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 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.
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.
Or thousands of people get stranded at airports as the ticketing system goes down or there is a data breach that exposes millions of people’s private data.
Some companies have been able to implement robust systems that can take major attacks, but that is generally because they are more sensitive to revenue loss when these systems go down.
Managers decided that by forcing people to deliver before it’s ready. It’s better for the company to have something that works but with bugs, rather than delaying projects until they are actually ready.
In most fields where people write code, writing code is just about gluing stuff together, and code quality doesn’t matter (simplicity does though).
Game programmers and other serious large app programmers are probably the only ones where it matters a lot how you write the code.
Kind of the opposite actually.
The Business™️ used to make all decisions about what to build and how to build it, shove those requirements down and hope for the best.
Then the industry moved towards Agile development where you put part of the product out and get feedback on it before you build the next part.
There’s a fine art to deciding which bugs to fix win. Most companies I’ve worked with aren’t very good at it to begin with. It’s a special skill to learn and practice
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!
Most of the high visibility “tech bros” aren’t technical. They are finance bros who invest in tech.
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”
There’s no formal membership but yeah, I’ve been involved in it for 6 years. It depends a lot on the chapter you’re in, so some are more oriented towards community building and socializing, some others are more focused on direct organizing support or political stuff. In each country the legal framework, the political landscape, and the culture are different, so chapters end up looking very different from each other.
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.
All software should be open source
