What opinions about the tech industry do you feel comfortable expressing here, but not in public/at work?
What opinions about the tech industry do you feel comfortable expressing here, but not in public/at work?
Short disclosure, I work as a Software Developer in the US, and often have to keep my negative opinions about the tech industry to myself. I often post podcasts and articles critical of the tech industry here in order to vent and, in a way, commiserate over the current state of tech and its negative effects on our environment and the Global/American sociopolitical landscape.
I'm generally reluctant to express these opinions IRL as I'm afraid of burning certain bridges in the tech industry that could one day lead to further employment opportunities. I also don't want to get into these kinds of discussions except with my closest friends and family, as I could foresee them getting quite heated and lengthy with certain people in my social circles.
Some of these negative opinions include:
- I think that the industries based around cryptocurrencies and other blockchain technologies have always been, and have repeatedly proven themselves to be, nothing more or less than scams run and perpetuated by scam artists.
- I think that the AI industry is particularly harmful to writers, journalists, actors, artists, and others. This is not because AI produces better pieces of work, but rather due to misanthropic viewpoints of particularly toxic and powerful individuals at the top of the tech industry hierarchy pushing AI as the next big thing due to their general misunderstanding or outright dislike of the general public.
- I think that capitalism will ultimately doom the tech industry as it reinforces poor system design that deemphasizes maintenance and maintainability in preference of a move fast and break things mentality that still pervades many parts of tech.
- I think we've squeezed as much capital out of advertising as is possible without completely alienating the modern user, and we risk creating strong anti tech sentiments among the general population if we don't figure out a less intrusive way of monetizing software.
You can agree or disagree with me, but in this thread I'd prefer not to get into arguments over the particular details of why any one of our opinions are wrong or right. Rather, I'd hope you could list what opinions on the tech industry you hold that you feel comfortable expressing here, but are, for whatever reason, reluctant to express in public or at work. I'd also welcome an elaboration of said reason, should you feel comfortable to give it.
I doubt we can completely avoid disagreements, but I'll humbly ask that we all attempt to keep this as civil as possible. Thanks in advance for all thoughtful responses.
Much of what we do and have built is overpriced and useless bullshit that doesn't make anybody better off.
We are inventing solutions and products to manage other solutions and products to manage other solutions and products to...etc etc.
Websites used to be static HTML pages with some simple graphics, images, and some imbedded stuff. Now, you need to know AWS for your IaaS, Kubernetes to manage your scaling and container orchestration for the thousands of Docker containers that you use to compose your app written in some horrific pile of JavaScript related web stacks like NodeJS, Typescript, React, blah blah blah...
Then you need a ton of other 3rd party components that handle authentication, databasing, backups, monitoring, signaling, account creation/management, logging, billing, etc etc.
It's circles within circles within circles, and all that to make a buggy, overpriced, clunky web app.
Similar is true for IT, massive software suites that most people in the company use 10% of their functionality for stupid shit.
I'm all for advancing technology, I love technology, it's my job and my hobby.
But the longer I work in this industry, the more I get this sick feeling that we lost the train long time ago. Buying brand new $1,500 laptops every 3 years so that most of our users can send emails, browse the web, and type up occasional memos.
CEOs and all management suite are mostly useless except for making the business worse for the employees for the sake of investors.
Most employees are perfectly fine with slow and steady growth instead of maximizing it.
It's interesting the preconceived notions over managements usefulness and the actual role a CEO plays in a company. I've had a lot of conversations with people over the years and everyone just expects that it "has to be this way or it won't work". Like every admin position is critical or the company will fail, completely disregarding that most of those positions didn't exist before and the company ran just fine.
There's a lot of misinformation over what their actual job entails. Management is mostly just one big "telephone" game (been on all sides of it, got out just in time before it warped my perception of life). The original role of being support is completely absent in their duties as our society and culture has changed. People also think a co-op would never work because you need a big shot CEO who runs the company and makes all the decisions (they don't, plenty of examples in reality).
It's kinda funny to hear a lot of the tech people on here mention imposter syndrome. Every person in administration has this feeling deep down inside that they aren't important and they have no clue what they're doing. The only difference is everyone in the C-suite pat's eachother on the back and help build each other's ego up so they can just pretend they don't feel it. It's why people in these positions get so defensive and irate if you start dissecting their actual duties and importance. They've been reassured everyday that what they do is integral when it's suppose to be the managers job to make his employees feel that way.
Luckily, as I work for the local govt, I can talk all the shit I want about the tech sector and technologies as a whole. My colleagues obviously don't agree with every opinion I share (some 3 even think Amazon is "actually good" and one networking guy is a cryptobro), but none of us are at any risk from talking shit about companies and their leaders, or tech shenanigans in general. Now, talking about our higher ups is trouble.
Right now, Ai is a party trick.
Tomorrow, Ai will inform the FBI that #29933 is planning on murdering his sister, and deploy a team of armed drones to escort him to prison, if he makes it.
Tomorrow, the department stores and supermarkets will be empty and you'll pick up your groceries from an automated warehouse that inserts them into your car.
Tomorrow, the mail bot will barf your mail into a labeled box, wherin you'll find your prescription medication, bottled labeled and packaged by nobody, which you take right after you go out to eat at an empty restaurant, where your food is brought to you by an automated track that says tHaNk Yo in an inhuman tone before cutting off too soon.
No conversations, no traveling, no hassle, no humanity, or sincerity whatsoever.
hooray?
Why the fuck is everyone so stoked about this? Vending-machine land sounds insufferable.
IT is slowly starting to get regulated like a real engineering field and that's a good developement.
I'm sad that I missed my opportunity to take a PE exam in software engineering.
All software should be open source
All software should be released as a common good that cannot be captured by corporations. Otherwise it's just free labor for Amazon, Google and Facebook
For the sake of humanity
No class consciousness. Too many tech workers think they're rugged individuals that can negotiate their own contracts into wealth.
Working for free on nights and weekends to "hit that deadline" is not good. You're just making the owners rich, and devaluing labor. Even if you own a lot of equity, it's not as much as the owners.
And then there's bullshit like return to office mandates and people are like "oh no none of us want to do this but there's no organized mechanism to resist"
Join Tech Workers Coalition
like pretty much all industries there are holding companies buying up anything profitable that is not to big to aquire consolidating a hold on the industry. this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vista_Equity_Partners bought out my company. I was let go and I don't think that came from vista but the separation agreement they put in front of me Im pretty sure was. Needless to say I did not sign it as it was crazy.
Please stop with the AI pushing. It's a solution looking for a problem, it's a waste in 90% of the cases.
On a bright note I'm optimistic that ai bloated garbage and advertising will eventually push a critical mass of people to using decentralized and open source tools, or possibly that non-profits and co-ops will start to spring up to manage more ethical services that could potentially replace the mainstream ones.
When you're not trying to make some dude disgustingly richer, you don't need a ton of advertising (imo).
I also think tech workers should unionize. On a darker note, I think outsourcing/offshoring post-covid is going to kill any unions viability. You need bargaining power (withhold your labor) and I'm not sure that will exist for this trade because of how easy it will be to find workers.
I also think tech workers should unionize. On a darker note, I think outsourcing/offshoring post-covid is going to kill any unions viability.
Quite possibly, but that's just another part of the onshore/offshore cycle. And having worked for a company that utilized offshore for coverage reasons, I'm not that worried about my position. Offshore techs are decent, but I have to clean up after them more than my onshore coworkers.
You need bargaining power (withhold your labor) and I'm not sure that will exist for this trade because of how easy it will be to find workers.
Offshore may work as scabs, but much like scabs, the work quality is noticeably worse. Ultimately, I think tech workers are a bigger hindrance to a tech union than the threat of offshoring is. Mainly because of the house cat like "rugged individualism" they're sure they have and a lack of overall understanding of the system we work in.
What do you think would help overcome that obstacle to unionization?
This post exemplifies an interesting combination of optimism and pessimism.
Most of the high visibility "tech bros" aren't technical. They are finance bros who invest in tech.
I think companies that use unethically trained AI (read: basically all gen AI) should be subject to massive litigation, or at least severely damaging boycotts.
Have mentioned it to a lawyer at work, and he was like “I get it, but uh… fat chance, lol”. Would not dare mention it to the AI-hungry folks in leadership.
Not a software dev, but for me it’s the constant leap from today’s “next best thing” to tomorrow’s. Behind the Bastards did an episode on AI, and his take resonated with me. Particularly his Q&A session with some AI leaders at, I think, CES not long ago. When the new hotness gets popular, an obscene amount of money is paired with the “move fast and break things” attitude in a rush to profit. This often creates massive opportunities for grifters as legislators are mind numbing slow to react to these new technologies. And when regulations are finally passed (or more recently, allowed by the oligarchs), they’re often written to protect the billionaires (read: “job creators”) more than the common customer. Everyone’s bought into the idea that slow and methodical stifles innovation. At least the people funding and regulating these things have.
A very large portion (maybe not quite a majority) of software developers are not very good at their jobs. Just good enough to get by.
And that is entirely okay! Applies to most jobs, honestly. But there is really NO appropriate way to express that to a coworker.
I've seen way too much "just keep trying random things without really knowing what you're doing, and hope you eventually stumble into something that works" attitude from coworkers.
maybe not quite a majority
VAST majority. This is 80-90% of devs.
I actually would go further and say that collectively, we are terrible at what we do. Not every individual, but the combination of individuals, teams, management, and business requirements mean that collectively we produce terrible results. If bridges failed at anywhere near the rate that software does, processes would be changed to fix the problem. But bugs, glitches, vulnerabilities etc. are rife in the software industry. And it just gets accepted as normal.
It is possible to do better. We know this, from things like the stuff that sent us to the moon. But we've collectively decided not to do better.
Main difference is, a bridge that fails physically breaks, takes months to repair, and risks killing people. Your average CRUD app... maybe a dev loses a couple or hours figuring out how to fix live data for the affected client, bug gets fixed, and everybody goes on with their day.
Remember that we almost all code to make products that will make a company money. There's just no financial upside to doing better in most cases, so we don't. The financial consequences of most bugs just aren't great enough to make the industry care. It's always about maximizing revenue.
I read somewhere that everyone is bad at their job. When you’re good at your job you get promoted until you stop being good at your job. When you get good again, you get promoted.
I know it’s not exactly true but I like the idea.
I don't want to get promoted... Once my job isn't mainly about programming anymore (in a pretty wide sense though), I took a wrong turn in life 😅
I think it's definitely the majority. The problem is that a lot of tech developments, new language features and Frameworks then pander to this lack of skill and then those new things become buzzwords that are required at most new jobs.
So many things could be got rid of if people would just write decent code in the first place!
If the person I will report to can't code, I pass on the contract.
Too many management types are the classic middle management who knows people, but not the tech they manage.
Also related - I will NEVER take a contract if my report to drives a Mercedes. 101% I will pass on that opportunity. Life's too short to deal with that type of entitlement. After 30 years in the industry, that single vehicle type is by far, to me, the largest of red flags.
My secret sexist opinion is: Fill your DBA team with women, lead by a woman, and then just stand back and turn them loose. I absolutely love all female DBA teams because they kick fucking ass always. [edit I'm a cis wm 50s for context]
[Dbl edit - I will also never hire anyone who was 'educated' in a Florida University. They are fucking worthless.]
My secret sexist opinion is: Fill your DBA team with women, lead by a woman, and then just stand back and turn them loose. I absolutely love all female DBA teams because they kick fucking ass always. [edit I’m a cis wm 50s for context]
Every woman developer or QA person I've ever worked with has been an absolute rockstar.
My theory is that this is because the industry is sexist enough that all the women who aren't aren't like that don't find it worth their while to persist at it and find other careers. : (
Yeah ignorance and smol pps ruin the workplace for sure. I've actually never met a woman in IT, in any discipline, that wasn't competent, and your comment now has me thinking why, and you're probably right. All the regular jackasses that I've had to work with are men.
Save for this one company where it seemed everybody was equally incompetent.
My current employer was founded on the basis of the first two statements. They said they would never hire anyone who didn't have a background in tech. Even the HR manager lady who processed my onboarding had a history of coding and I've never before seen an individual who had been in both industries.
Unfortunately, since I started, my company was bought by a bigger company who was then themselves bought by a bigger company. Though my employer still has one of the best workforces I've ever seen, it seems we no longer hold the "tech background only" policy.
If the person I will report to can't code, I pass on the contract
I get this, it's really frustrating to have a clueless manager. But to me, a bigger problem is the reverse.
I'd rather have a manager with no technical ability and excellent people skills, than a manager with excellent technical ability but no people skills. The latter is all too common in my experience.
Yeah it is a mixed bag of shit isn't it?
If the person I will report to can't code, I pass on the contract.
I feel like that's just a preference regarding jobs.
Part of the job of being the chief coder is having to translate back and forth between the people doing the coding and the people paying them to do so. You need a lot of high level technical knowledge to do the job well, but you aren't going to be technical in application.
That's not been my experience. I have more of a 'hospitality' mindset, ie: If the GM isn't willing to hit the line and dishdog in a crunch, he's a shitty GM and you'll end up with a poorly performing restaurant.
The 'chief coder' might not be the best coder, but when I or the team have to give a presentation to explain heap spraying to the boss, then that's not a boss I want.
The whole "tech industry" naming is bulllshit, there is more technology let's say in composite used to build an aircraft wing or in a surgerical robots, than in yet another mobile app showing you ads
The whole tech sector also tend to be over evaluated on the stock market. In no world Apple is worth 3 trillion while coca cola or airbus are worth around 200 billions
More people own an iPhone than an Airbus plane.
I think most people who actually work in software development will agree with you on those things. The problem is that it's the marketing people and investors who disagree with you, but it's also them who get to make the decisions.
I took some VC money to build some bullshit and I'll do it again!
Software dev tools and process are so convoluted and unnecessary. We need to find a happy medium between sites being published via FTP uploads like before and the CI/CD madness of today. And there’s too many tooling options available. It’s caused a huge amount of disparity between options. Look at the JavaScript ecosystem for example.
The abortion known as Terraform is a great example of what you mean.
Meh, I don't think Terraform was so bad. I mean, I wouldn't vote to use it all the time. But I didn't mind it.
Commercial freebie tech turns us into short-sighted muppets and pulls apart the fabric of society
When I was in undergrad I did debate, and a term that was used to describe the debate topics was "a solution in need of a problem". I think that that very often characterizes the tech industry as a whole.
There is legitimately interesting math going on behind the scenes with AI, and it has a number of legitimate, if specialized, use-cases - sifting through large amounts of data, etc. However, if you're an AI company, there's more money to be made marketing to the general public and trying to sell AI to everyone on everything, rather than keeping it within its lane and letting it do the thing that it does well, well.
Even something like blockchain and cryptocurrency is built on top of somewhat novel and interesting math. What makes it a scam isn't the underlying technology, but rather the speculation bubbles that pop up around it, and the fact that the technology isn't being used for applications other than pushing a ponzi scheme.
For my own opinions - I don't really have anything I don't say out loud, but I definitely have some unorthodox opinions.
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I think that the ultra-convenient mobile telephone, always on your person at all times, has been a net detriment societally speaking. That is to say, the average iPhone user would be living a happier, more fulfilling, more authentic life if iPhones had not become massively popular. Modern tech too often substitutes genuine real-in-person interactions for online interactions that only approximate it. The instant gratification of always having access to all these opinions at all times has created addictions to social media that are harder to quit than cocaine (source: I have a friend who successfully quit cocaine, and she said that she could never quit instagram). The constantly-on GPS results in people not knowing how to navigate their own towns; if you automate something without learning how to do it, you will never learn how to do it. While that's fine most of the time, there are emergency situations where it just results in people being generally less competent than they otherwise would have been.
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For the same reason, I don't like using IDEs. For example when I code in java, the ritual of typing "import javafx.application.Application;" or whatever helps make me consciously aware that I'm using that specific package, and gets me in the headspace. Plus, being constantly reminded of what every single little thing does makes it much easier for me at least to read and parse code quickly. (But I also haven't done extensive coding since I was in undergrad).
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Microsoft Office Excel needs to remove February 29th 1900. I get that they have it so that it's backwards compatible with some archaic software from the 1990s; it's an annoying pet peeve.
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Technology is not the solution to every problem, and technology can make things worse as much as it can make things better. Society seems to have a cult around technological progress, where any new tech is intrinsically a net good for society, and where given any problem the first attempted solution should be a technological one. But for example things like the hyperloop and tesla self-driving cars and so forth are just new modern technology that doesn't come anywhere near as close to solving transportation problems as just implementing a robust public transit network with tech that's existed for 200 years (trains, trolleys, busses) would.
I'm interested in reading more about coding java without an IDE, what's your usual workflow? Do you use maven or gradle or something else? Are there solutions or scripts you use to make up for some functionality of an IDE?
For the same reason, I don't like using CLIs.
IDEs?
Yes, my bad, I get all the TLAs mixed up.
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'Using cloud software will lead to lower costs and a better overall service quality'
We should stop making software for others.
A prerequisite for reasonable tech use is understanding the amount of energy and materials you need to "burn through" for any given piece of tech to 1) exist and 2) do its useful work. Call me naive, but I really doubt that we'd be accelerating climate change this much if every person contributing to the "X thousand hours of videos uploaded to YouTube each day" was required to write their own video hosting software first. I doubt our social networks would become so captured by propagandists of every user of one had to write their own. (Obviously as an absolute this is a bit too restrictive - it's more the tone and direction that I'm trying to convey).
Instead, we should be teaching and helping others reach our knowledge /skill level.
Maybe the execs would stop pushing shitty UI dark patterns if they had to code the service themselves (and then use it afterwards!).
Onecan^dream...