work on UI/front end, its still a CRUD app.
There's nothing wrong with that, just call it what it is. We (the majority) aren't progressing the science part of computer science in any way really. We are making some set of problems easier to be accomplished/solved. They may be data sets in interesting industries or enabling things like health care or medical research but CRUD apps aren't revolutionary.
If anything we are making things more complex with a glut of new shiny tools and abstractions that don't do things that much differently than 15 years ago. The sheer amount of dependencies some tool/frameworks require is mind boggling for basically sending text around over the internet and storing it on disk somewhere. Yes we all like to mock the way the web looked 15 years ago but is the tech underneath drastically different?
I feel like we tend to paint ourselves into a corner sometimes with the tech/tools and then end up remodeling the house to finish painting the room. That is definite BS.
Re: Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that Americans are extremely optimistic. It seems that many Americans believe in fate, at least on a subconscious level; that everything happens for a reason and that everything will work out in the end. Maybe it's related to the kinds of movies that Americans watch? I love watching Hollywood movies sometimes, but I have to say that compared to international films, the characters in American movies tend to be…
Then why just go outside and experience your unsatisfying life instead of paying to see a movie about it?
That way I can learn about all the other ways in which life can go wrong.
Re: Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs
#45Software development has proven methods for organizing labor by labor instead of by the whims of the owning class. The most useful software in the world is developed by an ecosystem of communities that resembles anarchist, communist ideas of how society at large could operate. Because of the unique capital requirements for software development, cooperative firms are more viable than in any other industry. We could be…
|Too bad most programmers are allergic to collective labor action. Because there are plenty of real-world examples in other industries of the end state of "collective labor action", and it's generally not pretty. We as an industry really do not want to emulate that model.
Our industry already bases a massive amount of its work on models of such collective labor. Software development has unique structural characteristics that make it fertile ground for experimenting with different organizational models.
Yours is a knee-jerk reaction.
Re: Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs
#46Software development has proven methods for organizing labor by labor instead of by the whims of the owning class. The most useful software in the world is developed by an ecosystem of communities that resembles anarchist, communist ideas of how society at large could operate. Because of the unique capital requirements for software development, cooperative firms are more viable than in any other industry. We could be…
What makes something "the most useful software in the world"?
There's a bunch of useful software which isn't run that way: Microsoft {Windows, Word, Excel, PowerPoint}. The software which runs Facebook, Google search, and Google's YouTube. iOS.
How much does Google Chrome development "resemble anarchist, communist ideas"? Or Android, for that matter.
Minix is in every modern Intel processor, but I also don't think it was developed by the ecosystem you describe.
Re: Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Nowhere is this more true than Silicon Valley.
This implies the poor are better off under socialism than as lower class in a rich country.
Would you rather be poor in the US, or poor in Sweden?
Both are rich countries. Socialism has a much stronger influence in Sweden.
Re: Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Nowhere is this more true than Silicon Valley.
Kind of ignores the fact that socialism did take root, like Eugene Debs running for president, but it was violently uprooted and the ground was torched and salted and a massive state apparatus was developed to make sure it could never be entertained again.
If Eugene Debs running for president proves that socialism did take root, how do the later runs of Norman Thomas not argue against the torching & salting?
Re: Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Nowhere is this more true than Silicon Valley.
Kind of ignores the fact that socialism did take root, like Eugene Debs running for president, but it was violently uprooted and the ground was torched and salted and a massive state apparatus was developed to make sure it could never be entertained again.
Someone running for President multiple times and never clearing either a single electoral vote or more than 6% of the popular vote is certainly evidence of their personal determination, but hardly evidence of them representating a philosophy that had taken root.
Re: Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs
#50I agree that the link with SWE is not so apparent, but there is and it's a subtle one:
as software engineering, we take pride in researching and leveraging the best and latest to solve our challenges. Time management included. And yet we systematically end up working in overburdened teams and overdue projects.
We surrounded ourselves of IDEs, instant messaging platforms, calendars with reminders, automation and all sort of stuff to be more productive.
And the agile methodologies! The holy Scrum/Kanban! How much time we dedicated to People Management, Release Management, Sprint Planning and the like.
Our schedules should be bulletproof.
And, yet, we work at least 50 hours per week with continuous surprises from the managerial perspective due to disorganization. And we tolerate all of this because we have been told it's heroic, instead of beheading the profitering gluttons that come up with the usual "goodmorning, this unannounced thing must be delivered tomorrow".
This is the bullshit. The cultural hysteria that sacrificing our health and free time is necessary due to some kind of higher purpose