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So to summarize... a man born into privilege is annoyed by poor people. The guy equates working for a paycheck with entitlement... how out of touch can you be?

So to summarize... a man born into privilege is annoyed by poor people. The guy equates working for a paycheck with entitlement... how out of touch can you be? Working for a paycheck is something you do out of economic neccessity--for survival, NOT entitlement. Getting paid to work on your hobbies in the tech industry in 1995 is basically winning the lottery. Most people would kill to have this chance. This guy is completely blind to his privilege. But instead of recognizing how neoliberal economics have destroyed the middle class and churned out a new "Depression-Era" generation that are forced to "chase the money" in order to eat... he is going to whine about how kids these days suck and are entitled. Fucking amazing. Gen Y has the worst economic prospects since the actual great depression, how the fuck can we be spoiled?

wpietri 12y ago
I read your comment before the article, and was all set to agree. But then I read the article. The people who come here looking for riches and playing at entrepreneurship are not "working for a paycheck". They are people who crave social standing, who crave money. They don't want to be comfortably middle class; they want to be elite. There was a giant wave of them during Bubble 1.0, but come 2001 most of them went back to wherever they were before. In the last few years they are thick on the ground again. They are very different than the people who came to make a difference, who came to create for the joy of it. I don't see the current crop of them as any worse than the 1990s invasion. But they're sure not any better. I also think this guy definitely does recognize how lucky he was. He opens talking about "more than I ever could have dreamed" and ends with feeling like he was lucky enough to witness "the very birth of rock and roll".
- saschajustin 12y ago
  Millenials do not have a choice between "elite social status" and "comfortable middle class". They have a choice between middle class and lower class. What you are calling elite is actually just middle class. Millenials are at the bottom of a pyramid in a stagnating economy that doesn't offer the same choice that was offered to their parents. We are a depression generation. Programming is one of the few lower middle class career paths still available. Most new jobs in this new economy (that are available to millenials) are working class as part of the service economy. Jobs that do provide a middle class living are either dissapearing as the boomers retire from them, or require a lot of competition to win. The amount of money you need to live a middle class life is much harder to achieve in 2015 than it was 40 years ago in 1975.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    That you are calling programmer salaries "lower middle class" makes me think you have no idea what you're talking about. What I'm calling elite is indeed elite. Your insistence on telling me I'm wrong about what I've actually seen makes me think there's no point in talking to you further.
    - saschajustin 12y ago
      I'm not contradicting your observations. I'm pointing out a sociological fact. You do not know the definition of lower middle class. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_middle_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_middle_class http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2F_Developer_%2F_Programmer/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2... The median income for a programmer is $69,708. This falls into the lower middle class. When Silicon Valley salaries are adjusted to account for cost of living, programmers making over $100,000 still fall into the LOWER middle class. People who get into software chasing money and elite status are ignorant of the fact that programmers are not elite and do not have high social status. They have lower middle class status and pay--which is better than working class at least.
      - wpietri 12y ago
        You're conflating household income and individual salary, and you're also using a technical definition in a a colloquial context. Entertaining for you, I'm sure, but again it doesn't make this look like a serious discussion.
        saschajustin 12y ago
        Household income is not the metric being used. It is income associated with a particular occupation that is used to class order those occupations. I guess you're right about failing to conform to colloquial myths and falsehoods. I tend to want to align my observations with facts and research rather than pop culture misunderstandings and ignorance.
typicalrunt 12y ago
Holy shit, settle down for a second. The guy equates working for a paycheck with entitlement... how out of touch can you be? I didn't read any of what you said in the author's blog. He even mentions, at the end, about "waxing nostalgic". So his argument going to be a bit one-sided but then, it is his argument after all. I agree with the overall sentiment of the author's rant. I miss some of the geeking out that was done in the tech industry, because it now seems to be filled with people looking to get rich quick with barely-working MVPs, or building services that have no revenue stream. The industry has turned very "business-y", IMO, but maybe it is just the natural cycle of every industry. UPDATE: Adding a bit of substance to my comment.
- saschajustin 12y ago
  Young people, new programmers, and other groups who have no power are not responsible for the nature of a field. Old people control the nature of every field. Old greybeards are the ones who made computer science this way--it's just those greybeards that this man disaproves of. This man isn't a billionaire VC, a tenured Comp Sci professor, an author of programming books, or a CEO hiring and training the kinds of employees he wants. This guy isn't in charge, so he blames young people and assumes they are in charge. Ridiculous. Young people are just followers. They follow the money, they do what they're told, they adopt fashions in order to SURVIVE, not out of some kind of "strange entitlement."
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    One young guy named Linus Torvalds upset a whole pile of holy applecarts, as a student, no less, a guy called Mark Zuckerberg built one of the most visited websites on the planet, two other guys built the most frequented search engine while still in college and so on. He doesn't care at all about not being in charge. He cares about people not wanting nor caring about getting some deeper levels of knowledge required to do their jobs properly and as a cause he sees that they are money oriented first, and tech oriented second.
swalsh 12y ago
Programming is like masturbating. You spend a lot of time yanking away until almost suddenly everything builds up in just the right way, and it works! For engineers, seeing it work is the orgasm. For business types, being able to sell it is the orgasm. I think the author yearns for the days that engineers ran silicon valley, and they worked on interesting problems because they wanted to see them work, not because there was a fat paycheck waiting for them at the end of the day.
dlhdesign 12y ago
Better summary: A man (who has enjoyed his career for the challenges it brings regardless of the pay level) is frustrated that the majority of his current peers don't seem to share the same passion for the work that he has.
- ZenoArrow 12y ago
  It's possible to interpret these types of past vs. today articles many different ways, but they often have a similar slant... 1. A rose-tinted view of the past (in case the author forgot, the technical challenges didn't prevent a whole lot of dross on the 90's internet). 2. A less than balanced view of today (is it really that hard to think of encouraging aspects of the modern web?) 3. A yearning for days gone by. The way I see it, these types of articles are less about criticising the present, and more about glorifying the past, a past that the author had some extra connection to by having lived through it. We're meant to marvel at the hardships that were faced, and recognise that the knowledge they accumulated isn't obsolete, so they still have a thing or two to teach us. Every generation will go through this, the generation before this guy did, the generation after will too. The truth is, some knowledge is only truly pertinent to its era. I wouldn't expect to read a book on starting an ISP in the 90s and then think I knew how best to do it now, even if the book might be interesting to read.
sebular 12y ago
Thank you. I rolled my eyes so hard when he started droning on about brogrammers not bothering to learn below their layers of abstraction. We live in a world where job postings are looking for RoR developers, job interviews test you on FizzBuzz, UML, and vague logic problems, and managers encourage developers to move fast and churn out releases. When exactly was anybody supposed to learn compilers, assembly, or low-level internet routing infrastructure? It was in a CS classroom years ago, and without any practical reason to refresh that knowledge ever since. Furthermore, the "applications" produced by this "golden age" of the internet were complete shit by today's standards. If they were so wonderful, why do we like to laugh at their miserable UX, ugly design, and lack of functionality? As if in 1995 they needed to think about javascript frameworks, CSS frameworks, responsive design, mobile anything, (quality) animations, asset servers, enormous databases, application and user analytics, clustered applications with message-passing, advanced caching strategies, an enormous variety of user input, or any of the other multitudinous things I forgot to mention. In 1995 they thought of everything up to the point where a static HTML document gets sent to the user, and that's where they stopped thinking. In 2015 we have a lot more to think about after that initial transfer. In 2015 we have to, y'know, make applications.

wpietri 12y ago

I read your comment before the article, and was all set to agree. But then I read the article. The people who come here looking for riches and playing at entrepreneurship are not "working for a paycheck". They are people who crave social standing, who crave money. They don't want to be comfortably middle class; they want to be elite. There was a giant wave of them during Bubble 1.0, but come 2001 most of them went back to wherever they were before. In the last few years they are thick on the ground again. They are very different than the people who came to make a difference, who came to create for the joy of it. I don't see the current crop of them as any worse than the 1990s invasion. But they're sure not any better. I also think this guy definitely does recognize how lucky he was. He opens talking about "more than I ever could have dreamed" and ends with feeling like he was lucky enough to witness "the very birth of rock and roll".

saschajustin 12y ago
Millenials do not have a choice between "elite social status" and "comfortable middle class". They have a choice between middle class and lower class. What you are calling elite is actually just middle class. Millenials are at the bottom of a pyramid in a stagnating economy that doesn't offer the same choice that was offered to their parents. We are a depression generation. Programming is one of the few lower middle class career paths still available. Most new jobs in this new economy (that are available to millenials) are working class as part of the service economy. Jobs that do provide a middle class living are either dissapearing as the boomers retire from them, or require a lot of competition to win. The amount of money you need to live a middle class life is much harder to achieve in 2015 than it was 40 years ago in 1975.
- wpietri 12y ago
  That you are calling programmer salaries "lower middle class" makes me think you have no idea what you're talking about. What I'm calling elite is indeed elite. Your insistence on telling me I'm wrong about what I've actually seen makes me think there's no point in talking to you further.
  - saschajustin 12y ago
    I'm not contradicting your observations. I'm pointing out a sociological fact. You do not know the definition of lower middle class. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_middle_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_middle_class http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2F_Developer_%2F_Programmer/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2... The median income for a programmer is $69,708. This falls into the lower middle class. When Silicon Valley salaries are adjusted to account for cost of living, programmers making over $100,000 still fall into the LOWER middle class. People who get into software chasing money and elite status are ignorant of the fact that programmers are not elite and do not have high social status. They have lower middle class status and pay--which is better than working class at least.
    - wpietri 12y ago
      You're conflating household income and individual salary, and you're also using a technical definition in a a colloquial context. Entertaining for you, I'm sure, but again it doesn't make this look like a serious discussion.
      - saschajustin 12y ago
        Household income is not the metric being used. It is income associated with a particular occupation that is used to class order those occupations. I guess you're right about failing to conform to colloquial myths and falsehoods. I tend to want to align my observations with facts and research rather than pop culture misunderstandings and ignorance.

typicalrunt 12y ago

Holy shit, settle down for a second. The guy equates working for a paycheck with entitlement... how out of touch can you be? I didn't read any of what you said in the author's blog. He even mentions, at the end, about "waxing nostalgic". So his argument going to be a bit one-sided but then, it is his argument after all. I agree with the overall sentiment of the author's rant. I miss some of the geeking out that was done in the tech industry, because it now seems to be filled with people looking to get rich quick with barely-working MVPs, or building services that have no revenue stream. The industry has turned very "business-y", IMO, but maybe it is just the natural cycle of every industry. UPDATE: Adding a bit of substance to my comment.

saschajustin 12y ago
Young people, new programmers, and other groups who have no power are not responsible for the nature of a field. Old people control the nature of every field. Old greybeards are the ones who made computer science this way--it's just those greybeards that this man disaproves of. This man isn't a billionaire VC, a tenured Comp Sci professor, an author of programming books, or a CEO hiring and training the kinds of employees he wants. This guy isn't in charge, so he blames young people and assumes they are in charge. Ridiculous. Young people are just followers. They follow the money, they do what they're told, they adopt fashions in order to SURVIVE, not out of some kind of "strange entitlement."
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 12y ago
  One young guy named Linus Torvalds upset a whole pile of holy applecarts, as a student, no less, a guy called Mark Zuckerberg built one of the most visited websites on the planet, two other guys built the most frequented search engine while still in college and so on. He doesn't care at all about not being in charge. He cares about people not wanting nor caring about getting some deeper levels of knowledge required to do their jobs properly and as a cause he sees that they are money oriented first, and tech oriented second.

swalsh 12y ago

Programming is like masturbating. You spend a lot of time yanking away until almost suddenly everything builds up in just the right way, and it works! For engineers, seeing it work is the orgasm. For business types, being able to sell it is the orgasm. I think the author yearns for the days that engineers ran silicon valley, and they worked on interesting problems because they wanted to see them work, not because there was a fat paycheck waiting for them at the end of the day.

dlhdesign 12y ago

Better summary: A man (who has enjoyed his career for the challenges it brings regardless of the pay level) is frustrated that the majority of his current peers don't seem to share the same passion for the work that he has.

ZenoArrow 12y ago
It's possible to interpret these types of past vs. today articles many different ways, but they often have a similar slant... 1. A rose-tinted view of the past (in case the author forgot, the technical challenges didn't prevent a whole lot of dross on the 90's internet). 2. A less than balanced view of today (is it really that hard to think of encouraging aspects of the modern web?) 3. A yearning for days gone by. The way I see it, these types of articles are less about criticising the present, and more about glorifying the past, a past that the author had some extra connection to by having lived through it. We're meant to marvel at the hardships that were faced, and recognise that the knowledge they accumulated isn't obsolete, so they still have a thing or two to teach us. Every generation will go through this, the generation before this guy did, the generation after will too. The truth is, some knowledge is only truly pertinent to its era. I wouldn't expect to read a book on starting an ISP in the 90s and then think I knew how best to do it now, even if the book might be interesting to read.

sebular 12y ago

Thank you. I rolled my eyes so hard when he started droning on about brogrammers not bothering to learn below their layers of abstraction. We live in a world where job postings are looking for RoR developers, job interviews test you on FizzBuzz, UML, and vague logic problems, and managers encourage developers to move fast and churn out releases. When exactly was anybody supposed to learn compilers, assembly, or low-level internet routing infrastructure? It was in a CS classroom years ago, and without any practical reason to refresh that knowledge ever since. Furthermore, the "applications" produced by this "golden age" of the internet were complete shit by today's standards. If they were so wonderful, why do we like to laugh at their miserable UX, ugly design, and lack of functionality? As if in 1995 they needed to think about javascript frameworks, CSS frameworks, responsive design, mobile anything, (quality) animations, asset servers, enormous databases, application and user analytics, clustered applications with message-passing, advanced caching strategies, an enormous variety of user input, or any of the other multitudinous things I forgot to mention. In 1995 they thought of everything up to the point where a static HTML document gets sent to the user, and that's where they stopped thinking. In 2015 we have a lot more to think about after that initial transfer. In 2015 we have to, y'know, make applications.