What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry

It's over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA

> This guy isn't in charge, so he blames young people and assumes they are in charge.

What makes you think he's not "in charge"?

> Young people are just followers. They follow the money, they do what they're told, they adopt fashions in order to SURVIVE, not out of some kind of "strange entitlement."

If you are young and believe this, I am sad for you.

"Youth" (those in their 20's, for example) have some of the best kind of power - the unfettered kind. As a generalization/simplification, those in their 20's have fewer dedicated costs in their lives (rent and food at the least; car payment perhaps). That gives them the freedom to CHOOSE. That's the power of youth - choice. In youth, a person can choose to lift up and move. Can choose to quit - or stay at - a job because of principals. Can choose to change careers, become an expert in one field or a generalist in many. I won't go so far as to say all things are possible, but there are certainly many paths that could be traveled with relative (key part there - relative) ease. As we get older, the dedicated costs (generally - there are certainly exceptions) go up. House payments. Kids. Medical expenses (personal and family). Income may (or may not) go up, but it's almost certain that key life options will decline. There are still choices to make and control of life to be had for sure, but they are not so numerous; the road does not web outward as it did in youth so much as it forks in minor directional changes.

So - if anyone out there is still in their youth (which is more a state of mind than physical being, mind), I suggest you try different things. Experiment with life. Follow your true passions and see where they lead. The author of this blog (and myself; and others) did that and it turned out that our passions would become an industry that would change the world. I only hope your passions (if you have the heart to chase them) will yield the same so that we can share in that. We can use this thing that we were around to see birthed to do so. Or something better if you prefer; but you'll need to make that happen because we're tired and just want to enjoy our time with our communal child as long as we can, please.

I've never liked the characteristics of Steve Jobs (and 90s Bill Gates) as mean. They're what I'd called "evil" - in the sense that they will do anything to get the works done, ethics or social norms be damned. But that's much different than being "mean". You can certainly be "evil" (with the quoted definition of evil above), but not mean.

Not that it's fine being "evil", but that's another discussion.

There's a fable, "The Scorpion and the Frog" [1] wherein the moral is (copied from Wikipedia):

The fable is used to illustrate the position that no change can be made in the behavior of the fundamentally vicious.

My point about changing the rules of the game is that if the oppressors are not changing because they have all the power, then don't try to change the oppressors. Instead, find a way to remove yourself from the rules that they created. After all, rules are just constructs and can be changed by anyone.

If enough people stopped allowing employers to push 60-hour work weeks on programmers [2], then we might start to see some change. The way that I stopped employers from abusing my time was to first admit that it was myself that was allowing it to be abused, and then to say no and instead show them what I could accomplish in 8 hours (or 40 hours per week). If an employer violated my rules, I left. That's my rule. It may mean that I miss out on some opportunities, but there are so many more opportunities for people out there that stick to their principles (within reason) and work with other decent people.

Lastly, I'll be more clear. The overall point I'm making to you in this comment and others is that you need to stop thinking in absolutes. There is too much pent up stress that doesn't need to be there, and your life will be a lot better if you stop feeling like things are things are set in stone (because they're not). This is very cliché to write but this is one of the few things that only age can teach you.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

[2] by quitting, talking to labour relations boards or the government, etc. Or, just saying no. It's a very very powerful word.

Thank you. I rolled my eyes so hard when he started droning on about brogrammers not bothering to learn below their layers of abstraction.

We live in a world where job postings are looking for RoR developers, job interviews test you on FizzBuzz, UML, and vague logic problems, and managers encourage developers to move fast and churn out releases. When exactly was anybody supposed to learn compilers, assembly, or low-level internet routing infrastructure? It was in a CS classroom years ago, and without any practical reason to refresh that knowledge ever since.

Furthermore, the "applications" produced by this "golden age" of the internet were complete shit by today's standards. If they were so wonderful, why do we like to laugh at their miserable UX, ugly design, and lack of functionality?

As if in 1995 they needed to think about javascript frameworks, CSS frameworks, responsive design, mobile anything, (quality) animations, asset servers, enormous databases, application and user analytics, clustered applications with message-passing, advanced caching strategies, an enormous variety of user input, or any of the other multitudinous things I forgot to mention.

In 1995 they thought of everything up to the point where a static HTML document gets sent to the user, and that's where they stopped thinking. In 2015 we have a lot more to think about after that initial transfer. In 2015 we have to, y'know, make applications.