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Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?

#71

Post by MrMember »

nugget wrote: post #11

Being on call and in a constant state of readiness to troubleshoot problems is tiresome. Even if problems rarely occur, the constant awareness of potential responsibility can quickly lead to burn out. The medical field has known this for a long time, and as a result, physicians get paid a lot of money to take extra call coverage. This is a very neglected topic of discussion within software development.

Man this one sucks. Being called at 2am to fix something once every couple of months isn't great but I can deal with it. Knowing I can be called at 2am on any day and be expected to fix something and not knowing when that will happen is what kills me. Despite the really good benefits in my current position I'm casually looking for a new job solely because of the on call schedule.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?

#74

Post by Omnius »

bargl wrote: post #17

There is an expectation and honestly a need to keep up with changes to the industry that I haven't seen in other fields. Any older dev has had to transition at least 1-2 languages and it's not an easy step. That doesn't even start covering how fast javascript frameworks are moving. Oh, hey you learned Angular, that's so 3 years ago we don't do that here. We use Vue.js which is better because _________. Vue will be re…

Excluding chasing the shiny object (the javascript race you mentioned) lifetime learning is part of the job description. If you don't love to learn and to apply the things you have learned the tech industry really isn't for you.

Also 1-2 languages... that's really on the shallow end most devs, myself included, will learn a lot more than that and each new language is much easier to pick up then the previous ones.

However as you get more experience, at least for me, you tend to stick to a handful of languages that each cover a domain.

OO, Functional, Dynamic/static variants and a language/stack that allows fast prototyping of ideas.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?

#75

Post by bargl »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #33
bargl wrote: post #17

There is an expectation and honestly a need to keep up with changes to the industry that I haven't seen in other fields. Any older dev has had to transition at least 1-2 languages and it's not an easy step. That doesn't even start covering how fast javascript frameworks are moving. Oh, hey you learned Angular, that's so 3 years ago we don't do that here. We use Vue.js which is better because _________. Vue will be re…

Are you a veteran who has experienced this? Because this sounds completely wrong to me. An experienced developer typically has no problem picking up new languages/frameworks/tools/etc. There isn't much value in familiarising oneself with arbitrary and invented things, of which there are many in our industry, and they are ephemeral. No, the real value is in knowing and understanding the discovered things. And since th…

I'm not saying it's get's harder to learn a new language vs a first language. It is easier to learn C++ after C. It isn't that it's hard to do. It's that it can be exhausting to do it for the 4th or 5th time, then only get to apply those skills for 2-3 years until you have to.

Yes I am a veteran who has experienced this.

Design patterns are what I've taken from my experience and applied across languages. But some good patterns in one language can be an Anit-Pattern in another. Not to mention the jump from something like OO to Functional Programming which is not as easy as C -> C++ -> Java -> C#.

> An experienced developer typically has no problem picking up new languages/frameworks/tools/etc. There isn't much value in familiarising oneself with arbitrary and invented things, of which there are many in our industry, and they are ephemeral.

That lesson takes a long time to learn, if you are lucky enough to learn it at all.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?

#76

Post by bargl »

andrewvc wrote: post #30
bargl wrote: post #17

There is an expectation and honestly a need to keep up with changes to the industry that I haven't seen in other fields. Any older dev has had to transition at least 1-2 languages and it's not an easy step. That doesn't even start covering how fast javascript frameworks are moving. Oh, hey you learned Angular, that's so 3 years ago we don't do that here. We use Vue.js which is better because _________. Vue will be re…

> Any older dev has had to transition at least 1-2 languages and it's not an easy step Most devs I know have been through a whole bunch more than 2. I've had to use at least 8 over the last 10 years of dev. I didn't have to learn all of them well, but I did have to learn them.

I was trying not to put a limit on it so I just put the lower end. I think an average of 1-2 per year isn't abnormal at all.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?

#77

Post by acconrad »

I never feel good enough. Ever. Part of that is my personality - I'm very hard on myself. But especially on HN (for better or worse) it seems like everyday I see someone who is making more money or building a better business or someone who just is an amazing programmer and I still have so much to learn.

It can be a positive motivator for continuous improvement but at the same time it can be overwhelming to feel like there is always so much to learn and you'll never learn it all.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?

#78

Post by bargl »

Omnius wrote: post #74
bargl wrote: post #17

There is an expectation and honestly a need to keep up with changes to the industry that I haven't seen in other fields. Any older dev has had to transition at least 1-2 languages and it's not an easy step. That doesn't even start covering how fast javascript frameworks are moving. Oh, hey you learned Angular, that's so 3 years ago we don't do that here. We use Vue.js which is better because _________. Vue will be re…

Excluding chasing the shiny object (the javascript race you mentioned) lifetime learning is part of the job description. If you don't love to learn and to apply the things you have learned the tech industry really isn't for you. Also 1-2 languages... that's really on the shallow end most devs, myself included, will learn a lot more than that and each new language is much easier to pick up then the previous ones. Howe…

Yeah 1-2 was me trying not to limit this to the guys who've been around for years. I'm probably at 4-5 and think it's common.

> If you don't love to learn and to apply the things you have learned the tech industry really isn't for you. Not everyone is in this to learn. I've been on govt contracts where a dev has been there 10-20 years and has only learned 3 languages, (and is writing the same way this year as they did 5 years ago). It is not my cup of tea (hence the past tense).

My point is, not everyone loves to learn. If you want to excel you need to constantly learn but if you get into tech and you hate to learn you'll flounder until you find a gig that will let you coast for years.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?

#79

Post by tsumnia »

kentm wrote: post #65
tsumnia wrote: post #53

A lot of issues have already been discussed, but one I haven't seen is the constant reminder that people and the Internet are terrible. Ignoring people that censor beheadings on YouTube and the Dark Web, I am very vividly aware of things Goatse, Blue Waffle, 1 Guy 1 Jar, Ogrish, early 4chan's \b\ and those mental images are very much burned into my brain. Maybe its not every aspect in the tech industry or maybe its c…

The tech industry idolizes and encourages terrible behavior, and it ends up being self-reinforcing. Efforts to counteract that get pushback. How many people will get upset if you suggest that Steve Jobs was not a good person and probably shouldn't be idolized? Or that Linus's email habits are not a good thing to emulate? We will tell ourselves fun stories about how people being jerks just means they are no bullshit p…

I don't entirely agree with respect to my original post and that your use of Jobs and Torvalds don't correctly align to my post.

I don't think the majority of people idolize stuff that makes everyone gag or grimace in disgust. A small subset of internet trolls idolize and encourage this behavior. Tech is only associated because it also shares the loner basement dweller stereotype.

There are entire organizations designed to counteract underage pornography and sex trafficking, everyone agrees this is a terrible thing. However, it still persists despite opposition and tech is heavily involved in the process. This gets back to my point that to be in tech requires an unavoidable knowledge of the cruelty of man.

Someone's email habits pales in comparison.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the dark sides of being in the tech industry?

#80

Post by notacoward »

Day-to-day annoyances: slow builds, flaky tests, debugging horrible code (especially if it's yours), open offices, certain coworkers

Psychological issues: on-call stress, unhealthy work-hours expectations, impostor syndrome, family-unfriendly policies and social environment

Cultural issues: affluenza and general entitlement, discrimination, moral posturing, people slamming your company and your product (rightly or wrongly - both hurt)

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