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I'm done with coding

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Re: I'm done with coding

#91

Post by proc0 »

colesantiago wrote: post #27
proc0 wrote: post #19

Yeah surveillance never works, at least not in the long term. Either people like what they work on or they don't, and adding a layer of corporate hypocrisy, where you need to pretend to be excited about every single tiny change, does not help. Some products are just boring and I can't fathom how some people get excited about it. The cynic in me tells me everyone is faking it, and that is soul crushing to think about.…

But if it pays the bills such that your kids can eat for another day and that your family have a roof over their heads, wouldn't it be worth it? I don't see any other FAANG level jobs that do not do surveillance in some way or are 100% ethical, as the author wants. He said it himself, it is a "shitty job market" so surely not everyone in the job market will be paying over 6 figures and be 100% ethical with no surveil…

I'm just saying it's sad how it creates an atmosphere of "fakeness" for lack of a better word. Nobody can really voice their real opinion, and so nobody is presenting their real selves.

I'm also commenting beyond the privacy matter. It's the combination of everyone being afraid to just be themselves because they need the job, and HR/leadership constant b.s. claiming it's an open and safe space. I should also say I'm mostly talking about large companies.

Re: I'm done with coding

#93

Post by harryquach »

esperent wrote: post #55
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.

Don't be dismissive of people's challenges in life, especially when they have the strength to share them. Money isn't the only cause of pressure in the world.

> Money isn’t the only cause of pressure in the world.

Of course not. However having FU money relieves many of them. Taking a moral stance is far less impressive when nothing is on the line.

Re: I'm done with coding

#94

Post by swat535 »

tombert wrote: post #61
ivewonyoung wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ever…

> 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.

There is a famous scene, in the movie Office Space (1999), where the low level coder is constantly harassed about an idiotic memo because he forgot a cover sheet on his TPS reports.. he is reminded of this 3 times and then some by other people..

It's unreal how the "modern" corporate environment, remains the same as it was in early 90s..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsLUidiYm0w

Re: I'm done with coding

#95

Post by tombert »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #84
tombert wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ever…

There are absolutely good teams at Apple. I left a toxic one (Photos) to follow an co-worker I liked a lot who had become a manager (and his team had an opening). Honestly, it was a back-water project with just a handful of engineers on it. But my manager was awesome, my team was cool. My favorite stint at Apple was when I was working on MacOS frameworks. It was chill, you got no significant bonuses to speak of, no s…

I was indeed working in the Eddy Cue branch of Apple, though he wasn't the redacted person in the anecdote (someone close to him though, though I ask if you figure who it is that you do not post it here).

I tried to do a transfer to another team (the storage backend for iCloud), went pretty far, and almost got an offer to move, but I had gotten a less-than-stellar review the previous year due to my attitude problems, and they decided not to move forward with the transfer.

In fairness to them, by the time I was doing that interview, I definitely did have an attitude problem, some of it justified, a lot of it not, so I don't really hold any grudges with that particular team for not letting me transfer.

After that transfer fell through, I was pretty depressed and eventually just decided to get another job at a different company.

Re: I'm done with coding

#96

Post by tombert »

swat535 wrote: post #94
tombert wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ever…

> 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. There is a famous scene, in the movie Office Space (1999), where the low level coder is constantly harassed about an idiotic memo because he forgot a cover sheet on his TPS reports.. he is reminded of this 3 times and then some by other peopl…

Yeah I actually mentioned that it was worse than Office Space.

One of the most frustrating days of entire professional career.

Re: I'm done with coding

#97

Post by echelon »

cmdtab wrote: post #79
echelon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neel, don't crawl into a hole. Use your skill. Fuck big tech. Let's use these LLMs that they think will replace us all to create browser agents that remove ads, tracking, click bait, attention stealing... heck, we could even de-engagement farm the internet. No more trolling, hate, or toxicity. If we all get personal assistants at the edge on our own pane of glass and hardware, then they have to pay us for access. Wan…

Unrelated. What happened to your anime studio?

Thanks for checking in. :)

We're still working on controllable video diffusion tools for artists, and we've learned a lot. I posted a bit about it a couple of weeks ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43102395

We'll do a "Show HN" soon!

Re: I'm done with coding

#98

Post by infinitebit »

I think it’s worth trying for ethical coding jobs for a bit. I think with your resume you could work at a lot of places, and you may be able to rekindle passion for something that you used to love and make six figures.

Re: I'm done with coding

#99

Post by NetOpWibby »

latentsea wrote: post #86
nvader wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along with naming things, the two hardest problems in computer science.

Actual two hardest problems appear to be 1. Tolerating working at FAANG. 2. Watching others who work at FAANG collect FAANG level salary while you don't.

The second part is what I'm dealing with. I didn't even realize I was getting nearly enough the market rate until I started looking around a few months ago. Feelsbadman.

Re: I'm done with coding

#100

Post by jasdi »

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

"They bring in a rookie, throw money at him, buy the car, the house, after a couple of years, and your kids are in private schools, you're used to the good life, they tell you the truth"

Big salaries thrown at young people are bait. They don't need wild animals, but circus animals that are obedient, dependent and consistently perform tricks without too much thinking about why. Over time this involves such animals to loose all sense of self. Naturally this won't work on everyone and causes all kinds issues for both sides.

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