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"Given that the software industry is already a horrible place to work" You say things like this a lot. I'm willing to accept that I may be naive, but do you th

by toby 13y ago

"Given that the software industry is already a horrible place to work" You say things like this a lot. I'm willing to accept that I may be naive, but do you think that those of us who have had primarily positive experiences (and I know a few, not only me) just incredibly lucky? I've been a programmer for 13 years and have worked at failing startups, moderately successful startups and big companies. I've mostly coded but have also managed small groups. There's some amount of bullshit in every job, I think, but I haven't found it to be disproportionate compared to my friends in other industries.

bangsta 13y ago
Maybe you just dont care. "Some amount of bullshit" does not include working a shop of 80 developers where you are the only one who speaks english in the office. "Some amount of bullshit" does not include mostly flat salaries for 10 years across the board. "Some amount of bullshit" does not mean disappearing health plans "Some amount of bullshit" does not include your new job (youre a LEAD!) of sitting on the phone trying to talk to a team in India or China who have no idea what they are doing and will get you fired when they dont deliver anything "Some amount of bullshit" does not include zero job training and the stripping of engineering culture where we train people from the ground up and theres a career path vs companies "only hiring seniors", so they can crap on them "Some amount of bullshit" does not mean a total breakdown of development discipline in the name of test driven development, scrum, lack of design, phony QA cycles and end results that not even a mother could love. This is supposed to be a profession. It is barely any longer what I would call a profession.
michaelochurch 13y ago
I don't know what you've experienced. Maybe you've been unusually lucky. Perhaps I've been unlucky. But everything I've seen convinces me that shitty experiences are the norm in this industry. I enjoy programming and solving hard problems, but I hate this industry with a passion. I'm sick of the terrible legacy code, the bad decisions made by people dumber than a crocodile's fecal product, and the lack of respect and autonomy for the people doing the actual fucking work. Even Google turned itself into a closed-allocation shitpile at some point. What a fucking disaster. We've failed to make ourselves a real profession, and it seems like the norm is for us to suffer dearly for it. Most programmers live in an environment where they have minimal autonomy and don't even choose which projects they work on. It's fucking disgusting and if we had any collective self-respect, we'd demolish the assholes who built these horrible work environments. Personally, I won't be happy until the people who instituted calibration scores and closed allocation at Google commit seppuku. They destroyed billions of dollars worth of economic value, they ruined the lives of hundreds to thousands of highly talented people, and it's the only decent thing for them to do after that.
- TheAntipodean 13y ago
  In an effort to find out what closed allocation meant I fired up your favourite search engine, Google, and searched the term. I was amused to see an article on your blog come up as the top hit.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    I have no problem with the search engine Google. I still use it-- and Gmail, too. At least 90% of the people at Google are really solid. Good people, great engineers. I have a dislike for the management, not the people or the products.
    - ableal 13y ago
      Interesting, thought provoking posts, but you seem to have used two different tags that pop up in search: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/project-allocation/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/project-allocation/ (the Discomfort is Bad piece) http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/closed-allocation/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/closed-allocation/ (the earlier Only Real Option piece) There's also the more systematic Quora/Forbes piece: http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/11/26/what-is-open-allocation/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/11/26/what-is-open-al...
ArtB 13y ago
> You say things like this a lot. I'm willing to accept that I may be naive, but do you think that those of us who have had primarily positive experiences (and I know a few, not only me) just incredibly lucky? Do you live in a major tech hub? Because here a lot of the jobs suck and we take the only gigs in town and most of us are the victims of the "two body problem" with more successful spouses anchoring us to undesirable areas.

by toby 13y ago

bangsta 13y ago

Maybe you just dont care. "Some amount of bullshit" does not include working a shop of 80 developers where you are the only one who speaks english in the office. "Some amount of bullshit" does not include mostly flat salaries for 10 years across the board. "Some amount of bullshit" does not mean disappearing health plans "Some amount of bullshit" does not include your new job (youre a LEAD!) of sitting on the phone trying to talk to a team in India or China who have no idea what they are doing and will get you fired when they dont deliver anything "Some amount of bullshit" does not include zero job training and the stripping of engineering culture where we train people from the ground up and theres a career path vs companies "only hiring seniors", so they can crap on them "Some amount of bullshit" does not mean a total breakdown of development discipline in the name of test driven development, scrum, lack of design, phony QA cycles and end results that not even a mother could love. This is supposed to be a profession. It is barely any longer what I would call a profession.

michaelochurch 13y ago

I don't know what you've experienced. Maybe you've been unusually lucky. Perhaps I've been unlucky. But everything I've seen convinces me that shitty experiences are the norm in this industry. I enjoy programming and solving hard problems, but I hate this industry with a passion. I'm sick of the terrible legacy code, the bad decisions made by people dumber than a crocodile's fecal product, and the lack of respect and autonomy for the people doing the actual fucking work. Even Google turned itself into a closed-allocation shitpile at some point. What a fucking disaster. We've failed to make ourselves a real profession, and it seems like the norm is for us to suffer dearly for it. Most programmers live in an environment where they have minimal autonomy and don't even choose which projects they work on. It's fucking disgusting and if we had any collective self-respect, we'd demolish the assholes who built these horrible work environments. Personally, I won't be happy until the people who instituted calibration scores and closed allocation at Google commit seppuku. They destroyed billions of dollars worth of economic value, they ruined the lives of hundreds to thousands of highly talented people, and it's the only decent thing for them to do after that.

TheAntipodean 13y ago
In an effort to find out what closed allocation meant I fired up your favourite search engine, Google, and searched the term. I was amused to see an article on your blog come up as the top hit.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  I have no problem with the search engine Google. I still use it-- and Gmail, too. At least 90% of the people at Google are really solid. Good people, great engineers. I have a dislike for the management, not the people or the products.
  - ableal 13y ago
    Interesting, thought provoking posts, but you seem to have used two different tags that pop up in search: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/project-allocation/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/project-allocation/ (the Discomfort is Bad piece) http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/closed-allocation/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/tag/closed-allocation/ (the earlier Only Real Option piece) There's also the more systematic Quora/Forbes piece: http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/11/26/what-is-open-allocation/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/11/26/what-is-open-al...

ArtB 13y ago

> You say things like this a lot. I'm willing to accept that I may be naive, but do you think that those of us who have had primarily positive experiences (and I know a few, not only me) just incredibly lucky? Do you live in a major tech hub? Because here a lot of the jobs suck and we take the only gigs in town and most of us are the victims of the "two body problem" with more successful spouses anchoring us to undesirable areas.