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With all the changes coming up, I am happy that I am retiring soon. Since I started in the 90s, SW dev has become more and more tightly controlled and feels mor

With all the changes coming up, I am happy that I am retiring soon. Since I started in the 90s, SW dev has become more and more tightly controlled and feels more like an assembly line. When I started, you could work for weeks and months without much interruption. You had plenty of time for experimentation and creativity. Now everything is ticked based and you constantly have to report status and justify what you are doing. I am sure there will always be devs who are doing interesting work but I feel these opportunities will be less and less. In a way it's only fair. Automation has made a lot of jobs obsolete or miserable. Software devs are a big contributor to automation so we shouldn't be surprised that we are finally managing to automate our own jobs away,

pbw 1y ago
I also started in the 1990’s and agree the evolution has been as you describe it. It does highly depend on where you work, but the tightly managed JIRA-driven development seems awfully popular. But I fall short of declaring the 1990s or 2000s or 2010s were the glory days and now things suck. I think part of it is nostalgia bias. I can think of a job I spent 4 years and list all the good parts of the experience. But I suspect I’m forgetting over a lot of mediocre or negative stuff. At any rate I still like the work today. There are still generally hard challenges that you can overcome, people that depend on you, new technologies to learn about. Generically good stuff.
- pbw 1y ago
  Another datapoint is working earlier eras sound bad to me: punchcards, assembly, COBOL, FORTRAN. Yes I suspect those people had a blast.
  - s5fs 1y ago
    Ex-cobol guy here, the work was a blast! I was working on the Lawson erp for a non-profit, mostly customizing the software for their specific use case. I loved it because the tools were crazy, the language limited, and the system itself was high value to the org. Debugging took forever but the fixes were often really small changes. I often had to go into the database (oracle) and clean up the data by hand. Such fun! I crave novelty and have a love for bad technology. I was an early nodejs adopter and loved es4 but newer versions of the language is too easy to use lol!
- Krei-se 1y ago
  Thanks for pointing out JIRA. I think the problem comes from needing to keep the codebase running next month while trying to up scalars / numbers, not thinking years ahead or how to improve both inside culture and outside image of a company which are more complex structures with lots of little metrics and interdependent components than a win/loss output or an issue tracker that ignores the fact issues solved != issues prevented. I guess these strategies boil down to having some MBA on top or an engineer that has no board of MBAs to bow down to. I strive to stay with private owned companies for this reason but ofc these are less loud on the internet, so you can easily miss them while jobhunting.
dymk 1y ago
It’s less automating the job of the engineer away, and replacing management with a panopticon AI
nyarlathotep_ 1y ago
> Since I started in the 90s, SW dev has become more and more tightly controlled and feels more like an assembly line. When I started, you could work for weeks and months without much interruption. You had plenty of time for experimentation and creativity. Now everything is ticked based and you constantly have to report status and justify what you are doing Yeah the consistent "reporting" of "status" on "stand-ups" where you say some filler to get someone incapable of understanding what it is that you're doing off your back for 24 more hours has consistently been one of the most useless and unpleasant parts of the job.
- neom 1y ago
  I tried, but I couldn't get a job as a web dev in the 90s because nobody in my area knew what the web was, I'm not sure anyone in my country did.
- mji 1y ago
  > you say some filler to get someone incapable of understanding what it is that you're doing off your back for 24 more hours has consistently been one of the most useless and unpleasant parts of the job This sucks for the 50% or so who are like you, but there's another 50% who won't really get much done otherwise, either because they don't know what to do and aren't self-motivated or capable enough to figure it out (common) or because they're actively cheating you and barely working (less common)
  - therein 1y ago
    Just if there were a way to filter people at hiring and perhaps some way to choose to not employ them after doing so...
  - aprilthird2021 1y ago
    > there's another 50% who won't really get much done otherwise, either because they don't know what to do and aren't self-motivated or capable enough to figure it out (common) or because they're actively cheating you and barely working (less common) Idk I barely ever work with people who are like this, and if people become like this, it's usually obvious to everyone that it's happened and they get a talking to in the office then get shown the door
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Krei-se 1y ago
Knowing Amazons backends this is just their technical debt creeping up. Coders do repetetive work there because extending from their architecture means lots of code simply to keep the machine running. I would be surprised if they did not assign ASIN (which come from the need to keep ISBN compatibility everywhere) to not only Apps but other virtual goods lol. From my integrations pov Ebay was ahead of their time with their data structure and pushed for deprecation fast to not keep the debt. Amazon ooth only looks more modern through acquiring new market fields instantly followed by throwing a lot of money to facade up the mess. Every contact like key account managers there were usually pushed for numbers, this has nothing to do with coders being coders. Bosses always look for ways to instantly measure coders output which is just short-sighted way of thinking. My coworkers were measured by lines of code obviously. I wonder how you measure great engineering. So no, this has not changed, you can still work uninterrupted on stuff for months or years if you want and skip these places, maybe even proved over your career that previous designs are stable for years to come.
dominicrose 1y ago
From what I've seen, devs though that COVID = full remote forever. It's no wonder there's more control now. So it started before AI IMO.
bamboozled 1y ago
Now everything is ticked based and you constantly have to report status and justify what you are doing. The weird thing about this is, many developers wanted this. They wanted the theater of Agile, JIRA tickets, points etc. I'm in the same boat yet still need to squeeze out another 10 years or so but personally working om multiple-side projects so I can get out of this boring, mundane shit.
georgeecollins 1y ago
I think what you are describing is the difference between being among the people to engineer the first car to being in the factory trying to make the 100 millionth car as cheaply as possible. Forty years ago people mostly learned to program because they were interested in it. People starting software / tech companies were taking a chance on something most didn't understand. That self selected for a type. Now its the most common major in school. I am sure its possible to recreate what you felt in the '90s but probably in a different field or a subset of this one.
elzbardico 1y ago
The plague of the two-week sprint.

pbw 1y ago

I also started in the 1990’s and agree the evolution has been as you describe it. It does highly depend on where you work, but the tightly managed JIRA-driven development seems awfully popular. But I fall short of declaring the 1990s or 2000s or 2010s were the glory days and now things suck. I think part of it is nostalgia bias. I can think of a job I spent 4 years and list all the good parts of the experience. But I suspect I’m forgetting over a lot of mediocre or negative stuff. At any rate I still like the work today. There are still generally hard challenges that you can overcome, people that depend on you, new technologies to learn about. Generically good stuff.

pbw 1y ago
Another datapoint is working earlier eras sound bad to me: punchcards, assembly, COBOL, FORTRAN. Yes I suspect those people had a blast.
- s5fs 1y ago
  Ex-cobol guy here, the work was a blast! I was working on the Lawson erp for a non-profit, mostly customizing the software for their specific use case. I loved it because the tools were crazy, the language limited, and the system itself was high value to the org. Debugging took forever but the fixes were often really small changes. I often had to go into the database (oracle) and clean up the data by hand. Such fun! I crave novelty and have a love for bad technology. I was an early nodejs adopter and loved es4 but newer versions of the language is too easy to use lol!
Krei-se 1y ago
Thanks for pointing out JIRA. I think the problem comes from needing to keep the codebase running next month while trying to up scalars / numbers, not thinking years ahead or how to improve both inside culture and outside image of a company which are more complex structures with lots of little metrics and interdependent components than a win/loss output or an issue tracker that ignores the fact issues solved != issues prevented. I guess these strategies boil down to having some MBA on top or an engineer that has no board of MBAs to bow down to. I strive to stay with private owned companies for this reason but ofc these are less loud on the internet, so you can easily miss them while jobhunting.

dymk 1y ago

It’s less automating the job of the engineer away, and replacing management with a panopticon AI

nyarlathotep_ 1y ago

> Since I started in the 90s, SW dev has become more and more tightly controlled and feels more like an assembly line. When I started, you could work for weeks and months without much interruption. You had plenty of time for experimentation and creativity. Now everything is ticked based and you constantly have to report status and justify what you are doing Yeah the consistent "reporting" of "status" on "stand-ups" where you say some filler to get someone incapable of understanding what it is that you're doing off your back for 24 more hours has consistently been one of the most useless and unpleasant parts of the job.

neom 1y ago
I tried, but I couldn't get a job as a web dev in the 90s because nobody in my area knew what the web was, I'm not sure anyone in my country did.
mji 1y ago
> you say some filler to get someone incapable of understanding what it is that you're doing off your back for 24 more hours has consistently been one of the most useless and unpleasant parts of the job This sucks for the 50% or so who are like you, but there's another 50% who won't really get much done otherwise, either because they don't know what to do and aren't self-motivated or capable enough to figure it out (common) or because they're actively cheating you and barely working (less common)
- therein 1y ago
  Just if there were a way to filter people at hiring and perhaps some way to choose to not employ them after doing so...
- aprilthird2021 1y ago
  > there's another 50% who won't really get much done otherwise, either because they don't know what to do and aren't self-motivated or capable enough to figure it out (common) or because they're actively cheating you and barely working (less common) Idk I barely ever work with people who are like this, and if people become like this, it's usually obvious to everyone that it's happened and they get a talking to in the office then get shown the door

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Krei-se 1y ago

Knowing Amazons backends this is just their technical debt creeping up. Coders do repetetive work there because extending from their architecture means lots of code simply to keep the machine running. I would be surprised if they did not assign ASIN (which come from the need to keep ISBN compatibility everywhere) to not only Apps but other virtual goods lol. From my integrations pov Ebay was ahead of their time with their data structure and pushed for deprecation fast to not keep the debt. Amazon ooth only looks more modern through acquiring new market fields instantly followed by throwing a lot of money to facade up the mess. Every contact like key account managers there were usually pushed for numbers, this has nothing to do with coders being coders. Bosses always look for ways to instantly measure coders output which is just short-sighted way of thinking. My coworkers were measured by lines of code obviously. I wonder how you measure great engineering. So no, this has not changed, you can still work uninterrupted on stuff for months or years if you want and skip these places, maybe even proved over your career that previous designs are stable for years to come.

dominicrose 1y ago

From what I've seen, devs though that COVID = full remote forever. It's no wonder there's more control now. So it started before AI IMO.

bamboozled 1y ago

Now everything is ticked based and you constantly have to report status and justify what you are doing. The weird thing about this is, many developers wanted this. They wanted the theater of Agile, JIRA tickets, points etc. I'm in the same boat yet still need to squeeze out another 10 years or so but personally working om multiple-side projects so I can get out of this boring, mundane shit.

georgeecollins 1y ago

I think what you are describing is the difference between being among the people to engineer the first car to being in the factory trying to make the 100 millionth car as cheaply as possible. Forty years ago people mostly learned to program because they were interested in it. People starting software / tech companies were taking a chance on something most didn't understand. That self selected for a type. Now its the most common major in school. I am sure its possible to recreate what you felt in the '90s but probably in a different field or a subset of this one.

elzbardico 1y ago

The plague of the two-week sprint.