this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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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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[–] JakenVeina@lemm.ee 139 points 3 days ago (9 children)

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 63 points 3 days ago (6 children)

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.

[–] candyman337@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago

The tech industry is so very capitalistic, so many companies see devs as min max churn machines, tech debt? Nah FEATURES! AI! MODERNITY! That new dev needs to be trained in the basics and best practices? Sorry that's not within scope

[–] folkrav@lemmy.ca 30 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 26 points 3 days ago (8 children)

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.

Or thousands of people get stranded at airports as the ticketing system goes down or there is a data breach that exposes millions of people's private data.

Some companies have been able to implement robust systems that can take major attacks, but that is generally because they are more sensitive to revenue loss when these systems go down.

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[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 36 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

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 22 points 2 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.

[–] trolololol@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day 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.

[–] amzd@lemmy.world 48 points 2 days ago (2 children)

All software should be open source

[–] chobeat@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 days ago

All software should be released as a common good that cannot be captured by corporations. Otherwise it's just free labor for Amazon, Google and Facebook

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[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There are some highly intelligent, very dangerous people out there, and 95% of companies will be incapable of stopping them. Most people, across all industries, are too slow, uneducated, lazy or just uncaring enough that no amount of training or tools will fix it.

[–] psion1369@lemmy.world 12 points 2 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.

[–] GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Right now, Ai is a party trick.

Tomorrow, Ai will inform the FBI that #29933 is planning on murdering his sister, and deploy a team of armed drones to escort him to prison, if he makes it.

Tomorrow, the department stores and supermarkets will be empty and you'll pick up your groceries from an automated warehouse that inserts them into your car.

Tomorrow, the mail bot will barf your mail into a labeled box, wherin you'll find your prescription medication, bottled labeled and packaged by nobody, which you take right after you go out to eat at an empty restaurant, where your food is brought to you by an automated track that says tHaNk Yo in an inhuman tone before cutting off too soon.

No conversations, no traveling, no hassle, no humanity, or sincerity whatsoever.

hooray?

Why the fuck is everyone so stoked about this? Vending-machine land sounds insufferable.

[–] rthomas6@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well, this scenario COULD result in the fabled Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, where machines take care of most of the labor and the benefit of this is shared among everyone. But more likely, most of the benefit of this will be given to a select few.

[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Shoot for the FALGSC, fall amongst the CyberpunkDystopia.

War will be automated too. That's going to be "fun" too. Not even Star Trek skipped that part.

[–] Lightor@lemmy.world 30 points 3 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.

[–] Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works 48 points 3 days ago (3 children)

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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[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 32 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Mr_Fish@lemmy.world 47 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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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[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

IT is slowly starting to get regulated like a real engineering field and that's a good developement.

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[–] d00phy@lemmy.world 29 points 3 days ago

Not a software dev, but for me it’s the constant leap from today’s “next best thing” to tomorrow’s. Behind the Bastards did an episode on AI, and his take resonated with me. Particularly his Q&A session with some AI leaders at, I think, CES not long ago. When the new hotness gets popular, an obscene amount of money is paired with the “move fast and break things” attitude in a rush to profit. This often creates massive opportunities for grifters as legislators are mind numbing slow to react to these new technologies. And when regulations are finally passed (or more recently, allowed by the oligarchs), they’re often written to protect the billionaires (read: “job creators”) more than the common customer. Everyone’s bought into the idea that slow and methodical stifles innovation. At least the people funding and regulating these things have.

[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

rabbits in skinner boxes pressing two buttons for a treat is not a far cry from tech workers sitting in cublices pressing 104 buttons for paycheck nor internet users doing it for imaginary internet points.

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