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Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

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Re: Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

#71

Post by aleph_minus_one »

nmehner wrote: post #22

> Besides that: find small (2-3 day) project ideas that require you to learn max. 1 new technology or idea, and build lots of such projects. That's how you learn programming. It's not a bad idea, but at least for me software development is more about long term issues coming up, team communication, features that create short term value but long term problems. How to organize big piles of code. A lot of abstractions do…

> Deploying a feature that is simple and that just works without any issues does not create nearly as much excitement as "saving the company" with a big hack and high risk deployments, although it is much better to not have to "save the company" in the first place.

Some people are more risk-affine, and some are more risk-averse.

The fact that such things work rather kindles a desire to do new interesting, experimental stuff in risk-affine people - something that a corporate environment often prohibits, which frustrates risk-affine people.

Re: Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

#72

Post by pdimitar »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #68
pdimitar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me saying that I heard your takes many times but never seen it anywhere should have tipped you off that I disagree. Not sure what your response contributes to any discussion though. You did not try to defend or enrich your position.

Assuming you were responding to my statement "It seems we are programmed to feel mildly dissatisfied no matter what our circumstances." I can't see how that squares with the paper I talked about. Of course you can raise your anecdotes but that proves nothing.

What you said are also anecdotes which also prove nothing.

The hedonistic treadmill does not exist.

It's a feel-good construct, I found.

Re: Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

#73

Post by jongjong »

rramadass wrote: post #57
badpun wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't want to know what happens to those who got trapped in this industry, got their passion for coding completely beaten out of them and can't find any off-ramp. I want to know. What happens to them?

A sense of negativity, cynicism and defeatism starts defining their outlook and colours everything in their life.

Definitely the case. Apologies if my comment is overly negative. I hope the next few decades will be better and that this was rock bottom. In any case, some people have had a great time in this industry even after 2010s but I think a larger amount of people have had a horrible time.

I guess it's not the 80s anymore. Those were the good times.

Re: Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

#74

Post by pdimitar »

kevinventullo wrote: post #61
pdimitar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s even a point where things switch from your boss telling you what to do to your boss asking you what to do. How? Actionable step by step, please. Measurable, with before-and-after descriptions.

Step 1. Figure out how to accomplish higher-level goals where the details haven’t been fleshed out yet. Step 2. If you are still relying on steps, you did not actually complete Step 1.

Is this referring to the mythical "go above and beyond and you will be recognized"?

If so, quite humorous.

Re: Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

#75

Post by famahar »

kenjackson wrote: post #21
famahar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really spot on. I realized how soul sucking it was after I got a teaching job. It was low pay English teaching in Japan but I felt a kind of joy, playfulness, humanity and a stress-free life I never experienced in working in tech. I've since gone back to tech and miss my students so much. Don't think I'll ever get that feeling at my current corporate job. I also ended up making way more side projects since my…

Why don’t you go back to teaching? Is it the money?

The main factor was the extremely low pay. Weird schedule too. (I worked in a conversational school, so not really even a teacher). Unless you work in international schools, you won't be making much more than minimum wage. It's a lot of fun though. I'd happily do it for possibly my whole life if the pay was better or I had another source of passive income.

Re: Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

#76

Post by rramadass »

marxisttemp wrote: post #66
rramadass wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had this argument before and No that is not quite true. For people not familiar with his work - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Boehm His research was a product of his times when programming/coding was considered a clerical job with the real brain work being done by System Analysts and System Designers who produced System Requirements Specification Documents and System Design Specification Documents. He wa…

I agree that risk management is important for software companies, in the same way it is for construction companies, and part of that involves software engineers. But I think pretty much any business has risk management processes that involve domain knowledge, and a much larger and more distinctive part of any kind of engineering involves non-business considerations and tradeoffs that AFAIK Boehm didn’t really concern…

Agreed, though IMO "Software Engineering" subsumes everything. You are looking for a holistic and reproducible process which can be communicated using well defined methodologies.

One important point though; IMO Risk Management in the Software Industry is qualitatively different than that from other Industries. This is because of the greater play and importance of Human Factors involved and their cumulative non-linear effects. In very few other industries (eg. Finance) can you have a factor of 10x/100x productivity between the average and the best since it does not follow the normal distribution. If i have a Jeff Dean/John Carmack programming or a Steve Jobs salesmanship in my company i can break every engineering rule i want and still come out on top.

Nassim Taleb's ideas on Mediocristan/Extremistan, Power Laws/Fat Tails are all relevant here. Here is a great video explaining these concepts (though we have to adapt and apply it to Software Engineering) : Pareto, Power Laws, and Fat Tails - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcqt49dXtm8

Re: Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

#77

Post by tvink »

tkiolp4 wrote: post #39

Programming is so different than software engineering, to the point some people (like me) love the former but little by little are starting to hate the latter. Learning for the sake of learning, being able to be picky about what to learn, feeling like a god by creating your own worlds, trial and error… these are all traits of programming. On the other hand, software engineering is about sprints, useless deadlines, us…

That's not how you define either of those things.

Granted, software engineering is a pretty ill-defined term, but I'm pretty sure most would agree that agile project management is not software engineering.

"Being able to be picky about what to learn" being programming is also a really confusing idea. Programming is writing programs, it's not some learning philosophy, and it's certainly not some liberated opposite to software engineering.

I guess you're confusing having a job with software engineering, and spare time coding with programming.

Re: Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

#78

Post by grey-area »

pdimitar wrote: post #43
grey-area wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is that simple and as I reach the end of my career I appreciate that more. Life is too short to stay in bad situations for a long time. Of course it’s sometimes hard to move/switch job but it’s never impossible and why spend most of your waking life on something you hate with unremitting passion like the OP?

> Life is too short to stay in bad situations for a long time Life is also too short to get evicted of "your" house (that the bank actually owns) when you miss 3 mortgage payments because you left because "life is too short to stay in bad situations".

Don’t do that then. You can wait to leave a job till you have another lined up. It’s not always easy or simple but it’s certainly possible.

Re: Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

#79

Post by gherkinnn »

prmph wrote: post #35
erikerikson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, you're not wrong but... "No", you can't scan that box in Chicago, the system says it's in New York. The world state is invalid, not the system. Screw that guy just trying to do his job, right? Gotta be careful with that attitude even though it represents some insight.

I think the comment you're replying to is partially sarcastic or tongue-in-cheek.

Not this time. I was quite sincere.

Let's take names. I have diacritics in mine and an appalling number of computer systems can't handle them properly. Should I drop them completely and loose a part of my language in the process? Or deal with more □? firstName + lastName is another, where our idea of naming is forces on to others with a different system.

Dates. The US sets weeks from Sun-Sat and much of US software defaults to it, even when it should know that in my locale Mon-Sun is the default. In some cases I can't even change it. And don't get me started on MM-DD-YYYY.

Processes. Talking to a human is easy. There is leeway. A computer says no. Now I have to conform.

More broadly, we humans do fantastically well with ambiguity. Modelling ambiguity is tricky, after all, computers are extremely fast morons. So that ambiguity gets lost.

Re: Thoughts on the software industry (2022)

#80

Post by pdimitar »

4dregress wrote: post #12
bruce511 wrote: post #3

Since the article jumps around a lot, let me add one more; Software is an amazing passion, but a terrible job. Imagine you love music, play the piano for hours every day, then once you grow up someone pays you a huge salary just to play. You're in heaven. Now imagine someone who loves classical music, but can't play. You see the fortunes being made by piano players, so you decide to learn. Which takes years of doing…

I work with a bunch of people who fit into this mind set. My view is that they want to play and not work to get things done. I also see it as we are engineers first and foremost and we use a software language as a tool to solve a problem. I’m also a musician who had the chance to make a living in audio production and nothing is worse than working on other peoples tedious projects, so decided to keep the art I love fo…

> My view is that they want to play and not work to get things done.

Nope, not at all. It's people who got sick of being sheep-herded into assembly-line processes. That you don't want to be an assembly-line does not automatically put you at the other extreme (namely the divas who want to only work on pet problems and get paid a lot).

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