7 ms·

As a fellow developer who has been passionate about open-source programming since childhood, I was disgusted in this last hiring bubble how condescending and di

by bratao 3y ago

As a fellow developer who has been passionate about open-source programming since childhood, I was disgusted in this last hiring bubble how condescending and disrespectful the developers were towards other professions, which is disappointing. My general feeling was that it elevated developers to a seemingly different caste of "special" people, and here in my country (Brazil) there was advertisements everywhere about how you can study a couple of weeks and get a Top 1% salary.

ChuckNorris89 3y ago
Don't worry, the sweet irony is hitting those condescending tech-bros now too the same way it hit the condescending crypto/stock bros who kept preaching "the market only goes up", "to the moon" and, my personal favorite which I read on HN, "developer demand is infinite". How's that infinite demand working out now tech-bros? Just ask Twitter employees. https://imgur.com/a/ZSEl44o https://imgur.com/a/ZSEl44o A lot of people working in tech were delusional by the 10+ year long cheap money printing bonanza which fueled VC growth, and a bust is a good reality check that no boom lasts forever and that it's best to be humble and not inflate your lifestyle while you're on top, as your position on top was most likely due to survivorship bias and great market conditions and not earned through raw skills and hard work alone.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > https://imgur.com/a/ZSEl44o https://imgur.com/a/ZSEl44o I was around for the last 13 years, and I'm pretty certain that it was *self-identified left-leaning journalists* who told coal-miners "LearnToCode" and then got all huffy when they got told "#learntocode". Developers weren't taking part in this mess.
  - ProllyInfamous 3y ago
    I'member when "Learn to Code" was taken as SEXIST somehow?! It's irrelevant now, it's more properly "Learn to prompt" [-engineer without tell anybody you have self-obsolesced your own career].
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    There were some developers at least condoning it. I remember having debates about this around the time it had really picked up and I remember people here and otherwise telling me developers would never have to worry because demand was seemingly infinite or something. I fucked up listening to them.
  - Tommstein 3y ago
    Don't forget Joe Biden, who needed a break because having the ability to go down into a mine and throw shit into a furnace obviously means that you can and presumably should learn to program instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDRK0MyuuIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDRK0MyuuIM
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  I'm a blue collar IBEW electrician that inevitably injured myself working in confined spaces. Summer 2022, I set out on my quest to become a technical writer, but by Holidays 2022 I was generating images and tip-toe-ing into the emerging ChatGPT stuff. By January 2023, I was already certain that professional writing would be increasingly-difficult to enter (as a career field) as a novice content creator: I was already able to generate extensive copy and then just act as copy-editor-"writer" Thankfully a natural disaster (landslide creep) has forced me to re-prioritize my life, down to potentially building yet another house — I'm not sure at this point I have the physical energy, but I certainly know that my brainpower cannot keep up (competitively) in a paid-market content onslaught (which is inevitable). Whatdo? My body was so excited to sit in a desk, just shy of 40... and now I just don't see a point competing with all the more-qualified laid-offs (redundant white collar worklings, some replaced by AGI-like services, competing against novices like me... which GPT certainly outperforms, at 1/100th the price).
  - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
    There must be work in your area that isn't backbreaking physical labour or computer knowledge work revolving around rapidly changing fads. How about working for the government or public companies or institutions? ChatGPT knows a lot when it comes to information that's public in the internet or open sourced a lot, like web dev, but a lot of business require institutional knowledge that's always in the heads of the workers and never opensourced online like electrical engineering, embedded programing, train operators, plumbers, electricians, PLC programming, etc. Knowledge work is so much more than web dev or copyrighting.
  - safety1st 3y ago
    Here's one thing you've got going for you: you can reason about electrical work far better than the general population as well as ChatGPT, which can barely reason at all. It can regurgitate what it scoops up from its training data very well. When it has to combine ideas in novel ways it starts to hallucinate and requires an operator with genuine expertise to separate fact from fiction. As a general purpose novice copywriter I think yeah a lot of people are gonna struggle in this new world. But you are an electrical expert. Maybe that's your angle.
- jarym 3y ago
  Same voices are heard whenever there’s a real estate bubble and wanna-be landlords come out with justifications like ‘people will always need a place to live so buying and renting will always work’
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  It's also hitting just as hard the people who were humble and hard working and who learned to code because it is (or was) one of the last firmly middle class jobs you could be allowed to do without a degree or background check. It doesn't only affect the people you don't like so I would chill on the glee, personally.
  - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
    Tech-bros were by far the best paid class in the middle class. People laid off from big tech are now kicking it back in SE-Asia with the severance money they got. No tears will be shed for them. They'll easily find other employment outside of big-tech. They'll still be middle class. I'd put my energy caring more about underpaid teachers, doctors, nurses, emergency personnel, or other the lower classes of the middle class that got laid off, if I were you, instead of defending overpaid tech-bros that got a dose of reality.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      My point is that those categories aren't as separate as you like to think. I used to teach at a code school, and every single cohort had a nurse and a public school teacher in it. It was a running joke among the staff mostly because it was a very alarming trend we couldn't avoid seeing. Those people didn't become "tech bros", to the extent they were admirable individuals before coding they remained so afterwards. A lot of people only entered the middle class because of coding work and will exit it when they can't continue. I'm one of these and I enjoy mocking tech workers as much as anyone but I trust my class solidarity is well placed in bowing out of this one.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Most nurses, EMTs, and teachers haven't been middle class for DECADES.
      - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
        They are in Europe.
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
  Not sure about learning to weld. c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer , possible emergence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interfa... , remote working, AI, and the implications of that.
effingwewt 3y ago
History rhymes. This whole thing was a repeat of the dotcom bubble. Back then it was 'learn web design!' Here too we had bootcamps to learn to code in weeks. At that point the bubble was reaching critical mass. Same damn thing happened before. I tried warning people- here on HN the sentiment was 'we are indisposable'. When the cost-cutting measures and hiring freezes began I tried warning again and was told 'its not a hiring freeze at Uber, we are fine...just stopped hiring for certain departments (definition of a hiring freeze)'. Then Twitter began the firing dominoes and here we are. Thing is it was their company culture and management that made this happen. Unreal perks, infantilization of the workforce, telling them how important they are, how they are changing the world, they are the 10x programmer. I can't believe our workforce is going through this again only 20 years later. Seems housing is headed the same way. We need protections for people, not companies. This is going to keeo happening unless we stop it.
- naravara 3y ago
  > I tried warning people- here on HN the sentiment was 'we are indisposable'. Maybe if you were actually any good. I reckon at least 60% of these bootcamp alumni were just dead weight. I've interviewed so many people who "learned to code" but had no meaningful logical reasoning or problem solving skills. They could maybe understand syntax, but for the most part they just have some basic familiarity with various frameworks and tools. They don't know how any of it actually works. Experienced developers are often mediocre communicators, so it's not even like they'd be able to explain what needs to be done clearly enough for people without problem solving skills of their own to run with the ball once its been handed to them. Developers are there for their programming skills, not pedagogical ones, so it's just not a realistic staffing model to be this way.
  - everforward 3y ago
    I had friends that did bootcamps and this mirrors my experience. They know how to use Express a little bit, but not how the middleware works or what HTTP status codes mean. They can write code if I translate it to requirements and show them something similar already in the code. They tend to flail around when handed a more open ended problem like "we need an endpoint that will return the last 5 purchases made by a particular user". They don't yet grok the kind of questions to ask like where should the data come from and what format should I return it in? I don't mean to disparage them as students, I just think they were sold a lie. New programmers probably can learn the very basics of a language and framework in 8 weeks, but learning to solve open-ended problems takes a fair bit of practice for most people. There isn't really a shortcut through that.
antibasilisk 3y ago
I notice that there is a huge difference in the attitudes of people who learned programming in childhood, compared to people who learned in adulthood. As someone in the former group, I find myself agreeing strongly with your assessment. There is a lack of humility that is far too common, that manifests as a toxic attitude and bad spending habits. I see a similar issue with people in finance, and once the illusion fades such people are prone to suicide, as was the case in 2008.

by bratao 3y ago

ChuckNorris89 3y ago

Don't worry, the sweet irony is hitting those condescending tech-bros now too the same way it hit the condescending crypto/stock bros who kept preaching "the market only goes up", "to the moon" and, my personal favorite which I read on HN, "developer demand is infinite". How's that infinite demand working out now tech-bros? Just ask Twitter employees. https://imgur.com/a/ZSEl44o https://imgur.com/a/ZSEl44o A lot of people working in tech were delusional by the 10+ year long cheap money printing bonanza which fueled VC growth, and a bust is a good reality check that no boom lasts forever and that it's best to be humble and not inflate your lifestyle while you're on top, as your position on top was most likely due to survivorship bias and great market conditions and not earned through raw skills and hard work alone.

lelanthran 3y ago
> https://imgur.com/a/ZSEl44o https://imgur.com/a/ZSEl44o I was around for the last 13 years, and I'm pretty certain that it was *self-identified left-leaning journalists* who told coal-miners "LearnToCode" and then got all huffy when they got told "#learntocode". Developers weren't taking part in this mess.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  I'member when "Learn to Code" was taken as SEXIST somehow?! It's irrelevant now, it's more properly "Learn to prompt" [-engineer without tell anybody you have self-obsolesced your own career].
- the_only_law 3y ago
  There were some developers at least condoning it. I remember having debates about this around the time it had really picked up and I remember people here and otherwise telling me developers would never have to worry because demand was seemingly infinite or something. I fucked up listening to them.
- Tommstein 3y ago
  Don't forget Joe Biden, who needed a break because having the ability to go down into a mine and throw shit into a furnace obviously means that you can and presumably should learn to program instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDRK0MyuuIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDRK0MyuuIM
ProllyInfamous 3y ago
I'm a blue collar IBEW electrician that inevitably injured myself working in confined spaces. Summer 2022, I set out on my quest to become a technical writer, but by Holidays 2022 I was generating images and tip-toe-ing into the emerging ChatGPT stuff. By January 2023, I was already certain that professional writing would be increasingly-difficult to enter (as a career field) as a novice content creator: I was already able to generate extensive copy and then just act as copy-editor-"writer" Thankfully a natural disaster (landslide creep) has forced me to re-prioritize my life, down to potentially building yet another house — I'm not sure at this point I have the physical energy, but I certainly know that my brainpower cannot keep up (competitively) in a paid-market content onslaught (which is inevitable). Whatdo? My body was so excited to sit in a desk, just shy of 40... and now I just don't see a point competing with all the more-qualified laid-offs (redundant white collar worklings, some replaced by AGI-like services, competing against novices like me... which GPT certainly outperforms, at 1/100th the price).
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago
  There must be work in your area that isn't backbreaking physical labour or computer knowledge work revolving around rapidly changing fads. How about working for the government or public companies or institutions? ChatGPT knows a lot when it comes to information that's public in the internet or open sourced a lot, like web dev, but a lot of business require institutional knowledge that's always in the heads of the workers and never opensourced online like electrical engineering, embedded programing, train operators, plumbers, electricians, PLC programming, etc. Knowledge work is so much more than web dev or copyrighting.
- safety1st 3y ago
  Here's one thing you've got going for you: you can reason about electrical work far better than the general population as well as ChatGPT, which can barely reason at all. It can regurgitate what it scoops up from its training data very well. When it has to combine ideas in novel ways it starts to hallucinate and requires an operator with genuine expertise to separate fact from fiction. As a general purpose novice copywriter I think yeah a lot of people are gonna struggle in this new world. But you are an electrical expert. Maybe that's your angle.
jarym 3y ago
Same voices are heard whenever there’s a real estate bubble and wanna-be landlords come out with justifications like ‘people will always need a place to live so buying and renting will always work’
giraffe_lady 3y ago
It's also hitting just as hard the people who were humble and hard working and who learned to code because it is (or was) one of the last firmly middle class jobs you could be allowed to do without a degree or background check. It doesn't only affect the people you don't like so I would chill on the glee, personally.
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago
  Tech-bros were by far the best paid class in the middle class. People laid off from big tech are now kicking it back in SE-Asia with the severance money they got. No tears will be shed for them. They'll easily find other employment outside of big-tech. They'll still be middle class. I'd put my energy caring more about underpaid teachers, doctors, nurses, emergency personnel, or other the lower classes of the middle class that got laid off, if I were you, instead of defending overpaid tech-bros that got a dose of reality.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    My point is that those categories aren't as separate as you like to think. I used to teach at a code school, and every single cohort had a nurse and a public school teacher in it. It was a running joke among the staff mostly because it was a very alarming trend we couldn't avoid seeing. Those people didn't become "tech bros", to the extent they were admirable individuals before coding they remained so afterwards. A lot of people only entered the middle class because of coding work and will exit it when they can't continue. I'm one of these and I enjoy mocking tech workers as much as anyone but I trust my class solidarity is well placed in bowing out of this one.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Most nurses, EMTs, and teachers haven't been middle class for DECADES.
    - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
      They are in Europe.
LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
Not sure about learning to weld. c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer , possible emergence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interfa... , remote working, AI, and the implications of that.

effingwewt 3y ago

History rhymes. This whole thing was a repeat of the dotcom bubble. Back then it was 'learn web design!' Here too we had bootcamps to learn to code in weeks. At that point the bubble was reaching critical mass. Same damn thing happened before. I tried warning people- here on HN the sentiment was 'we are indisposable'. When the cost-cutting measures and hiring freezes began I tried warning again and was told 'its not a hiring freeze at Uber, we are fine...just stopped hiring for certain departments (definition of a hiring freeze)'. Then Twitter began the firing dominoes and here we are. Thing is it was their company culture and management that made this happen. Unreal perks, infantilization of the workforce, telling them how important they are, how they are changing the world, they are the 10x programmer. I can't believe our workforce is going through this again only 20 years later. Seems housing is headed the same way. We need protections for people, not companies. This is going to keeo happening unless we stop it.

naravara 3y ago
> I tried warning people- here on HN the sentiment was 'we are indisposable'. Maybe if you were actually any good. I reckon at least 60% of these bootcamp alumni were just dead weight. I've interviewed so many people who "learned to code" but had no meaningful logical reasoning or problem solving skills. They could maybe understand syntax, but for the most part they just have some basic familiarity with various frameworks and tools. They don't know how any of it actually works. Experienced developers are often mediocre communicators, so it's not even like they'd be able to explain what needs to be done clearly enough for people without problem solving skills of their own to run with the ball once its been handed to them. Developers are there for their programming skills, not pedagogical ones, so it's just not a realistic staffing model to be this way.
- everforward 3y ago
  I had friends that did bootcamps and this mirrors my experience. They know how to use Express a little bit, but not how the middleware works or what HTTP status codes mean. They can write code if I translate it to requirements and show them something similar already in the code. They tend to flail around when handed a more open ended problem like "we need an endpoint that will return the last 5 purchases made by a particular user". They don't yet grok the kind of questions to ask like where should the data come from and what format should I return it in? I don't mean to disparage them as students, I just think they were sold a lie. New programmers probably can learn the very basics of a language and framework in 8 weeks, but learning to solve open-ended problems takes a fair bit of practice for most people. There isn't really a shortcut through that.

antibasilisk 3y ago

I notice that there is a huge difference in the attitudes of people who learned programming in childhood, compared to people who learned in adulthood. As someone in the former group, I find myself agreeing strongly with your assessment. There is a lack of humility that is far too common, that manifests as a toxic attitude and bad spending habits. I see a similar issue with people in finance, and once the illusion fades such people are prone to suicide, as was the case in 2008.