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Most Software Dev Jobs Are Bullshit Jobs

• blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  The author comes close to making the more obvious leap to "Most Jobs Are Bullshit" but for some reason doesn't quite make it there. But unless you'd like to forage for sustenance in the woods, I'm not sure we have much of an alternative... and at least some dev work is mildly interesting.
  • danharaj 9y ago
    They don't make the leap because they link to the original Graeber article which makes that point in general.
    • blacksmith_tb 9y ago
      I saw that, but it seems like that makes writing this piece superfluous - unless it's just to clarify that software dev is part of the 'most jobs' and not the few, non-bullshit ones.
• geogra4 9y ago
  workers of the world unite!
• cominous 9y ago
  Most of her claims are true for all 40h full-time jobs, which is the majority of all jobs. In that logic, nobody would have kids. But.. I totally struggle with keeping a life aside to 40-60h work aswell so I wont blame her - I feel the same.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• PrunJuice 9y ago
  So sitting AND standing are both out. Now what? Walking desks? Neutral buoyancy fluid desks? Supine desks?
  • NathanWilliams 9y ago
    Maybe just less hours in total at a desk (aka work)? I think that was the point she was trying to make.
  • jtmarmon 9y ago
    reminds me of this college humor episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu3holG7M7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu3holG7M7I
  • WalterSear 9y ago
    https://www.theonion.com/health-experts-recommend-standing-up-at-desk-leaving-o-1819577456 https://www.theonion.com/health-experts-recommend-standing-u...
  • mikestew 9y ago
    Walking desks? Missed the treadmill desk fad, did we? In case you really did, yes, that was a thing. Take a treadmill, put a board across the handholds to hold your laptop, start coding.
  • Kpourdeilami 9y ago
    Anecdotal, but I have been walking to work for the past 2 months and it helps a lot. I get around 12km of walking and 2 hours of exercise out of it. It has helped a lot to balance my sleep as well since I'm usually too tired to stay up late. I highly recommend it to anyone who works long hours behind a desk.
  • Bjartr 9y ago
    Walking[1] and supine[2] definitely exist. Neutral buoyancy almost exists[3]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006M2PJV0/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006M2PJV0/ [2] https://www.wired.com/2015/10/altwork-desk/ https://www.wired.com/2015/10/altwork-desk/ [3] http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jtpo/ http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jtpo/
• bmj 9y ago
  This article assumes that every developer works for an SV-style start-up that requires 80 hour weeks building trivial things. I work in the medical industry, rarely work more than 40 hours a week, take six weeks of vacation a year, and can generally feel okay about my output actually helping people lead better lives. Of course, yes, sometimes I do a lot of BS things at my job. However, as another comment has already noted, there are few jobs that include some sort of BS at some point. That is why it is called "work."
  • fileeditview 9y ago
    I really don't think it's about doing some "BS" or annoying things at work. It's about creating products(in this case software) that are utterly useless to the world. That maybe even make the world a worse place over the long run. It's about products that nobody would miss if they wouldn't exist. It's about the 1000th clone of some app that offers some wannabe feature plus social networking. The problem is not software alone.. our world is full of shit products no one really needs. But in software you don't need to cut down trees or mine ore. You just have endless resources.. which increases the crap output by a lot. EDIT: Oh and I'm sure not every software dev job is useless/boring/..
    • touristtam 9y ago
      > EDIT: Oh and I'm sure not every software dev job is useless/boring/.. No but re implementing the same bit of logic for the hell of it, although it might be satisfying for one, is pretty silly in the long term.
    • sreenadh 9y ago
      > But in software you don't need to cut down trees or mine ore. Lets not forget the dictators with child soldiers that use forced labour to mine the rare earth materials & the factories with nets to catch the workers that attempt suicide, which are a part of making computers & mobiles that is vital for software development. Also, where our old devices & batteries end up. Softwares do rack up a huge carbon foot-print.
  • eberkund 9y ago
• danharaj 9y ago
  Software development has proven methods for organizing labor by labor instead of by the whims of the owning class. The most useful software in the world is developed by an ecosystem of communities that resembles anarchist, communist ideas of how society at large could operate. Because of the unique capital requirements for software development, cooperative firms are more viable than in any other industry. We could be doing our work in radically different ways. Too bad most programmers are allergic to collective labor action.
  • drb91 9y ago
    "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Nowhere is this more true than Silicon Valley.
    • danharaj 9y ago
      Kind of ignores the fact that socialism did take root, like Eugene Debs running for president, but it was violently uprooted and the ground was torched and salted and a massive state apparatus was developed to make sure it could never be entertained again.
      • cafard 9y ago
        If Eugene Debs running for president proves that socialism did take root, how do the later runs of Norman Thomas not argue against the torching & salting?
      • dragonwriter 9y ago
        Someone running for President multiple times and never clearing either a single electoral vote or more than 6% of the popular vote is certainly evidence of their personal determination, but hardly evidence of them representating a philosophy that had taken root.
    • seppin 9y ago
      This implies the poor are better off under socialism than as lower class in a rich country.
• tenpoundhammer 9y ago
  This article brings up a common theme, people don't want to work 40 hour weeks. I see nothing wrong with that sentiment, but I also don't see any wrong with a 40 or 60 hour work week. Every person on this planet needs to decide how they want to spend their time and the quality of life they want to have. If you want to work fewer hours you will have less money. It's pretty simple. If you want to do that good for you.
• deckar01 9y ago
  I have had about 10 jobs in my life. About half of them were specific to my career. I have found that I am happier building things that the author might consider "bullshit" (relative to my interests) compared to working on things that I am passionate about. When I have a job doing what I "love", someone inevitably takes a steaming shit on the thing I created and forces me to break it in some stupid way. I would rather do the things I love on my own time so that I don't have to compromise my work to keep food on the table.
  • WalterSear 9y ago
    > my own time The co-option of that by the forces of capitalism is much of what the author is complaining about.
• reaperducer 9y ago
  Something happened around the time computer programmers started calling themselves "engineers" -- they became self-important. And in doing so, convinced others that they are indispensable. I tell people, if you don't have a flashing light and a siren, your job is not that important. My employer tethers me to a work cell phone that I never ever use. Why? In case the web site goes down while I'm not at work. Except that the site is on an intranet. And the entire company is 9-5. If I'm not there, nobody else is there, either, to see if the site has crashed. But somewhere along the line, coding became more mission critical than it really is.
• wrs 9y ago
  Is there not a little bit of irony in someone writing this and then posting it on Medium?
• relics443 9y ago
  So she wants people to work less and get paid more? To work on stupid things, that aren't critical? And someone is willing to pay a lot of money for you to do that? Also, her idea that getting paid well means nothing because there are people who make more money left me scratching my head.
  • eberkund 9y ago
    No, I think she is saying that if 20% of the software we develop is important lets stop working on the 80% that isn't and instead work 1 day per week on the important stuff and get paid the same amount. In theory this makes sense, but I think it is a massive oversimplification.
  • the_gastropod 9y ago
    > Also, her idea that getting paid well means nothing because there are people who make more money left me scratching my head. I think her point was that working (especially long hours) has costs: childcare, restaurant food if you're limited on time to cook, transportation costs, work-appropriate clothing, etc. So while you're being paid "well", you may ultimately be better off working less and being paid less.
• Tepix 9y ago
  Melissa McEwen is spot on. I have had 30h jobs software development jobs for the last 7 years. I make enough money as-is and see no reason to switch to 35h or 40h. I'd rather see my kids more. The only reason to work more would be do found a company again. Btw I have 30 days of paid vacation per year (which is not unusual in Germany).
• iamcasen 9y ago
  In software it is more true than any other industry. The software we develop has the power to be leveraged across all industries. Much like the wheel, it should not be constantly re-invented. I truly feel like most software development should be done via autonomous software partnerships not unlike law firms. There would be so much less waste, and I imagine it would be a huge boost to the economy. We don't need any more eye-grabbing, social-media-connected, neopet apps people. Software engineers are building useless and inane shit because that's how incentives work under capitalism. It's a shame.
• horsecaptin 9y ago
  To many people your job looks like BS, but it isn't because someone clearly values the fact that you are where you are and is willing to pay real money for it. If you think your job is BS, then do yourself a favor and work hard towards moving to a job that you do not think is BS. Other people's opinions are like the tides and the wind - sometimes they bode well and sometimes they don't.
• pendar747 9y ago
  This article says nothing about how software engineering is a "bullshit job". Her only point that comes close is that she once worked at a job where she was building a pointless website, but that only makes her job in that instance "bullshit". Look all around you and you see almost endless ways that digital systems are transforming and running our lives, every single one of those needed to be engineered, designed and tested by someone, which could have been a software engineer. I think it wouldn't be an overstatement to stay without software engineers our modern life would be impossible. I often hear complaining that they are going to leave software engineering because of a flawed list of problems, while the real problem lies in their perception of what the profession should be. IMO software engineering is about solving challenging technical problems, and not necessarily what is created in the process. A lot of what a software engineer does is not apparent in the end result, but is absolutely necessary to get those programs, systems or applications running. I think there are far worst professions out there, which in comparison achieve so little to SWE. Working hours does not make any job a "bullshit" one, and the working hours and the pay grade of a SWE are obviously far better than most job. The parts of the article talks about SWE from a completely biased and personal view, which almost have no value to the reader. I'm surprised that such article would even be by on HN's first page!
• cleandreams 9y ago
  I think if I had had an easy out I might have left the profession. But I didn't and so I've done a lot of somewhat scary but ultimately really rewarding things: took the hardest jobs I could get, then went out contracting, then founded a start up myself, then got into AI. My career has been fascinating and fun, with some genuine difficult patches. I'm grateful I didn't have a family farm to escape to.
• matt_s 9y ago
  The article barely touches on the bullshit factor. Sure every workplace has BS people have to deal with, that doesn't matter if it is a tech company. I would venture a guess that the majority, perhaps vast majority (i.e. 75% or greater), of software development jobs are doing CRUD with data in a RDBMS. Even if you work on UI/front end, its still a CRUD app. There's nothing wrong with that, just call it what it is. We (the majority) aren't progressing the science part of computer science in any way really. We are making some set of problems easier to be accomplished/solved. They may be data sets in interesting industries or enabling things like health care or medical research but CRUD apps aren't revolutionary. If anything we are making things more complex with a glut of new shiny tools and abstractions that don't do things that much differently than 15 years ago. The sheer amount of dependencies some tool/frameworks require is mind boggling for basically sending text around over the internet and storing it on disk somewhere. Yes we all like to mock the way the web looked 15 years ago but is the tech underneath drastically different? I feel like we tend to paint ourselves into a corner sometimes with the tech/tools and then end up remodeling the house to finish painting the room. That is definite BS.
• ai_ja_nai 9y ago
  I agree that the link with SWE is not so apparent, but there is and it's a subtle one: as software engineering, we take pride in researching and leveraging the best and latest to solve our challenges. Time management included. And yet we systematically end up working in overburdened teams and overdue projects. We surrounded ourselves of IDEs, instant messaging platforms, calendars with reminders, automation and all sort of stuff to be more productive. And the agile methodologies! The holy Scrum/Kanban! How much time we dedicated to People Management, Release Management, Sprint Planning and the like. Our schedules should be bulletproof. And, yet, we work at least 50 hours per week with continuous surprises from the managerial perspective due to disorganization. And we tolerate all of this because we have been told it's heroic, instead of beheading the profitering gluttons that come up with the usual "goodmorning, this unannounced thing must be delivered tomorrow". This is the bullshit. The cultural hysteria that sacrificing our health and free time is necessary due to some kind of higher purpose
  • AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    > And the agile methodologies! The holy Scrum/Kanban! How much time we dedicated to People Management, Release Management, Sprint Planning and the like. The problem is, you need to do some planning. The question is, what's the way of doing planning that takes the least amount of time and effort, and still gets done what needs done?
    • ai_ja_nai 9y ago
      The metodologies and all of the aforementioned tools are fine. But instead of using them to stay in the schedules with less, we used them to make more in the same amount of time. We pursued efficiency ("more with less") and profit instead of keeping the profits constant and give more free time to people. In other words, economic growth demand eroded the margin that we gained through these efficiencies.