alt Hacker News100% agree. Sadly, I have realised fewer people actually give an F than you realise; for some, it's just a paycheck. I am not sure what has happened over the decades regarding actually being proud of the work you produce.
I also think they tend to be the older ones among us who have seen what happens when it all goes wrong, and the stack comes tumbling down, and so want to make sure you don't end up in that position again. Covers all areas of IT from Cyber, DR, not just software.
When I have moved between places, I always try to ensure we have a clear set of guidelines in my initial 90-day plan, but it all comes back to the team.
It's been 50/50: some teams are desperate for any change, and others will do everything possible to destroy what you're trying to do. Or you have a leader above who has no idea and goes with the quickest/cheapest option.
The trick is to work this out VERY quickly!
However, when it does go really wrong, I assume most have followed the UK Post Office saga in the UK around the software bug(s) that sent people to prison, suicides, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
I am pretty sure there would have been a small group (or at least one) of tech people in there who knew all of this and tried to get it fixed, but were blocked at every level. No idea - but suspect.
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What happened is that most companies do not care about their employees, and their employees know it.
If anything happens, the company will lay off people without a care for what happens to them.
Even when they do care, such as in a smaller company, their own paycheck is being weighed against the employees, and they will almost always pick themselves, even if they caused the problems.
CEOs making millions while they lay off massive amounts of people is the norm now, and everyone knows it.
You can't blame the employee for not caring. They didn't start it.
> I am not sure what has happened over the decades regarding actually being proud of the work you produce.
My local grocery stores won’t accept pride as payment for food, and working harder doesn’t make my paycheck increase.
>I am not sure what has happened over the decades regarding actually being proud of the work you produce.
Because there's still people doing less work than you do for a bigger paycheck
Because you'd get fired or laid off for someone working for 1/2 to 1/4th of your pay
Because they make you jump through multiple rounds of interviews and technical tests while people above you have a far less barrier to being hired
Because someone stole credit for your work
Because you'd get re-hired and find a mountain of shit code from a company that off shored their dev team
Because companies stopped giving significant raises that didn't keep up with major inflation in the past few years, while your work might have gotten them many multiples more of profits
Idk it's just a mystery we'll never know
People have to be interested in their jobs to care about it. Corporations know that people rarely get to do whatever they want, so they assume (correctly) that most workers do not care, so they move on to care about processes, workflows, which makes even less workers care about their jobs.
For individual workers, the best thing is to work @ something you love && get good pay. Like a compiler engineer, a kernel engineer, an AI engineer, etc.
> I am not sure what has happened over the decades regarding actually being proud of the work you produce.
Anecdotal, but I used to be proud of the work I produced, and then it got old and repetitive. However, as it was getting old, I was earning more. Now I'm in a place where if I were to quit and find something I could be proud of, I would have to accept a huge reduction in compensation. No thanks.
I'd rather have a much higher "just a paycheck" and find things to be proud of outside of work. Plus no one else cares anymore so why should I? Just pay me a lot and I'll keep showing up.
> I am not sure what has happened over the decades regarding actually being proud of the work you produce.
Many employers actively discourage people from doing work that they are proud of. You cannot be proud of something that is built as cheaply as possible.
You can get employees to care about customers or the product, you cannot get employees to care about profits and dividends.
> I also think they tend to be the older ones among us who have seen what happens when it all goes wrong, and the stack comes tumbling down…
To the great surprise of my younger self I have never seen “it all come crashing down” and I honestly believe this is extremely rare in practice (i.e. the U.K post saga), something that senior devs like to imagine will happen but probably won’t, and is used to scare management and junior devs into doing “something” which may or may not make things better.
Almost universally I’ve seen the software slowly improved via a stream of urgent bug fixes with a sprinkle of targeted rewrites. The ease of these bug fixes and targeted rewrites essentially depends on whether there is a solid software design underneath: Poor designs tend to be unfixable and have complex layers of patches to make the system work well enough most of the time; good designs tend to require less maintenance overall. Both produce working software, just with different “pain” levels.
> Or you have a leader above who has no idea and goes with the quickest/cheapest option.
This leader is not going with the quickest or cheapest option. Doing so would probably be laudable. They are going with the claims made by someone that a certain way is going to be quicker or cheaper. It doesn't matter if it actually is, or ends up being, quicker or cheaper. One plan is classified as meeting the requirements while another plan is classified as being cheaper, the cheaper one will be chosen even though it doesn't meet the requirements.
> I am pretty sure there would have been a small group (or at least one) of tech people in there who knew all of this and tried to get it fixed, but were blocked at every level. No idea - but suspect
I recall there was a whistleblower Richard Roll who said that engineering did know of the bugs and flaws
> I am not sure what has happened over the decades regarding actually being proud of the work you produce.
Millions of boocampers and juniors trying to make a quick buck; any tech work that is not “make it, and make it quick” is punished; tech debt swept under the rug; any initiative is being shut down because status quo is more important; “we’ll optimize when it becomes a problem” on 15 seconds page reload; dozen of layers of parasites and grifters making your life hell, because their paycheck depends on it; salary bumps that don’t even cover inflation – the only way to actually move in life is to join, raise as much hell as possible in 2 years and jump ship leaving the fallout for the next SOB in the line.
And that’s just what I bothered enough to type on bad iOS keyboard.
> for some, it's just a paycheck.
What is wrong with just wanting to work for money?
> I am not sure what has happened over the decades regarding actually being proud of the work you produce.
Maybe if wages kept up with inflation people would still care. You know, when I was young, I was able to rent an apartment while being a cashier in a grocery store.
People need visas and that’s all they care about
You started an excellent discussion with this comment
Work is just a paycheck because I am just a number for my employer. Why would I be proud of my work when apparently according to management I should be replaced by AI at some point because im just a cost factor. Why would I care about the business at that point? Fuck the higher ups, I'll be proud of my work and actually put in effort if I can afford a house.
> I am not sure what has happened over the decades regarding actually being proud of the work you produce.
Simple:
1. People lost ownership of the things they work on. In the early 1900s, more than half of the workforce was self-employed. Today, it is 10% in the US, 13% in the EU.
What you produce is not “yours”, it’s “your employer’s”. You don’t have ownership, and very limited to no agency.
2. People lost any tangible connection to the quality and quantity of their output.
Most workers don’t get rewarded for working harder and producing more or better output. On the contrary, they are often penalized with more and/or harder work.
To quote Office Space: “That makes a man work just hard enough not to get fired.”
3. People lost their humanity. They are no longer persons. They are resources. Human resources. And they are treated like it.
They are exploited for gain and dumped when no longer needed.