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>I hope I don’t come across as too harsh here, but I think a lot of developers are finally being forced to understand that their high salaries and above-average

>I hope I don’t come across as too harsh here, but I think a lot of developers are finally being forced to understand that their high salaries and above-average job security were fundamentally predicated on business models that largely didn’t have a ton of competition. Would love to see the business and manager types manage software and infrastructure. What's the worst that could happen? Go on, do it. Every time a foot gun goes off it'll be followed by a condescending chuckle. I used to see 'passion' as the defining factor of how to stay in the field and do well, and that was advice given to people who wanted to join the industry -- who showed the minimum of interest. Now we're going to have these non-technical people who definitely aren't interested and definitely don't have passion for it try to make and manage quality software?

pjc50 5mo ago
There's a lot of value to be extracted in the period between "we fired all the qualified staff" and "oops, we lost all our customers due to unreliability". In physical industries that may happen sooner or in a more alarming way - you discover the loss of your safety personnel in the form of, say, a refinery explosion. But in software you can just .. break stuff, and leak personal data, and deliver a service which is down quite a lot (see github discussion passim, or endless complaining about Windows 11), and nobody goes away. Partly because software switching costs are so high, partly because the alternatives have the same problems. This sort of thing happened to, for example, Maplin. The big poster child is sadly Twitter. A lot of people said it would collapse without 90% of the staff, and that hasn't materialized. I suspect they can't deploy huge changes to the backend, but they never did that much anyway. (also, those of us not in the US and not in FAANG always wondered how such a steep salary differential could have been maintained forever; more than doctors and lawyers? Comparable to finance bros or the fabled quants? All of those are much more onerous jobs with much harder entrance criteria!)
- pjmlp 5mo ago
  Software companies so far have been getting away with it, because the industry is relatively young versus others, and outside high integrity computing liability is yet to be a common expectation. If everyone asked for returns, or sued, software companies the same way they deal with other goods, the atittude would most likely have changed by now. Not to mention the whole EULAs ("we don't have any idea what we are doing here, please sign") disease.
  - skinfaxi 5mo ago
    > If everyone asked for returns, or sued, software companies the same way they deal with other goods, the atittude would most likely have changed by now. How can they do that when they probably had to sign an arbitration agreement to use the product? Can't pull that shit with a box of oatmeal or most other physical items without software components.
    - pjmlp 5mo ago
      Hence my remark with EULAs, they should be illegal.
    - tardedmeme 5mo ago
      Steam (the game store) had an arbitration agreement. It turns out there's no class action arbitration and the merchant pays all arbitration fees. When they did something wrong (I don't remember what) and got inundated with thousands upon thousands of individual arbitration cases, suddenly they wished for a class action lawsuit instead. They removed forced arbitration from the EULA. It's not clear if it meant anything anyway. Half the point of an EULA is to scare you away from trying to enforce your rights even if a lawyer would rip it up.
- pavel_lishin 5mo ago
  I think that's more likely to be true of big, established companies - but not so much new companies that start off smaller, and that don't have any sort of customer lock-in. If I'm a business owner, and my point-of-sale software was wildly unreliable, I'd switch if I wasn't constrained by a contract. I can't exactly move off of Facebook as my marketing strategy, though.
- LorenPechtel 5mo ago
  Yup, the way to short term money is to cut quality. And we really incentivize such behavior. It's not what you can actually do, it's what you can make it look like you did. And get out before it burns down around you. And look at Twitter--much less reliable.
tardedmeme 5mo ago
Look at the home building inspection YouTube shorts. Guy pulls up to a house. Looks at the foundation, it's cracked. Opens the door, it's jammed and requires force. Finishes opening the door, it slams into a low part of the ceiling. Goes into the bathroom. Turns the tap. Water comes out. Sprays directly on something that shouldn't have water on it. Runs the shower. Water pools away from the drain and stays there. Opens the bathroom door from this side. Doorhandle bangs into towel rail, door is tricky to open. Drops a golf ball on floor tiles (apparently a standard test). Several are loose. Turns on the light switch. No light because the light only comes on when both switches are on. Goes to the kitchen. Puts the $5 outlet tester in each outlet. Missing neutral. Reversed hot and neutral. Missing ground. Runs hand over the wallpaper. It's not even close to flat. Goes up to the attic. Looks at where the beams are joined together. Half the nail plates are stuck into one beam instead of joining two beams. You get the idea. Could be staged for the video, but I believe it. You don't make back the cost of wrecking a house from ads on a short form video. This is the state of the homebuilding industry right now. Most of these homes are sold to people who don't make payment contingent upon passing an inspection. The business knows quality doesn't matter to buyers and you can save lots of money by cutting corners. This is not just homebuilding, this is the future of every industry. We're putting distilled water in the hydroponics. In tech, it was already happening before AI, just look at the usability decline in every Windows and OSX version.
gavmor 5mo ago
The 'sad' fact is that you don't have to love the craft to make money selling the product. This has always been true to some extent.

pjc50 5mo ago

There's a lot of value to be extracted in the period between "we fired all the qualified staff" and "oops, we lost all our customers due to unreliability". In physical industries that may happen sooner or in a more alarming way - you discover the loss of your safety personnel in the form of, say, a refinery explosion. But in software you can just .. break stuff, and leak personal data, and deliver a service which is down quite a lot (see github discussion passim, or endless complaining about Windows 11), and nobody goes away. Partly because software switching costs are so high, partly because the alternatives have the same problems. This sort of thing happened to, for example, Maplin. The big poster child is sadly Twitter. A lot of people said it would collapse without 90% of the staff, and that hasn't materialized. I suspect they can't deploy huge changes to the backend, but they never did that much anyway. (also, those of us not in the US and not in FAANG always wondered how such a steep salary differential could have been maintained forever; more than doctors and lawyers? Comparable to finance bros or the fabled quants? All of those are much more onerous jobs with much harder entrance criteria!)

pjmlp 5mo ago
Software companies so far have been getting away with it, because the industry is relatively young versus others, and outside high integrity computing liability is yet to be a common expectation. If everyone asked for returns, or sued, software companies the same way they deal with other goods, the atittude would most likely have changed by now. Not to mention the whole EULAs ("we don't have any idea what we are doing here, please sign") disease.
- skinfaxi 5mo ago
  > If everyone asked for returns, or sued, software companies the same way they deal with other goods, the atittude would most likely have changed by now. How can they do that when they probably had to sign an arbitration agreement to use the product? Can't pull that shit with a box of oatmeal or most other physical items without software components.
  - pjmlp 5mo ago
    Hence my remark with EULAs, they should be illegal.
  - tardedmeme 5mo ago
    Steam (the game store) had an arbitration agreement. It turns out there's no class action arbitration and the merchant pays all arbitration fees. When they did something wrong (I don't remember what) and got inundated with thousands upon thousands of individual arbitration cases, suddenly they wished for a class action lawsuit instead. They removed forced arbitration from the EULA. It's not clear if it meant anything anyway. Half the point of an EULA is to scare you away from trying to enforce your rights even if a lawyer would rip it up.
pavel_lishin 5mo ago
I think that's more likely to be true of big, established companies - but not so much new companies that start off smaller, and that don't have any sort of customer lock-in. If I'm a business owner, and my point-of-sale software was wildly unreliable, I'd switch if I wasn't constrained by a contract. I can't exactly move off of Facebook as my marketing strategy, though.
LorenPechtel 5mo ago
Yup, the way to short term money is to cut quality. And we really incentivize such behavior. It's not what you can actually do, it's what you can make it look like you did. And get out before it burns down around you. And look at Twitter--much less reliable.

tardedmeme 5mo ago

Look at the home building inspection YouTube shorts. Guy pulls up to a house. Looks at the foundation, it's cracked. Opens the door, it's jammed and requires force. Finishes opening the door, it slams into a low part of the ceiling. Goes into the bathroom. Turns the tap. Water comes out. Sprays directly on something that shouldn't have water on it. Runs the shower. Water pools away from the drain and stays there. Opens the bathroom door from this side. Doorhandle bangs into towel rail, door is tricky to open. Drops a golf ball on floor tiles (apparently a standard test). Several are loose. Turns on the light switch. No light because the light only comes on when both switches are on. Goes to the kitchen. Puts the $5 outlet tester in each outlet. Missing neutral. Reversed hot and neutral. Missing ground. Runs hand over the wallpaper. It's not even close to flat. Goes up to the attic. Looks at where the beams are joined together. Half the nail plates are stuck into one beam instead of joining two beams. You get the idea. Could be staged for the video, but I believe it. You don't make back the cost of wrecking a house from ads on a short form video. This is the state of the homebuilding industry right now. Most of these homes are sold to people who don't make payment contingent upon passing an inspection. The business knows quality doesn't matter to buyers and you can save lots of money by cutting corners. This is not just homebuilding, this is the future of every industry. We're putting distilled water in the hydroponics. In tech, it was already happening before AI, just look at the usability decline in every Windows and OSX version.

gavmor 5mo ago

The 'sad' fact is that you don't have to love the craft to make money selling the product. This has always been true to some extent.