Ask HN: How do you suggest we technologists get our industry back?
It has to end. And we have the talent to stop the world if we want to do so.
I'd like to ask the crowd, to source some new ideas: what do you suggest that we do to win back the autonomy that is rightfully ours? What's the best idea you can come up with for how to restore our industry to decency? How do we get back the autonomy originally associated with software development, when it was an R&D job? How do we professionalize to such an extent that we answer only to our own, as attorneys and physicians do? What do we do to shame (one hopes, out of existence) the phony startups where VP/NTWTFK's outearn programmers by a factor of 10?
Do you have a personal plan to contribute to fixing this? Or am I completely insane for thinking this cause is still worth fighting for?
19 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 48.1 ms ] threadI work for a big technology company, I am one of the lowest level of "technologists" (a few steps above an intern). I get paid over twice the average household income of the surrounding area...all that money for just me! And that is just my base salary!
On top of that I get bonuses, to travel around the country (and occasionally to a different country) and stock.
And what do I have to "deal with"?? I get into work around 10am, we do standup, I grab a coffee, have a few meetings maybe, code away, a design review, grab an hour long relaxed lunch with my team at a nearby restaurant, back to work, code, maybe the odd board game or table football game, design etc. 6-7pm head off home (some of my team get in at 8 and are home by 4-5 - i prefer the later mornings), back to my lovely, spacious Downtown apartment, go for a walk with my girlfriend along the waterfront.
I find my work interesting - I don't choose the projects, people with business goals and spreadsheets do that, but I find there are fun challenges everywhere when you start talking to people. And I get dedicated time to explore my own ideas.
On top of that I get 3 weeks paid vacation, plus statutory holidays (2 weeks less than I got in europe.. but meh), not forgetting the weekends.
99.9999% (probably more) of people on this planet work harder, for less (or no) money, struggle to live day by day and I spent $10 a day ($300 a month, $3600 a year!!) on coffee.
I have no plans to "rally against" that.
Do you understand how awful it is to work with people who are only trying to do a job, won't take any risks, and are generally satisfied? It absolutely sucks trying to make a difference and getting stuck on a team with casual, 8-5 coders who want to dumb down every project, add limits and impose process because that supports their goals of just keeping a job. And it's not about having 'fun challenges.' I can find enough fun challenges at my home with a few books to waste the entire rest of my life.
A couple things. First, you have to consistently come out in the top 10-20% of the project allocation heap to have a career in this industry. You realize that almost no one can have top-10% luck over a period of 20 years, right? If you don't get the absolute best projects available, you become a second-class citizen around 28 because you're competing against people who were politically fortunate enough to get real work. Have fun with that. Unless you die early, you will turn 40, and unless you rape the project-allocation game into ribbons, you won't have high-enough quality work experience to survive what this industry considers "advanced" age. You'll be a 40-year-old with the typical dogshit work experience (that only makes you a bitter loser; you don't learn anything from it) that most people get, competing against 25-year-olds who haven't learned yet that the game is rigged against them.
Second, at least in New York or the Bay Area, no programmer gets to raise kids. We are, as a people, being sterilized by the cocksuckers who control this shitpile of an industry. To make raise-a-family money, you have to become more like one of those parasitic VP/NTWTFK's that I talked about who get huge paychecks just for using the bathroom. If you do actual work, you'll never make enough money to, for example, own a house in the Bay Area. It's the VP/NTWTFK's who are driving up those prices, not legitimate people.
Unless you're extremely fortunate (1-in-1000) and work for a startup that IPO's, you'll see things exactly as I do in a matter of a few years. Big fucking deal, you get to spend $10 a day on coffee. Yeah, you're fucking Marie Antoinette. Congratulations on your awesome life.
Did the oppressed people of Paris in the 1780s say, "You know, they have it worse in Somalia", and therefore decide that their ruling classes were wonderful human beings? No. They took responsibility for making their lives better, and they went out and fucking did something.
Now you are getting carried away :).
First of all, if you have kids older than about 3, no more renting. You can't put your kids through a move just because your landlord decided to raise prices 20%. If you move 5 times in their first 15 years, their likelihoods of having psychotic mental illness in adolescence and adulthood go way up.
Extreme commuting is no longer an option either. If you commute 3 hours per day in addition to a 9+ hour job, you're going to be miserable and irritable and your kids are going to see you at your worst and end up fucked-up. Then they'll end up needing the validation of VC-istan narcissism too... the cycle repeats.
Then, housework. If you have two people working career jobs, and you have kids, you're way beyond being able to do your own cleaning. If you don't have kids, you don't need to hire maids because having a tidy place is optional and most people just do without; but that shit no longer flies when you have helpless creatures you must keep alive. If you're both working career jobs, you need the resources to hire for all that shit to keep the place clean.
Finally, tuition and health insurance.
Mostly, it's goddamn fucking housing, though. Seriously, all this NIMBY shit that keeps house prices high is one of the most twisted dysgenic programs ever devised. It creates a world in which future-oriented smart people realize how fucked-up everything is and refuse to bring more people into the world, while the present-focused dumbasses (and the rich psychopaths making money off this horrible arrangement) breed like rabbits. Compassionate people who actually observe the state of the world objectively (and realize that it's borderline torture to force some being that hasn't yet been afflicted with existence to be born into this ruined world) are being selected against.
Tuition and health insurance is about the same everywhere. Housework is not that hard, maids are not that expensive. Absolute cleanliness is not something that kids require, neither is owning a (2-bed, 3-bed, huge) house.
In my opinion, your restrictions are quite arbitrary. So you would not have kids while working as a software engineer, but plenty of people do.
Here is a powerful clue for you: if you talk to actual people in the real world, you will find schoolteachers, construction workers, real estate agents, Windows desktop support staff, and even meter readers who are successfully raising children. I know it's jarring to hear this, but software developers do not actually have it hard in this regard.
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It seems like what you did with your comment was to reframe his comment, without his consent, so that instead of the median it referred to some platonic ideal you have regarding the role software developers should have in the market.
What do you think line of business devs at Global 2000 companies do all day? Hew nuggets of C#/ADO code out of solid rock in a dank tunnel with only the lamp affixed to their helmet to see it with? No, they lead exactly the life the parent commenter said they do.
For that matter, how many 40 year old developers do you know? The last 8 years of my career have been a tour of every conceivable kind of software developer, and I've met lots and lots of 40 year olds, and 50 year olds, and (gasp) older. I do not know a lot of 40 year old developers who think of their lot as "dogshit". Your ageism assessment isn't even valid in startupland! Look at the stats on tech entrepreneurship. The only place 40 year olds are disfavored is on message boards, and (if we want to stipulate any part of your argument) on the small subset of startups that are important primarily to message board nerds.
No (P)rofession has an easier time raising children than software developers. Corp lawyers have 50%+ travel burdens and work 60-70 hour weeks. High-paid accountants work for firms that similarly keep them on the road half the year. Doctors? Heh. I raised 2 kids while starting two startups and working for a third and saw my kids all the time. And that's startupland. Most developers do - not - work - for - startups. Line of business software developers at State Farm do not work 70 hour weeks.
edited for brevity
1) Love yourself, but less. We can't "stop the world if you want to", almost 100% of developers just aren't that special, most struggle to make the same CRUD apps over and over again.
2) If you don't like your job find another one, if you've got the stones create your own job, if you can't do either of those things then find something to look forward to when you clock out.
3) If someone above you undeservedly makes more than you go to www.facebook.com and join the group called "Everyone except Larry Ellison".
Then you'll find peace.
"Technologists" are worthless independent of the business value they create.
Even for in-house corporate attorneys, their managers are other attorneys, all the way up to the general counsel, who answers to the board (not the CEO) itself; the board is the GC's client.
Of course, if you manage your client list badly and end up dependent on one client, you essentially have a boss. In theory, it's not supposed to be that way; in practice, obviously it can be. But the aspiration (lawyers answer only to their own) is noble.
buddy, you are way out of your league.
lawyers are subject to all the exact same pressures as engineers, except the barriers to entry for becoming an attorney are far, far lower than to becoming a software engineer. as a result, the odds of your lawyer-boss being more of a dumb-ass than your engineer-boss are really high.
and no, in house counsel does not report to other lawyers - that is the whole bloody point.
individual clients routinely ruin the careers of attorneys.
the idea that lawyers answer only to their own is as naive as the idea that technologists have 'lost' their profession.
technologists, if you haven't noticed, are running the world. if you hate your current company, find a new one or start your own. stop blaming the industry.
Making a trade guild is one option, but it may cause one set of useless bureaucrats to be replaced by another. I think it is a good thing that even college dropouts can be successful in the software industry.
One option may be to change the terminology that we use to talk about computer programming. The terminology used to explain technology was designed to sell computers back when computers were foreign, frightening, and expensive. Words like "Enterprise Architecture" were designed to sell millions of dollars worth of computers and make it seem as if someone with little knowledge would never be in over their head in dense logic.
Technological populism got a computer into everybody's pocket, but I think that instead of watering down logic when presenting computers to a nontechnical person, we should take the core of programming and have them look at each aspect slowly and clearly. This will show people that although anybody can understand computers, you yourself do not. Although C is complicated, a topic such as how ascii characters work is understandable by a nontechnical person.
Also, programmers could simply refuse to work with jerks, but if that is not happening during a huge boom, then it will definitely not happen once the industry looses steam.
This is a good article on the topic by Adm. Hyman "I would sink them all" Rickover. http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/2034/article/399/doing.a.job
How about you start showing some respect for other people's work?We have something called Diversity, ok?Some people are engineers, some doctors..some make more money than you, some don't.Fair or not, this is how the world works.
You can't just come here and say "WE" in order to make us feel we are on the same boat.Speak for yourself.And your attitude makes me sick.I mean, who do you think you are?the architect of the world(speaking of arrogance)?Who are you to say what's "rightfully yours" and what's not?Your post is so insulting that I won't even bother talking about the rest of it.No wonder you're so frustrated.
One thing is for sure though: I would never work with someone with a personality like yours.And by the looks of it not many people do.
Now as a rule, programmers generally are good at execution but tend to execute on problems no one cares about. The #1 cause of startup failure is not failure to execute-it's good execution on a problem that nobody cares about.
That's why non-technical VPs earn so much. It's because the skill of picking great problems and managing people is massively valuable. If it weren't, then all the companies that emphasized market over technology would go bankrupt, and companies that emphasized technology over market would succeed.
Now, someone who can understand what people want and understand what's possible with technology is significantly more valuable than someone with either individual skill. That's because they can combine what's valuable and what's just become possible. This is a rare combination-Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are two people who've executed this really well.
My personal plan is to learn this combination of skills and drive technology that's both extremely valuable and at the very edge of what's possible. We'll see how far I get.