(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.
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Your attitude is correct, don’t support enshittification and don’t do anything you’re not comfortable doing
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Don’t replace cursewords with stupid characters, this is Lemmy.
- Yes, but also, I do want to have a job because I want to make a positive impact. It’s too easy to become a NEET and be negative at everything.
- I understand your concern. Next time, I’ll go either no symbols or express my opinion without swearwords (because they are not pleasant, at least for me).
EDIT: but mainstream web is really that bad.
You can just fucking cuss here.
Fuck yeah!
There are tons of IT jobs for more ethical companies where you can feel good about what you are working on.
Stay away from large, publicly traded companies, and companies whose user isn’t the paying customer.
Startups, companies that are wholly privately owned (often by an individual into philanthropy or at least mostly concerned with their image and legacy), or those usually in smaller more focused markets are where the ethical jobs tend to be.
You guys are doing that in your interviews, right? Learning about the product, the company, its moral philosophy? Not just selling out to the highest paying job?.. Right?
Maybe that’s too much for some people. People do get squeezed and get desperate.
Local 👏 non 👏 profits (or govt)
I feel like those options are always immediately written off. It is possible to find good to great opportunities. Plenty of shit ones too of course but it’s worth a look.
It feels good to work somewhere whose purpose is to support the community I live in.
express my opinion without swearwords (because they are not pleasant, at least for me).
I know this is completely beside the point, but one thing that just really activates my almonds for absolutely no reason is people “censoring” a swear word by replacing a couple of letters and then acting like they didn’t swear.
Switching out one letter doesn’t make it any less swearing (and since when is “porn” a swear word?), everybody knows what you wrote and you know what you wrote. If you think swearing is bad then don’t fucking do it, but don’t swear and then pretend you didn’t just because you hid a letter.
It’s just as silly as using darn or frick, except they have none of the punch which is the purpose of swear words, ya know?
I use those in some situations that don’t call for a full-fledged swear, minor irritations like missing a metro when I’m not in any hurry.
It’s good to have an escalation ladder for swearing 😀 don’t have to go straight for the nuclear option
Thats a good point!
They’re not supposed to be pleasant. Swear words are part of your evolved self defense system, and generally speaking any time that’s active you won’t feel good.
I thought, I was having text encoding issues for a hot second there…
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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.
As someone that is quite unfamiliar with Marx’ ideology (yet I’m aware of it being the base of communism in what was the USSR) I find it quite ironic that both late-stage (aka extreme) capitalism leads to the same as what commuism lead to: which is what Marx describes, according to the Wikipedia page, as alienation of the worker. And it shows, funnily enough, contradictions with the implementation of soviet communism, which was supposedly based on marxist ideology.
I also think it would be quite amusing to see someone do an experiment, where groups of random people are presented with either a poster that shows this idea from Marx, or with a presentation/podcast/TED Talk where a person describes and presents the idea without ever mentioning it was Marx’ ideas. As someone that always steered clear of Marx and his ideas specifically because I thought it would be about promoting communism (and as someone with Eastern European roots, I know what real communism was like), so I looked at it the same way I would look at religious propaganda: with a spoonful of salt, a bottle of scepticism, and the idea that it would be better to just steer clear instead of wasting my time, and yet when I saw this link you posted I was like “this sounds interesting, let’s check it out” and so I did, and I was left pleasantly surprised.
While there is a good bit of nuance and western propaganda around the USSR, you are essentially right. For different reasons though. The USSR never fully abolished capitalism. They thought that capitalism was a “necessary evil” that had to be contained and shaped towards a socialist/communist end goal. They intentionally reproduced the exploitative conditions of capitalism post-revolution because they thought it had to happen that way.
Socialism is most broadly divided into statist and non-statist socialism. If you’re anti-capitalist or just don’t generally care for the present condition of the world, but don’t really care for the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao then you should check out libertarian socialism/anarchism. It’s a broad category of ideologies with a ton of overlap that essentially boils down to “hierarchy is the real problem and any successful egalitarian society should seek to eliminate heirarchy as much as possible”
Eliminate hierarchy by allowing anyone to enter the market and do business? Some kind of marketplace … where people are free to choose their economic relations at will. Freedom and markets. A market with freedom as a defining characteristic.
You’re describing anarcho capitalism or just regular capitalism if you’re including the state. Both of which blow for a number of reasons you likely wouldn’t accept if your sarcasm is anything to go by. Did you have a point to all of that or were you just being a goober?
This is one reason devs sometimes spend free time contributing to open source. It feels good to know your skills are going towards a passion, and builds a resume around what you love.
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
🤡
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.
This is my biggest problem with working as a programmer. I enjoy solving complex programming problems, learning about new algorithms, exploring new technologies. Instead every job seems to be “add new button with questionable requirements” or “add thing to the backend that nobody thought about for more than 3 seconds”. All for questionable goals like advertisement, surveillance, big oil, fintech, or defense of course. It’s kind of a bummer, but at least it pays well and it beats most other jobs.
- java ( @java@beehaw.org ) 3•9 months ago
Why don’t you go developing video games engines, aerospace soft, etc.? I’d assume this is where tasks go beyond “provide a CRUD REST API interface” or “add a button”.
Aerospace is largely making killing machines and also some of the most soul destroying tedious fragmented work because the high safety stakes. Games industry is famously toxic. There are a few fun and rewarding good jobs out there but I don’t think you’re hitting examples.
I moved to EdTech from gaming - mobile gaming felt so damn focussed on value extraction.
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.
Go into embedded software. You can’t do ads if there is no UI taps head.
Not sure myself, I’m trying to get into some IT jobs (not necessarily programming) that aren’t anywhere near social media and are more focused on internet infrastructure, but getting any job is hard when you’re starting out and I would like to avoid the evil ones at all cost.
But just as there is no ethical consumption in capitalism, there’s no consensual work, so the values of wherever you end up working won’t align with yourself or the other workers fully, it’s just a question of degree.
imo you gotta take whatever you can as a first job to get started. If you hate it, make a goal to find a better job after the first year. Just try to learn whatever you can an remember to write down notable things you do on the job to make your resume sound better. Beggars can’t be choosers. You can focus on finding something fun and ethical after you have the experience and luxury to do so.
Also I don’t think you can really appreciate what ethical and unethical behaviour looks like until you experience it first hand. Besides you aren’t really contributing anything truly unique early in your career. Companies that can only hire desperate, under-performing or new engineers tend not to do so well (take a look at just about any bank for instance) and with how much of an arms race most of the unethical stuff is the effect can be very pronounced.
I strongly believe that the vulnerability google is starting to show is a direct result of them losing prestige as a good place to work.
I agree. I think it’s the same thing that Activision Blizzard has been experiencing. All their recent games have been mediocre at best, and it’s due to losing their best talent due to being a bad place to work.
I actually just switched to Kagi for my main search engine because I have been feeling disappointed with Google search lately. It’s fine if you’re only searching big websites but you’ll be lucky to get any results for niche stuff
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.
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.
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.
Not a developer but a recent engineering grad. I get SO MUCH spam from the literal US military and defense contractors looking for people to work on their actual weapons. Surface-to-air missiles, nuclear submarines, air warfare, electronic warfare … these are actual “opportunities” that have landed in my inbox courtesy of my dipshit school career center’s lack of morals. I need a job, but I would literally rather skin myself and eat it then work for those monsters at any salary.
So imagine if the US military didn’t have any weapons. How do you think that would play out? Would the overall outcome be ethically preferable to our current state of affairs?
So imagine if the US military didn’t have any weapons.
Every single day. I can only dream so much.
How do you think that would play out?
Great!
Would the overall outcome be ethically preferable to our current state of affairs?
Fuck yeah fam!
No we don’t fucking need anymore missiles thank you very much, LEAST OF ALL in the hands of the US government.