[HN Gopher] So long, and thanks for all the bytes
___________________________________________________________________
So long, and thanks for all the bytes
Author : ckue
Score : 264 points
Date : 2024-02-17 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chethaase.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (chethaase.medium.com)
| yawz wrote:
| Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up
| on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call
| of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be
| more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-
| colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try
| my hand at this other thing."
| oldpersonintx wrote:
| Lots of people will be leaving tech, not by choice. Unlike
| longterm Googlers, not everyone can afford to not get paid for
| six months.
|
| Also, this isn't a "downturn"...the companies are mostly doing
| better than ever. This is a permanent restructuring in resource
| allocation. Companies are going to shrink headcount even as
| their businesses flourish.
| nrjames wrote:
| I'm not sure it's the downturn, necessarily. I used to be
| enthralled with tech, full of energy to explore new tools,
| programming languages, etc. I think I slowly awoke to the fact
| that it's not the tech but the people that make it interesting
| and rewarding. For me (and I'm not trying to project on anybody
| else), interactions and activities with people who were doing
| things that are not tech seemed deeper and more genuine --
| almost as if it was easier for me to get to know them and enjoy
| their company in a non-tech context. As a result, my hobbies
| and interests have pivoted to activities that don't involve
| computers much at all. My career remains in tech and I try to
| put my best efforts into the work that I do, but it's becoming
| more difficult as I continue to realize that life, for me, is
| better when most of it is spent away from screens.
| Seanambers wrote:
| Tech pays so much, people can afford to move on. That's
| probably the biggest reason.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's not most people or even most people in tech obviously.
| But I know a fair number of people in tech, especially
| post-pandemic, who reassessed things and decided they had
| enough money and really weren't enjoying their jobs any
| longer so they moved on.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| I know a number of people that were true believers until
| the the pandemic. I think that as tech workers, we are
| generally really isolated from a lot of real problems
| people face. I remember having sick family members, kids
| that were out of school with nowhere to go and nothing to
| do and I could watch the weight of boardom and loneliness
| weighing on them and the additional responsibilities of
| having the kitchen stocked and open for 3 or 4 meals a
| day and then sitting there and listening to some shithead
| rambling on about a useless product and fake deadlines so
| someone I didn't know or care about could make 15%
| instead of 10% this year.
|
| I kinda reassessed who is benefiting and the actual
| importance of a lot of the work you do. Even though it's
| all framed as 'mission driven' and 'Changing the world' a
| lot of it really is only important so some mega corp can
| make a couple extra points on their stock.
|
| I've talked to a bunch of people in the industry that had
| similar realizations. I've heard things like 'it's not
| something I can do today, but in x years . . .'
|
| I believe there were a lot of people who reassessed an
| have a different view and that is and will continue to
| change the trajectory of many tech careers over the
| coming decade.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Do you think remote work has made it less interesting for
| you?
| CM30 wrote:
| I suspect there will be quite a few people in this situation,
| but it won't be the majority of people simply for financial
| reasons. If your idea of a fulfilling career isn't tech, law,
| finance, medicine or business/management, it may simply be
| impossible to do it full time and have a decent quality of life
| in many places.
|
| For instance, writing jobs pay terribly overall, with the
| quantity of them going down a lot due to the decline of
| traditional media and the advent of AI. Unless you've got a
| FAANG income nest egg or a trust fund to rely on, I wouldn't
| recommend anyone get into this kind of work as their main
| career, regardless of how fulfilling it might be.
|
| Ultimately I suspect many people will be forced to try and
| stick out this recession/downturn just because tech is their
| best bet of a decent living.
| ghaff wrote:
| I wouldn't over-generalize. But there is some belt tightening
| at companies. Many companies have grown/changed. People may not
| feel up for a late career reboot even if, under different
| circumstances, they might have put some more years in.
| throwaway63467 wrote:
| I would assume that he just earned so much money that he's rich
| and can now do something else with his life without caring
| about money. Good for him.
| away271828 wrote:
| "Rich" is a bit of a loaded term. But, yes, if someone has
| had a successful 35-40 year career in tech and has managed
| their finances reasonably, it's not unreasonable that they
| might decide to pack things in some years early--especially
| if they're not wild about working at a behemoth company that
| isn't as much fun as it used to be.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > But, yes, if someone has had a successful 35-40 year
| career in tech and has managed their finances reasonably,
| it's not unreasonable that they might decide to pack things
| in some years early
|
| Early? If you've been in tech (or any job, really) for 35
| to 40 years you're going to be in your 60s (or close) which
| is a normal time to retire.
| zhivota wrote:
| Yeah the real difference with tech, at least as it's been
| for the last while, is you can do it after 10-20 years.
| I've had a very middling career overall and after about
| 15 years I'm very close to being able to just move on and
| do anything else without worrying about day to day
| expenses.
|
| Now people who have run faster and faster on the hedonic
| treadmill with their inflated tech salaries, they are
| going to be in trouble.
| ghaff wrote:
| Retiring in late 50s vs. retiring at 65 (much less later)
| still qualifies as some years early I think. Obviously a
| step function difference from retiring/"retiring" in
| early 40s.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| There is a vast difference - literally vast - between
| Google employee's salary over 14 years vs the median salary
| in IT overall.
|
| This is especially true if you consider salaries world wide
| vs just the United States.
| gedy wrote:
| Even in the best of times, the best engineers I've worked with
| basically we're just putting up with companies and management
| because the work was interesting and pay was good.
|
| With so many people looking for work at the moment, I think a
| lot of these same companies have kind of a big head about
| themselves. Interviewing always sucks, but having to jump
| through a bunch of hoops, be ignored, or ghosted by some dopey
| SaaS company is really discouraging for a lot of people.
|
| I myself decided to take a sabbatical so as not to deal with
| all this right now.
| away271828 wrote:
| It's not 2001 but it's almost certainly harder for a later
| career person in particular get hired than, say, 5 years ago.
| I know quite a few people who presumably feel comfortable
| financially and have walked away from at least full time
| involvement with tech.
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| Tangential to the article since that was a voluntary departure,
| but this is absolutely happening, yes.
|
| My partner decided to get "into tech" in ~2018. Her reason more
| or less amounted to looking at me and determining "it's a cushy
| job that pays very well." For a while, I tried pointing her to
| various sources to start learning a bit about software
| development and programming; there's no barrier to installing
| PyCharm CE and Github, after all. But there was zero interest
| and zero natural curiosity. She just did some certificate
| coursework, passed, then started looking for a job, and nothing
| beyond that.
|
| In a lot of ways, software developer has been brought down to
| earth as a more "normal" career. You don't really hear about
| lawyers working on passion law projects at night or mechanical
| engineers designing skyscrapers as a hobby; the path for that
| is just go to school -> get internship -> get fulltime job ->
| do your 9-5.
|
| The thing is, my partner isn't alone. She represents the vast,
| _vast_ majority of new software developers in the past 15
| years. The industry has grown, the pay has exploded, people who
| worked retail could parlay a 6-week bootcamp into a six-figure
| salary. Obviously people would hop in even if they didn 't know
| what a compiler was.
|
| But in a post-ZIRP world companies are seriously reevaluating
| the value of the average software developer. In 2010, a
| software dev was far more likely to have at least _some_
| personal interest in software, or even just computers in
| general. Now, you have software developers who never touched an
| actual, non-phone /tablet computer before entering their
| university courses. They're not stupid--they can pass a
| leetcode interview just fine--they just don't care about
| technology beyond using it as a means to pay rent.
|
| Even if we return to near-ZIRP, there's going to be less demand
| for massive software dev teams. Everyone hates him, but you
| have to begrudgingly admit that Elon successfully demonstrated
| you don't need massive dev teams to build and run software,
| even at Twitter's scale. (obviously it has other problems due
| to Elon's incompetence, but nothing more developers would
| solve.) Most companies could cut their dev team size by 50% and
| end up net-positive due to less overhead--the challenge is
| figuring out which 50% to cut.
|
| So, yes. The tech downturn for this group of people--the non-
| passionate 9-to-5ers, particularly juniors--will last for many
| years, and that will lead to many jumping to other careers.
| Mc91 wrote:
| > Everyone hates him, but you have to begrudgingly admit that
| Elon successfully demonstrated you don't need massive dev
| teams to build and run software, even at Twitter's scale.
| (obviously it has other problems due to Elon's incompetence,
| but nothing more developers would solve.) Most companies
| could cut their dev team size by 50% and end up net-positive
| due to less overhead--the challenge is figuring out which 50%
| to cut.
|
| What do you mean this revelation was recently demonstrated by
| Elon? The NATO Software Engineering Conference 1968 paper
| talks about the problems of having too many programmers of
| low skill. The 1969 paper talks about the same thing. Fred
| Brooks wrote the Mythical Man Month in 1975, covering this
| topic extensively. This has been talked about extensively for
| over half a century with regards to software, it wasn't just
| discovered by Elon in the last year.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Nothing you said contradicts GP, who didn't claim Elon
| discovered anything. Elon did recently demonstrate what has
| been known for a long time - but not widely believed.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> Elon did recently demonstrate what has been known for
| a long time_
|
| You mean because he fired a lot of people and the website
| is still up?
|
| Revenue has been falling precipitously. I'm not sure
| anything has been demonstrated yet.
| manmal wrote:
| Revenue hasn't fallen because devs were fired, but
| because people responsible for selling ads were.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| No, I don't think that's what happend.
|
| If I remember correctly, he reduced the content
| moderation team, which led to an increase in hate speech,
| misinformation and CSAM. That's why big advertisers left
| and revenues crashed.
|
| He then told those big advertisers to piss off and
| refocused his advertising business on smaller customers,
| which is why he doesn't need so many ad sales people any
| more.
|
| Perhaps he should hire some developers and data
| scientists to better automate content moderation.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| He also did fire a lot of sales and account managers in
| those first weeks. There were advertising customers in
| the news who were no longer purchasing ads because they
| literally didn't know who to contact any longer.
| kbolino wrote:
| I think we have another problem looming, beyond the
| realization that many engineers are unnecessary:
|
| Most of the business models in tech are unsustainable. The
| ad-revenue driven explosion of the Internet over the past ~15
| years has long since reached saturation. The data mines are
| all tapped out, and what have we learned? Mostly, nothing.
| Following a person's habits can help you target ads and drive
| them towards (mostly) unnecessary consumption. Then what?
|
| Without ZIRP we're going to run out of the easy credit
| fueling such consumption. The economic hamster wheel is going
| to have to slow down. Then the realization that the SnR on
| the data being collected is practically 0 will set in. An
| immense amount of investment dollars was thrown at companies
| that charge nothing to the end user but collect and sell data
| to third parties. Yet that data is almost completely
| worthless.
|
| I personally think fee-for-service is eventually going to
| make a (bigger) comeback, though another round or two of ZIRP
| might stave it off for awhile. As it does return, it is going
| to put even more pressure on companies to run lean teams.
| slyall wrote:
| > So, yes. The tech downturn for this group of people--the
| non-passionate 9-to-5ers, particularly juniors--will last for
| many years, and that will lead to many jumping to other
| careers.
|
| This happened after the dot-com burst in 2000. At that time
| there were a lot of people in Tech who would have otherwise
| gone into marketing, accounting or whatever.
|
| A lot of these moved out of tech into other fields. Or they
| moved into less technical roles like project manager or
| management.
| dustincoates wrote:
| I think this is a good call out. There are many in tech
| who, if salaries fall, will go into other industries. Then
| there are those who will figure out how to do with less--
| because they couldn't imagine working in anything else.
| plainOldText wrote:
| On one hand computer and information science degrees have
| experienced the highest growth among undergrad degrees [1], so
| lots of people are joining in, but on the other I'm curious to
| hear from the people who have left.
|
| Is anyone who has exited the tech world still reading HN? What's
| it like on the outside?
|
| [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-most-popular-
| u-s...
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Chet's book on the early days of Android is super interesting.
| Lots of crazy OS building stories. He must have interviewed 50
| people who worked on the first couple releases of Android. I had
| him share parts of that story on the podcast and result is one of
| my favorite episodes.
|
| I always thought of Android as, of course it succeeded, it was a
| big google project. But the story is far more interesting. They
| were somewhat of a small group, part of an acquisition and didn't
| actually merge with the prevailing google culture. Kind of kept
| to themselves and worked insane hours and were really into
| coffee.
|
| Also, most of them had previous worked on similar projects. They
| had done the T-Mobile Sidekick and some of them came from WebTV,
| I think and BeOS.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61431659
|
| https://corecursive.com/android-with-chet-haase/
| raphlinus wrote:
| I joined Android in April 2012. Looking back, at that time
| Android was incredibly lean for what it was accomplishing. The
| entire Frameworks team reported to one manager, and we would
| fit in a medium size conference room. That included all of UI
| toolkit and the bulk of the Java APIs an app would call into,
| including Binder. (Networking, phone, graphics, Bluetooth, etc
| were other teams, but we worked closely together. And I think
| graphics was like 5 people). At the time I was slightly worried
| that I had joined a mature project and that it had already seen
| most of its success. Little did I know. (Disclosure: Chet was
| my manager for a couple years, until I left in late 2016 to
| join Fuchsia, largely because I was impatient to develop in
| Rust).
|
| Chet is a great comedian, I think he'll do well in his new
| interest. I'll bend the norms here and tell a joke. It'll be
| funny to Android insiders, apologies otherwise.
|
| At one point, he hosted a get-together in his house, which was
| one of many things that led to incredible team cohesion. It was
| somewhat chilly, and we were sitting around in our jackets
| shivering a bit. One person said, "we should have an Android
| app for turning on the heat to warm us up." My response: "we
| already do, it's called GMSCore."
| eclipxe wrote:
| As someone currently working on GMSCore...I couldn't stop
| laughing.
| chaboud wrote:
| That must have been an amazing ride. Note: in my opinion, a
| small, lean, focused team is the right way to build an OS. I
| haven't seen the "throw an army at it" approach succeed for
| building the core of an OS or platform, as it becomes almost
| impossible to keep coherence in the system.
|
| And, yeah, that GMSCore joke is too real.
| manmal wrote:
| Indeed, it was interesting when VW announced they'd hire
| 10k engineers to build an automotive OS. Of course it
| hasn't worked out and they needed to restart the effort
| (with 5k devs it seems?).
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe?
|
| How many people worked on the core of Windows NT? On a
| number of the big Unixes? Various minicomputer OSs?
|
| What you probably do need is a chief architect--like Cutler
| in the NT case--to keep everyone lined up.
| wrs wrote:
| Depending on your definition of "core", I think the cores
| of those were indeed implemented by a handful of people.
| Read "Showstopper" for the Windows NT story, for example,
| with a small gang of ex-DEC engineers putting the basic
| kernel abstractions in place.
|
| Of course, the full functionality of the system comes
| after lots more people build functionality on top of that
| core. Which is exactly why it's important for that core
| to be coherent, powerful, and well engineered.
|
| You can have the best chief architect in the world, but
| if everyone's building on sand you're going to get a
| crappy system. Whereas if the core of the system is
| solid, it will guide people into doing things better even
| without an architect.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've read Showstopper. Also Soul of a New Machine. Don't
| really disagree. A lot depends on what you consider core
| and what you consider a system in the words of Fred
| Brooks.
| bitwize wrote:
| _The Mythical Man Month_ was literally written because
| Fred Brooks threw an army at the problem of writing an OS
| -- IBM 's OS/360 -- then found it didn't work and decided
| to write down why it didn't work. His idea of an ideal
| software team he called the "surgical team" and your
| chief architect is the "surgeon" -- the one responsible
| for the major design decisions who calls all the shots.
| The surgeon and his team shouldn't exceed about ten
| people.
|
| _The Mythical Man Month_ is, like the Bible, one of
| those tomes that everyone cites with reverence, yet no
| one seems to read or follow the principles of. The ideal
| team from corporate 's perspective is what I call the
| RAMP -- Redundant Array of Mid Programmers. The idea
| being that if you get a bunch of mid programmers together
| and have them constantly communicating, you can get the
| output of one good programmer without the risk of one
| good programmer, since you can always replace any of the
| mid programmers that fail or falter. But this approach
| has a number of drawbacks: you don't actually get the
| output of one good programmer this way, and you don't get
| the speed of one good programmer either. Furthermore, you
| run into the same problems you do with actual RAID:
| similar components tend to fail on similar timelines, so
| you end up having to replace all the components at around
| the same time anyway. Programmers tend to burn out, or
| quit and look for greener pa$ture$, after a few years, so
| you may end up losing a significant chunk, if not all, of
| your team at around the same time.
|
| But if you're an organization with billions in the bank,
| you can remain idiotic for much longer periods of time
| than any of your people are willing to stick around for
| and attempt to positively change things.
| agentgumshoe wrote:
| The other key factor is probably the person hiring/hiring
| being able to identify a 'good' programmer. Whether
| that's through their own competence or having some
| knowledge of the candidate outside their resume.
|
| Speed to market is also a factor. If you pushing to
| release a new product, good engineers are _very_
| important. For big corporates with established
| marketshare and profits, it seems to be the thousand
| monkeys with typewriters approach
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Small, lean, focused team is the correct way to build any
| massive undertaking in software. Maybe not in sending
| people to the moon, but in building consumer software.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| Well, small, lean, and focused also implies that the time
| to deliver is still a bit longer. If you're willing to
| wait 5 years for something, then a small lean focused
| team is the way to go. The issue with hiring 10k devs to
| build the core of an os is that just by definition,
| you'll have people starting the user land at the same
| time as the core and now you have UI project managers
| dictating ABI interfaces at the same time as you're
| trying to make your core OS.
|
| A large dev team for something that complex it the
| classic case of the mythical man month. Some things just
| need to happen in series, and some things just need to
| happen first.
| agentgumshoe wrote:
| Much like societies, there is no 'one way' to do it all.
|
| Best is to really understand what you are trying to do in
| the first place.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"until I left in late 2016 to join Fuchsia, largely because
| I was impatient to develop in Rust"
|
| Shows how different people are. I only care what I am
| developing. I have my preferences but if generally language
| is the last thing I care about bar some pathological cases.
| chihuahua wrote:
| I used to think that way until I ran into one of the
| pathological cases (Ruby) and now I'll think very carefully
| about which job offers to accept based on the language(s)
| involved.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I worked with some of them at WebTV and they were extraordinary
| hackers there, and at General Magic before that.
|
| I miss Bowser the Rabbit most, though.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| I didn't work on Android until 2016. As someone who was very
| much not old guard, Chet's book helped fill in a lot of details
| and historical context for me. I enjoyed the read and recommend
| it. So long Chet, and thanks for all the fish.
| blindriver wrote:
| The idea that another multi-millionaire tech worker would think
| that leaving their job is something people would be interested in
| is... strange. He's letting the world know that in the second
| worst tech downturn in history, he's going to retire and pursue
| comedy writing. Feels more appropriate for a Facebook post to
| this friends rather than a medium post.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| I'm more interested on why he is posting it on medium when he
| has a blog.
| agmater wrote:
| I really like how Medium lets you know how "distraction free"
| their reading experience is (using huge popunders, privacy
| notices, sticky headers).
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure why anyone would use Medium at this point.
| It's not like there aren't free alternatives even if you
| don't want to self-host.
| herrkanin wrote:
| Weirdly gatekeepy. Why shouldn't he be allowed to update his
| followers on his life?
| furyofantares wrote:
| It's actually fine for someone to post something you don't
| personally want to read.
| poszlem wrote:
| To quote Gervais' bit:
|
| On Twitter, people sometimes say, "Why don't you keep your
| opinions to yourself?" I go, "You're following me. I didn't
| tweet at you." That's like going to a notice board in the
| middle of town, seeing a sign for guitar lessons, and yelling,
| "I DON'T WANT guitar lessons!" Well, it wasn't for you.
|
| Maybe hard to believe, but for a lot of people, it's way more
| interesting than hearing yet another self-proclaimed radical
| communist go on another rant about people making money.
| pyb wrote:
| I'm not sure why it did, but it's not his fault that this has
| made the top spot on HN.
| sulam wrote:
| It's also strange that all those people in movies think we care
| about their current relationship status.
| sowbug wrote:
| You might be interested in an excellent keyboard shortcut:
| control-W. (Or command-W on a Mac.)
| jacurtis wrote:
| He posted it on Medium, not the front page of the New York
| Times.
|
| People follow him on Medium, presumably because they want to
| follow his thoughts and are interested in what he has to say.
|
| So for him to post to a platform of followers, explaining the
| most major life change of his life and announcing that he
| effectively won't be as involved in the Android community
| anymore all seems pretty reasonable.
|
| If someone has a gun to your head forcing you to read it
| against your will than I suggest dialing 911. For the rest of
| us, there is nothing forcing us from reading it. So if its not
| of interest we just move on.
| nemo44x wrote:
| "Hey everyone, I'm so awesome that after doing whatever I
| wanted at Google (I took no time to actually take interest in
| anything but my project) and making millions of dollars, I'm
| going to now self actualize! Some guys buy a sports car during
| their midlife crisis but I'm going to spend $100k+ to learn how
| to be funny via luxury MFA and buy access to Second City. I AM
| AWESOME!
| ilamont wrote:
| To quote musician Jon Wurster, roughly the same age as Chet, "I
| take whatever opportunities arise, no matter how weird or
| improbable they may be."
| MrUssek wrote:
| Some context for those that may be unaware; Chet has been a
| staple in the Android developer community for a very long time,
| having hosted a popular podcast and been a staple a conferences.
| His move into comedy will surprise no one, but he will be dearly
| missed.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| The title is an allusion to "So long, and Thanks for All the
| Fish", a book by Douglas Adams.
|
| (For those HNers not steeped in the HHGTTG trilogy of six books)
| vitiral wrote:
| Which is a reference to what the Dolphins say at the start of
| Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as they leave the earth just
| before it is destroyed for a new intergalactic roadway.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| Which made a lot of people sad, even the ones with digital
| watches...
| stareatgoats wrote:
| yeah, he swears he loves Google, Android and the rest - but
| he did put that title there didn't he? Come to think of it,
| that's one of the hallmarks of comedy - say one thing and
| subtly imply another ...
| i000 wrote:
| Reads like a good outline for a sitcom. Disillusioned tech exec
| enrolls in arts school with quirky green haired genZ : ^ )
| manmal wrote:
| Like Pierce in Community?
| ignoramous wrote:
| Chet is a story-teller extraordinaire. imo, Devoxx 2019 remains
| his best presentation, so far: https://www.youtube-
| nocookie.com/embed/IEQj8ZxHejo (mirror:
| https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/IEQj8ZxHejo) And his best gift
| to all of us active in AOSP and Android developer ecosystem is
| his book _Androids_ (https://www.chethaase.com/androids).
|
| Thank you Chet. You have been sheer _quality_ (q14) all year,
| every year.
| aslilac wrote:
| good for you man.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Never had the pleasure of meeting him in person, but as most of
| my career so far has been in mobile (and Android specifically)
| for the past 14 years, Chat has been one of those Android experts
| that have always 'been there'.
|
| I wish him all the best with the new endeavour, and thank him for
| all the great content and communication he has been part of over
| the years.
|
| I will though miss the banter dynamic between Chet, Tor and
| Romain on ADB.
|
| _p.s_ Highly recommend reading his book Androids on the history
| of the early days of its development
| hcks wrote:
| I though Google paid decent salaries, but it turns out even after
| 15 years there you're still concerned about making ends meet it
| seems
| barelyauser wrote:
| Salaries is one thing. Your lifestyle choices are another thing
| entirely.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I've been working at Google about 10 years as "only" an L5 and
| have about $3M in stock just from stuff I haven't sold
| dangus wrote:
| Yeah, every ex-Googler "riding off into the sunset" blog post
| like this is pretty annoying.
|
| What's even worse is when they do things like this post where
| there are little jokes about how it's a financial burden to
| change careers or take a break rather than acknowledging how
| they have no risk of running out of money. Going to art
| school is the worst financial decision ever, tee hee! Yeah
| man, imagine what it must be like with student loans.
|
| Great for OP for working at the right place at the right time
| and winning the proverbial lottery. I'm not sure what I'm
| supposed to take away from it other than "must be nice."
|
| Going to a pricey private school as a hobby/retirement
| activity must be real fun.
| manmal wrote:
| Nicolas Cage can't make ends meet, and he was one of the
| highest paid actors, once.
| treprinum wrote:
| I always wanted to program, to create great things, got really
| good at it, but most of the time I was overtaken by folks playing
| politics that only used tech as a stepping stone to something
| they always wanted to do but only tech gave them financial
| resources to do that.
| pickledish wrote:
| I remember feeling like this a while ago -- like there was
| something inherently different (...better?) about "us" (who are
| in tech because we just fundamentally love programming)
| compared to "them" (who are in tech because there's good money
| in it). Though over the last couple years I think I've been
| changing my mind a bit.
|
| I've had the chance to get to know some more people -- people
| who are indeed in tech for mostly financial reasons, but who
| are still fantastic developers and care a lot about the craft.
| I realized that having dreams outside of software doesn't
| necessarily make you worse at it, or "less deserving" of the
| job.
|
| And, I definitely wouldn't conflate "in tech for the money"
| with "playing politics" / stupid ladder-climbing -- I bet
| there's some nontrivial overlap there, but there are other
| reasons one might need strong financial stability, like if they
| don't have any kind of other safety net (from the government,
| from their family) to fall back on, and thus feel worried
| without a good foundation.
| breather wrote:
| Tech for tech's sake helps nobody. Politics is a fact of nearly
| every facet of life--you can accept this and play the game or
| accept that you're in the backseat.
|
| The worst people in the world already know this and run our
| industry. There's no reason we have to accept them.
| noncoml wrote:
| > Tech for tech's sake helps nobody
|
| If it wasn't for science, art and tech for their own sake we
| would still be on the trees gathering bananas
| breather wrote:
| Art? Yes, of course! I have no clue what you're referring
| to with tech, though. Throughout history development of
| tech has almost always driven by seeking economic leverage.
| I'm sure there are exceptions but I can't think of any.
|
| Not sure what you're referring to with science at all.
| musicale wrote:
| > Throughout history development of tech has almost
| always driven by seeking economic leverage. I'm sure
| there are exceptions but I can't think of any.
|
| What about:
|
| - curiosity (much of science, mathematics, etc.)
|
| - artistic expression (musical instruments, demoscene)
|
| - fortunate accidents (penicillin)
|
| - just tinkering around (all sorts of inventions)
|
| - play and fun (many non-commercial computer games)
|
| - communication (telegraph, telephone, email, ...)
|
| - self-expression (blogs)
|
| - being dissatisfied with something and trying to change
| it (many more inventions)
|
| - basic needs (advances in food, shelter, medicine...)
|
| - trying to gain a military advantage (all sorts of
| weaponry and defenses)
|
| - exploration (e.g. traveling to the bottom of the ocean,
| or landing on the moon)
|
| - ideology/philosophy/religion (GNU and free software;
| cathedrals; pyramids)
|
| etc.
|
| At the end of the day much of technology is motivated by
| human needs, interests, desires, fears, etc.
|
| OP's move from tech to comedy writing shows that interest
| or passion can be powerful motivators.
| breather wrote:
| I'm as keen to wax poetic about the non-economic
| potential of technology as the next person, but I'm not
| deluding myself into thinking that was why the technology
| was developed in the first place.
|
| Also, a military advantage is an economic one, there's no
| real difference between the concepts.
| wrs wrote:
| So you're saying all of technology is the result of
| saying "we could make money if we had a thing that did
| X", and none of it is the result of "we found a way to do
| X because we thought it would be cool."
|
| If nothing else, you just dismissed most of mathematics
| and basic physics.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| I think you value "art" too much, and think too little of
| "tech".
|
| It's also not confusing to me what the other person is
| saying, maybe you can clarify what your misunderstandings
| are before anyone can address them.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Please explain in detail. I'm not seeing the connection.
| dart200 wrote:
| > The worst people in the world already know this and run our
| industry. There's no reason we have to accept them.
|
| tbh until we change the way to go about politics, or
| collective decision making, this isn't going to change.
| noncoml wrote:
| I feel lucky and privileged to be in that position. I get to do
| what I love and get paid very generously.
|
| If it wasn't for "those people" or for tech being so lucrative
| to attract them, I would probably still do the same but
| struggle to make ends meet.
|
| So I'm very grateful that tech is what it is today.
| ghaff wrote:
| People are lucky when there's some intersection between what
| they like doing, what they're good at, and what pays
| reasonably well.
| doesnt_know wrote:
| That's the system we live in. Feels pretty natural that people
| will optimise for the effort/$ ratio if they have the power to
| do so. Sitting in my home AC'd office, making a computer do
| things and getting paid more then basically every "essential
| service" is probably the sweetest deal outside of being born
| into a wealthy family.
|
| I personally love to code, I literally do it in my free time to
| solve my own little problems and/or just to learn, but I don't
| resent people who are only doing it for the money or because
| it's easier than most alternatives.
| Klonoar wrote:
| That's the game, yeah.
|
| Sometimes you have to do shit you don't want to do in order to
| accomplish what you do want to do. It's on you.
| sieste wrote:
| I wish you and the rest of the android team hadn't forced me to
| give you so many of my bytes, but you're most welcome, good luck.
| reactordev wrote:
| Nice! I've been rewinding myself. Not sure where I'll go though
| but it's fun. After 25 years I'm ready for it. Not going to write
| comedies but I'll figure something out.
| jll29 wrote:
| It's his contribution to increase Android quality.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Shouldn't the correct office annotation be @Obsoleted ?
| billjings wrote:
| Chet is going to be missed a lot in our community. His talks with
| Romain Guy were inspirational to me: whenever I saw them it was
| clear that they could each hold the stage on their own, but that
| having the both of them got more out of both of them, both
| technically and in entertainment value.
|
| I hope he does well in comedy, but I will miss his example: that
| you can bring even unusual talents and interests into work life
| and make something worthwhile of it
| Xeronate wrote:
| good for him and sounds like he really enjoyed tech. i burned out
| after 10 years and am going to art school now. makes me wonder if
| he wishes he did it earlier.
| Zaheer wrote:
| I recently found out the creator of the show Suits was an
| investment banker previously:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Korsh
|
| It's great to see folks excel in multiple fields.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Well, we need more Shazam like comedy to get us nerds through the
| day (Silicon Valley is good and the IT Crowd but Shazam is way
| more into it with the inside baseball), so I hope for selfish
| reasons he mixes the two passions!
| wtracy wrote:
| I remember Chet making delightful blog posts all the way back
| when he was at Sun. I wish him well on his new career, but hope
| that he doesn't give up technical writing completely.
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