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3 years of work being thrown away is not a big deal. Imagine a retail employee complaining about how nobody cares what they did the past 3 years. I don't see a

3 years of work being thrown away is not a big deal. Imagine a retail employee complaining about how nobody cares what they did the past 3 years. I don't see a difference.

fred_is_fred 4y ago
Presumably the retail employee does not see this as a passion or life calling and rather only a paycheck. From the look of his writing he was pretty passionate about this.
cpsns 4y ago
Nah, this is a huge deal for some of us. Many of us put in years of work for something to be thrown away without a second thought, all of our time and effort for nothing. I am someone who wants to build long lasting, useful systems. When my last employer was acquired and killed it really, really upset me to see all my hard work and my coworkers hard work destroyed. I’d go so far as to say it seriously affected my view of the industry in a negative way and permanently hurt my career satisfaction.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  Of course it's a huge deal. What they're saying is that it happens. Constantly. Sometimes I even ponder if my decades-worth experience is not basically because I'm writing the same program over and over again, just for different companies...
  - cpsns 4y ago
    > What they're saying is that it happens. Constantly. And I’m personally not okay with that when it comes to the work I do. It was a personally very eye opening experience to drive around with a guy who built homes. He'd point out every house he worked on, even ones 30 years ago and you could tell he was really, truly proud of his work and showing it off. I realised if someone asked to see my past work it simply doesn't exist in any meaningful capacity. I take pride in my work, but it doesn't exist long term like his does. I want that same kind of satisfaction he had, but there's no way for me to get it. His work lasts a lifetime and makes the lives of people better, mine lasts a few years at best and often doesn't.
    - disqard 4y ago
      I've felt this same way for a while now. What I find interesting (and hard to reconcile) is how society loves to reward the intangible, derivative, overcomplicated stuff, and ignores the foundational things. The overused (and valid) example is "compare swe to teacher compensation". In truly fractal fashion, this is also true within our own industry: Build an engine capable of running an ML model very fast? Meh. Take that, and layer an API on top, and charge $$ per image-generating call? Shut up and take my money. I don't have an insightful mental model for how to deal with this, except to note that this pattern is prevalent in all human occupations -- the "higher up" you are in the "value chain", the more derived/bullshit-y your fundamental contribution to society is, and simultaneously, the more $$ you can make off of it.
egypturnash 4y ago
The retail work was not huge and important but it was definitely work - people came into the shop looking for a thing the shop might be able to provide, and many of them left with the thing they wanted. You would not have anything to show for three years of that beyond a series of paystubs, but every day you would have seen the fruits of your work. Laboring for years on something that ends up trashed and under corporate NDAs, with nothing to show beyond a series of paystubs, is different from that. Most of my friends who work for corporations have felt this at least once in their career, to be honest. It generally pays better than the retail job, at least.
- raydev 4y ago
  > Laboring for years on something that ends up trashed and under corporate NDAs, with nothing to show beyond a series of paystubs, is different from that I'm struggling to relate to this. Me and the rest of my team were literally laid off just a few weeks ago. What I'm hearing from the inside is that half of our work is now in maintenance mode (it's kinda necessary for KTL) and the Big Project™ we were working on is fully abandoned. I guess I'm sad the Big Project™ will no longer exist, but I learned dozens of lessons while working on it, and I'm more confident and a better engineer because of those lessons and effort. And I get to add some nice things to my resumé. It doesn't truly feel like a loss. Hundreds of other companies will do similar things and I will try to join them or I'll be interested in some other field in a few years. But I'm already familiar with changing jobs every few years so perhaps that's why I find it harder to relate.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Seriously, this headline gave me a chuckle. Like I'm sure it feels bad or whatever but it's weird when anything I build for pay isn't dead and gone within three years, either replaced or simply abandoned for various reasons. My first thought was that "first time?" hanging-scene meme.
noizejoy 4y ago
> 3 years of work being thrown away is not a big deal. Imagine a retail employee complaining about how nobody cares what they did the past 3 years. I don't see a difference. There’s a big difference between project work and operational work, including what kind of individuals it attracts and therefore what many of those individuals gain work satisfaction from.
TristanBall 4y ago
If your work is rote crud apps the sure, I can see that. But if your work has been the development, deployment and advocacy of your own ideas and research... thats very different to me, because the level of personal ownership is greater.
bombcar 4y ago
There's a difference between working on a job that you know is repeated every day (this is retail) and working on something that's supposed to be "one and done" - this is more like a retail manager working for three years to get a new location up and running and then having it shut down.

3 years of work being thrown away is not a big deal. Imagine a retail employee complaining about how nobody cares what they did the past 3 years. I don't see a difference.

fred_is_fred 4y ago

Presumably the retail employee does not see this as a passion or life calling and rather only a paycheck. From the look of his writing he was pretty passionate about this.

cpsns 4y ago

Nah, this is a huge deal for some of us. Many of us put in years of work for something to be thrown away without a second thought, all of our time and effort for nothing. I am someone who wants to build long lasting, useful systems. When my last employer was acquired and killed it really, really upset me to see all my hard work and my coworkers hard work destroyed. I’d go so far as to say it seriously affected my view of the industry in a negative way and permanently hurt my career satisfaction.

AshamedCaptain 4y ago
Of course it's a huge deal. What they're saying is that it happens. Constantly. Sometimes I even ponder if my decades-worth experience is not basically because I'm writing the same program over and over again, just for different companies...
- cpsns 4y ago
  > What they're saying is that it happens. Constantly. And I’m personally not okay with that when it comes to the work I do. It was a personally very eye opening experience to drive around with a guy who built homes. He'd point out every house he worked on, even ones 30 years ago and you could tell he was really, truly proud of his work and showing it off. I realised if someone asked to see my past work it simply doesn't exist in any meaningful capacity. I take pride in my work, but it doesn't exist long term like his does. I want that same kind of satisfaction he had, but there's no way for me to get it. His work lasts a lifetime and makes the lives of people better, mine lasts a few years at best and often doesn't.
  - disqard 4y ago
    I've felt this same way for a while now. What I find interesting (and hard to reconcile) is how society loves to reward the intangible, derivative, overcomplicated stuff, and ignores the foundational things. The overused (and valid) example is "compare swe to teacher compensation". In truly fractal fashion, this is also true within our own industry: Build an engine capable of running an ML model very fast? Meh. Take that, and layer an API on top, and charge $$ per image-generating call? Shut up and take my money. I don't have an insightful mental model for how to deal with this, except to note that this pattern is prevalent in all human occupations -- the "higher up" you are in the "value chain", the more derived/bullshit-y your fundamental contribution to society is, and simultaneously, the more $$ you can make off of it.

egypturnash 4y ago

The retail work was not huge and important but it was definitely work - people came into the shop looking for a thing the shop might be able to provide, and many of them left with the thing they wanted. You would not have anything to show for three years of that beyond a series of paystubs, but every day you would have seen the fruits of your work. Laboring for years on something that ends up trashed and under corporate NDAs, with nothing to show beyond a series of paystubs, is different from that. Most of my friends who work for corporations have felt this at least once in their career, to be honest. It generally pays better than the retail job, at least.

raydev 4y ago
> Laboring for years on something that ends up trashed and under corporate NDAs, with nothing to show beyond a series of paystubs, is different from that I'm struggling to relate to this. Me and the rest of my team were literally laid off just a few weeks ago. What I'm hearing from the inside is that half of our work is now in maintenance mode (it's kinda necessary for KTL) and the Big Project™ we were working on is fully abandoned. I guess I'm sad the Big Project™ will no longer exist, but I learned dozens of lessons while working on it, and I'm more confident and a better engineer because of those lessons and effort. And I get to add some nice things to my resumé. It doesn't truly feel like a loss. Hundreds of other companies will do similar things and I will try to join them or I'll be interested in some other field in a few years. But I'm already familiar with changing jobs every few years so perhaps that's why I find it harder to relate.

yamtaddle 4y ago

Seriously, this headline gave me a chuckle. Like I'm sure it feels bad or whatever but it's weird when anything I build for pay isn't dead and gone within three years, either replaced or simply abandoned for various reasons. My first thought was that "first time?" hanging-scene meme.

noizejoy 4y ago

> 3 years of work being thrown away is not a big deal. Imagine a retail employee complaining about how nobody cares what they did the past 3 years. I don't see a difference. There’s a big difference between project work and operational work, including what kind of individuals it attracts and therefore what many of those individuals gain work satisfaction from.

TristanBall 4y ago

If your work is rote crud apps the sure, I can see that. But if your work has been the development, deployment and advocacy of your own ideas and research... thats very different to me, because the level of personal ownership is greater.

bombcar 4y ago

There's a difference between working on a job that you know is repeated every day (this is retail) and working on something that's supposed to be "one and done" - this is more like a retail manager working for three years to get a new location up and running and then having it shut down.