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I'm done with coding

neelc.org

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Re: I'm done with coding

#61

Post by tombert »

ivewonyoung wrote: post #18
tombert wrote: post #13

> I’ve tried to discuss this with my mom, and she kept telling me how “lucky” I am for working at Microsoft... I don't think I worked on any unethical part of Apple, I just worked on the indexing and caching for iTunes, but I really hated working there, and it was frustrating that whenever I complained about it, people would remind me how lucky I was to have a job at Apple. I survived 2.5 years there, but eventually…

Could you explain why you hated working there

Oh my, how long you got? There were a ton of things, but I can really boil down to a few instances.

First:

The thing that really made me disenchanted with the company came down to an incident where I replied back to a previous email chain with (one of the higher-ups at Apple) with a topic that wasn't directly relevant to the subject of the previous emails, and then that asshole thought it was best to complain to every single manager between me and him, which was six people.

The next day every one of those managers decided to schedule a half-hour meeting explaining to me how inappropriate it was that I emailed directly, instead of going through the bureaucratic channels. It was three hours of nearly-continuous meetings, all with the same subject of how bad it was to email a higher-up without first emailing every single person in-between first.

Three. Fucking. Hours. They wasted basically half a day just to make sure that I didn't send an email to the wrong people in the wrong order. It was worse than that scene in Office Space.

Second:

There was also another incident, where my manager's manager's manager emailed me, I hadn't replied in two hours, so he called my cell phone and yelled at me for not checking my emails more frequently. I tried explaining that email was asynchronous and that if he needed my attention immediately he should message me with HipChat or call my phone, which he clearly knew how to do, only for him to tell me that I have an attitude problem.

Not as bad as having my day ruined for emailing the wrong person, but still really rubbed me the wrong way.

There were a lot more annoying things that happened, and my understanding is that a lot of it was an issue with my team; Apple has thousands of software engineers and I think some teams are better than others.

Re: I'm done with coding

#64

Post by tombert »

hansvm wrote: post #56
ivewonyoung wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why you hated working there

At YT, I hated that you needed two weeks of prep for the meeting to uncover two weeks of prep for the meeting where you could get preliminary access to the data source you needed to figure out if your job description was even viable. I get that you need internal controls or whatever, but just log my queries, and if I'm stalking an ex then fire and sue me. It's hard to optimize conversion rate for superchat or whateve…

Getting data, even for live systems, wasn't too hard as long as you weren't doing anything secret during a trading blackout window, which didn't seem too unreasonable to me.

I didn't work with data science though, my stuff was generally limited to database queries and log messages.

Re: I'm done with coding

#65

Post by j16sdiz »

colesantiago wrote: post #10

"> I’ve decided that in the shitty job market, it’s not worth being a software engineer even if I make much less. Part of it is being “specialized” in over-glorified surveillance so even if I change employers, what’s the guarantee I won’t be working on another surveillance product. Assuming I can even get another job. ...While six figures is certainly nice, it’s only nice if it’s ethically done. I’d much rather flip…

> Almost all company,... have surveillance...

If i understand correctly, OP was working on surveillance-enabling AI technology. Unlike traditional surveillance, it can actually scales.

and no, how high the false rate the AI is doesn't really matter. What really matters is is the fear of being constantly watched

Re: I'm done with coding

#66

Post by colesantiago »

dingnuts wrote: post #60
harryquach wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, I’ll just live off dividend income and try to get my new IT startup Fourplex off the ground It’s easy to say no when the money is not needed.

It's actually worse than that. By holding his stocks he remains invested in the company in every meaning of the word. The dividends he's living on are the literal fruit of the proverbial sin that caused him to quit. In order to be morally honest about divesting himself of this line of business he needs to sell his stock. He should invest it in something else, that he believes in, so that any dividends are thus just.

I agree with this.

He must rid himself of any remnants of Microsoft he helped build, therefore he still has a stake in MS through stock, which means he is still supporting surveillance capitalism.

Re: I'm done with coding

#67

Post by t-writescode »

colesantiago wrote: post #66
dingnuts wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually worse than that. By holding his stocks he remains invested in the company in every meaning of the word. The dividends he's living on are the literal fruit of the proverbial sin that caused him to quit. In order to be morally honest about divesting himself of this line of business he needs to sell his stock. He should invest it in something else, that he believes in, so that any dividends are thus just.

I agree with this. He must rid himself of any remnants of Microsoft he helped build, therefore he still has a stake in MS through stock, which means he is still supporting surveillance capitalism.

Are his shares voting shares?

Re: I'm done with coding

#68

Post by colesantiago »

j16sdiz wrote: post #65
colesantiago wrote: post #10

"> I’ve decided that in the shitty job market, it’s not worth being a software engineer even if I make much less. Part of it is being “specialized” in over-glorified surveillance so even if I change employers, what’s the guarantee I won’t be working on another surveillance product. Assuming I can even get another job. ...While six figures is certainly nice, it’s only nice if it’s ethically done. I’d much rather flip…

> Almost all company,... have surveillance... If i understand correctly, OP was working on surveillance-enabling AI technology. Unlike traditional surveillance, it can actually scales. and no, how high the false rate the AI is doesn't really matter. What really matters is is the fear of being constantly watched

They are all the same, surveillance-enabling, traditional surveillance is still surveillance and both fall under surveillance capitalism.

For website owners, as soon as you run or load Google Analytics, you are participating in surveillance capitalism for Google.

Same with email tracking links, IoT devices sending tracking data, product analytics or any identifying information.

Re: I'm done with coding

#70

Post by assimpleaspossi »

Whenever anyone refers to themselves as a "coder", I always think, "Would Hemingway call himself a typist?"

Calling oneself a coder is only a recent occurrence. I never heard the term until a few years ago; possibly due to all the hobbyists getting involved.

Coding is the end result of programming. I'm a programmer and proud of it.

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