6 ms·

This sort of crap is why I left software. Niceness over competence. I didn't enter this (at the time) largely solitary profession to have all the best, juicies

by tomc1985 5y ago

This sort of crap is why I left software. Niceness over competence. I didn't enter this (at the time) largely solitary profession to have all the best, juiciest parts of the job get taken over by these people-oriented idiots. There needs to be a revolution that returns programming back into the hands of solitary nerds working on sheer competence. More people need to care about the quality of the final output than whether or not the guy who wrote it is "a nice fellow". I feel like this is 'participation trophy' culture coming back to haunt us. Stop being so afraid of getting yelled at, anger is a part of life!

endisneigh 5y ago
I can't tell if this post is sarcastic or not, haha. What are you doing now?
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Not sarcastic. I am now software-adjacent, working solo. Got sick of the people aspect and the fact that my employer takes 99% of the value I create and then forces me to practically beg for a 5% raise each year Fuck that industry. I became a programmer because I love computers, not people
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    > then forces me to practically beg for a 5% raise each year I hear you. thanks for the reply
  - robocat 5y ago
    > Got sick of the people aspect and the fact that my employer takes 99% of the value I create You are on ycombinator, where there is all the information you need to know on how to capture your value. If I deconstruct your complaint, it is inherently capitalist. If you want to receive profits you need to be a risk-taking owner. Why is it fair that employees do not get paid what they are “worth”? Firstly, a startup example. What you perceive as profits, are often the returns for risks. Risks a well paid employee doesn’t take. A VC needs to get 30x* returns from the 1 in 10 successes they get, just to break even on the risk adjusted returns for an investment where capital is locked up for more than a decade. Employee’s risk free wages are sometimes the largest cost for a startup. If you are a very early employee then only you have the incentive to negotiate ownership (and also deal with all the risks of ownership!). Secondly, an example of an existing business. Apple is a business that makes huge profits: Apple pays as little as possible to create as much profit as possible. A new employee never created the money machine (e.g. Apple), instead the employee joined it long after it was created, and the employee has no right to claim to the profits that the machine creates. Anytime you are late to the party to become an employee of any business, you will struggle to claim profits, and will only receive what you beg for. Capitalism 101. I know all the above is stating the completely obvious, but your statement is simply not coherent with reality, and that disturbs me. YC is about as capitalist as you can get so your statement seems jarring - HN is one of the few places founders can get good advice. If you wanted to “get your value”, perhaps join a cooperative (where membership is ownership). Or go to a country where rewards are spread more evenly to everyone. Or parse the benefits of being in the top 1% of the world as your rewards (assuming you work as a programmer in the US, you are likely in the top 1% of earners in the world). Actually you appear pretty angry, bitter and disappointed with your work. Perhaps investigate if you can learn a new attitude and be more satisfied with what you have. Just becoming an owner is unlikely solve your negative feelings IMHO. Note that I know plenty of people that echo what you are feeling - it is natural and you are definitely not alone! Disclaimer: I am a well off hippy capitalist that chooses to live in a socialist democratic country. I have been a whiner about wages in the past, and I have had a minor win at the capitalist lottery. * https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me-the-truth-about-vcs/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me... PG quote: “Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money. This isn't quite true. It is true that all they really care about is doing interesting work.”. Quote from https://corecursive.com/leaving-debian/ https://corecursive.com/leaving-debian/ ””” Adam: Around this time is when I first heard of Joey. And the thing that caught my interest about him was he looked like this platonic ideal of a hardcore software developer. He was just working on what he cared about and living out in the woods. At the time, everybody was talking about entrepreneurship and startups and how you can work crazy hard as a software developer and make a whole bunch of money, and then you’d be set for life. And here was Joey, and he had been through the first bubble and it seemed like he had cracked the code. He said, you’re looking at the numerator how much money you need to do what you want, but I’m looking at the denominator. I’ve just decreased my cost of living. I made the Zen move, so instead of hitting a big score, I can just do what I want right now. At least this was my impression from the outside. So that’s really the question, I wanted to ask Joey: Was this idyllic life you’ve built in a cabin in the woods as great as it looks? Joey: There’s always a backstory that might not live up to the romanticism. But I certainly do feel very lucky that I do have a lot of ability to take some time and just think about an idea and then be, okay, I’m going to go spend whatever amount of time it ends up taking, because it’s worth doing this. It’s hills around me here and a few mountains in the distance, but dense forest and I’m kind of down an oval bowl with basically completely isolated from whatever’s going on, except for whatever noise might filter up from the distant road a mile away. And yeah, it’s a very calm and peaceful place. And for me that’s more of just a background thing, I just know that, I can sit down and work for five hours and that’s a really nice thing. And I know that if I need a break, I can go and easily take a walk and refresh my mind. And so yeah, it’s the little things really that make living in a rural place nice. I wish more people have that ability and I feel very, very lucky to have it right now. Who knows how long it will continue. ”””
vlunkr 5y ago
I'm pretty sure this will hold true in my field where teamwork is required. If you're not nice, people won't want to talk to you, if you're not part of the communication chain, your value as a team member drops. No part of this has anything to do with software.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  The thing is software doesn't have to be a team activity. It goes against the current grain where everyone seems to want to build large teams of sort-of-competent nice guys, but you can have one or two really smart guys, and pay/treat them super well, and you can get an entire product out of them
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
antonzabirko 5y ago
Great perspective except anger doesn't need to be a part of life.
- jvvw 5y ago
  I think anger is a natural part of life sometimes - but we have some control of how we react to anger. I certainly would quit a job if one of my co-workers was allowed to shout at me! Often when we feel anger, there is something that needs to be expressed, but the art is in choosing the right moment and expressing it in the right way (which I add is certainly not an art I have perfected!).
  - antonzabirko 5y ago
    Agree
- tomc1985 5y ago
  It is though, and it will confront you when you least expect it. It should be seen as a wake-up call, not something to be afraid of.
  - antonzabirko 5y ago
    Life is what you make of it not what it makes of you. If you don't want anger it doesn't need to be there.
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      But it isn't. Circumstance molds you. The Great Depression did untold psychological damage to entire generations. I don't think they could just will the anger and resentment and destitution away
      - antonzabirko 5y ago
        Circumstance is what you allow it to be. Short of being put in a Chinese concentration camp ala Uighurs, you generally have the last say in circumstance to experience anger.
romanhn 5y ago
As an introvert who had to push himself to become one of those "people-oriented idiots", the reality you have to recognize is that software is ultimately about people. It is not written in a vacuum to make computers happy, there's generally a human (or a bunch of them) at the other end who will be deriving value from it. Working competently to solve the wrong problem is not how successful software is written. And the chances of solving the right problem without talking to people are, frankly, slim. There will not be a revolution that eschews the people aspects, the industry has evolved (yes, the opposite of devolved) beyond that. Walking around calling people idiots and being generally angry is not going to win you any trophies either.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Externally, with customers, sure. I agree that we are ultimately doing this for people. But internally, I do not think that having requirements filter through ever-growing and increasingly specialized teams is a net positive. Early in my career I worked directly with stakeholders and shareholders, and I was empowered to build and deploy things that solved their issues, often from scratch. And I did exactly that, and it felt great! When I quit, I worked mainly with my product manager, who in turn interfaced with god knows how many people, and only receive tasks after they were parceled out and dispatched to me via JIRA, where I could only see a small part of the picture and I was held to arbitrary metrics on performance. Things were much better when we programmers were a weird and mysterious rainmakers that the higher-ups didn't understand. This newer, more gentrified profession is ... a lot less enjoyable to work in.
  - romanhn 5y ago
    It sounds like you're burnt out on bad company/team culture then? I can assure you that there are still plenty of teams that operate similar to your early career experience. These tend to be in smaller companies. But even larger ones exist that offer team autonomy, participation in customer discovery, and sane management practices. You just have to be very careful about sussing out this info during the interview process. I guess what I'm getting at is while there are plenty of shitty teams, I wouldn't say it's an indictment on the industry as a whole. After 20-ish years in it, I'm actually optimistic that things are improving as new companies shed more of the traditional command-and-control techniques.
pc86 5y ago
I'm not sure what "'participation trophy' culture" has to do with not being an asshole. Being unable to express your opinions without anger or yelling isn't a sign of competence, it's a sign of a mental imbalance.
- _game_of_life 5y ago
  Working in the trades the guys that yelled and blew their fuses constantly were always clearly in over their heads and were failing to cope with the stress. I'm fond of the term "Mantrum" to describe the behavior. Children scream and throw tantrums. Adults channel those emotions into productive means or recreational outlets. Adults understand that their colleagues also experience the same frustrations and emotions, and it's unfair to be a messy bitch and pollute the work environment with that garbage. I really can't imagine thinking someone losing their cool and composure at their job is a sign of competency, of all things...
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    I have fond memories of working in an environment where we sometimes resolved differences with heated arguments. Ultimately either the better idea or cooler heads prevail, some people are just stubborn and take some coaxing.
    - doubled112 5y ago
      In general I have far preferred the coworkers who have had an honest heated reaction instead of the ones who play passive/aggressive mind games to try and get their way. It can be whatever angry word you want to call it, but not directed at you, and that's just fine with me. A cool and collected discussion is preferred, of course.
  - nickthegreek 5y ago
    When I was managing people, I understood that everyone might be a messy bitch once in awhile. I’m not privy to their personal issues and wanted to give them some flexibility. But if was repeated behavior, we would have to have a discussion.

endisneigh 5y ago

I can't tell if this post is sarcastic or not, haha. What are you doing now?

tomc1985 5y ago
Not sarcastic. I am now software-adjacent, working solo. Got sick of the people aspect and the fact that my employer takes 99% of the value I create and then forces me to practically beg for a 5% raise each year Fuck that industry. I became a programmer because I love computers, not people
- endisneigh 5y ago
  > then forces me to practically beg for a 5% raise each year I hear you. thanks for the reply
- robocat 5y ago
  > Got sick of the people aspect and the fact that my employer takes 99% of the value I create You are on ycombinator, where there is all the information you need to know on how to capture your value. If I deconstruct your complaint, it is inherently capitalist. If you want to receive profits you need to be a risk-taking owner. Why is it fair that employees do not get paid what they are “worth”? Firstly, a startup example. What you perceive as profits, are often the returns for risks. Risks a well paid employee doesn’t take. A VC needs to get 30x* returns from the 1 in 10 successes they get, just to break even on the risk adjusted returns for an investment where capital is locked up for more than a decade. Employee’s risk free wages are sometimes the largest cost for a startup. If you are a very early employee then only you have the incentive to negotiate ownership (and also deal with all the risks of ownership!). Secondly, an example of an existing business. Apple is a business that makes huge profits: Apple pays as little as possible to create as much profit as possible. A new employee never created the money machine (e.g. Apple), instead the employee joined it long after it was created, and the employee has no right to claim to the profits that the machine creates. Anytime you are late to the party to become an employee of any business, you will struggle to claim profits, and will only receive what you beg for. Capitalism 101. I know all the above is stating the completely obvious, but your statement is simply not coherent with reality, and that disturbs me. YC is about as capitalist as you can get so your statement seems jarring - HN is one of the few places founders can get good advice. If you wanted to “get your value”, perhaps join a cooperative (where membership is ownership). Or go to a country where rewards are spread more evenly to everyone. Or parse the benefits of being in the top 1% of the world as your rewards (assuming you work as a programmer in the US, you are likely in the top 1% of earners in the world). Actually you appear pretty angry, bitter and disappointed with your work. Perhaps investigate if you can learn a new attitude and be more satisfied with what you have. Just becoming an owner is unlikely solve your negative feelings IMHO. Note that I know plenty of people that echo what you are feeling - it is natural and you are definitely not alone! Disclaimer: I am a well off hippy capitalist that chooses to live in a socialist democratic country. I have been a whiner about wages in the past, and I have had a minor win at the capitalist lottery. * https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me-the-truth-about-vcs/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me... PG quote: “Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money. This isn't quite true. It is true that all they really care about is doing interesting work.”. Quote from https://corecursive.com/leaving-debian/ https://corecursive.com/leaving-debian/ ””” Adam: Around this time is when I first heard of Joey. And the thing that caught my interest about him was he looked like this platonic ideal of a hardcore software developer. He was just working on what he cared about and living out in the woods. At the time, everybody was talking about entrepreneurship and startups and how you can work crazy hard as a software developer and make a whole bunch of money, and then you’d be set for life. And here was Joey, and he had been through the first bubble and it seemed like he had cracked the code. He said, you’re looking at the numerator how much money you need to do what you want, but I’m looking at the denominator. I’ve just decreased my cost of living. I made the Zen move, so instead of hitting a big score, I can just do what I want right now. At least this was my impression from the outside. So that’s really the question, I wanted to ask Joey: Was this idyllic life you’ve built in a cabin in the woods as great as it looks? Joey: There’s always a backstory that might not live up to the romanticism. But I certainly do feel very lucky that I do have a lot of ability to take some time and just think about an idea and then be, okay, I’m going to go spend whatever amount of time it ends up taking, because it’s worth doing this. It’s hills around me here and a few mountains in the distance, but dense forest and I’m kind of down an oval bowl with basically completely isolated from whatever’s going on, except for whatever noise might filter up from the distant road a mile away. And yeah, it’s a very calm and peaceful place. And for me that’s more of just a background thing, I just know that, I can sit down and work for five hours and that’s a really nice thing. And I know that if I need a break, I can go and easily take a walk and refresh my mind. And so yeah, it’s the little things really that make living in a rural place nice. I wish more people have that ability and I feel very, very lucky to have it right now. Who knows how long it will continue. ”””

vlunkr 5y ago

I'm pretty sure this will hold true in my field where teamwork is required. If you're not nice, people won't want to talk to you, if you're not part of the communication chain, your value as a team member drops. No part of this has anything to do with software.

tomc1985 5y ago
The thing is software doesn't have to be a team activity. It goes against the current grain where everyone seems to want to build large teams of sort-of-competent nice guys, but you can have one or two really smart guys, and pay/treat them super well, and you can get an entire product out of them

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

antonzabirko 5y ago

Great perspective except anger doesn't need to be a part of life.

jvvw 5y ago
I think anger is a natural part of life sometimes - but we have some control of how we react to anger. I certainly would quit a job if one of my co-workers was allowed to shout at me! Often when we feel anger, there is something that needs to be expressed, but the art is in choosing the right moment and expressing it in the right way (which I add is certainly not an art I have perfected!).
- antonzabirko 5y ago
  Agree
tomc1985 5y ago
It is though, and it will confront you when you least expect it. It should be seen as a wake-up call, not something to be afraid of.
- antonzabirko 5y ago
  Life is what you make of it not what it makes of you. If you don't want anger it doesn't need to be there.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    But it isn't. Circumstance molds you. The Great Depression did untold psychological damage to entire generations. I don't think they could just will the anger and resentment and destitution away
    - antonzabirko 5y ago
      Circumstance is what you allow it to be. Short of being put in a Chinese concentration camp ala Uighurs, you generally have the last say in circumstance to experience anger.

romanhn 5y ago

As an introvert who had to push himself to become one of those "people-oriented idiots", the reality you have to recognize is that software is ultimately about people. It is not written in a vacuum to make computers happy, there's generally a human (or a bunch of them) at the other end who will be deriving value from it. Working competently to solve the wrong problem is not how successful software is written. And the chances of solving the right problem without talking to people are, frankly, slim. There will not be a revolution that eschews the people aspects, the industry has evolved (yes, the opposite of devolved) beyond that. Walking around calling people idiots and being generally angry is not going to win you any trophies either.

tomc1985 5y ago
Externally, with customers, sure. I agree that we are ultimately doing this for people. But internally, I do not think that having requirements filter through ever-growing and increasingly specialized teams is a net positive. Early in my career I worked directly with stakeholders and shareholders, and I was empowered to build and deploy things that solved their issues, often from scratch. And I did exactly that, and it felt great! When I quit, I worked mainly with my product manager, who in turn interfaced with god knows how many people, and only receive tasks after they were parceled out and dispatched to me via JIRA, where I could only see a small part of the picture and I was held to arbitrary metrics on performance. Things were much better when we programmers were a weird and mysterious rainmakers that the higher-ups didn't understand. This newer, more gentrified profession is ... a lot less enjoyable to work in.
- romanhn 5y ago
  It sounds like you're burnt out on bad company/team culture then? I can assure you that there are still plenty of teams that operate similar to your early career experience. These tend to be in smaller companies. But even larger ones exist that offer team autonomy, participation in customer discovery, and sane management practices. You just have to be very careful about sussing out this info during the interview process. I guess what I'm getting at is while there are plenty of shitty teams, I wouldn't say it's an indictment on the industry as a whole. After 20-ish years in it, I'm actually optimistic that things are improving as new companies shed more of the traditional command-and-control techniques.

pc86 5y ago

I'm not sure what "'participation trophy' culture" has to do with not being an asshole. Being unable to express your opinions without anger or yelling isn't a sign of competence, it's a sign of a mental imbalance.

_game_of_life 5y ago
Working in the trades the guys that yelled and blew their fuses constantly were always clearly in over their heads and were failing to cope with the stress. I'm fond of the term "Mantrum" to describe the behavior. Children scream and throw tantrums. Adults channel those emotions into productive means or recreational outlets. Adults understand that their colleagues also experience the same frustrations and emotions, and it's unfair to be a messy bitch and pollute the work environment with that garbage. I really can't imagine thinking someone losing their cool and composure at their job is a sign of competency, of all things...
- tomc1985 5y ago
  I have fond memories of working in an environment where we sometimes resolved differences with heated arguments. Ultimately either the better idea or cooler heads prevail, some people are just stubborn and take some coaxing.
  - doubled112 5y ago
    In general I have far preferred the coworkers who have had an honest heated reaction instead of the ones who play passive/aggressive mind games to try and get their way. It can be whatever angry word you want to call it, but not directed at you, and that's just fine with me. A cool and collected discussion is preferred, of course.
- nickthegreek 5y ago
  When I was managing people, I understood that everyone might be a messy bitch once in awhile. I’m not privy to their personal issues and wanted to give them some flexibility. But if was repeated behavior, we would have to have a discussion.