5 ms·

Long long time ago people in tech were in tech because of the tech. Then, at some point, being in tech became a gilded profession and everyone: salesmen, artis

by xlii 1mo ago

Long long time ago people in tech were in tech because of the tech. Then, at some point, being in tech became a gilded profession and everyone: salesmen, artists, clerks etc. joined in. Not because they wanted to be in tech. They wanted gold. For years it was working, but right now things shifted. You can no longer just do the thing you learned for a job and continue doing so, because landscape shifted. So they're miserable and they want to get back to knitting, pottery or whatever thing they want to do but not tech. For people I know who are in tech for the tech nothing changed. There's new tech in town, one has to adjust, and it's still possible to discover new things and pave new paths. Tech was always shifting and I suppose people who worked in it for it always knew it, and it doesn't derail them.

MarkusQ 1mo ago
100%. I noticed it most when the slurs they used against us became status symbols, as a hoard of grifters traded in their ties (remember ties?) and golf doodads for SF franchise bling and proclaimed themselves "geeks" and "nerds".
- uncivilized 1mo ago
  That was just a brief trend. Geeks and nerds are back to being derogatory.
  - MarkusQ 1mo ago
    I suppose I should be grateful, if it means the mercenaries are leaving.
    - purplemoonx 1mo ago
      I think we’re leaving not them haha We’re out! Grads from big schools and frats are in - regardless of ability. It’s like when you build a Wordpress site for your client in 2009, after it’s live they don’t need you anymore (until the domain expires or a plugin breaks). But during that moment they don’t need you they act cold like they will never need you again. This is happening at scale IMO.
cholantesh 1mo ago
Quite a lot of folks who got into tech for the tech are also miserable, because, as the byline rather aptly puts it, a lot of it is pointless. It does not serve a public good, or even a public desire, and 'work for its own sake' is only engaging up to a point.
dec0dedab0de 1mo ago
I have been in tech for the tech for over 20 years now, heck over 30 years as a hobbyist. I have lost almost all interest in it these days. It feels increasingly meaningless, and actively harmful. I know it is my own fault for neglecting my health and relationships, but I can't help but feel this career makes the most important things more difficult.
- xlii 1mo ago
  The burnout is a separate topic, and it was always difficult to balance in this specific industry. All these "Working in IT isn't stressful at all - John 25yo" memes didn't come come from nothing. But I wouldn't really put it on LLMs/AI. It was always like this. Jokes about how hopeless development cycle is, and how everybody have impostor syndrome etc.
  - dec0dedab0de 1mo ago
    [dead]
  - bluefirebrand 1mo ago
    > The burnout is a separate topic I think it's pretty strongly related, honestly
- cheschire 1mo ago
  Were you chasing the feeling of successfully solving a problem? Have you replaced problem solving with LLM chats? Maybe instead of engineering, you’ve been subtly shifted into project management and hate that career. But it’s tough to engineer much these days. Instead I find I’m PM’ing the bots more than solving problems.
  - pydry 1mo ago
    The culture of the tech industry started going to shit in 2022/2023 after rates were hiked and before LLMs were capable of anything much. There's more toxicity, more waterfall, more authoritarianism, less autonomy, more pressure. Consequently lower productivity, too. Sometimes AI is just the label that gets slapped on "all the ways the tech industry has changed over the last 3 years".
tigerlily 1mo ago
This is such a neat comment! If you concentrate, it's very near the metre and prose of a Dr Seuss story, like the Lorax or the Sneetches.
noosphr 1mo ago
Tech means a lot of things there. I got into computer science because the problems in physics were either already solved or couldn't be solved without trillions of dollars invested in new accelerators. From my point of view the tech side of things is a gig I did on the side to pay the bills. LLMs are amazing and useful. Even Knuth thinks so: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/claude-cycles.pdf https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/claude-cycles.pdf Now instead of spending weeks on side quests I can just burn some money and get either a counter example or proof without sinking hours/days/weeks into it.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
pydry 1mo ago
>For people I know who are in tech for the tech nothing changed. Yeah it did. The environments became a lot more toxic and the decisions became a lot more stupid. I also miss working with people who actually cared about the craft. They exist on the IC level but they're burned out and on the executive level it's mostly just insecure morons these days.
- laichzeit0 1mo ago
  It’s great to care about the craft as long as someone else is paying for it. I think most software developers are waking up to the reality that they were always just holding business at ransom with their craft. Software is a grudge purchase for businesses. No one has ever cared about the craft except the craftsmen.
  - skhameneh 1mo ago
    The parent comment’s take resonates with me and your response is exactly, what I assume, frustrates us both. I’ve been at companies that were founded on sales of physical goods that literally had vendors pick them for vended goods because they found the software made purchasing more convenient - as in they literally had customers tell them they bought their physical goods because of their software. They didn’t need the software. The software wasn’t critical to acquiring goods. They could have purchased goods elsewhere of similar quality and often potentially lower cost. The customers cared about the software, the software (that was not part of their core business) drove the core business. Edit: I originally had a lot more typed about how craft matters and not being strictly about perfection. It wasn’t necessary to drive the point, so I removed it. People do buy craft and many pay a hefty premium for better craft (in all aspects, both producer COGS and customer needs/desires).
    - laichzeit0 1mo ago
      Look I get it. I completely emphasise with the feeling. My undergrad is Computer Science, I often dreamed about writing my own compiler and spent years learning low level performance optimization, loved design patterns, re-factoring code to be more elegant, all that stuff. I just feel like after years in industry and how I’m steering something like Fable now that all of this is irrelevant and the writing is crystal clear on the wall: Writing software by hand is in its death throes. There is no future for it besides some very niche areas. When last have you actually looked at what your high level language is actually being compiled and optimised to? We’re moving up the abstraction ladder with software. To your point: People care about the actual output, the interface, whether it does what they want it to do, but in no way do they care about the internals and how it’s built. That’s an implementation detail. And that’s where all the fun of the craft actually sits. This is not unique to software engineering though, go take a look at the maths and mathematics subreddits. There are guys doing PhDs in maths who are too afraid to run their dissertation topics through the latest models because it might just solve the problem they’ve spent the last few years working on in a few hours. They absolutely hate that problems are being blown away where people have spent years trying to figure out. It feels like the same psychological pain software engineers are going through.
VoodooJuJu 1mo ago
[dead]
burnt-resistor 1mo ago
This is what annoyed me to no end; being surrounded by incurious corporate political players who wanted to appear "smart" but couldn't care less about learning, excellence, or much of anything except leaving in time to pickup their kids. Meanwhile, I had taught myself coding the hard way without the internet or proper reference materials or community, by trial-and-error in front of a debugger/profiler/disassembler in the mid 80's - late 90's. Apparently, that holds no economic value now because all that matters is # of PRs, tokenmaxxing, and "impact" like savings and features. But really, the deal breaker for me is the brazen and/or clueless evil aims of the ownership class such that working for them enables rather than reduces societal harm. Thus, tech isn't for me. Also, the number and distribution of cool, decent, clever people has been driven out of both the startup scene and the megacorp scene; maybe there's better hope in obscure SMBs or nonprofits.
zelphirkalt 1mo ago
It doesn't derail them, except for them not finding a new job and many being unfortunate enough to lose their old one. Instead many jobs are taken by "AI engineers", glorified prompters, who are not in tech because of the tech, but because they will do anything for that paycheck.
a2ff6eeb0 1mo ago
That seems backwards. I'm here for the money, and AI has turned the work into largely unskilled labor. I don't care if all I do is copy and paste between tickets, logs, and the prompt (and, that is really all I do). I'm expecting the gravy train to end, but right now things only suck if you care about doing good work. Management is quite happy with the resulting output, and I'm fine with matching their energy. I can do things that I care about on my own time.
johnnyanmac 1mo ago
>For people I know who are in tech for the tech nothing changed I'd say I'm in tech for tech. Everything changed, the social contract was defiled. The gold rush was always temporary, but the act of "getting a job in tech" (which was already an excessive process) became a wild goose chase itself. I can't even just hope for a boring bank job making 90k anymore (which was always told as my reassurance "if all else fails). We're just in a broken system, now. My goals aren't derailed, but my career sure was.

by xlii 1mo ago

MarkusQ 1mo ago

100%. I noticed it most when the slurs they used against us became status symbols, as a hoard of grifters traded in their ties (remember ties?) and golf doodads for SF franchise bling and proclaimed themselves "geeks" and "nerds".

uncivilized 1mo ago
That was just a brief trend. Geeks and nerds are back to being derogatory.
- MarkusQ 1mo ago
  I suppose I should be grateful, if it means the mercenaries are leaving.
  - purplemoonx 1mo ago
    I think we’re leaving not them haha We’re out! Grads from big schools and frats are in - regardless of ability. It’s like when you build a Wordpress site for your client in 2009, after it’s live they don’t need you anymore (until the domain expires or a plugin breaks). But during that moment they don’t need you they act cold like they will never need you again. This is happening at scale IMO.

cholantesh 1mo ago

Quite a lot of folks who got into tech for the tech are also miserable, because, as the byline rather aptly puts it, a lot of it is pointless. It does not serve a public good, or even a public desire, and 'work for its own sake' is only engaging up to a point.

dec0dedab0de 1mo ago

I have been in tech for the tech for over 20 years now, heck over 30 years as a hobbyist. I have lost almost all interest in it these days. It feels increasingly meaningless, and actively harmful. I know it is my own fault for neglecting my health and relationships, but I can't help but feel this career makes the most important things more difficult.

xlii 1mo ago
The burnout is a separate topic, and it was always difficult to balance in this specific industry. All these "Working in IT isn't stressful at all - John 25yo" memes didn't come come from nothing. But I wouldn't really put it on LLMs/AI. It was always like this. Jokes about how hopeless development cycle is, and how everybody have impostor syndrome etc.
- dec0dedab0de 1mo ago
  [dead]
- bluefirebrand 1mo ago
  > The burnout is a separate topic I think it's pretty strongly related, honestly
cheschire 1mo ago
Were you chasing the feeling of successfully solving a problem? Have you replaced problem solving with LLM chats? Maybe instead of engineering, you’ve been subtly shifted into project management and hate that career. But it’s tough to engineer much these days. Instead I find I’m PM’ing the bots more than solving problems.
- pydry 1mo ago
  The culture of the tech industry started going to shit in 2022/2023 after rates were hiked and before LLMs were capable of anything much. There's more toxicity, more waterfall, more authoritarianism, less autonomy, more pressure. Consequently lower productivity, too. Sometimes AI is just the label that gets slapped on "all the ways the tech industry has changed over the last 3 years".

tigerlily 1mo ago

This is such a neat comment! If you concentrate, it's very near the metre and prose of a Dr Seuss story, like the Lorax or the Sneetches.

noosphr 1mo ago

Tech means a lot of things there. I got into computer science because the problems in physics were either already solved or couldn't be solved without trillions of dollars invested in new accelerators. From my point of view the tech side of things is a gig I did on the side to pay the bills. LLMs are amazing and useful. Even Knuth thinks so: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/claude-cycles.pdf https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/claude-cycles.pdf Now instead of spending weeks on side quests I can just burn some money and get either a counter example or proof without sinking hours/days/weeks into it.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

pydry 1mo ago

>For people I know who are in tech for the tech nothing changed. Yeah it did. The environments became a lot more toxic and the decisions became a lot more stupid. I also miss working with people who actually cared about the craft. They exist on the IC level but they're burned out and on the executive level it's mostly just insecure morons these days.

laichzeit0 1mo ago
It’s great to care about the craft as long as someone else is paying for it. I think most software developers are waking up to the reality that they were always just holding business at ransom with their craft. Software is a grudge purchase for businesses. No one has ever cared about the craft except the craftsmen.
- skhameneh 1mo ago
  The parent comment’s take resonates with me and your response is exactly, what I assume, frustrates us both. I’ve been at companies that were founded on sales of physical goods that literally had vendors pick them for vended goods because they found the software made purchasing more convenient - as in they literally had customers tell them they bought their physical goods because of their software. They didn’t need the software. The software wasn’t critical to acquiring goods. They could have purchased goods elsewhere of similar quality and often potentially lower cost. The customers cared about the software, the software (that was not part of their core business) drove the core business. Edit: I originally had a lot more typed about how craft matters and not being strictly about perfection. It wasn’t necessary to drive the point, so I removed it. People do buy craft and many pay a hefty premium for better craft (in all aspects, both producer COGS and customer needs/desires).
  - laichzeit0 1mo ago
    Look I get it. I completely emphasise with the feeling. My undergrad is Computer Science, I often dreamed about writing my own compiler and spent years learning low level performance optimization, loved design patterns, re-factoring code to be more elegant, all that stuff. I just feel like after years in industry and how I’m steering something like Fable now that all of this is irrelevant and the writing is crystal clear on the wall: Writing software by hand is in its death throes. There is no future for it besides some very niche areas. When last have you actually looked at what your high level language is actually being compiled and optimised to? We’re moving up the abstraction ladder with software. To your point: People care about the actual output, the interface, whether it does what they want it to do, but in no way do they care about the internals and how it’s built. That’s an implementation detail. And that’s where all the fun of the craft actually sits. This is not unique to software engineering though, go take a look at the maths and mathematics subreddits. There are guys doing PhDs in maths who are too afraid to run their dissertation topics through the latest models because it might just solve the problem they’ve spent the last few years working on in a few hours. They absolutely hate that problems are being blown away where people have spent years trying to figure out. It feels like the same psychological pain software engineers are going through.

VoodooJuJu 1mo ago

[dead]

burnt-resistor 1mo ago

This is what annoyed me to no end; being surrounded by incurious corporate political players who wanted to appear "smart" but couldn't care less about learning, excellence, or much of anything except leaving in time to pickup their kids. Meanwhile, I had taught myself coding the hard way without the internet or proper reference materials or community, by trial-and-error in front of a debugger/profiler/disassembler in the mid 80's - late 90's. Apparently, that holds no economic value now because all that matters is # of PRs, tokenmaxxing, and "impact" like savings and features. But really, the deal breaker for me is the brazen and/or clueless evil aims of the ownership class such that working for them enables rather than reduces societal harm. Thus, tech isn't for me. Also, the number and distribution of cool, decent, clever people has been driven out of both the startup scene and the megacorp scene; maybe there's better hope in obscure SMBs or nonprofits.

zelphirkalt 1mo ago

It doesn't derail them, except for them not finding a new job and many being unfortunate enough to lose their old one. Instead many jobs are taken by "AI engineers", glorified prompters, who are not in tech because of the tech, but because they will do anything for that paycheck.

a2ff6eeb0 1mo ago

That seems backwards. I'm here for the money, and AI has turned the work into largely unskilled labor. I don't care if all I do is copy and paste between tickets, logs, and the prompt (and, that is really all I do). I'm expecting the gravy train to end, but right now things only suck if you care about doing good work. Management is quite happy with the resulting output, and I'm fine with matching their energy. I can do things that I care about on my own time.

johnnyanmac 1mo ago

>For people I know who are in tech for the tech nothing changed I'd say I'm in tech for tech. Everything changed, the social contract was defiled. The gold rush was always temporary, but the act of "getting a job in tech" (which was already an excessive process) became a wild goose chase itself. I can't even just hope for a boring bank job making 90k anymore (which was always told as my reassurance "if all else fails). We're just in a broken system, now. My goals aren't derailed, but my career sure was.