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submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

Short disclosure, I work as a Software Developer in the US, and often have to keep my negative opinions about the tech industry to myself. I often post podcasts and articles critical of the tech industry here in order to vent and, in a way, commiserate over the current state of tech and its negative effects on our environment and the Global/American sociopolitical landscape.

I'm generally reluctant to express these opinions IRL as I'm afraid of burning certain bridges in the tech industry that could one day lead to further employment opportunities. I also don't want to get into these kinds of discussions except with my closest friends and family, as I could foresee them getting quite heated and lengthy with certain people in my social circles.

Some of these negative opinions include:

  • I think that the industries based around cryptocurrencies and other blockchain technologies have always been, and have repeatedly proven themselves to be, nothing more or less than scams run and perpetuated by scam artists.
  • I think that the AI industry is particularly harmful to writers, journalists, actors, artists, and others. This is not because AI produces better pieces of work, but rather due to misanthropic viewpoints of particularly toxic and powerful individuals at the top of the tech industry hierarchy pushing AI as the next big thing due to their general misunderstanding or outright dislike of the general public.
  • I think that capitalism will ultimately doom the tech industry as it reinforces poor system design that deemphasizes maintenance and maintainability in preference of a move fast and break things mentality that still pervades many parts of tech.
  • I think we've squeezed as much capital out of advertising as is possible without completely alienating the modern user, and we risk creating strong anti tech sentiments among the general population if we don't figure out a less intrusive way of monetizing software.

You can agree or disagree with me, but in this thread I'd prefer not to get into arguments over the particular details of why any one of our opinions are wrong or right. Rather, I'd hope you could list what opinions on the tech industry you hold that you feel comfortable expressing here, but are, for whatever reason, reluctant to express in public or at work. I'd also welcome an elaboration of said reason, should you feel comfortable to give it.

I doubt we can completely avoid disagreements, but I'll humbly ask that we all attempt to keep this as civil as possible. Thanks in advance for all thoughtful responses.

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[-] blackstrat@lemmy.fwgx.uk 31 points 3 days ago

For many real world, day to day tasks, computers and the software that ran on them were faster and easier to use 20 years ago.

[-] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I hate so much that this is true. How did we manage to go so far backwards despite an army of UX designers? Oh wait...

But seriously it's all this bullshit driven by engagement and weird metrics no one likes. For some reason even our ticketing system at work is built like it's supposed to hold my attention rather than be a purpose-built tool for making my job easier.

[-] fishcurry509@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

And it's because the same designers are building ticketing systems as are building the other apps.

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[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 51 points 3 days ago

Tech workers need to unionize

[-] Reygle@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago

It's all trash. Everything normal people use on a daily basis is pure dumpster fire level garbage with massive, HEINOUS, unforgivable amounts of tracking built in.

They know all of this. They just don't care.

MOBILE USERS CAN GO FUCK THEMSELVES.

Phew. That felt good.

[-] Mesa@programming.dev 5 points 3 days ago

Only one in this thread willing to talk about the real problems.

[-] bokherif@lemmy.world 25 points 3 days ago

A lot of what is sold to consumers is straight up shite.

[-] mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 3 days ago

Ah, the upside of being autistic. I'll say anything i believe is true at work or here.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

You don't need to be autistic to do that.

Wait a second...

[-] Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml 21 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The Microsh*t Office Suit is atrocious — both from a Software Dev and ordinary user perspective. Literally any alternative is better, Libre Office, Google Office, etc.

Word is bloated, slow, impractical, bad for collaboration, and politically dubious. Teams is buggy, impractical, also politically dubious, and lacks many basic features. At this point, I literally despise Microsoft. Also Windows really seems to be unusable, from the enlightened perspective of a Mac or Linux user (in my case the latter).

SystemD is bloated and stopping Linux from getting faster.

Most mainstream programming languages suck, Rust being the exception.

Alright, I'm done ;)

Edit: any website that breaks because of uBlock Origin medium mode is poorly made and not trustworthy. /endrant

[-] Irelephant@lemm.ee 7 points 3 days ago

There is two types of languages, ones people bitch about, and ones nobody uses.

[-] JustTesting@lemmy.hogru.ch 3 points 2 days ago

What sucks the most about rust is that 90% of rust jobs are some crypto bullshit. I love the language, but finding normal jobs is near impossible.

At the same time, i could find 20 Go positions but Go just isn't exciting. It's the new java imo, working with it probably good for job security, but i just don't see myself working in Go in the future as a main language.

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[-] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago

Most programmers suck ass, including myself

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[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 94 points 4 days ago

No class consciousness. Too many tech workers think they're rugged individuals that can negotiate their own contracts into wealth.

Working for free on nights and weekends to "hit that deadline" is not good. You're just making the owners rich, and devaluing labor. Even if you own a lot of equity, it's not as much as the owners.

And then there's bullshit like return to office mandates and people are like "oh no none of us want to do this but there's no organized mechanism to resist"

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[-] nutsack@lemmy.world 28 points 3 days ago

companies don't know how to interview. i don't need someone to walk me through a sorting algorithm. i need someone who will be responsive, and interested in the problems we actually face.

[-] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

Also, any number of interviews that is more than one is too many interviews.

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[-] graycube@lemmy.world 103 points 4 days ago

Most of the high visibility "tech bros" aren't technical. They are finance bros who invest in tech.

[-] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Most of them speak the jargon, but can't explain what it means

[-] JakenVeina@lemm.ee 124 points 4 days ago

A very large portion (maybe not quite a majority) of software developers are not very good at their jobs. Just good enough to get by.

And that is entirely okay! Applies to most jobs, honestly. But there is really NO appropriate way to express that to a coworker.

I've seen way too much "just keep trying random things without really knowing what you're doing, and hope you eventually stumble into something that works" attitude from coworkers.

[-] Zagorath@aussie.zone 61 points 4 days ago

I actually would go further and say that collectively, we are terrible at what we do. Not every individual, but the combination of individuals, teams, management, and business requirements mean that collectively we produce terrible results. If bridges failed at anywhere near the rate that software does, processes would be changed to fix the problem. But bugs, glitches, vulnerabilities etc. are rife in the software industry. And it just gets accepted as normal.

It is possible to do better. We know this, from things like the stuff that sent us to the moon. But we've collectively decided not to do better.

[-] folkrav@lemmy.ca 30 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Main difference is, a bridge that fails physically breaks, takes months to repair, and risks killing people. Your average CRUD app... maybe a dev loses a couple or hours figuring out how to fix live data for the affected client, bug gets fixed, and everybody goes on with their day.

Remember that we almost all code to make products that will make a company money. There's just no financial upside to doing better in most cases, so we don't. The financial consequences of most bugs just aren't great enough to make the industry care. It's always about maximizing revenue.

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[-] Akareth@lemmy.world 25 points 3 days ago

Neither Python nor JavaScript should be the primary language used in any production back end.

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[-] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 days ago

I think that the AI industry is particularly harmful to writers, journalists, actors, artists, and others. This is not because AI produces better pieces of work, but rather due to misanthropic viewpoints of particularly toxic and powerful individuals at the top of the tech industry hierarchy pushing AI as the next big thing due to their general misunderstanding or outright dislike of the general public.

I'm a writer and my work is increasingly making me use AI to do things. I'm 98% sure I'm just training this thing to replace me at this point, and am planning accordingly.

[-] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 days ago

I really don't get the use of AI to replace creative roles. At worst I've used it as a sort of "lorem ipsum" generator but for various placeholders. I think AI's true value is in understanding the sometimes overwhelming amount of documents, records, datasets and databases that organizations can amass. Being able to have an AI help sift through the garbage is real helpful actually.

I've seen governments using it to do things like handle access-to-information type requests or help patent examiners find relevant patents: those uses make a lot of sense.

[-] drascus@sh.itjust.works 17 points 3 days ago

So Just for context I work as an engineer but I consider myself pretty low level. I am completely self taught as I sort of flunked out of college and didn't pay much attention anyway. I've just been the sort of person who takes everything apart and tinkers around to figure things out or reads documentation. So I am not some genius programmer or anything. However what I have noticed over the span of my ( 40 + years ) is that the Internet and technology used to be a challenge but rewarding. Things were skewed towards creativity, sharing, community, and knowledge. I remember spending lots of time on forums like Usenet and later bulletin boards of various types. I remember when Wikipedia first became a thing and it really seemed to me that we were going to get this amazing platform to learn and self teach just about any subject imaginable. Then somehow the Internet just became an endless fucking scroll farm. My dumbass uncles and older family members who used to be content with just eating aerosol cheese while channel surfing got online and became complete fools. Instead of creativity and debate we just have endless AI slop, morons reacting to videos of nothing, Bots, and click bait. It seems like the industry just loves it because before they could barely figure out how they could make money off of this crap and now they have it figured out "turn everyone into fucking zombies". People at work are at times blown away at my stamina to work through problems and it's like bro I used to sleep next to my 486 so I could put in disk 20 of 50 to install something and it would take like all friggin night. I used to have to find a dude that got a catalog so I could get a CPU upgrade or part because there was no internet. I used to have to fight for every damn piece of documentation or software I could get my hand on. Now it's all right there and people have decided to watch Tik Tok instead of being able to do anything on their own. We screwed the hell up the Internet and tech has made people lazy, less capable, and focused on instant gratification. It was supposed to make us curious, creative, and engaged. Now with AI we are like "hmm how can I even be lazier?". I would get if they used AI to help solve really complex problems reserved that compute and stuff to assist on certain things that humans are not good at. However we are using this shit to just circumvent having to think and a substitute for community. Why ask a friggin bot when all the answers were in forums where you could interact with people make friends and learn? Now I am looking down the barrel of the gun of being replaced in the next 5 years or so going, Great so this shit which was "my thing" the only damn thing I was ever good at or interested in is going to be taken away from me because of some lazy ass people who just want to watch Tik Tok all day? -End rant.

[-] conicalscientist@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I don't think it's really uncomfortable to say but whatever.

There used to be a digital social contract that we were all stewarding a global information database. That was before the era of "inflluencers" and information arbitrage. In other words people deriving monetized content from other content. Why would anyone want to do the leg work for some random jerk to take all for personal gain.

The whole proposition is a negative spiral. The paradigm changed from stewardship to something shit. This scroll zombie thing or whatever. We have the few users who are the "creators". Everyone else are consuming whatever is fed to them. It has discouraged people from thinking for themselves and maybe even adding something to the pot.

One thing I've noticed the git repo snipers. People will camp on forks looking at your work. If you don't submit to upstream then someone else will copy your patch(es) and make a pull request.

Also more generally things I do that I don't publish to posts/blogs is liable to be sniped. So might as well keep it to myself unless I'm will to go the full mile making a big show of staking ownership.

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[-] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 34 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

CEOs and all management suite are mostly useless except for making the business worse for the employees for the sake of investors.

Most employees are perfectly fine with slow and steady growth instead of maximizing it.

[-] Cataphract@lemmy.ml 21 points 4 days ago

It's interesting the preconceived notions over managements usefulness and the actual role a CEO plays in a company. I've had a lot of conversations with people over the years and everyone just expects that it "has to be this way or it won't work". Like every admin position is critical or the company will fail, completely disregarding that most of those positions didn't exist before and the company ran just fine.

There's a lot of misinformation over what their actual job entails. Management is mostly just one big "telephone" game (been on all sides of it, got out just in time before it warped my perception of life). The original role of being support is completely absent in their duties as our society and culture has changed. People also think a co-op would never work because you need a big shot CEO who runs the company and makes all the decisions (they don't, plenty of examples in reality).

It's kinda funny to hear a lot of the tech people on here mention imposter syndrome. Every person in administration has this feeling deep down inside that they aren't important and they have no clue what they're doing. The only difference is everyone in the C-suite pat's eachother on the back and help build each other's ego up so they can just pretend they don't feel it. It's why people in these positions get so defensive and irate if you start dissecting their actual duties and importance. They've been reassured everyday that what they do is integral when it's suppose to be the managers job to make his employees feel that way.

[-] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 31 points 4 days ago

Much of what we do and have built is overpriced and useless bullshit that doesn't make anybody better off.

We are inventing solutions and products to manage other solutions and products to manage other solutions and products to...etc etc.

Websites used to be static HTML pages with some simple graphics, images, and some imbedded stuff. Now, you need to know AWS for your IaaS, Kubernetes to manage your scaling and container orchestration for the thousands of Docker containers that you use to compose your app written in some horrific pile of JavaScript related web stacks like NodeJS, Typescript, React, blah blah blah...

Then you need a ton of other 3rd party components that handle authentication, databasing, backups, monitoring, signaling, account creation/management, logging, billing, etc etc.

It's circles within circles within circles, and all that to make a buggy, overpriced, clunky web app.

Similar is true for IT, massive software suites that most people in the company use 10% of their functionality for stupid shit.

I'm all for advancing technology, I love technology, it's my job and my hobby.

But the longer I work in this industry, the more I get this sick feeling that we lost the train long time ago. Buying brand new $1,500 laptops every 3 years so that most of our users can send emails, browse the web, and type up occasional memos.

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[-] amzd@lemmy.world 43 points 4 days ago

All software should be open source

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[-] witx@lemmy.sdf.org 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)
  • IT reconversions are bullshit and dangerous to the industry. Everyone and their grandma are becoming "programmers". We're in the "fuck around" phase, the "find out" will be explosive. Companies are inundating themselves with these "reconverted" juniors and doing soft-layoffs to seniors..

  • crypto, Blockchain and AI are just bs to make a quick buck out of investors. They are truly disastrous to the environment

  • If you use chatgpt et al. I'll look down on you from a technical competence level

  • marketing and middle management are mostly useless. A good, and small, sales+marketing team is very effective but the moment they start growing they start to degenerate pretty fast into BS world and imposing company culture

[-] needanke@feddit.org 16 points 3 days ago
  • If you use chatgpt et al. I'll look down on you from a technical competence level

Eh, I have to say I find it quite usefull sometimes for brainstorming solutions. It is esentially a rubber duck that answers and sometimes gives good ideas.

Of course the answers are often bullshit, but they can sometimes point you in the right direction/to the right words to google.

(All of this ignoring the enviromental problems ofc.)

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[-] CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 20 points 4 days ago

At least half of the people working in tech shouldn't be. They have 0 clue what they're doing and that's dangerous. And far to many people solve everything with a golden hammer.

You don't need a Mac to work in IT. Especially if all your doing is ansible.

Ansible sucks. It's slow, it's limited, it gives a false sense of understanding to do many. I mean it's nice that it's a structured playground for some folks I suppose. But there are better tools that do the exact same thing. Or you could just write a proper script.

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[-] Nyxicas@kbin.melroy.org 19 points 3 days ago

I truly believe that innovating the internet is really running in place. Might be just me but I can't think of anything we can really do, to 'evolve' it. We're doing everything that we've been doing in the past three decades, but it's only just been more accessible and the speeds faster (depending where you are). But we're not actually moving the needle when it comes to progressing the internet as a whole.

And I see it this way as to why. We've experienced two big booms in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, with Web 1.0 being what some consider the Wild West of the internet. Web 2.0 is basically the great social media bubble that has blossomed for years. We're not doing anything new or different now than we did back in 2007. Every new social media platform that comes out is recycling the exact same things as many before it presented. I truly think we stopped evolving the internet the day we managed to get messengers onto phones when phones were developing and it's only been perfected by the age of the first wave of smartphones.

So I just think with all of this AI stuff, this "Web 3.0" I've been hearing about for a few years now, the Metaverse .etc are all just gimmicks. Gimmicks of shitty ideas coming from the wrong people that should be practicing said ideas, all saying that they're innovating the internet when all that they're doing is just taking advantage of the internet for themselves. All within political theater of course.

[-] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It will create a fully autonomous and self sufficient robot army one day and the 1% will genocide the working class with said army after our labor is no longer needed.

[-] Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works 46 points 4 days ago

The whole "tech industry" naming is bulllshit, there is more technology let's say in composite used to build an aircraft wing or in a surgerical robots, than in yet another mobile app showing you ads

The whole tech sector also tend to be over evaluated on the stock market. In no world Apple is worth 3 trillion while coca cola or airbus are worth around 200 billions

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[-] trolololol@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I'm not verbose today but let me just get intro into my thoughts that I grew up in the 3rd world and then moved to Australia in my late 30s, and I think I had a better life where I grew up instead of where you are. The capitalism periphery has downsides but at least quality of life is minimally compatible with logic.

I've seen bigger concentration of power in my home country, but it still blows my mind how your country didn't get a revolution along side with rights movement decades ago when the momentum was there, and things are going down very fast since then. For you people I mean.

Your country is a cancer to the world democracy. Yes ussr was also a demon, and Russia is trying hard to match. Everybody else want you both to sink.

Economy like history is written by the victors.

Insert usual rant that your country doesn't even have a proper name..

Yep that's my short version. You should see me when I'm worked up by what evil CIA has done all around.

[-] Lightor@lemmy.world 30 points 4 days ago

Please stop with the AI pushing. It's a solution looking for a problem, it's a waste in 90% of the cases.

[-] Mr_Fish@lemmy.world 43 points 4 days ago

I think most people who actually work in software development will agree with you on those things. The problem is that it's the marketing people and investors who disagree with you, but it's also them who get to make the decisions.

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[-] kibiz0r@midwest.social 29 points 4 days ago

I think companies that use unethically trained AI (read: basically all gen AI) should be subject to massive litigation, or at least severely damaging boycotts.

Have mentioned it to a lawyer at work, and he was like “I get it, but uh… fat chance, lol”. Would not dare mention it to the AI-hungry folks in leadership.

[-] psion1369@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

My opinion on tech is that there are cool things being done that do one shiney thing, but everyone disregards the shit it produces behind the scenes. Blookchain is an awesome concept, the whole chain depends on all the other parts of it, but the fact that in order to use it, you have to download the whole thing in several systems. The size of a single will grow so large, only a few companies will be able to analyze it at scale. And AI is a huge joke. Nobody should be celebrating generative AI. A ton of computing power that is dangerous to our eco system, and it's all trained on shady material. Nobody is doing anything significant about the power consumption, just coming up with agencies to help companies use AI properly. It's all a joke. Most of our most influencial technologies are just someone asking how to make big bucks off something comes else created for free.

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this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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