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Here's a prospective from someone who became a software dev in my late 20s after other jobs. Relatively speaking, if you can write working code and show up on t

by xnyan 6y ago

Here's a prospective from someone who became a software dev in my late 20s after other jobs. Relatively speaking, if you can write working code and show up on time, you have a lot of leverage in getting and keeping employment, more than most other middle to upper middle class professions. This means org politics has less effect on you, and less incentive to get involved. As a dev you can, but don't have to, think as much about the politics and operations of your org for all kinds of reasons. You are relatively harder to replace so internal politics tends to matter less, and if the org makes decisions you don't like, you can be confident that you can leave and find something else versus the long and often unfruitful process of trying to change an org from within. Politics can and often is messy, how often have you heard something like "I just want to build things" (it's how I feel for sure), if you can get paid well to do that, why get involved with a messy decision making process?

52-6F-62 6y ago
To extend upon this (though personally I feel a little differently than yourself, but inclusive of how you feel as well): My personal experience has seen individual contributing software developers have little voice in the matter regardless. Outside of "tech"-forward companies they are of little consequence in the larger political structure of a company. I've seen it and been it—speak up about a desired direction, voice concerns about a decided direction, concerns about faulty legacy software, etc. Those voices, unless amplified by political clout mean little to nothing to anyone else. In a lot of organizations, title is everything when it comes to moving discussion. So my thinking, if we're continuing the comparison to the medical profession, is hierarchies must follow similarly. A head of Surgery in a hospital ward is going to be a doctor. Hospital directors are going to be doctors. Sure, the CEO may not be, but they rely on the expertise of their directors. If the directors don't follow the same code as the rest of the professionals under them, then they can theoretically impose any ethics they choose and the onus falls to the IC/surgeon/etc which for the intended purposes of the oath/license/regulation at all is tenuous.

by xnyan 6y ago

52-6F-62 6y ago

To extend upon this (though personally I feel a little differently than yourself, but inclusive of how you feel as well): My personal experience has seen individual contributing software developers have little voice in the matter regardless. Outside of "tech"-forward companies they are of little consequence in the larger political structure of a company. I've seen it and been it—speak up about a desired direction, voice concerns about a decided direction, concerns about faulty legacy software, etc. Those voices, unless amplified by political clout mean little to nothing to anyone else. In a lot of organizations, title is everything when it comes to moving discussion. So my thinking, if we're continuing the comparison to the medical profession, is hierarchies must follow similarly. A head of Surgery in a hospital ward is going to be a doctor. Hospital directors are going to be doctors. Sure, the CEO may not be, but they rely on the expertise of their directors. If the directors don't follow the same code as the rest of the professionals under them, then they can theoretically impose any ethics they choose and the onus falls to the IC/surgeon/etc which for the intended purposes of the oath/license/regulation at all is tenuous.