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I have never encountered a profession that complains as much about their job as Software Engineers. I've worked many jobs in my life: restaurants, construction,

I have never encountered a profession that complains as much about their job as Software Engineers. I've worked many jobs in my life: restaurants, construction, teaching, IT Support and so far the best one has been software development. Every job has its annoying BS. I get it's not for everybody, but at least I get to solve puzzles all day instead of digging post holes or dealing with shitty customers.

spir 3y ago
Pete Davidson joked that depression is a rich person's condition because it implies you have a life you shouldn't be depressed about. Same with software engineers?
- tstrimple 3y ago
  I know mental health issues and suicide attempts correlate much more strongly with folks lower on the socioeconomic ladder, but when I was poor I was too busy to be depressed in the same way I am today. Now my life is far easier, yet also somehow much more depressing.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    having grown up extremely poor, I agree with this sentiment. But it's also more than that. I hate using this word but I think it applies here. Poor people don't have to the privilege to stop and whine. - When I was a teenager I had a flat tire and the spare was flat. I knew of a tire shop a few miles down the road so I pulled the tire off my vehicle and walked it the several miles to the shop. The shop was closed because the guy had called in sick. It was another 15 miles to town, so I started the walk. Thankfully someone took pity on me and picked me up after a couple of miles. - When I first graduated college I didn't have a working vehicle but got a job miles from the house. I would leave around 3am and walk for 5 hours to be there at 8am, then hitch a ride home. I did this until I could afford a bicycle, which I had for about a month before someone stole and I was back to walking. - I know a woman who recently (w/i the last 2-3 years) was talking about how when her vehicle broke down one night she ended up having to walk 12 miles back into town. For poor people there's this hard wall where if you stop it's akin to laying down and dying, the results are catastrophic. So you do what you must. People who are not poor often don't understand how it is that someone can't or won't take the time to talk to a therapist about trauma. They can't afford it either in time or money.
belval 3y ago
I wonder where you live for that to be true, in my experience everyone just complains all the time about the previous guys' craftsmanship and that's especially true in trade and engineering. > restaurants KitchenConfidential is a subreddit dedicated to complaining about shitty customers. > construction If you don't hang out with construction worker, you can find almost any YouTube video that goes over some aspect of homebuilding, scroll down and see comments with "As a carpenter of 15 years that guy is a moron for X and Y". > teaching I don't have public examples of that one but a lot of my friends are teacher and they are an absolute blast to be around because they keep complaining about stupid helicopter parents, overbearing principals and other bad encounters. No idea what kind of teacher you hang out with. Same goes for doctor and nurses btw, put two of them together in a room and they will start complaining about patient X and Y. > IT Support There are 4-5 subreddits like TalesFromTechSupport that are literally only stories from IT technicians. All of the above to say, really happy for you if Software Engineers are the ones that complain the most.
- yoyohello13 3y ago
  You're right, my post is hyperbole. However, creating a blog for your complaints seems unique to software developers, lol.
  - klardotsh 3y ago
    Outside of SEO, marketing, and other sales-adjacent purposes, software developers are some of the only people with indie blogs anymore, which I think explains this. The practical difference between posting on my blog about ugly code and posting on a subreddit/forum about ugly code is primarily who owns the data and where it is stored. The restaurant workers are still doing a similar type of venting.
  - madeofpalk 3y ago
    I don't think it's that unique, it's just that creating your own website (even if it's a hosted blog of medium or whatever) is not really something most people do. Plenty of people complain about their job on reddit or twitter or tiktok or whatever. Internet is full of it.
deleted 3y ago
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manicennui 3y ago
I complain because the impact I can have on people's lives now is far greater than when I was working fast food or picking orders in a warehouse, but the people I work with either don't give a shit or are incompetent. Then we wonder why dealing with various companies is so irritating and they create so many problems in our lives.
throw555chip 3y ago
In the Navy if people weren't complaining, we knew something was wrong.
deleted 3y ago
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switchbak 3y ago
Almost every teacher I've known has complained a lot more than most of the S/W engineer folks I know. I do complain a bit myself though, but I think that's a reflection of having high standards and an eagerness to improve things (to put a positive spin on it). You do make a good point though - we don't have to work in the sleet, or in human filth in a 2 foot crawlspace filled with spiders. It could be a lot worse!
jiggawatts 3y ago
One unique aspect of software engineering is that it is still growing exponentially, doubling approximately every five years. As a direct consequence of the mathematics of exponential growth, this means that: HALF of all software developers have LESS THAN 5 YEARS of experience! This results in experienced devs being simply outnumbered by newcomers and having to perpetually fight against the rising tide of beginner errors. As someone with nearly four decades of experience, I'm facing six such doublings (plus retirees subtracting from the experienced pool!), meaning that I'm outnumbered by people will less experience 64-to-1. In my time I've seen every wheel reinvented -- badly -- at least three or four times over. I've seen the same huge, glaring mistakes made over and over by new people. It's literally impossible to convince them of their mistakes because it's one voice against dozens. Few if any other industries are like this because they don't have the same insane growth curve. Surgeons with less than 5 years of experience are hugely outnumbered by surgeons with 10, 15, 20, etc... years of experience all the way up to 50+. They don't get to overrule the Chief of Surgery. They're told to shut up and learn how to do things properly by people who made mistakes and learned from the consequences. As a random example of this effect, the entire industry is learning for like the third or fourth time that text-based formats are not better, and their "ease of use" is a deceptive trap. JSON is just text, and is "so easy" -> gRPC, a binary wire format. HTTP is just text, and is "so easy" -> HTTP/3, a binary protocol. This kind of thing will keep happening until the exponential growth transitions into the flat bit of the S curve, and the average experience level starts climbing towards two decades.
meiraleal 3y ago
True that! And this makes me happy. I hope all professions will be like that soon.
par 3y ago
You've never worked in a pharmacy have you? :)
carabiner 3y ago
You haven't met doctoral students then.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

spir 3y ago

Pete Davidson joked that depression is a rich person's condition because it implies you have a life you shouldn't be depressed about. Same with software engineers?

tstrimple 3y ago
I know mental health issues and suicide attempts correlate much more strongly with folks lower on the socioeconomic ladder, but when I was poor I was too busy to be depressed in the same way I am today. Now my life is far easier, yet also somehow much more depressing.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  having grown up extremely poor, I agree with this sentiment. But it's also more than that. I hate using this word but I think it applies here. Poor people don't have to the privilege to stop and whine. - When I was a teenager I had a flat tire and the spare was flat. I knew of a tire shop a few miles down the road so I pulled the tire off my vehicle and walked it the several miles to the shop. The shop was closed because the guy had called in sick. It was another 15 miles to town, so I started the walk. Thankfully someone took pity on me and picked me up after a couple of miles. - When I first graduated college I didn't have a working vehicle but got a job miles from the house. I would leave around 3am and walk for 5 hours to be there at 8am, then hitch a ride home. I did this until I could afford a bicycle, which I had for about a month before someone stole and I was back to walking. - I know a woman who recently (w/i the last 2-3 years) was talking about how when her vehicle broke down one night she ended up having to walk 12 miles back into town. For poor people there's this hard wall where if you stop it's akin to laying down and dying, the results are catastrophic. So you do what you must. People who are not poor often don't understand how it is that someone can't or won't take the time to talk to a therapist about trauma. They can't afford it either in time or money.

belval 3y ago

I wonder where you live for that to be true, in my experience everyone just complains all the time about the previous guys' craftsmanship and that's especially true in trade and engineering. > restaurants KitchenConfidential is a subreddit dedicated to complaining about shitty customers. > construction If you don't hang out with construction worker, you can find almost any YouTube video that goes over some aspect of homebuilding, scroll down and see comments with "As a carpenter of 15 years that guy is a moron for X and Y". > teaching I don't have public examples of that one but a lot of my friends are teacher and they are an absolute blast to be around because they keep complaining about stupid helicopter parents, overbearing principals and other bad encounters. No idea what kind of teacher you hang out with. Same goes for doctor and nurses btw, put two of them together in a room and they will start complaining about patient X and Y. > IT Support There are 4-5 subreddits like TalesFromTechSupport that are literally only stories from IT technicians. All of the above to say, really happy for you if Software Engineers are the ones that complain the most.

yoyohello13 3y ago
You're right, my post is hyperbole. However, creating a blog for your complaints seems unique to software developers, lol.
- klardotsh 3y ago
  Outside of SEO, marketing, and other sales-adjacent purposes, software developers are some of the only people with indie blogs anymore, which I think explains this. The practical difference between posting on my blog about ugly code and posting on a subreddit/forum about ugly code is primarily who owns the data and where it is stored. The restaurant workers are still doing a similar type of venting.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  I don't think it's that unique, it's just that creating your own website (even if it's a hosted blog of medium or whatever) is not really something most people do. Plenty of people complain about their job on reddit or twitter or tiktok or whatever. Internet is full of it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

manicennui 3y ago

I complain because the impact I can have on people's lives now is far greater than when I was working fast food or picking orders in a warehouse, but the people I work with either don't give a shit or are incompetent. Then we wonder why dealing with various companies is so irritating and they create so many problems in our lives.

throw555chip 3y ago

In the Navy if people weren't complaining, we knew something was wrong.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

switchbak 3y ago

Almost every teacher I've known has complained a lot more than most of the S/W engineer folks I know. I do complain a bit myself though, but I think that's a reflection of having high standards and an eagerness to improve things (to put a positive spin on it). You do make a good point though - we don't have to work in the sleet, or in human filth in a 2 foot crawlspace filled with spiders. It could be a lot worse!

jiggawatts 3y ago

One unique aspect of software engineering is that it is still growing exponentially, doubling approximately every five years. As a direct consequence of the mathematics of exponential growth, this means that: HALF of all software developers have LESS THAN 5 YEARS of experience! This results in experienced devs being simply outnumbered by newcomers and having to perpetually fight against the rising tide of beginner errors. As someone with nearly four decades of experience, I'm facing six such doublings (plus retirees subtracting from the experienced pool!), meaning that I'm outnumbered by people will less experience 64-to-1. In my time I've seen every wheel reinvented -- badly -- at least three or four times over. I've seen the same huge, glaring mistakes made over and over by new people. It's literally impossible to convince them of their mistakes because it's one voice against dozens. Few if any other industries are like this because they don't have the same insane growth curve. Surgeons with less than 5 years of experience are hugely outnumbered by surgeons with 10, 15, 20, etc... years of experience all the way up to 50+. They don't get to overrule the Chief of Surgery. They're told to shut up and learn how to do things properly by people who made mistakes and learned from the consequences. As a random example of this effect, the entire industry is learning for like the third or fourth time that text-based formats are not better, and their "ease of use" is a deceptive trap. JSON is just text, and is "so easy" -> gRPC, a binary wire format. HTTP is just text, and is "so easy" -> HTTP/3, a binary protocol. This kind of thing will keep happening until the exponential growth transitions into the flat bit of the S curve, and the average experience level starts climbing towards two decades.

meiraleal 3y ago

True that! And this makes me happy. I hope all professions will be like that soon.

par 3y ago

You've never worked in a pharmacy have you? :)

carabiner 3y ago

You haven't met doctoral students then.

deleted 3y ago

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