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Ask HN: What's a Dirty Secret No One Wants to Admit in the Tech Industry?

13 points by karakoram 2mo ago

What’s a Dirty Secret No One Wants To Admit In The Tech/Software Industry? Industry as a whole or within software engineering.

toomuchtodo 2mo ago
Most of the work is meaningless and some form of theater, lots of folks are chasing total comp and resume driven development. Many metrics measured are orthogonal to success, and the work that matters to success is hard to measure at all. Complexity for complexity's sake. "Just one more framework|technology|abstraction bro." Choose Boring Technology (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289512 - August 2026 (245 comments) In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39440179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39440179 - February 2024 (436 comments)
bezko 2mo ago
It's all bash scripts
ashleyn 2mo ago
120 hours of leetcode prep to get a job centering divs with claude
- yuye 2mo ago
  120 hours of leetcode prep to get a job writing design documents
FrankWilhoit 2mo ago
The business customers don't understand the concept of a dangling else.
cratermoon 2mo ago
The average programmer is an illusion. Most programmers working in software, and I’m including not just the tech industry specifically, but all companies that employ or contact for programming are not very good. The relatively few who are outstanding skew the average. You know the joke about Bill Gates walks into a bar? Most programmers were already doing what vibe programmers do with AI now, just more manually.
fsflover 2mo ago
1. True security cannot rely on code correctness but only on reliable compartmentalization. Qubes OS does this right. 2. Your phone is an entire computer, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367568 3. Intel ME / AMD PSP is a computer inside your computer that obeys someone else, not you. 4. Ads are an attack, aimed at your brain. They try to inject malware into your thinking, manipulating your worldview and your actions, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49282599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49282599, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269
potamic 2mo ago
That most people could care less about tech and are just in it for the grift.
colesantiago 2mo ago
The same programmers that shame others for using AI tools like Codex, Claude are also secretly using it themselves. Whether at work or personal projects or anything else. Nobody wants to admit it, but they are using AI.
- yuye 2mo ago
  This is a huge cope
  - colesantiago 2mo ago
    It is real. In the end you and I and everyone else will be using AI for work and personal use. No amount of shaming others using AI would stop it. The bigger cope will be engineers losing their jobs by not adapting to the change that is happening in front of them.
    - questionableans 2mo ago
      The only shaming I’ve seen are for people using AI badly or not at all. I also think we should differentiate between programming to get a program you can do something else with, programming to understand the machine, and programming to give the programmer a logical challenge to keep their skills sharp.
    - jerhewet 2mo ago
      I will never use LLM's. Never. Your cope for your own faults is very sad.
      - colesantiago 2mo ago
        You might not, but your children and grandchildren will use LLMs and AI. These technologies aren’t just going to go away just because you choose not to use them, or if you change careers, retire or whatever.
    - jpmoral 2mo ago
bob1029 2mo ago
Virtually no one in tech seems interested in doing what Jobs suggested despite the level of success he delivered. Telling an average developer to work backward from the customer will generally be met with a foul mood. Especially when that constraint suggests that the currently preferred technical ideology or tribe is no longer suitable. The whole thing is one big ego trip most of the time.
- oldsklgdfth 2mo ago
  A compounding factor is when requirements are filtered through B2B layers. At which point the end-user is not the customer and it turns into a game of telephone. Apple sidesteps this issue with vertical integration.
GenericDev 2mo ago
[dead]
dlcarrier 2mo ago
Automation isn't having robots assemble things, it's laying off accountants who read numbers from spreadsheets, type them into their calculator, and enter the number back into the spreadsheet, and replacing them with a spreadsheet that was created by someone who actually knows what they're doing.
msarrel 2mo ago
People who work in tech aren't as interested in the tech as they are in the money.
- yuye 2mo ago
  And those that did go into tech out of genuine interest would eventually love nothing more than to leave tech, but stay for the money.
hexley19 2mo ago
Most production code nobody actually understands in full. People just know their part, and the rest runs on inertia and fear of touching it.
oldsklgdfth 2mo ago
AI is not making engineers more productive. It makes them lazy and think less critically. Also leads to soft-mindedness.
NishanStepak 2mo ago
That AI and search engines use a lot of cheap labor. On systems like Mechanical Turk, or hiring third world quality raters to check results. It is particularly obvious.
lluisantoni 2mo ago
The placebo effect of useless dashbords.
mikewarot 2mo ago
Computer security is a solved problem, and has been since the 1980s. Unfortunately adopting it requires us to abandon the ambient authority model of application development and our operating systems that support it. Currently when you tell an application to open a file, it can actually do almost anything. There are operating systems that enforce your choices, not many, they're very niche, for now. We're at the point where the power grid would be if nobody ever used fuses or circuit breakers. All power could rush to any fault. The same is true with any application a user might run under Linux, Windows, etc. To save a lot of grief: I'm not suggesting we use Windows UAC, AppArmor, or any other administratively driven security measures. Think power boxes[1] that replace file dialog boxes, and the give file capabilities to the application per the users will, in a secure, transparent and easy to understand manner. [1] https://wiki.c2.com/?PowerBox https://wiki.c2.com/?PowerBox
Ekaros 2mo ago
Most of software should be solved by now. And we shouldn't be reinventing wheel each time we make anything. But that would be just too boring.
- brazukadev 2mo ago
  > Most of software should be solved by now. what does solved even mean? If I don't own the wheel, I'm not reinventing it. Paying rent for Microsoft's or Google's wheels don't solve my software needs.

13 points by karakoram 2mo ago

What’s a Dirty Secret No One Wants To Admit In The Tech/Software Industry? Industry as a whole or within software engineering.

toomuchtodo 2mo ago

Most of the work is meaningless and some form of theater, lots of folks are chasing total comp and resume driven development. Many metrics measured are orthogonal to success, and the work that matters to success is hard to measure at all. Complexity for complexity's sake. "Just one more framework|technology|abstraction bro." Choose Boring Technology (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49289512 - August 2026 (245 comments) In Defense of Simple Architectures (2022) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39440179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39440179 - February 2024 (436 comments)

bezko 2mo ago

It's all bash scripts

ashleyn 2mo ago

120 hours of leetcode prep to get a job centering divs with claude

yuye 2mo ago
120 hours of leetcode prep to get a job writing design documents

FrankWilhoit 2mo ago

The business customers don't understand the concept of a dangling else.

cratermoon 2mo ago

The average programmer is an illusion. Most programmers working in software, and I’m including not just the tech industry specifically, but all companies that employ or contact for programming are not very good. The relatively few who are outstanding skew the average. You know the joke about Bill Gates walks into a bar? Most programmers were already doing what vibe programmers do with AI now, just more manually.

fsflover 2mo ago

1. True security cannot rely on code correctness but only on reliable compartmentalization. Qubes OS does this right. 2. Your phone is an entire computer, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367568 3. Intel ME / AMD PSP is a computer inside your computer that obeys someone else, not you. 4. Ads are an attack, aimed at your brain. They try to inject malware into your thinking, manipulating your worldview and your actions, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49282599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49282599, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269

potamic 2mo ago

That most people could care less about tech and are just in it for the grift.

colesantiago 2mo ago

The same programmers that shame others for using AI tools like Codex, Claude are also secretly using it themselves. Whether at work or personal projects or anything else. Nobody wants to admit it, but they are using AI.

yuye 2mo ago
This is a huge cope
- colesantiago 2mo ago
  It is real. In the end you and I and everyone else will be using AI for work and personal use. No amount of shaming others using AI would stop it. The bigger cope will be engineers losing their jobs by not adapting to the change that is happening in front of them.
  - questionableans 2mo ago
    The only shaming I’ve seen are for people using AI badly or not at all. I also think we should differentiate between programming to get a program you can do something else with, programming to understand the machine, and programming to give the programmer a logical challenge to keep their skills sharp.
  - jerhewet 2mo ago
    I will never use LLM's. Never. Your cope for your own faults is very sad.
    - colesantiago 2mo ago
      You might not, but your children and grandchildren will use LLMs and AI. These technologies aren’t just going to go away just because you choose not to use them, or if you change careers, retire or whatever.
  - jpmoral 2mo ago

bob1029 2mo ago

Virtually no one in tech seems interested in doing what Jobs suggested despite the level of success he delivered. Telling an average developer to work backward from the customer will generally be met with a foul mood. Especially when that constraint suggests that the currently preferred technical ideology or tribe is no longer suitable. The whole thing is one big ego trip most of the time.

oldsklgdfth 2mo ago
A compounding factor is when requirements are filtered through B2B layers. At which point the end-user is not the customer and it turns into a game of telephone. Apple sidesteps this issue with vertical integration.

GenericDev 2mo ago

[dead]

dlcarrier 2mo ago

Automation isn't having robots assemble things, it's laying off accountants who read numbers from spreadsheets, type them into their calculator, and enter the number back into the spreadsheet, and replacing them with a spreadsheet that was created by someone who actually knows what they're doing.

msarrel 2mo ago

People who work in tech aren't as interested in the tech as they are in the money.

yuye 2mo ago
And those that did go into tech out of genuine interest would eventually love nothing more than to leave tech, but stay for the money.

hexley19 2mo ago

Most production code nobody actually understands in full. People just know their part, and the rest runs on inertia and fear of touching it.

oldsklgdfth 2mo ago

AI is not making engineers more productive. It makes them lazy and think less critically. Also leads to soft-mindedness.

NishanStepak 2mo ago

That AI and search engines use a lot of cheap labor. On systems like Mechanical Turk, or hiring third world quality raters to check results. It is particularly obvious.

lluisantoni 2mo ago

The placebo effect of useless dashbords.

mikewarot 2mo ago

Computer security is a solved problem, and has been since the 1980s. Unfortunately adopting it requires us to abandon the ambient authority model of application development and our operating systems that support it. Currently when you tell an application to open a file, it can actually do almost anything. There are operating systems that enforce your choices, not many, they're very niche, for now. We're at the point where the power grid would be if nobody ever used fuses or circuit breakers. All power could rush to any fault. The same is true with any application a user might run under Linux, Windows, etc. To save a lot of grief: I'm not suggesting we use Windows UAC, AppArmor, or any other administratively driven security measures. Think power boxes[1] that replace file dialog boxes, and the give file capabilities to the application per the users will, in a secure, transparent and easy to understand manner. [1] https://wiki.c2.com/?PowerBox https://wiki.c2.com/?PowerBox

Ekaros 2mo ago

Most of software should be solved by now. And we shouldn't be reinventing wheel each time we make anything. But that would be just too boring.

brazukadev 2mo ago
> Most of software should be solved by now. what does solved even mean? If I don't own the wheel, I'm not reinventing it. Paying rent for Microsoft's or Google's wheels don't solve my software needs.