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.
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.
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.
They call that the Peter Principle, and there’s at least one Ig Nobel Prize winning study which found that it’s better to randomly promote people rather than promote based on job performance.
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!
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Most of the high visibility “tech bros” aren’t technical. They are finance bros who invest in tech.
Most of them speak the jargon, but can’t explain what it means
Tech workers need to unionize
This is more than self interest, self respecting tech workers would have refused to create our current panopticon-skinnerbox if they weren’t at the mercy of the tech lords. Seniority based hiring and firing, that has to be demand number one, number 2 is layoff recall lists 5 years long.
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
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.
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
companies don’t know how to interview. i don’t need someone to walk me through a sorting algorithm. i need someone who will be responsive, and interested in the problems we actually face.
Ok, but can you just whiteboard code me a Fibonacci sequence function.
Also, any number of interviews that is more than one is too many interviews.
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.
An inability to understand that ‘e-mail’ doesn’t get an S is not how I guessed you work in a lot of Azure.
Few things would make me happier than to never log into an Azure instance ever again lol.
100% agree with everything you said. I used to absolutely love technology and the Internet, but I’m definitely feeling a lot less interested in it all as the years go on.
Being techy I’m often asked to help out with systems / computer related stuff at work, and I just can’t for the life of me fathom why we’ve got 5 different systems all frankensteined together trying to talk to each other, instead of just one fucking system that does it all.
I learned the other day that our company spent something like 100 million on this prototype system that ended up being totally scrapped. We’ve now integrated all sorts of AI shite and switched to Microsoft purely because of Copilot, which, i can honestly say is a flaming pile of utter shit that never does what you need it to.
The whole industry is in shambles at the moment. I wish all this AI and crypto shit would just disappear, along with the majority of programming languages and frameworks, and other bloated bullshit and just take us back to simpler times.
Please stop with the AI pushing. It’s a solution looking for a problem, it’s a waste in 90% of the cases.
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.
CEOs and all management suite are mostly useless except for making the business worse for the employees and customers 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.
A lot of what is sold to consumers is straight up shite.
Neither Python nor JavaScript should be the primary language used in any production back end.
Javascript I understand, but why Python?
Out of interest, why?
At least half of the people working in tech shouldn’t be. They have 0 clue what they’re doing and that’s dangerous. And far to many people solve everything with a golden hammer.
You don’t need a Mac to work in IT. Especially if all your doing is ansible.
Ansible sucks. It’s slow, it’s limited, it gives a false sense of understanding to do many. I mean it’s nice that it’s a structured playground for some folks I suppose. But there are better tools that do the exact same thing. Or you could just write a proper script.
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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.
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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 like that don’t find it worth their while to persist at it and find other careers. : (
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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.
