cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/6002282
He revealed the secrets !
Aren’t IT people just janitors that tell you to turn it off and back on again?
I’ve been an actual janitor and a sysadmin… they’re not dissimilar. You clean up other people’s shit for a living.
So do I but with exception of the unfortunate cp that calls for bleaching eyes (and security) one is more sanitary than the other…
It’s mind bending that there are actual humans on the planet, paid a shit tonne more than software developers, who not only believe the parody highlighted by @SwiftOnSecutity, but treat and share it as gospel, acting on it with nutjob metrics to “increase productivity” whilst salivating over the hyperbole around “AI” that is sweeping the globe, dreaming of a better world.
One without those pesky developers with their brains, thoughts and opinions.
But, what do I know, I’ve been in this profession for only 40 years…
You’re probably not the biggest asshole in the room. In my experience, the person making decisions (and the most money) is never the most qualified, most competent, most efficient, or hardest working individual. They are just the biggest asshole in the room. They’re willing to be loud and belligerently wrong, they’re willing to take credit for the accomplishments of others, they’re willing to shift blame onto someone else, they’re willing to demand everyone else work harder than they do, and they’re willing to demand far more than their fair share of the profit.
And they will be mollified by the rest because nobody is a bigger asshole. Most people just want to do their jobs, and don’t want to rock the boat. Competent people see opportunity to ride in the wake of the biggest asshole in the room.
If you ever watch Shark Tank, you’ll see they are masters of the craft.
They are just the biggest asshole in the room.
So one day the different body parts were arguing over who should be in charge.
The eyes said they should be in charge, because they were the primary source of information about the world.
The stomach said it should be in charge because digestion was the source of energy.
The brain said it should be in charge because it was in charge of information processing and decision-making.
The rectum said nothing, just closed up shop.
Before long, the vision was blurry, the stomach was queasy, and the brain was foggy.
Assholes have been in charge ever since.
The problem is that most of us have swallowed the ‘competence uber alles’ ideal that school fed us through exams and scoring, when the game really is mostly politics (as in interpersonal relationships). So we are understandably disappointed when the incompetent get promoted through brown nosing or luck, when we should be reevaluating the rules of the game.
They are just the biggest asshole in the room
That’s always fun in sales. The vendor that brazenly promises two-and-a-half mirage for half the price will win the bid, and the sales people will move on to a different employer when the real budget for the project becomes clear.
You know what they do to old engineers don’t you?
EDIT : https://youtu.be/fN-VAdAnoZ4?t=31
" you know what they do with engineers when they turn 40? they take them out and shoot them"
I think I botched the Office space quote, I thought tom said something at some point about
“you know what they do to old engineers don’t you? They take them out back and *gun noise*”
EDIT : https://youtu.be/fN-VAdAnoZ4?t=31
" you know what they do with engineers when they turn 40? they take them out and shoot them"
Wait till they find out what software ‘architects’ really do.
I always saw architects roles in modern development being the person trying to find synergies between different teams andcoordinateing them working with each other.
Like if some team makes a sick project for managing streams of data streams the architect should be promoting it for other teams to leverage.
That’s one role, as a software architect I also often served as the sunk cost fallacy bad news delivery system. It’s a good idea to keep some eyes from outside your team on your project just to do the occasional sensibility check.
There is also a large responsibility to make sure different teams are well coordinated and not building the system in directly opposing directions. It really fucking sucks to have your work, as a developer, invalidated by someone else’s work suddenly without any warning.
A good software engineer is also an architect. You don’t need dedicated architects if you have good developers.
But on the other hand there are much more questionable and unnecessary jobs like product managers or managers of managers.
The good ones: design and adjust software development processes, standards for cross-project functionality and reusability and in general try and improve at a high level the process of making, maintaining and improving software in a company.
The bad ones: junior/mid-level software design with a thick layer of bullshit on top to spin it as advanced stuff.
If you want to see bad software architecture, just look at most of Google’s frameworks and libraries.
I used to joke with my niece that my programming job was just me staring at screens and meetings all day. She didn’t believe me until she got to shadow me one day and got super bored.
It’s not as easy as it sounds, sometimes the screens are all wrong!! https://xkcd.com/722/
Not op but guessing she had an idea from media like TV shows and movies that make technical jobs seem much more exciting for entertainment over realism. Crises are usually more Jerry accidentally deleted a directory and we need to recover some files and establish safe guard procedures to prevent it from happening again or this thing broke that nobody even knew existed so we gotta figure it out and less type fast enough to save the mainframe from l33t hackers.
Wait until this guy finds out that Elon doesn’t actually build the cars
Seriously. If Elon shut down Tesla tomorrow all these engineers would be building electric cars at other companies.
Does (or does not) he get the credit for committing the fraud that kept Tesla in business long enough to popularize* electric cars that there are other companies at which to build them?
Aforementioned fraud:
(When searching, found apparently jurors in 2023 disagreed with my assessment, so please take with grain of salt.)
*I say “popularize” given:
Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by [not Elon! but] Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors.
He’s a piece of shit but he restarted the Space Race that was literally dying, push the industry into electric cars when none of them were willing to do it. His actual products may be garbage but it doesn’t stop that it started the movements that needed to happen in the industry.
To say that he contributed nothing at all is unfortunately false as much as I may hate the man
