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I agree with a lot that Louis says and what strikes me on this one is when he said the guy doesn't care about you and that he thinks the value is in the servers

I agree with a lot that Louis says and what strikes me on this one is when he said the guy doesn't care about you and that he thinks the value is in the servers and the api. I've worked in tech with a lot of people like this. They will tell you straight up they don't care about users or employees. CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level and should just do the same thing over and over. I'll tell you one thing you'll never change the reddit managements minds, never ever ever. Same as I was never able to change any of these other peoples minds.

koliber 3y ago
> CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level and should just do the same thing over and over. This shows how important it is to learn about a company, it's culture, philosophy, and values before joining. I can see how some people operate like this, and I don't want to work with them. For anyone reading this who thinks all companies are like the one that parent described, I want to share that it is not true. There are plenty of companies who based their collaboration with their workers on other mental models than cogs-in-the-machine.
- koito17 3y ago
  > learn about a company, it's culture, philosophy, and values before joining. I may sound dumb, but how does one do this? What question would you ask in an interview in order to determine whether the management are apathetic to their users or employees? The three interviews I did at my current company gave me a glimpse into the culture, but only a surface-level "first impression" kind of knowledge. With that said, I think I successfully ascertained the company's vision with the product I'm working on, but that's way easier to learn than culture IMO.
  - smugma 3y ago
    “Tell me about a time when Engineering changed the product direction…” Open-ended questions like that.
    - wellanyway 3y ago
      99% of us are intervieved by HR and a dev. This sounds like a question for a CEO or head of product.
      - est31 3y ago
        Those might be the people who are the subjects of that story, but the story might be known around the company.
        Ansik 3y ago
        That's a good point. I'd go further to argue that if stories like that aren't known around the company (or at least by the staff hiring you), it could itself be seen as an orange, if not red, flag.
      - ilyt 3y ago
        ...you think dev wouldn't notice if the product they are making changed direction ?
      - btilly 3y ago
        No, that's a question for a dev. If the CEO can tell you about how engineering changed the product, but the dev can't, then your experience is going to match the dev's. And the part of "engineering" that changed the product was almost certainly not a dev. Besides, it is common for CEOs to think that they are more responsive than they really are. And they are generally better at marketing than truth. So for both reasons, I would not trust their answer unless it is backed up by the rank and file.
  - korijn 3y ago
    Ask if you can meet (anyone from) your potential team and ask them directly.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - koliber 3y ago
    That's a great question! There is no single approach. It's a soft skill. I don't think there is a single magic question you can ask and you'll get a black-and-white answer. Here are some ideas: - read about the company on glassdoor. Try to read between the lines. Are the reviews fluff? Are there any veiled criticisms. Read the high praises and the vulgar criticisms with a grain of salt. They are a signal, but people often have an agenda or are led by emotion when they post like that. Pay attention to the mixed reviews who give you the good and some bad. See if there are any patterns between reviews. - I hope you will have an interview with either the hiring manager, or one or more peers. Ask them questions about how it is to work there. Find way to ask without asking "How is it working there?" directly. Some ideas: - Am I joining because the team is growing, or am I replacing someone? If replacing, why did the person before me leave? - How long have the people on the team I am joining been there? You're looking to get a feel for tenure and seniority. - How often do you speak with your manager? Their manager? The CTO? The CEO? In general, the more often, and the more approachable leadership is, the less likely you're thought of as a cog and seen more as a human. - Ask if they could give a concrete example of how their values or principles have been used in practice recently. Make sure you read these ahead of time. If they can't tell, then their values might be bullet points on a glossy brochure that have no application in reality. If they don't know their values, that means no one cares about them. - How often do you have to work overtime? Is it normal? Is it occasional? How is that recognized? How is that seen? - Ask how they define and recognize excellence on their team. Listen to the story they tell. Is it mechanical? Do you get a non-answer? A blank stare? Draw your own conclusions. This is not a set of checkboxes. The best companies are not perfect. The worst companies do some things right (I would hope). It gets easier with time, as you get more experiences under your belt, you'll understand where you fit and where you don't. You'll build a gut feeling for this.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    >I may sound dumb, but how does one do this? Read reviews on Glassdoor.com. Take them with a grain of salt, but if you see a lot of reviews all saying similar things about the management, it's probably true.
- mordae 3y ago
  No, it shows that we need to build companies where employees have stake in the company and means to affect it's direction. Because otherwise you are always fighting an uphill battle and get boiled like a frog when things inevitably start to go south.
  - nickserv 3y ago
    Something about workers owning the means of production...
    - mordae 3y ago
      Quite. https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    Isn’t this what a joint-stock company does? Anyone can purchase shares (in privately held companies its more difficult but often possible) which grants them proportional votes for things that the board of directors lay out. Every tech company I know of grants workers options/stock. What more is fair? What is it about worker status that should grant them outsized influence on a company and not, say, customers? Of course a joint-stock company allows customers to put skin in the game too (which a worker does not simply by being a worker) and giving them influence in addition to their ability to “vote with their wallet”. It solves all these problems and avoids the adversarial relationship issues.
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  > For anyone reading this who thinks all companies are like the one that parent described, I want to share that it is not true. There are plenty of companies who based their collaboration with their workers on other mental models than cogs-in-the-machine. It's even more complex. While top management might give a rough direction, even within a single company different managers may create way different environments.
- lloeki 3y ago
  > This shows how important it is to learn about a company, it's culture, philosophy, and values before joining. I can't recall the exact quote so paraphrasing here, I recall the gist of someone saying: > When deciding whether or not to join a group of people, take a long hard look at people already there, how they work, how they think, and if there's something that you see and don't want to turn into, bail out. Because you're going to join a group of, say, 10 people, and in all likelihood these 10 people will change you, whereas the chances of a single individual changing 10 people are slim at best, and more realistically and bluntly put, nonexistent. So the three choices are a) run away, b) join and embrace (or cave in, depending on how you put it, which may or may not be toxic for you), and c) join but resist (which will be toxic for everyone)
  - bombcar 3y ago
    One of the most prominent examples is voting; few people remain true single issue voters and instead begin to take on all aspects of their party.
PicassoCTs 3y ago
This mentality, of the employee as a interchangeable operative box has destroyed so much value. Its what regularly destroys the value of companies bought up by behemoths. The knowledge is just transferable after all, and there can not be any value in constellations, aka teams and pipelines. Thus it gets all destroyed, people shoved around until they quit. Its like management has its own toxic ideology, of a world were working people are just a sort of lego brick, and the ideology wins out every time.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  This works on the retail level too, where sufficient customers opt to choose a lower quality product (sometimes unknowingly) for a lower price, and causing the higher quality, higher price product/service to not be viable anymore.
- 411111111111111 3y ago
  That's arguably what they want though. These multinational corporations aren't really focussing at extracting the most value out of what they've got, they're mostly trying to minimize risk. While a talented and motivated individual can indeed create a lot of value, this will inevitably also create a lot of dependency on said person. Now this person has become a liability, and HR doesn't like liabilities.
- nirui 3y ago
  > The knowledge is just transferable after all Not exactly. I do agreed about the value destroying part. But unless the knowledge mentioned is standardized, it's not really easy to transfer them to the succeeding team members. Some highly successful products (or features in these products) was created because the effort from one or two employees who got the idea based on their knowledge from life. Without these key employees, the product/features will never be implemented, and the success will never happen (and nobody will know it's possible). It's the same way how CEO/CTO works, really. Some CEO lead the company to success while others failed, not because they're incompetent, but because the knowledge is not there, which lead to (for example) the lack of imagination and growth. But unlike the leaders, employees usually don't receive nearly enough reward for their insight, if their effort is noticed at all. That's the dilemma.
sharts 3y ago
[flagged]
- AnonCoward42 3y ago
  This is neither inherent nor exclusive to capitalism.
  - aniforprez 3y ago
    I'm getting really tired of people just vapidly attributing "bad thing" to capitalism. People are just shitty. That's not exclusive to capitalism
    - EGreg 3y ago
      No one said “exclusive” to capitalism. It’s simple. The profit motive ruins everything as things get big. Usually because shareholders demand to extract rents from the ecosystem. Even while externalizing the cost to society and the environment Open source gift economies are a far better alternative for society and don’t have that problem. But they require the productive participants to enjoy financial independence or some disposable free time, and universal basic income isn’t coming from daddy government anytime soon. If you want to attract infrastructure providers and fund development for your project in an economically sustainable way, don’t sell shares in your corporation - release a utility token for your platform, and make it available worldwide. Heck, peg it to a USDC if you’re worried about speculators or complying with securities laws (although there are tons of exemptions from registration, like Reg D and Reg S and Reg CF etc). Issuing and managing them with smart contracts is super easy, and permissionless. You can do it in a minute. People have their own choice of how to store them. And micropayments for infrastructure can be implemented via trustlines in a free market pretty easily. The utility token holders — even the people who hoard them — have a far better set of incentives than corporate shareholders do. Ether or Filecoin HODLers aren’t trying to ruin it for everyone using the network, nor are they even trying to assert central control over what people can do with IPFS or Ethereum! Sadly, many people on HN have it completely backwards with what’s good for society. They hate Web3 with a passion and claim it has no use cases even though utility tokens would lead to a far superior set of incentives, wifh no parasitic shareholder class insisting on centralized control and rent extraction — essentially forever. They see what happens at Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, with a few people at the top making decisions, but they don’t put two-and-two together because the cargo-cult of anti-Web3 is strong in 2023. (But not next year, when the halving event happens and lots of innovation gets released again.) Meanwhile they are in love with generative AI, the new kid on the block, despite most of its own most prominent inventors screaming about a large chance of catastrophe and running to the governmebf.
bambax 3y ago
> CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level Yes, I'm currently working for such a client (not as a dev though) and it's amazing how absolutely convinced even so-called "technical" people think developers are like interchangeable factory workers (which are themselves also probably a myth). Apparently, the inability to code is some badge of honor, and proof that one is a "thinker"(?!?). This view seems to be more pervasive in Europe than in the US... Maybe it's an artifact of social classes / hierarchical societies, and more egalitarian societies have an edge to overcome those prejudices. I'm not sure. I don't really know. What I know is that it's terrible.
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  To clarify : The US is more egalitarian and hierarchical ?
  - tormeh 3y ago
    I think it’s more about attitudes to specialization and credentialism. People with tech degrees are supposed to do tech. People with business degrees are supposed to do business. A common scenario when a self-taught executive-level manager moves from an anglo country to a germanic one is that employers ask “where is your business degree?”. And this works both ways. Germanic tech employees tend to not value sales/business, and view the money people as a necessary evil that have no idea what they’re doing. This is of course a self-reinforcing cycle. And there’s nothing bad about specialization, really, but interdisciplinary people have their place as well. As for credentialism, I think it’s slightly better than its reputation on this site, but it shouldn’t be applied too strictly.
    - dopidopHN 3y ago
      Ah ok. That make more sense. I find the US distribution of wealth vastly more inégal than Europe but that was not your point, sorry. Absolutely, a diploma is needed and self starters are view with skepticism. France is extreme with that for instance. Banks will lend you money to starts a specific business only if you have a related diploma ( hair dresser, butcher, boulanger … ) I mean; they won’t flat out refuse if you dont. But passing thought those trade schools will open doors. I was just talking it with a friend very qualified in education in both the US and France. He’s a certify teacher with experience in both countries. He’s starting a business of teaching music exclusively. He has like 8 years of relevant experiences doing that. France is still asking him to do a 2 years training if he want to access the government contracts of public schools. And that’s in a context of teacher scarcity. Silver lining, the training will cost like $1000/year but that borderline insulting to have him do that and I find the 2 years timeline insane. So, yeah, long story short crendentism indeed. I think it was coming from a good place originally. But at this point it’s silly.
ilyt 3y ago
It's also usually the type that can never admit their own mistake and instead will push into failure because they think admitting to mistake and changing course makes them look weak
newsclues 3y ago
I’ve always viewed developers as modern day tool and die craftsman. They build the machines that sit in the factory and churn out the product/service
koonsolo 3y ago
> developers are like "machines working in a factory" After I worked a few years in the industry, I came to the following conclusion: The main difference between a factory and a knowledge business is that in a factory, the smartest, most knowledgable people are at the top (not completely the case, but mostly). In knowledge work, the smartest (=experts) are at the bottom. If you move up as a smart person, you will for sure lose up-to-date knowledge. This has a few consequences of course. In knowledge work, managers should not say "First do this, then do that". Managers should be at the service of their team, making sure they get the focus and freedom to work on their stuff. Now back to the factories: I'm no expert, but one of the key elements of Lean Manufacturing is that the people on the floor are able to provide feedback to the upper layers. Why them? Because they have the hands-on knowledge and see things management can't. So even in factories, either you listen to the lowest level employees or you're not optimising your process. And finally, if users and employees can be replaced, so can companies, products and services. The thing is that having great retention in users saves you a lot of investment on acquiring new ones. And having great retention in employees saves you a lot of investment in hiring and training. The leaders that realise this will outperform anyone that doesn't.
- Joeri 3y ago
  This is known as the theories X and Y of management: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y The personality of the leadership will determine whether they think of workers as self-motivated (will actively look for work) or externally motivated (will wait for work and try to avoid it). Those who don’t think workers are self-motivated will build management structures where people are discouraged from thinking beyond their station and have all kinds of reporting and incentives to make them do their work. I was for a long time hard in the self-motivated camp, but eventually realized that’s me and not everyone, and maybe not even most people. A multi-modal management approach that leaves room for both works better but is harder to pin down.
  - koonsolo 3y ago
    Very interesting link, I didn't know about this one yet. Thanks for the info, fellow Flemish guy (your name gave it away :D)
pmoriarty 3y ago
"CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level and should just do the same thing over and over." Now ask the same CTO (or, hell, most HN users) what they think of tech support, or QA, or tech writers. Developers are like gods in the pecking order compared to these other professions.
bartread 3y ago
I never really saw the "factory" analogy of software development: it just makes no sense, unless you look at your CD pipeline and think that's your whole process and where most of the work happens. The very definition of a factory is that it manufactures the same thing, or a limited range, of items over and over and over again. That's not software development: you're either doing something new, or working on an existing codebase but, of course, because each part of that codebase is quite different to the others, there's no real uniformity to what you're building. Sure, there are processes that are similar (writing tests, debugging), etc., but it's much more like the design and testing phase of engineering a product rather than the manufacturing phase. Overall, "factory" is an incredibly vapid analogy that simply needs to die in our industry.
- speed_spread 3y ago
  The factory analogy exists because it's still prevalent in managerial culture. The factory model has staying power because it allows outputting a bunch of numbers that everybody understands and can plan upon. It is also utterly wrong when applied to software development but the illusion of constant delivery it provides is so reassuring. We'll keep having it pushed down our throats because managers won't read or understand or believe the Mythical Man Month which is all they'd need to know if they'd care.
  - bartread 3y ago
    I'm sure it exists in management culture, but I'd argue that existence isn't universal: only one data point but I've been a manager for a long time now and, very much because I think it's a ridiculous construct, it doesn't exist in my culture. I've worked one place where it was fairly strong (and wasn't there very long), but it's never really gained much of a foothold in any of the other companies I've worked at. Or, at least, not while I was there, which includes plenty of places where I was an IC or mainly an IC, so couldn't be attributed to my influence.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
> CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level You can pay someone to work but you can’t pay them to care and the difference between a product where people cared and one where they did not is extremely tangible.
ignoramous 3y ago
> I'll tell you one thing you'll never change the reddit managements minds, never ever ever. pg says there's probably no one who understands reddit's userbase better than Huffman... https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1654769759399845888 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1654769759399845888 so, there's hope? /s
nine_zeros 3y ago
> CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level and should just do the same thing over and over. The entire industry is infected with management (CXO, VP, Directors, Managers) that think engineers can be pushed to produce "more". And they do this without any idea what "more" is, and how the "more" will bring revenue. At least in a factory, producing "more" units is likely to return more income. But engineering is not like that at all. There is a creative aspect to it and there is a maintenance aspect to it. But management ignores it to protect their own stock awards.
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
I'd say the ideology of mechanization extends to every facet of modern society, to our detriment. Perhaps you're just complaining about CTOs because the ire was aimed at you in particular that time? Mobile game makers weaponize psychology at every level of development and then mock their biggest money-makers as "whales". Rush to dehumanize everyone and why be surprised that this is the inevitable result? A human is only worth as much as its output. Good news is soon the "machines working in the factory" will be smarter than everyone, and you can enjoy your CTO's dumbfounded face before we all shuffle into extinction.

koliber 3y ago

> CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level and should just do the same thing over and over. This shows how important it is to learn about a company, it's culture, philosophy, and values before joining. I can see how some people operate like this, and I don't want to work with them. For anyone reading this who thinks all companies are like the one that parent described, I want to share that it is not true. There are plenty of companies who based their collaboration with their workers on other mental models than cogs-in-the-machine.

koito17 3y ago
> learn about a company, it's culture, philosophy, and values before joining. I may sound dumb, but how does one do this? What question would you ask in an interview in order to determine whether the management are apathetic to their users or employees? The three interviews I did at my current company gave me a glimpse into the culture, but only a surface-level "first impression" kind of knowledge. With that said, I think I successfully ascertained the company's vision with the product I'm working on, but that's way easier to learn than culture IMO.
- smugma 3y ago
  “Tell me about a time when Engineering changed the product direction…” Open-ended questions like that.
  - wellanyway 3y ago
    99% of us are intervieved by HR and a dev. This sounds like a question for a CEO or head of product.
    - est31 3y ago
      Those might be the people who are the subjects of that story, but the story might be known around the company.
      - Ansik 3y ago
        That's a good point. I'd go further to argue that if stories like that aren't known around the company (or at least by the staff hiring you), it could itself be seen as an orange, if not red, flag.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      ...you think dev wouldn't notice if the product they are making changed direction ?
    - btilly 3y ago
      No, that's a question for a dev. If the CEO can tell you about how engineering changed the product, but the dev can't, then your experience is going to match the dev's. And the part of "engineering" that changed the product was almost certainly not a dev. Besides, it is common for CEOs to think that they are more responsive than they really are. And they are generally better at marketing than truth. So for both reasons, I would not trust their answer unless it is backed up by the rank and file.
- korijn 3y ago
  Ask if you can meet (anyone from) your potential team and ask them directly.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- koliber 3y ago
  That's a great question! There is no single approach. It's a soft skill. I don't think there is a single magic question you can ask and you'll get a black-and-white answer. Here are some ideas: - read about the company on glassdoor. Try to read between the lines. Are the reviews fluff? Are there any veiled criticisms. Read the high praises and the vulgar criticisms with a grain of salt. They are a signal, but people often have an agenda or are led by emotion when they post like that. Pay attention to the mixed reviews who give you the good and some bad. See if there are any patterns between reviews. - I hope you will have an interview with either the hiring manager, or one or more peers. Ask them questions about how it is to work there. Find way to ask without asking "How is it working there?" directly. Some ideas: - Am I joining because the team is growing, or am I replacing someone? If replacing, why did the person before me leave? - How long have the people on the team I am joining been there? You're looking to get a feel for tenure and seniority. - How often do you speak with your manager? Their manager? The CTO? The CEO? In general, the more often, and the more approachable leadership is, the less likely you're thought of as a cog and seen more as a human. - Ask if they could give a concrete example of how their values or principles have been used in practice recently. Make sure you read these ahead of time. If they can't tell, then their values might be bullet points on a glossy brochure that have no application in reality. If they don't know their values, that means no one cares about them. - How often do you have to work overtime? Is it normal? Is it occasional? How is that recognized? How is that seen? - Ask how they define and recognize excellence on their team. Listen to the story they tell. Is it mechanical? Do you get a non-answer? A blank stare? Draw your own conclusions. This is not a set of checkboxes. The best companies are not perfect. The worst companies do some things right (I would hope). It gets easier with time, as you get more experiences under your belt, you'll understand where you fit and where you don't. You'll build a gut feeling for this.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  >I may sound dumb, but how does one do this? Read reviews on Glassdoor.com. Take them with a grain of salt, but if you see a lot of reviews all saying similar things about the management, it's probably true.
mordae 3y ago
No, it shows that we need to build companies where employees have stake in the company and means to affect it's direction. Because otherwise you are always fighting an uphill battle and get boiled like a frog when things inevitably start to go south.
- nickserv 3y ago
  Something about workers owning the means of production...
  - mordae 3y ago
    Quite. https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity
- nemo44x 3y ago
  Isn’t this what a joint-stock company does? Anyone can purchase shares (in privately held companies its more difficult but often possible) which grants them proportional votes for things that the board of directors lay out. Every tech company I know of grants workers options/stock. What more is fair? What is it about worker status that should grant them outsized influence on a company and not, say, customers? Of course a joint-stock company allows customers to put skin in the game too (which a worker does not simply by being a worker) and giving them influence in addition to their ability to “vote with their wallet”. It solves all these problems and avoids the adversarial relationship issues.
johannes1234321 3y ago
> For anyone reading this who thinks all companies are like the one that parent described, I want to share that it is not true. There are plenty of companies who based their collaboration with their workers on other mental models than cogs-in-the-machine. It's even more complex. While top management might give a rough direction, even within a single company different managers may create way different environments.
lloeki 3y ago
> This shows how important it is to learn about a company, it's culture, philosophy, and values before joining. I can't recall the exact quote so paraphrasing here, I recall the gist of someone saying: > When deciding whether or not to join a group of people, take a long hard look at people already there, how they work, how they think, and if there's something that you see and don't want to turn into, bail out. Because you're going to join a group of, say, 10 people, and in all likelihood these 10 people will change you, whereas the chances of a single individual changing 10 people are slim at best, and more realistically and bluntly put, nonexistent. So the three choices are a) run away, b) join and embrace (or cave in, depending on how you put it, which may or may not be toxic for you), and c) join but resist (which will be toxic for everyone)
- bombcar 3y ago
  One of the most prominent examples is voting; few people remain true single issue voters and instead begin to take on all aspects of their party.

PicassoCTs 3y ago

This mentality, of the employee as a interchangeable operative box has destroyed so much value. Its what regularly destroys the value of companies bought up by behemoths. The knowledge is just transferable after all, and there can not be any value in constellations, aka teams and pipelines. Thus it gets all destroyed, people shoved around until they quit. Its like management has its own toxic ideology, of a world were working people are just a sort of lego brick, and the ideology wins out every time.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
This works on the retail level too, where sufficient customers opt to choose a lower quality product (sometimes unknowingly) for a lower price, and causing the higher quality, higher price product/service to not be viable anymore.
411111111111111 3y ago
That's arguably what they want though. These multinational corporations aren't really focussing at extracting the most value out of what they've got, they're mostly trying to minimize risk. While a talented and motivated individual can indeed create a lot of value, this will inevitably also create a lot of dependency on said person. Now this person has become a liability, and HR doesn't like liabilities.
nirui 3y ago
> The knowledge is just transferable after all Not exactly. I do agreed about the value destroying part. But unless the knowledge mentioned is standardized, it's not really easy to transfer them to the succeeding team members. Some highly successful products (or features in these products) was created because the effort from one or two employees who got the idea based on their knowledge from life. Without these key employees, the product/features will never be implemented, and the success will never happen (and nobody will know it's possible). It's the same way how CEO/CTO works, really. Some CEO lead the company to success while others failed, not because they're incompetent, but because the knowledge is not there, which lead to (for example) the lack of imagination and growth. But unlike the leaders, employees usually don't receive nearly enough reward for their insight, if their effort is noticed at all. That's the dilemma.

sharts 3y ago

[flagged]

AnonCoward42 3y ago
This is neither inherent nor exclusive to capitalism.
- aniforprez 3y ago
  I'm getting really tired of people just vapidly attributing "bad thing" to capitalism. People are just shitty. That's not exclusive to capitalism
  - EGreg 3y ago
    No one said “exclusive” to capitalism. It’s simple. The profit motive ruins everything as things get big. Usually because shareholders demand to extract rents from the ecosystem. Even while externalizing the cost to society and the environment Open source gift economies are a far better alternative for society and don’t have that problem. But they require the productive participants to enjoy financial independence or some disposable free time, and universal basic income isn’t coming from daddy government anytime soon. If you want to attract infrastructure providers and fund development for your project in an economically sustainable way, don’t sell shares in your corporation - release a utility token for your platform, and make it available worldwide. Heck, peg it to a USDC if you’re worried about speculators or complying with securities laws (although there are tons of exemptions from registration, like Reg D and Reg S and Reg CF etc). Issuing and managing them with smart contracts is super easy, and permissionless. You can do it in a minute. People have their own choice of how to store them. And micropayments for infrastructure can be implemented via trustlines in a free market pretty easily. The utility token holders — even the people who hoard them — have a far better set of incentives than corporate shareholders do. Ether or Filecoin HODLers aren’t trying to ruin it for everyone using the network, nor are they even trying to assert central control over what people can do with IPFS or Ethereum! Sadly, many people on HN have it completely backwards with what’s good for society. They hate Web3 with a passion and claim it has no use cases even though utility tokens would lead to a far superior set of incentives, wifh no parasitic shareholder class insisting on centralized control and rent extraction — essentially forever. They see what happens at Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, with a few people at the top making decisions, but they don’t put two-and-two together because the cargo-cult of anti-Web3 is strong in 2023. (But not next year, when the halving event happens and lots of innovation gets released again.) Meanwhile they are in love with generative AI, the new kid on the block, despite most of its own most prominent inventors screaming about a large chance of catastrophe and running to the governmebf.

bambax 3y ago

> CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level Yes, I'm currently working for such a client (not as a dev though) and it's amazing how absolutely convinced even so-called "technical" people think developers are like interchangeable factory workers (which are themselves also probably a myth). Apparently, the inability to code is some badge of honor, and proof that one is a "thinker"(?!?). This view seems to be more pervasive in Europe than in the US... Maybe it's an artifact of social classes / hierarchical societies, and more egalitarian societies have an edge to overcome those prejudices. I'm not sure. I don't really know. What I know is that it's terrible.

dopidopHN 3y ago
To clarify : The US is more egalitarian and hierarchical ?
- tormeh 3y ago
  I think it’s more about attitudes to specialization and credentialism. People with tech degrees are supposed to do tech. People with business degrees are supposed to do business. A common scenario when a self-taught executive-level manager moves from an anglo country to a germanic one is that employers ask “where is your business degree?”. And this works both ways. Germanic tech employees tend to not value sales/business, and view the money people as a necessary evil that have no idea what they’re doing. This is of course a self-reinforcing cycle. And there’s nothing bad about specialization, really, but interdisciplinary people have their place as well. As for credentialism, I think it’s slightly better than its reputation on this site, but it shouldn’t be applied too strictly.
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    Ah ok. That make more sense. I find the US distribution of wealth vastly more inégal than Europe but that was not your point, sorry. Absolutely, a diploma is needed and self starters are view with skepticism. France is extreme with that for instance. Banks will lend you money to starts a specific business only if you have a related diploma ( hair dresser, butcher, boulanger … ) I mean; they won’t flat out refuse if you dont. But passing thought those trade schools will open doors. I was just talking it with a friend very qualified in education in both the US and France. He’s a certify teacher with experience in both countries. He’s starting a business of teaching music exclusively. He has like 8 years of relevant experiences doing that. France is still asking him to do a 2 years training if he want to access the government contracts of public schools. And that’s in a context of teacher scarcity. Silver lining, the training will cost like $1000/year but that borderline insulting to have him do that and I find the 2 years timeline insane. So, yeah, long story short crendentism indeed. I think it was coming from a good place originally. But at this point it’s silly.

ilyt 3y ago

It's also usually the type that can never admit their own mistake and instead will push into failure because they think admitting to mistake and changing course makes them look weak

newsclues 3y ago

I’ve always viewed developers as modern day tool and die craftsman. They build the machines that sit in the factory and churn out the product/service

koonsolo 3y ago

> developers are like "machines working in a factory" After I worked a few years in the industry, I came to the following conclusion: The main difference between a factory and a knowledge business is that in a factory, the smartest, most knowledgable people are at the top (not completely the case, but mostly). In knowledge work, the smartest (=experts) are at the bottom. If you move up as a smart person, you will for sure lose up-to-date knowledge. This has a few consequences of course. In knowledge work, managers should not say "First do this, then do that". Managers should be at the service of their team, making sure they get the focus and freedom to work on their stuff. Now back to the factories: I'm no expert, but one of the key elements of Lean Manufacturing is that the people on the floor are able to provide feedback to the upper layers. Why them? Because they have the hands-on knowledge and see things management can't. So even in factories, either you listen to the lowest level employees or you're not optimising your process. And finally, if users and employees can be replaced, so can companies, products and services. The thing is that having great retention in users saves you a lot of investment on acquiring new ones. And having great retention in employees saves you a lot of investment in hiring and training. The leaders that realise this will outperform anyone that doesn't.

Joeri 3y ago
This is known as the theories X and Y of management: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y The personality of the leadership will determine whether they think of workers as self-motivated (will actively look for work) or externally motivated (will wait for work and try to avoid it). Those who don’t think workers are self-motivated will build management structures where people are discouraged from thinking beyond their station and have all kinds of reporting and incentives to make them do their work. I was for a long time hard in the self-motivated camp, but eventually realized that’s me and not everyone, and maybe not even most people. A multi-modal management approach that leaves room for both works better but is harder to pin down.
- koonsolo 3y ago
  Very interesting link, I didn't know about this one yet. Thanks for the info, fellow Flemish guy (your name gave it away :D)

pmoriarty 3y ago

"CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level and should just do the same thing over and over." Now ask the same CTO (or, hell, most HN users) what they think of tech support, or QA, or tech writers. Developers are like gods in the pecking order compared to these other professions.

bartread 3y ago

I never really saw the "factory" analogy of software development: it just makes no sense, unless you look at your CD pipeline and think that's your whole process and where most of the work happens. The very definition of a factory is that it manufactures the same thing, or a limited range, of items over and over and over again. That's not software development: you're either doing something new, or working on an existing codebase but, of course, because each part of that codebase is quite different to the others, there's no real uniformity to what you're building. Sure, there are processes that are similar (writing tests, debugging), etc., but it's much more like the design and testing phase of engineering a product rather than the manufacturing phase. Overall, "factory" is an incredibly vapid analogy that simply needs to die in our industry.

speed_spread 3y ago
The factory analogy exists because it's still prevalent in managerial culture. The factory model has staying power because it allows outputting a bunch of numbers that everybody understands and can plan upon. It is also utterly wrong when applied to software development but the illusion of constant delivery it provides is so reassuring. We'll keep having it pushed down our throats because managers won't read or understand or believe the Mythical Man Month which is all they'd need to know if they'd care.
- bartread 3y ago
  I'm sure it exists in management culture, but I'd argue that existence isn't universal: only one data point but I've been a manager for a long time now and, very much because I think it's a ridiculous construct, it doesn't exist in my culture. I've worked one place where it was fairly strong (and wasn't there very long), but it's never really gained much of a foothold in any of the other companies I've worked at. Or, at least, not while I was there, which includes plenty of places where I was an IC or mainly an IC, so couldn't be attributed to my influence.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

> CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level You can pay someone to work but you can’t pay them to care and the difference between a product where people cared and one where they did not is extremely tangible.

ignoramous 3y ago

> I'll tell you one thing you'll never change the reddit managements minds, never ever ever. pg says there's probably no one who understands reddit's userbase better than Huffman... https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1654769759399845888 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1654769759399845888 so, there's hope? /s

nine_zeros 3y ago

> CTO I've worked with said that developers are like "machines working in a factory" that they shouldn't think above their level and should just do the same thing over and over. The entire industry is infected with management (CXO, VP, Directors, Managers) that think engineers can be pushed to produce "more". And they do this without any idea what "more" is, and how the "more" will bring revenue. At least in a factory, producing "more" units is likely to return more income. But engineering is not like that at all. There is a creative aspect to it and there is a maintenance aspect to it. But management ignores it to protect their own stock awards.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

I'd say the ideology of mechanization extends to every facet of modern society, to our detriment. Perhaps you're just complaining about CTOs because the ire was aimed at you in particular that time? Mobile game makers weaponize psychology at every level of development and then mock their biggest money-makers as "whales". Rush to dehumanize everyone and why be surprised that this is the inevitable result? A human is only worth as much as its output. Good news is soon the "machines working in the factory" will be smarter than everyone, and you can enjoy your CTO's dumbfounded face before we all shuffle into extinction.