What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
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What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
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Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
#2/me throws one blogpost in the making in the trashcan for fear of being labeled a plagiarist and checks the room for webcams.
Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
#3Although sometimes I still enjoy a M.A.S.H. rerun more than the fodder I find on the interweb...it has been fairly amazing to watch the birth and transformation, even tertiarily. Well written, WM.
Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
#4Interesting to watch the term "brogrammer" evolve. I'm not entirely sure what it means anymore, but I do recall it was typically used for programmers with stereotypical frat boy mentalities, then it went on to imply misogynistic tendencies, then it became a sort of generic slur and now the author uses it as a synonym for "inexperienced programmer" - one who doesn't want to peak in the lower levels of the stack more specifically, lack of desire to learn in other words.
I've only ever seen the term "brogrammer" used in SV circles, though. It's hardly a phenomenon for the tech industry as a whole.
Other than that, I somewhat agree. Most of our software hasn't evolved conceptually much since the 80s, with some notable exceptions in academic and PL circles that haven't gained mainstream acceptance, predictably.
Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
#5Its an interesting bit of nostalgia which I can find much to relate too. But I take a more practical view of the future. The author makes this statement:
"In contrast to those golden days, the tech industry today seems to lie at this horrible intersection of the mysteriously entitled generation Y, the millenials, and the extremely cheap and available resources for getting a product to market that the cloud and inexpensive overseas outsourcing shops have created."
When I think about these things and the dot com explosion, I realize that these markets are best created by the people living in them. Specifically, if you're primary labor supply consists of "mysteriously entitled generation Y and millenials" then if you are building tools for these people you need to understand what they like and what they don't like. As engineers we tend to create things that "we" would like, and if "we" are no longer a close match for what the overall market is looking like, then our instincts will lead us astray.
So the challenge is to extract the useful things from your experience and apply the core truths, rather than lament that you cannot reproduce that experience in others. Passing on the truths is important, how you get to, or teach, those truths depends on the current fashion.
Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
#6/me throws one blogpost in the making in the trashcan for fear of being labeled a plagiarist and checks the room for webcams.
Odd that: me too.
I was hitting my now regular frustration with things which actually seem to get harder with time instead of simpler. It feels like we are no longer standing on the shoulders of giants, but attempting to stand on a billion ants and then struggling to see daylight as they swarm all over us.
Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
#7So to summarize... a man born into privilege is annoyed by poor people.
The guy equates working for a paycheck with entitlement... how out of touch can you be?
Working for a paycheck is something you do out of economic neccessity--for survival, NOT entitlement.
Getting paid to work on your hobbies in the tech industry in 1995 is basically winning the lottery. Most people would kill to have this chance. This guy is completely blind to his privilege.
But instead of recognizing how neoliberal economics have destroyed the middle class and churned out a new "Depression-Era" generation that are forced to "chase the money" in order to eat... he is going to whine about how kids these days suck and are entitled.
Fucking amazing. Gen Y has the worst economic prospects since the actual great depression, how the fuck can we be spoiled?
Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
#8This always happens when a scene/subculture hits the mainstream. You could madlibs this article and get a description of every musical genre. It's sad to see what you were so passionate about appear in a diluted form, and external perception be distorted by this new image.
But there always remains an underground where true innovation and passion thrives.
Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
#9This always happens when a scene/subculture hits the mainstream. You could madlibs this article and get a description of every musical genre. It's sad to see what you were so passionate about appear in a diluted form, and external perception be distorted by this new image. But there always remains an underground where true innovation and passion thrives.
This isn't music, or anything like it. The article touches on the Millenials' refusal to learn anything below their chosen layer of abstraction to be a systemic risk to anything they build.
It's more akin to every bridge engineer not bothering with materials science or integral calculus because they know how to throw a bunch of trusses together than it is akin to every hipster on the planet learning to play Stairway to Heaven.
Re: What Bums Me Out About the Tech Industry
#10So to summarize... a man born into privilege is annoyed by poor people. The guy equates working for a paycheck with entitlement... how out of touch can you be? Working for a paycheck is something you do out of economic neccessity--for survival, NOT entitlement. Getting paid to work on your hobbies in the tech industry in 1995 is basically winning the lottery. Most people would kill to have this chance. This guy is co…
Holy shit, settle down for a second.
The guy equates working for a paycheck with entitlement... how out of touch can you be?
I didn't read any of what you said in the author's blog. He even mentions, at the end, about "waxing nostalgic". So his argument going to be a bit one-sided but then, it is his argument after all.
I agree with the overall sentiment of the author's rant. I miss some of the geeking out that was done in the tech industry, because it now seems to be filled with people looking to get rich quick with barely-working MVPs, or building services that have no revenue stream. The industry has turned very "business-y", IMO, but maybe it is just the natural cycle of every industry.
UPDATE: Adding a bit of substance to my comment.