5 ms·

I resonate with Dubray's sentiments. Maybe it's because I just turned 50 and am more contemplative at the half-century mark, but I feel anymore like I'm playing

I resonate with Dubray's sentiments. Maybe it's because I just turned 50 and am more contemplative at the half-century mark, but I feel anymore like I'm playing a part in peddling schlock and snake oil. Our industry is increasingly selling products that are extractive and zero-sum as opposed to being the tide that lifts all boats. Was I always living a lie in a way, or have things truly become qualitatively worse over the past 10 or 15 years?

rozap 2y ago
I've been reflecting over the past year or so about this. And I'm also stuck with the same thoughts. Was I just dumb 15 years ago, or did the industry actually shift? Or a little of both? imo society also had a different view of these sorts of snake oil salesmen, so it was easier to fall into the collective hallucination. Remember when the movie "the social network" came out, the movie portrayed zucc as kind of an asshole, but also a hero - there was a sort of righteousness, and people loved him. The "very special boy" who cheekily breaks a few rules in order to build something that is wildly popular and disruptive...and this was something to live up to? But now I think, in general, we've seen that most of these very special boys are actually quite shit.
- jochem9 2y ago
  15 years ago we didn't have so many algorithms. I think Facebook still sorted by recent back then. The pervasiveness of algorithms is a symptom of the change that has happened. It shows how companies started to compete more and more for our attention and engagement.
  - hibikir 2y ago
    At one point, a company makes changes to just get users, and that makes it have to do things people want. Eventually the growth opportunity by utility gets very small, so all the efforts come from increasing profitability per user. That will rarely make the company's products better for their users. Every top company moved to increasing margins and minimal growth years ago.
    - sydbarrett74 2y ago
      And this is precisely Doctorow's definition of 'enshittification'.
  - the_snooze 2y ago
    I think "algorithms" disguises something bigger: a broad ethos to extract value from users, instead of delivering value to them. Modern consumer tech sees end-users as resources to exploit. Between privacy violations, vendor lock-in, worsening functionality and interoperability, and unilaterally changing terms and designs, these services demonstrate so much contempt for the people who've come to rely on them. Instead of making things better, tech companies use their engineering prowess to impose control over people and reduce end-users' agency.
    - BlueTemplar 2y ago
      And people have been warning about these issues back then already : this is what "protocols, not platforms" was about. (Corporations seeking monopoly is not a new story.)
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - Zak 2y ago
    Algorithms aren't inherently bad. An algorithm that keeps spam out of my email is pretty great if it works. An algorithm that presents a feed of things I actually want to see is also pretty great. I want to see life updates from my friends and family, especially media of their pets, but not sports, babies, or politics except from a couple people who write interesting things. That's not a tall order for a recommendation algorithm with a huge supply of training data. It wouldn't even need a 50% hit rate to make something really useful that I would definitely check once or twice a day and post or comment several times a week if even a third of my real life social circle used it. An algorithm that presents me a feed of things I sometimes can't look away from even though I don't really want to see them is harmful, like an addictive drug.
- foobarian 2y ago
  > The "very special boy" who cheekily breaks a few rules in order to build something that is wildly popular and disruptive...and this was something to live up to? I think examples like this (also see Bill Gates) were more inspiring because there was an idea that you could get at least some smaller scale of that kind of success with a modicum of talent, hard work, and luck. You would look around your high school class and there would be one or two "whiz kids" who everybody knew would go on to do great things. The role of computers was not widespread yet and there seemed countless possibilities for computers to make life better. Instead of writing numbers by hand into a ledger and adding on a mechanical calculator, you would use a spreadsheet type of thing. I think what changed is the efficiency of the successes. Success means extraction at largest possible scale, such that there is no more room for one or two whiz kids from every single high school class. There is room for 1 whiz kid per generation; and chances are that guy will need to be a greedy asshole to make it to the top. And then the very nature of this extraction means, now that the productivity gains have plateaued, that resources are taken from the poor and given to the rich. Sorry to be a downer, I'll see myself back to my bottle. :-D
  - Earw0rm 2y ago
    Yes. The problem is scale and pervasiveness. Ethics didn't matter on an Apple ][. Well, not much. You could screw around, break stuff, "should" didn't come into it, you couldn't really touch the parts of the world that matter. Even people hacking phone lines and banks were small-time for the most part. Zuckerberg wasn't particularly original in his thought process, there'd been many like him before, but I think Facebook was the pivotal moment. One, because it was for everyone (even more so than AOL), two, because it was personal in a way that previous social platforms (ICQ, Usenet, Compuserve) hadn't been, and three because by rigidly enforcing real-life identities as the norm, it collapsed the context between online and offline. Ten years earlier, lonely-bored-horny-smart dudes would have joked about building an app to be vaguely creepy around hot girls they were too shy to talk to. Heck, that's basically the plot of Weird Science - by 1985, Hollywood knew that's what geeks were like, so we can guess the first time that conversation happened was about 1972. Smart little boys breaking the rules on an Apple ][ are interesting and funny. When they end up running the world but haven't grown psychologically, it's downright terrifying. Same goes for 25-year-old stoner douchebags making edgy shitposts on 4chan, and those same people when they're 55 and worth $400Bn. With power, responsibility. Grow the fuck up.
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  In fact Zuck _was_ a hero back then, as was Elon. People with power tend to change. With being in power, their perspective on the world shifts, often for the worse. Zuck originally wanted fully free speech, this is in fact what everyone wanted in that time. Then appeared the massive abuse in the unavoidable echo chambers. Zuck was hence forced to be the judge between good and bad speech/content, up to being in court. The filtering had to happen with advanced algorithms since fully manual was impossible to pull off. The funding happened by advertising, so the move to algorithms upping engagement was only logical. Elon on the other hand went all the way from the nerd being bullied at the playground, via the acceleration of electrical transport, up to buying the world's biggest software playground and obtaining a large part of world's communication and transport hardware infrastructure. He's more convinced than ever of the power of capitalism, for the good and the bad.
  - estebank 2y ago
    > Elon on the other hand went all the way from the nerd being bullied at the playground Elon wasn't bullied. He was pushed down a flight of stairs by one kid after Elon made fun of that kid's father's suicide.
    - nuancebydefault 2y ago
      We were not at the site when it happened. I only recall the various sources that I read and try to make a consistent/plausible model and narrative. I never met Elon nor Zuck in person.
      - estebank 2y ago
        I wasn't there, but the source is elon's father.
        bluesroo 2y ago
        Elon's father is/was a certifiable monster. I'm not sure he's the reliable narrator that you're setting him up to be.
- c0balt 2y ago
  > the movie portrayed zucc as kind of an asshole, but also a hero The word/ genre is a protagonist as antihero. An antihero is nice in fiction, we sympathize with them to some degree over their flaws and challenges. The problem is that a billionaire very much has an outsized impact.
  - sydbarrett74 2y ago
    Put another way, an anti-hero is tantalising in a work of fiction, but not necessarily the type of bloke with whom you'd want to grab a beer IRL.
xnx 2y ago
Things have definitely gotten worse. I view SaaS subscriptions as the primary culprit. Even here on HN, most "side-projects" are attempts at recurring revenue through paid subscriptions instead of contributing to the sharing economy (which nearly all software is built from in terms of languages and libraries).
- billy99k 2y ago
  "Even here on HN, most "side-projects" are attempts at recurring revenue through paid subscriptions instead of contributing to the sharing economy (which nearly all software is built from in terms of languages and libraries)." Shared libraries generally don't make money. HN has always been about startups and making products/services. I predicted this would happen decades ago. Piracy was accepted in the tech community and became so widespread, it made it nearly impossible to make a living selling the software anymore, so businesses made their move when Internet speeds got faster and now make everything into a service (that can't be pirated).
  - Zak 2y ago
    HN was briefly called "Startup News". I remember the popular prediction of software going service-based, probably delivered via a web browser or something like one in the late 1990s and being disturbed at the prospect of being unable to pirate things. How else was I going to get software as a broke teenager?
devjab 2y ago
I think parts of our industry has gotten worse, but I also think there are a lot of opportunities to do some really great (and fun) work. I work in the green energy industry and I like working with software for solar plant equipment. I hope I can eventually pick up a little more on the electrical engineering side of things and get into farming robots. Don't get me wrong, I also do work in the financial aspects of it and that'... Well, useless is too strong a word, but in the grand scheme of things it's frankly useless. There is so much ridiculous leglislation that can be digitized, some of it is stupid. Like how you can get various tax benefits if you split what you and I think of as a single solar farm into 100 smaller companies. How to game the various financial tariffs, how to figure out the optimal direction for solar cells based on market data. That sort of stuff. Then there is the reasonable parts, like how Italy has an agency which requires all money transactions to go through them as an anti-mafia thing (sorry I can't be more clear on that part I didn't make it). Over all though, it's fun to work with stuff that has a real world use.
- magnuspaaske 2y ago
  In Denmark the electricity price is calculated per hour for consumers, allowing us to move tumble drying, dishwashing and laundry to times, when it's cheaper to use power (= more renewable energy in the grid). This obviously requires some digital solutions to work and I think it's a great example where digitalization drives value in other sectors (in this case the power sector).
  - devjab 2y ago
    I actually don't know too much about what power traders do in the various EU nations. The majority of our plants tend to shut down production once the grid is too full since that is what many countries require. Hopefully we'll see storage get to a point where we can keep the power for later, but that's not where we're at right now. A solar panel and it's inverter and datalogger don't work without software though, and it can be quite fun to work with that tech. At least in my opinion.
surgical_fire 2y ago
I don't have your answers, but it has been a very long time that I lacked the enthusiasm you seem to have had. I used to be hyped about the Internet in particular and technology as a whole in the early to mid 2000s, before I started to work professionally as a developer. Ever since this illusion was shattered. I understood that everyone was just interested in making money, lots of it and as quickly as possible. There was no concern of how good something would be for the world as whole, only a vague shrug on that of something was successful it was inherently good. I don't feel better or worse for it. I know it's a job but someone's gotta do it.
- chillingeffect 2y ago
  In my career, engineering went from lucrative, upper middle class to a potentially explosive wealth-building apparatus. Once people became aware of that, they began to strive for it. Far fewer people became content to live out a peaceful, upper middle class life. Their hunger for more created a subculture of grinding and speculation. As the playing field grew feom office computers to everyone's phones, the old school capitalists dove in and catalyzed it all. To the point where the wellbeing of our young, the environment, the jobs we created- none if it mattered anymore. The goal was to get perversely rich and dominate the subculture, dissolving the real culture with it. Can we ever get back on track?
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    > Far fewer people became content to live out a peaceful, upper middle class life. Ironically, this is was what I chased, and what I found. I never wanted to have a destructive amount of money, just enough to have a house and raise a family. A lot of people in this industry just wanted to make money very quickly to retire early though. There is something unhealthy that comes with it, I think. > Can we ever get back on track? I am very pessimistic about it. Not without heavy government regulation, and it is a can of worms of its own. We are never going back to the environment we had around the 90s and early 2000s. There was a naivety in the air back then, some healthy gleeful contrarianism. After the dot com bust, it was unclear for a while how many things could even be monetized. There was a pervasive desire to build things for the sake of it. What we have now kinda sucks, and it is probably only gonna get worse.
add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
I don't think it's always been this way. Perhaps capitalism is destined to end up here eventually, but I think it's been functional enough for most of our lives. I wouldn't even say it got really bad until very recently, but that could change from one person's perception to another's. I'm happy I got to live most of my life in the era when it wasn't like this.
austin-cheney 2y ago
When you write software is the thing you are writing something you would ever want to pay for out of pocket even with inside knowledge? The answer to that question determines the degree of bullshit you are peddling. As a JavaScript developer the answer about 90% of the time is I would rather just write it myself. Exceptions include JellyFin, PiHole, Node.js, Mealie, Libre Office, and some other things. Those things are free, but I would buy I license if they weren't. These things are exceptions not because they are big, but because I am happy with the quality of product. They have not given me cause to find a replacement. There is so much software that I cannot say this for.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
The cure for that, for me, was easy (but sucked). No one wanted to hire me, so I started writing software for organizations that help people, for free. I feel that my software Makes A Difference. It doesn't make money, but it acts as a force multiplier, for people that help people.
- polishdude20 2y ago
  How do you pay the bills?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    I'm retired. Fortunately, I had invested wisely, and live humbly, so I can handle it. The reason no one wants to hire me, is because I "aged out" of the tech industry. At 55, I was "radioactive." I would have been happy to put in at least ten more years, but c'est la vie...
    - adamc 2y ago
      Another option, if you can stand the bureaucracy: Go work for a university. Or possibly some level of government.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- axxto 2y ago
  How did you find such organizations? Can you give some examples, please?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    Well, in my case, I’ve been involved in them, for most of my life. I won’t go into detail, as that is sort of the way we work. We don’t really talk about our work at the level of press, radio, and film. Otherwise, finding volunteer opportunities is usually fairly straightforward. Find a cause that personally motivates you, and look for organizations in that context. The whole thing about “volunteer,” though, is that it is synonymous with “unpaid,” and that’s a dirty word, with this crowd. Also, working with these types of orgs can be maddening. When there’s no money to be made, ego becomes the currency, so status games abound. And, when people don’t pay for something, they often treat it like crap. That means that we have to find our own motivation, and have a thick skin. If we are doing something that we truly believe in, then it makes it worthwhile. If we aren’t motivated by the cause, it can be rather demoralizing. In my case, I stay focused on the people that my work helps.
ericmcer 2y ago
Computers have inundated life so thoroughly now that it feels less clean to be writing software. If people enjoy a 30 min TV show you made that feels great, but if they are watching 10 hours of tv a day then it feels more problematic. My personal relationship with phones/computers/tv has degraded in the past 20 years as well, its hard to feel good about building software when I am trying to cut computer/phone usage out of my own life.

rozap 2y ago

I've been reflecting over the past year or so about this. And I'm also stuck with the same thoughts. Was I just dumb 15 years ago, or did the industry actually shift? Or a little of both? imo society also had a different view of these sorts of snake oil salesmen, so it was easier to fall into the collective hallucination. Remember when the movie "the social network" came out, the movie portrayed zucc as kind of an asshole, but also a hero - there was a sort of righteousness, and people loved him. The "very special boy" who cheekily breaks a few rules in order to build something that is wildly popular and disruptive...and this was something to live up to? But now I think, in general, we've seen that most of these very special boys are actually quite shit.

jochem9 2y ago
15 years ago we didn't have so many algorithms. I think Facebook still sorted by recent back then. The pervasiveness of algorithms is a symptom of the change that has happened. It shows how companies started to compete more and more for our attention and engagement.
- hibikir 2y ago
  At one point, a company makes changes to just get users, and that makes it have to do things people want. Eventually the growth opportunity by utility gets very small, so all the efforts come from increasing profitability per user. That will rarely make the company's products better for their users. Every top company moved to increasing margins and minimal growth years ago.
  - sydbarrett74 2y ago
    And this is precisely Doctorow's definition of 'enshittification'.
- the_snooze 2y ago
  I think "algorithms" disguises something bigger: a broad ethos to extract value from users, instead of delivering value to them. Modern consumer tech sees end-users as resources to exploit. Between privacy violations, vendor lock-in, worsening functionality and interoperability, and unilaterally changing terms and designs, these services demonstrate so much contempt for the people who've come to rely on them. Instead of making things better, tech companies use their engineering prowess to impose control over people and reduce end-users' agency.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    And people have been warning about these issues back then already : this is what "protocols, not platforms" was about. (Corporations seeking monopoly is not a new story.)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Zak 2y ago
  Algorithms aren't inherently bad. An algorithm that keeps spam out of my email is pretty great if it works. An algorithm that presents a feed of things I actually want to see is also pretty great. I want to see life updates from my friends and family, especially media of their pets, but not sports, babies, or politics except from a couple people who write interesting things. That's not a tall order for a recommendation algorithm with a huge supply of training data. It wouldn't even need a 50% hit rate to make something really useful that I would definitely check once or twice a day and post or comment several times a week if even a third of my real life social circle used it. An algorithm that presents me a feed of things I sometimes can't look away from even though I don't really want to see them is harmful, like an addictive drug.
foobarian 2y ago
> The "very special boy" who cheekily breaks a few rules in order to build something that is wildly popular and disruptive...and this was something to live up to? I think examples like this (also see Bill Gates) were more inspiring because there was an idea that you could get at least some smaller scale of that kind of success with a modicum of talent, hard work, and luck. You would look around your high school class and there would be one or two "whiz kids" who everybody knew would go on to do great things. The role of computers was not widespread yet and there seemed countless possibilities for computers to make life better. Instead of writing numbers by hand into a ledger and adding on a mechanical calculator, you would use a spreadsheet type of thing. I think what changed is the efficiency of the successes. Success means extraction at largest possible scale, such that there is no more room for one or two whiz kids from every single high school class. There is room for 1 whiz kid per generation; and chances are that guy will need to be a greedy asshole to make it to the top. And then the very nature of this extraction means, now that the productivity gains have plateaued, that resources are taken from the poor and given to the rich. Sorry to be a downer, I'll see myself back to my bottle. :-D
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  Yes. The problem is scale and pervasiveness. Ethics didn't matter on an Apple ][. Well, not much. You could screw around, break stuff, "should" didn't come into it, you couldn't really touch the parts of the world that matter. Even people hacking phone lines and banks were small-time for the most part. Zuckerberg wasn't particularly original in his thought process, there'd been many like him before, but I think Facebook was the pivotal moment. One, because it was for everyone (even more so than AOL), two, because it was personal in a way that previous social platforms (ICQ, Usenet, Compuserve) hadn't been, and three because by rigidly enforcing real-life identities as the norm, it collapsed the context between online and offline. Ten years earlier, lonely-bored-horny-smart dudes would have joked about building an app to be vaguely creepy around hot girls they were too shy to talk to. Heck, that's basically the plot of Weird Science - by 1985, Hollywood knew that's what geeks were like, so we can guess the first time that conversation happened was about 1972. Smart little boys breaking the rules on an Apple ][ are interesting and funny. When they end up running the world but haven't grown psychologically, it's downright terrifying. Same goes for 25-year-old stoner douchebags making edgy shitposts on 4chan, and those same people when they're 55 and worth $400Bn. With power, responsibility. Grow the fuck up.
nuancebydefault 2y ago
In fact Zuck _was_ a hero back then, as was Elon. People with power tend to change. With being in power, their perspective on the world shifts, often for the worse. Zuck originally wanted fully free speech, this is in fact what everyone wanted in that time. Then appeared the massive abuse in the unavoidable echo chambers. Zuck was hence forced to be the judge between good and bad speech/content, up to being in court. The filtering had to happen with advanced algorithms since fully manual was impossible to pull off. The funding happened by advertising, so the move to algorithms upping engagement was only logical. Elon on the other hand went all the way from the nerd being bullied at the playground, via the acceleration of electrical transport, up to buying the world's biggest software playground and obtaining a large part of world's communication and transport hardware infrastructure. He's more convinced than ever of the power of capitalism, for the good and the bad.
- estebank 2y ago
  > Elon on the other hand went all the way from the nerd being bullied at the playground Elon wasn't bullied. He was pushed down a flight of stairs by one kid after Elon made fun of that kid's father's suicide.
  - nuancebydefault 2y ago
    We were not at the site when it happened. I only recall the various sources that I read and try to make a consistent/plausible model and narrative. I never met Elon nor Zuck in person.
    - estebank 2y ago
      I wasn't there, but the source is elon's father.
      - bluesroo 2y ago
        Elon's father is/was a certifiable monster. I'm not sure he's the reliable narrator that you're setting him up to be.
c0balt 2y ago
> the movie portrayed zucc as kind of an asshole, but also a hero The word/ genre is a protagonist as antihero. An antihero is nice in fiction, we sympathize with them to some degree over their flaws and challenges. The problem is that a billionaire very much has an outsized impact.
- sydbarrett74 2y ago
  Put another way, an anti-hero is tantalising in a work of fiction, but not necessarily the type of bloke with whom you'd want to grab a beer IRL.

xnx 2y ago

Things have definitely gotten worse. I view SaaS subscriptions as the primary culprit. Even here on HN, most "side-projects" are attempts at recurring revenue through paid subscriptions instead of contributing to the sharing economy (which nearly all software is built from in terms of languages and libraries).

billy99k 2y ago
"Even here on HN, most "side-projects" are attempts at recurring revenue through paid subscriptions instead of contributing to the sharing economy (which nearly all software is built from in terms of languages and libraries)." Shared libraries generally don't make money. HN has always been about startups and making products/services. I predicted this would happen decades ago. Piracy was accepted in the tech community and became so widespread, it made it nearly impossible to make a living selling the software anymore, so businesses made their move when Internet speeds got faster and now make everything into a service (that can't be pirated).
- Zak 2y ago
  HN was briefly called "Startup News". I remember the popular prediction of software going service-based, probably delivered via a web browser or something like one in the late 1990s and being disturbed at the prospect of being unable to pirate things. How else was I going to get software as a broke teenager?

devjab 2y ago

I think parts of our industry has gotten worse, but I also think there are a lot of opportunities to do some really great (and fun) work. I work in the green energy industry and I like working with software for solar plant equipment. I hope I can eventually pick up a little more on the electrical engineering side of things and get into farming robots. Don't get me wrong, I also do work in the financial aspects of it and that'... Well, useless is too strong a word, but in the grand scheme of things it's frankly useless. There is so much ridiculous leglislation that can be digitized, some of it is stupid. Like how you can get various tax benefits if you split what you and I think of as a single solar farm into 100 smaller companies. How to game the various financial tariffs, how to figure out the optimal direction for solar cells based on market data. That sort of stuff. Then there is the reasonable parts, like how Italy has an agency which requires all money transactions to go through them as an anti-mafia thing (sorry I can't be more clear on that part I didn't make it). Over all though, it's fun to work with stuff that has a real world use.

magnuspaaske 2y ago
In Denmark the electricity price is calculated per hour for consumers, allowing us to move tumble drying, dishwashing and laundry to times, when it's cheaper to use power (= more renewable energy in the grid). This obviously requires some digital solutions to work and I think it's a great example where digitalization drives value in other sectors (in this case the power sector).
- devjab 2y ago
  I actually don't know too much about what power traders do in the various EU nations. The majority of our plants tend to shut down production once the grid is too full since that is what many countries require. Hopefully we'll see storage get to a point where we can keep the power for later, but that's not where we're at right now. A solar panel and it's inverter and datalogger don't work without software though, and it can be quite fun to work with that tech. At least in my opinion.

surgical_fire 2y ago

I don't have your answers, but it has been a very long time that I lacked the enthusiasm you seem to have had. I used to be hyped about the Internet in particular and technology as a whole in the early to mid 2000s, before I started to work professionally as a developer. Ever since this illusion was shattered. I understood that everyone was just interested in making money, lots of it and as quickly as possible. There was no concern of how good something would be for the world as whole, only a vague shrug on that of something was successful it was inherently good. I don't feel better or worse for it. I know it's a job but someone's gotta do it.

chillingeffect 2y ago
In my career, engineering went from lucrative, upper middle class to a potentially explosive wealth-building apparatus. Once people became aware of that, they began to strive for it. Far fewer people became content to live out a peaceful, upper middle class life. Their hunger for more created a subculture of grinding and speculation. As the playing field grew feom office computers to everyone's phones, the old school capitalists dove in and catalyzed it all. To the point where the wellbeing of our young, the environment, the jobs we created- none if it mattered anymore. The goal was to get perversely rich and dominate the subculture, dissolving the real culture with it. Can we ever get back on track?
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > Far fewer people became content to live out a peaceful, upper middle class life. Ironically, this is was what I chased, and what I found. I never wanted to have a destructive amount of money, just enough to have a house and raise a family. A lot of people in this industry just wanted to make money very quickly to retire early though. There is something unhealthy that comes with it, I think. > Can we ever get back on track? I am very pessimistic about it. Not without heavy government regulation, and it is a can of worms of its own. We are never going back to the environment we had around the 90s and early 2000s. There was a naivety in the air back then, some healthy gleeful contrarianism. After the dot com bust, it was unclear for a while how many things could even be monetized. There was a pervasive desire to build things for the sake of it. What we have now kinda sucks, and it is probably only gonna get worse.

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago

I don't think it's always been this way. Perhaps capitalism is destined to end up here eventually, but I think it's been functional enough for most of our lives. I wouldn't even say it got really bad until very recently, but that could change from one person's perception to another's. I'm happy I got to live most of my life in the era when it wasn't like this.

austin-cheney 2y ago

When you write software is the thing you are writing something you would ever want to pay for out of pocket even with inside knowledge? The answer to that question determines the degree of bullshit you are peddling. As a JavaScript developer the answer about 90% of the time is I would rather just write it myself. Exceptions include JellyFin, PiHole, Node.js, Mealie, Libre Office, and some other things. Those things are free, but I would buy I license if they weren't. These things are exceptions not because they are big, but because I am happy with the quality of product. They have not given me cause to find a replacement. There is so much software that I cannot say this for.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

The cure for that, for me, was easy (but sucked). No one wanted to hire me, so I started writing software for organizations that help people, for free. I feel that my software Makes A Difference. It doesn't make money, but it acts as a force multiplier, for people that help people.

polishdude20 2y ago
How do you pay the bills?
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I'm retired. Fortunately, I had invested wisely, and live humbly, so I can handle it. The reason no one wants to hire me, is because I "aged out" of the tech industry. At 55, I was "radioactive." I would have been happy to put in at least ten more years, but c'est la vie...
  - adamc 2y ago
    Another option, if you can stand the bureaucracy: Go work for a university. Or possibly some level of government.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
axxto 2y ago
How did you find such organizations? Can you give some examples, please?
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  Well, in my case, I’ve been involved in them, for most of my life. I won’t go into detail, as that is sort of the way we work. We don’t really talk about our work at the level of press, radio, and film. Otherwise, finding volunteer opportunities is usually fairly straightforward. Find a cause that personally motivates you, and look for organizations in that context. The whole thing about “volunteer,” though, is that it is synonymous with “unpaid,” and that’s a dirty word, with this crowd. Also, working with these types of orgs can be maddening. When there’s no money to be made, ego becomes the currency, so status games abound. And, when people don’t pay for something, they often treat it like crap. That means that we have to find our own motivation, and have a thick skin. If we are doing something that we truly believe in, then it makes it worthwhile. If we aren’t motivated by the cause, it can be rather demoralizing. In my case, I stay focused on the people that my work helps.

ericmcer 2y ago

Computers have inundated life so thoroughly now that it feels less clean to be writing software. If people enjoy a 30 min TV show you made that feels great, but if they are watching 10 hours of tv a day then it feels more problematic. My personal relationship with phones/computers/tv has degraded in the past 20 years as well, its hard to feel good about building software when I am trying to cut computer/phone usage out of my own life.