(begin rant)
Hi. Do you ever have a feeling that you have technical skills to qualify as a programmer, and there’s a demand for specialists, but, ironically, nobody needs them to design some useful information system or optimize the workflow in the factories, or do real science and push the limitations of human knowledge, but rather, all is just to spread some crappy advertising message as cheap as possible to the broadest audience as possible, usually without giving any respect to consumers, that feels like you’re losing your brain cells when interacting with the app/content you create. Quality level zero, consumerism level over 9k. Tons of boilerplate because ‘everything must be kept proprietary’ and it probably won’t work after 2 years because the framework you were using is down and the very idea of the becomes dated. Also, the more advanced technology, the more it’s used for shit. Like, we have generative neural networks that are used for turdposting conspiracies and generating profit/influence for some party.
I would say this clearly: I am very, very angry when I’m seeing this. I don’t want to participate in something that forces consumers to eat shit. Fuck SEO and e-commerce. Everything’s generative-AI, GANs, LLMs… now, which do not produce any value, at least to the user, or extracting every single bit of data of the user. Everything’s just to bombard people with information nowadays. Even Project Managers get biased (mostly because of naïve hype) and promote this crap.
(end rant)
So, my question is, how do you go through all of it? Of course, devs are better paid, but I don’t care about money. I’m still a student and, although I really like programming, and I’m really good at solving Competitive Programming problems (been at ICPC several times), I’m tired of this junk, besides I have a feeling I’ll be forced to do it. But, if I’m going to do it, somebody’s gonna get hurt. But it seems that it’s the only thing I’m skilled at, and I have no alternatives. So, how do you get through all of it, and what do you see it as relief, what does reward you at the very end?
EDIT: uncensored all swear words at request. I hope now you’re happy.
Welcome, you have discovered the alienation of labour in the field of IT. People were dealing with this shit for decades and it will keep happening as long as we live under capitalism.
Work that isn’t super unethical exists. It pays well but not obscenely well like ad industry. If you are a highly in demand engineer you are making a choice by working for an ad company.
Surely there are other programming jobs you can get? I work on IT service management software for mostly the public sector. We can’t even use Google Analytics. How about embedded systems? Automation for factories? Medical software? I once worked on AI for detecting lesions in eye-fundus photographs, to screen for diabetes. There’s plenty of specialized software for
niceniche sectors, for example I did cost estimation and planning software for the construction industry. Or you can go work for some indie developer to make games. Put away some money and you can eventually start your own company to make the kind of software you enjoy making.Do not work for a company that defies your moral compass. Period. Integrity is what makes legends.
Companies are led by humans and their morals and priorities reflect all the way down.
Bro… Most people are bootlickers so they shill whatever their corpo daddy tells them and they do it for free on their time off
🤡
I work for the federal government and spend my time at work making open sourced software and outside of work contributing to open source. My job is centered around forwarding science for the betterment of society, not around making the company more money.
As a result, I’m happier. My salary could probably be about 25% higher in the private sector. However, my job is secure through retirement and the pension plan and work life balance is sensational. This year i will have taken a month off between vacations and use-or-lose. I also have banked over 2500 hours of sick leave that don’t drop off. I also work fully remote though my office is 7 minutes away with no traffic.
Without doxxing myself, I worked for a small firm that helped “tech for good” companies to build their MVP or product towards Series A-C funding.
In the four years I worked with them, I don’t remember a single project there that wasn’t tainted by corruption, dodgy owners, or outright lies. This ranges from:
- The owner of a popular wellness and workplace stress app getting pissed off with me because a bug was found in a Node backend I had built for her (a PDF upload didn’t fill the correct fields in the DB). Her support contract was up with us, so she took the sane approach - literally calling my employer out on LinkedIn, and me by name as being an “incompetent developer”. Legal got involved, and she had to issue an apology online.
- Several instances of outright lying in pitch decks about customer numbers and eco credentials to get “green” funding.
- The company itself transitioning to crypto, despite pushing the fact that they only work on tech for good projects, while being run by a COO with a history of being inappropriate, having heavy drug/alcohol use, and being genuinely fucking useless in the world of tech.
- A workplace surveying tool to unlock happiness in the workplace getting funding through our work, then deciding to fire the entire fucking team we had built to run their product because they wanted to cut costs and sell to the highest bidder - a company notorious for horrendous workplace practices.
- Someone bragging about their CTO working at Amazon for 5 years. While true, it was in a fulfillment center.
- Countless charities that burn through money in ways you wouldn’t believe, or act hypocritical to their main mission. Imagine trying to fire someone at a mental health charity because they needed time off from stress, or making dead kid jokes at a fundraiser for a children’s charity…
Working at that place made me realise that sometimes the best you can hope for is a leadership structure that aren’t total assholes, and to work on something that you at least have some faith in.
Several of your use cases are just a different career. I optimize factory Workflows for a living, it’s industrial engineering, and it’s a very different skill set from programming
Web design is not the only option for someone who likes programming. Since you are still a student, there are so many options in front of you. You can be an embedded engineer and work closer to hardware, design firmware, electronic chips themselves or their verification environment. You can be a software engineer and work on business-to-business software which does not include adds and is very useful (e.g. CAD tools, inventory trackers for supermarkets and hospitals etc.). There is so much you can do, pursue something you are enthusiastic about.
Go into embedded software. You can’t do ads if there is no UI taps head.
Cli advertisements FTW - Ubuntu embedded edition
There’s plenty of work to be found in the public sector, the pay may be a bit less but I’ve always found the work to be satisfying and diverse. And, though this might be a European thing, the job security is usually quite high.
On top of that, the domain knowledge you build with working in these kinds of organizations can be quite valuable.Oh man I know how you feel. You need to find a balance. You don’t have to work 5-7 days a week to live. As a skilled worker you can survive from 4 days or less. Especially if you can remote and live in a cheap place. You can spend your other work days on whatever you find to be valuable. I dunno works for me.
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It’s all bullshit, and you’ve hit the nail on the head.
The only way out is through each other: change your workplace to be less bullshit. Demand dignity. Maybe bring your friends and make a co-op.
I do IT for a non profit. Luckily, it’s one that is funded by membership dues so I don’t have to fundraise, which includes a ton of advertising and the like. True, I’m not making bank like a lot of folks in IT. But my peace of mind is intact. I make a good living, and feel good about what I do. Jobs like mine are out there, but when you’re a student all you hear about is the vast amount of money you can make quickly by selling your soul to amazon or whoever. If you keep at it, there is a path in IT that does not include losing sight of your values. Good luck!!
Sammeee except data analyst (by title, I guess) working in local healthcare. I’m under the impression I could make bank by selling out but I’m quite happy with 70k, a pension, and my dignity.
While I do work for a giant, soulless corporation that definitely exploits people, the product I work on is actually useful to don’t marginalized people.
So I’m not contributing to the enshittification of the Internet.
