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So Long to Tech's Dream Job: It’s the shut up and grind era, tech workers said, as Apple, Google, Meta and other giants age into large bureaucracies.

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  • I wonder if it's inevitable that anywhere with enough humans working together will reach this point eventually?

    No, not really. Where I work now is fantastic and we have great leadership. The moment your original visionary leader leaves and someone with an MBA gets in their place, it all goes to shit. This is LITERALLY what happened to Google and to Apple. Both super dynamic companies with great culture who were then gutted to generate shareholder value.

  • cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34411807

    While many of them still provide free food and pay well, they have little compunction cutting jobs, ordering mandatory office attendance and clamping down on employee debate. [...] “Tech could still be best in terms of free lunch and a high salary,” Ms. Grey said, but “the level of fear has gone way up.”

    Along the way, the companies became less tolerant of employee outspokenness. Bosses reasserted themselves after workers protested issues including sexual harassment in the workplace. With the job market flooded with qualified engineers, it became easier to replace those who criticized.
    “This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts co-workers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said in a blog post last year.

    Time to unionize.

  • I posted a similar comment in another post of this article.

    The elite 1% students who spent their lives pursuing this are getting exactly what they asked for. They sold their souls for a big paycheck and assumed that it was everyone else's careers that were volatile. They'd have done better to work for a non-profit where at least they could say that they are making the world a better place.

    It must be nice living in your imaginary world where everything is black and white.

  • I’ve been a software engineer for almost 10 years now and lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to doing something else. I went into the field because coding and computing in general are genuine passions of mine but I find it difficult to be the code mill I’m expected to be, especially when getting work done quickly is prioritized over getting it done correctly. I also feel like most of the coworkers I’ve had over the years don’t have any genuine interest or intrinsic motivation, and are just in it because it pays well - which I don’t fault them for, especially in the current economy, but they’re much more likely to put up with being treated like shit.

    I just don’t know what else I would do. Teaching high school CS seems fun but I’m pretty sure making that transition would take a couple years, since I gotta get a teaching degree and be a student teacher and all that, and I’m not sure I have the patience for that

    What kind of company do you work at? I try to aim for big enough to pay well and give good benefits, but has small enough teams that we own the whole product, start to finish. If you're working at a software development company, maybe try a company that does something else, but still needs developers?

  • Time to unionize.

    They'll just move the office to Austin.

  • I posted a similar comment in another post of this article.

    The elite 1% students who spent their lives pursuing this are getting exactly what they asked for. They sold their souls for a big paycheck and assumed that it was everyone else's careers that were volatile. They'd have done better to work for a non-profit where at least they could say that they are making the world a better place.

    The elite 1% students are going to be the ones fixing shit when AI breaks everything, because they’re the ones who spent countless hours learning math and algorithms and shit.

  • The elite 1% students are going to be the ones fixing shit when AI breaks everything, because they’re the ones who spent countless hours learning math and algorithms and shit.

    Meh I was a B student and run circles around my coworkers. Lots of people in this industry that aren't actual nerds.

  • I’ve been a software engineer for almost 10 years now and lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to doing something else. I went into the field because coding and computing in general are genuine passions of mine but I find it difficult to be the code mill I’m expected to be, especially when getting work done quickly is prioritized over getting it done correctly. I also feel like most of the coworkers I’ve had over the years don’t have any genuine interest or intrinsic motivation, and are just in it because it pays well - which I don’t fault them for, especially in the current economy, but they’re much more likely to put up with being treated like shit.

    I just don’t know what else I would do. Teaching high school CS seems fun but I’m pretty sure making that transition would take a couple years, since I gotta get a teaching degree and be a student teacher and all that, and I’m not sure I have the patience for that

    I imagine you mean well, but teaching is a profession — not a hobby you dabble in when the honeymoon with your career is over.

  • I’ve been a software engineer for almost 10 years now and lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to doing something else. I went into the field because coding and computing in general are genuine passions of mine but I find it difficult to be the code mill I’m expected to be, especially when getting work done quickly is prioritized over getting it done correctly. I also feel like most of the coworkers I’ve had over the years don’t have any genuine interest or intrinsic motivation, and are just in it because it pays well - which I don’t fault them for, especially in the current economy, but they’re much more likely to put up with being treated like shit.

    I just don’t know what else I would do. Teaching high school CS seems fun but I’m pretty sure making that transition would take a couple years, since I gotta get a teaching degree and be a student teacher and all that, and I’m not sure I have the patience for that

    I think you can teach at community college without a teaching degree. You might need a master's though.

    I have a CS degree but started out in nuclear power, then that got me into automation and robotics. There's way more of that take your time to do it right atmosphere, and these jobs are all over hiding in unexpected places. I guess nobody wants to turn on an expensive machine just to have it eat itself because of a software bug lol.

  • Time to unionize.

    Too many dudes who think their special and irreplaceable sadly.

    if we unionize I may not get raises!

  • Too many dudes who think their special and irreplaceable sadly.

    if we unionize I may not get raises!

    Employees are more threatened by the prospect of offshoring and H-1B replacement labor than by their egos. Unlike cops or plumbers who can't be easily replaced by remote teams abroad, tech workers face the real risk of being replaced. Strong unions exist across many industries precisely because workers naturally form them to protect their interests and to preserve their way of life.

    The 'tech bro' mentality is no different from ego in any other profession. Unionization isn't about eliminating individual personalities, but about collective worker protection.

  • I wonder if it's inevitable that anywhere with enough humans working together will reach this point eventually?

    From what I’ve seen it starts with a few people who abuse the niceties, or the first downturn, or both, and suddenly they’ve got an excuse to strip it all back.

    It’s always one or the other that starts it. You have an office game console and someone brings their kids who spill pop on it or they take the games home. You get that guy who takes a box of snacks home and the CEO complains for like 2 years about it. You get someone who orders pay per view on a business trip. Etc.

    Once you get to like 300 employees this threshold starts getting reliably exceeded.

  • I’ve been a software engineer for almost 10 years now and lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to doing something else. I went into the field because coding and computing in general are genuine passions of mine but I find it difficult to be the code mill I’m expected to be, especially when getting work done quickly is prioritized over getting it done correctly. I also feel like most of the coworkers I’ve had over the years don’t have any genuine interest or intrinsic motivation, and are just in it because it pays well - which I don’t fault them for, especially in the current economy, but they’re much more likely to put up with being treated like shit.

    I just don’t know what else I would do. Teaching high school CS seems fun but I’m pretty sure making that transition would take a couple years, since I gotta get a teaching degree and be a student teacher and all that, and I’m not sure I have the patience for that

    Those soulless people who have no live off the craft drive me nuts, and a lot got in the field like 2017-2023 when everyone was trying to grow headcount as fast as possible.

    Those people drive me mad.

  • I’ve been a software engineer for almost 10 years now and lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to doing something else. I went into the field because coding and computing in general are genuine passions of mine but I find it difficult to be the code mill I’m expected to be, especially when getting work done quickly is prioritized over getting it done correctly. I also feel like most of the coworkers I’ve had over the years don’t have any genuine interest or intrinsic motivation, and are just in it because it pays well - which I don’t fault them for, especially in the current economy, but they’re much more likely to put up with being treated like shit.

    I just don’t know what else I would do. Teaching high school CS seems fun but I’m pretty sure making that transition would take a couple years, since I gotta get a teaching degree and be a student teacher and all that, and I’m not sure I have the patience for that

    I find it difficult to be the code mill I’m expected to be, especially when getting work done quickly is prioritized over getting it done correctly.

    Same. Half the time the code base is an indicipherable, spaghetti filled dumpster fire. More often than that, the business plan is either non existent or just plain idiotic. Management can't even answer basic questions like, "who is going to pay for this?" The last three projects I worked on were DOA because there was no clear path to profitability.
    This was at large, well established corporations.

    I'm still trying to figure out how it's possible to graduate with an MBA without understanding the inherent need for revenue to exceed expenses.

  • It must be nice living in your imaginary world where everything is black and white.

    Every year I tell my CS/CE/Info students that the market is saturated and that jobs are hard to find. I then tell them that they have to figure what motivates them: a paycheck or service. I then suggest that public service is generally stable while private enterprise can be volatile. I finish by telling them that they have to decide what among this fits them best.

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    Two pieces of shit
  • Intel collapsing?

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    3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com3
    Whilst true, AMD are doing just fine by being fabless. I can't really see x86 going as soon as you say for many reasons
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    medicpigbabysaver@lemmy.worldM
    Release the Trump/Epstein files
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    Actually, nope! Claiming that you personally didn't learn with an IDE and that there are make-believe scenarios where one is not available is not actually addressing the argument. There really aren't any situations that make any sense at all where an IDE is not available. I've worked in literally the most strict and locked down environments in the world, and there is always approved software and tools to use... because duh! Of course there is, silly, work needs to get done. Unless you're talking about a coding 101 class or something academic and basic. Anyway, that's totally irrelevant regardless, because its PURE fantasy to have access to something like Claude and not have access to an IDE. So your argument is entirely flawed and invalid.
  • Apparently Debian has alienated the developers

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    Oh man, I'm a bit late to the party here. He really believes the far-right Trump propaganda, and doesn't understand what diversity programs do. It's not a war between white men an all the other groups of people... It's just that is has proven to be difficult to for example write a menstrual tracker with a 99.9% male developer base. It's just super difficult to them to judge how that's going to be used in real-world scenarios and what some specific challenges and nice features are. That's why you listen to minority opinions, to deliver a product that caters to all people. And these minority opinions are notoriously difficult to attract. That's why we do programs for that. They are task-forces to address things aside from what's mainstream and popular. It'll also benefit straight white men. Liteally everyone because it makes Linux into a product that does more than just whatever is popular as of today. Same thing applies to putting effort into screen readers and disabled people and whatever other minorities need. If he just wants what is majority, I'd recommend installing Windows to him. Because that's where we're headed with this. That's the popular choice, at least on the desktop. That's what you're supposed to use if you dislike niche. Also his hubris... Says Debian should be free from politics. And the very next sentence he talks his politics and wants to shove his Trump anti-DEI politics into Debian.... Yeah, sure dude.
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    moseschrute@piefed.socialM
    While I agree, everyone constantly restating this is not helpful. We should instead ask ourselves what’s about BlueSky is working and what can we learn? For example, I think the threadiverse could benefit from block lists, which auto update with new filter keywords. I’ve seen Lemmy users talk about how much time they spend crafting their filters to get the feed of content they want. It would be much nicer if you could choose and even combine block lists (e.g. US politics).
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    jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldJ
    I wonder! They may be labeled as contractors or similar to a merc. Third-party contractors that don't have to follow the same 'rules' as government or military personnel. Edit: Word, merchs to merc, meaning mercenary
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    Definitely don't want to be painting my face every day