5 ms·

I really thought it was corrupt politicians giving away public resources to private mega corporations, irresponsible financing systems, wall street selling lel

I really thought it was corrupt politicians giving away public resources to private mega corporations, irresponsible financing systems, wall street selling lel bonds, the undermining of the national working class, bogus copyright laws that are designed to squish small and upcoming competition, and people purchasing garbage degrees instead of useful ones with money they don't have guaranteeing they'll be indebted for at least two or three decades. But no, it's just IT. How wrong I was.

kartan 9y ago
Yes. I work in IT and I'm rich, aren't you rich like the rest on engineers that read Hacker News? Not like the poor people at finance institutions, they create so much value and get so few in return...
- empath75 9y ago
  They're also enabled by IT.
  - simonh 9y ago
    Financial institutions are all now IT companies. It's an essential core competency. Money is information.
    - eternalban 9y ago
      And that is precisely why (imo) the finance world engineered the outsourcing strategy (and invested heavily in off shore body shops) in late 90s. At least that is how it looked to me in those days. (The official story was that low skill IT jobs are sent off shore to help the bottom line. This, the official reason for a service and information economy to tech transfer its crown jewels, never made any sense. Consider that software craft is mostly learned on the job, thus gutting the entry level insures future deficits in higher levels. And further that by near universal account, outsourced software projects are technically subpar and subject to multiple rewrites. All this while entire floors at investment banks' IT departments were 'let go'. You do the math.)
    - gizmodo59 9y ago
      A core competency doesn't mean they are IT companies. Knowing how to use a computer is akin to literacy. That does not mean that being so efficient in Excel will make you Martin Shkreli (https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4df5il/martin_shkreli_doing_magic_with_microsoft_excel/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4df5il/martin_shkre...) Finance is much more than knowing how to use or even excel at any software or programming. Computer is an enabler in this case IMHO.
      - simonh 9y ago
        They're IT companies that just don't sell any of their tech. But then Facebook don't sell their tech either. Just as a computer is an enabler at Facebook to manage personal contacts and communications, at Google to manage their indexing and advertising business, at Amazon to manage their ordering and inventory systems. Banks nowadays are just as much IT companies as any of these. A typical bank employs thousands of developers. They even develop their own development and service deployment environments, their own IDEs, even their own custom languages, middleware, development frameworks and libraries and database technologies. Some have even rolled their own internal cloud infrastructure services like mini-Azures or a mini-AWS and systems like Hadoop but using entirely custom tech, not just an instance of an open source solution. There is almost nothing going on in the big tech giants in terms of core technology development that some banks somewhere aren't also doing. You might split hairs or come up with some technical definition to avoid classifying them in this way, but if you do you will be deluding yourself. The Banks have found that in many areas they cannot rely on external technology companies to meet their needs, so they have to meet them using internal resources and roll a lot of their own tech.
jrs95 9y ago
There does seem to be a hostility towards people who work in tech on the left. To me this feels like pandering to that by Clintonian types who don't actually have any interest in dealing with class issues.
- tetraca 9y ago
  From what I've seen, I don't believe it's universal. The hostility is toward certain kinds of people who encourage and enable centralization or crystallization of power. People like Richard Stallman are generally liked, but people like Peter Thiel or Mark Zuckerberg are not. Mind you I don't know what the Tankie side of things really says because I loathe them.
  - jrs95 9y ago
    It's definitely not universal. But in my opinion, it's more like there are people who think they're better than us that are upset that we're as successful as we are. And being predominantly white men doesn't help, even if we do tend to lean left. That shitty documentary Nancy Pelosi's daughter made is probably a good example of that. The premise is basically that tech workers are terrible and are destroying San Francisco. I'm sure there's similar sentiments on the right as well, but theirs seem to be more of "these rich tech liberals want to tell us how to live" or something along those lines.
    - charlesdm 9y ago
      Do software engineers predominantly lean left? I think the left / right debate is quite outdated, with both sides having equally good (but also bad) ideas about certain subjects. Why can't you lean left on healthcare and LGBT rights, yet more right on certain economic policies and tax issues?
      - jrs95 9y ago
        I think both are true. Software engineers tend to vote Democrat, but they're also much more likely to be libertarians than the average person. Or even "alt-right" to be honest. Outside of a general leftward bias, I think we seem to be more prone to exploring ideological extremes.
nabla9 9y ago
Common media narratives like the ones you describe are usually wrong or at least they give misguided view of relative importance of different factors.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  "Common media narratives" ... or ... "easily observed phenomena"? You be the judge!
BlackjackCF 9y ago
I've always viewed IT as the new version of the middle/upper class. It's kind of weird to criticize a field that's open to people joining and paying well as the reason for wealth inequality.
marcosdumay 9y ago
That. Let's all just dismiss that governments worldwide have been growing out of control since the 30's so we can settle on an enemy and keep the growing.

kartan 9y ago

Yes. I work in IT and I'm rich, aren't you rich like the rest on engineers that read Hacker News? Not like the poor people at finance institutions, they create so much value and get so few in return...

empath75 9y ago
They're also enabled by IT.
- simonh 9y ago
  Financial institutions are all now IT companies. It's an essential core competency. Money is information.
  - eternalban 9y ago
    And that is precisely why (imo) the finance world engineered the outsourcing strategy (and invested heavily in off shore body shops) in late 90s. At least that is how it looked to me in those days. (The official story was that low skill IT jobs are sent off shore to help the bottom line. This, the official reason for a service and information economy to tech transfer its crown jewels, never made any sense. Consider that software craft is mostly learned on the job, thus gutting the entry level insures future deficits in higher levels. And further that by near universal account, outsourced software projects are technically subpar and subject to multiple rewrites. All this while entire floors at investment banks' IT departments were 'let go'. You do the math.)
  - gizmodo59 9y ago
    A core competency doesn't mean they are IT companies. Knowing how to use a computer is akin to literacy. That does not mean that being so efficient in Excel will make you Martin Shkreli (https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4df5il/martin_shkreli_doing_magic_with_microsoft_excel/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4df5il/martin_shkre...) Finance is much more than knowing how to use or even excel at any software or programming. Computer is an enabler in this case IMHO.
    - simonh 9y ago
      They're IT companies that just don't sell any of their tech. But then Facebook don't sell their tech either. Just as a computer is an enabler at Facebook to manage personal contacts and communications, at Google to manage their indexing and advertising business, at Amazon to manage their ordering and inventory systems. Banks nowadays are just as much IT companies as any of these. A typical bank employs thousands of developers. They even develop their own development and service deployment environments, their own IDEs, even their own custom languages, middleware, development frameworks and libraries and database technologies. Some have even rolled their own internal cloud infrastructure services like mini-Azures or a mini-AWS and systems like Hadoop but using entirely custom tech, not just an instance of an open source solution. There is almost nothing going on in the big tech giants in terms of core technology development that some banks somewhere aren't also doing. You might split hairs or come up with some technical definition to avoid classifying them in this way, but if you do you will be deluding yourself. The Banks have found that in many areas they cannot rely on external technology companies to meet their needs, so they have to meet them using internal resources and roll a lot of their own tech.

jrs95 9y ago

There does seem to be a hostility towards people who work in tech on the left. To me this feels like pandering to that by Clintonian types who don't actually have any interest in dealing with class issues.

tetraca 9y ago
From what I've seen, I don't believe it's universal. The hostility is toward certain kinds of people who encourage and enable centralization or crystallization of power. People like Richard Stallman are generally liked, but people like Peter Thiel or Mark Zuckerberg are not. Mind you I don't know what the Tankie side of things really says because I loathe them.
- jrs95 9y ago
  It's definitely not universal. But in my opinion, it's more like there are people who think they're better than us that are upset that we're as successful as we are. And being predominantly white men doesn't help, even if we do tend to lean left. That shitty documentary Nancy Pelosi's daughter made is probably a good example of that. The premise is basically that tech workers are terrible and are destroying San Francisco. I'm sure there's similar sentiments on the right as well, but theirs seem to be more of "these rich tech liberals want to tell us how to live" or something along those lines.
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    Do software engineers predominantly lean left? I think the left / right debate is quite outdated, with both sides having equally good (but also bad) ideas about certain subjects. Why can't you lean left on healthcare and LGBT rights, yet more right on certain economic policies and tax issues?
    - jrs95 9y ago
      I think both are true. Software engineers tend to vote Democrat, but they're also much more likely to be libertarians than the average person. Or even "alt-right" to be honest. Outside of a general leftward bias, I think we seem to be more prone to exploring ideological extremes.

nabla9 9y ago

Common media narratives like the ones you describe are usually wrong or at least they give misguided view of relative importance of different factors.

wavefunction 9y ago
"Common media narratives" ... or ... "easily observed phenomena"? You be the judge!

BlackjackCF 9y ago

I've always viewed IT as the new version of the middle/upper class. It's kind of weird to criticize a field that's open to people joining and paying well as the reason for wealth inequality.

marcosdumay 9y ago

That. Let's all just dismiss that governments worldwide have been growing out of control since the 30's so we can settle on an enemy and keep the growing.