[markonthewall]

Sometimes I wonder if software engineers are half as smart as they think they are. I can't think of any precedent or similar situation: a corps of highly skilled workers pro-actively sabotaging themselves in order to share the fate of their country's dying middle class: longer hours, shrinking salaries and cut-throat competition for employment.

I am glad that I have some fuck-you money now. Because the prospects as software engineer seem, frankly, rather poor now.

The first step is to stop thinking that this industry - somehow - matters more than any other or that herein lies the future of humanity. Half of that is marketing garbage and the other results from free kool-aid parties that were held after a few of us either built successful companies or made good exit deals with bigger ones. There is an alarming amount of people who are not only drunk, but blind too.

I might be the bearer of bad news, but hear me out: this industry is just like any other. In other words, you are subject to the same dynamics that fuel workers - shareholders dualism everywhere. Basic game theory: you are going to get screwed and that's not funny.

[TeffenEllis]

I agree on the surface of your argument though it's not as bleak as we fear.

While I don't think it's intentionally malicious, the current "cult" dev culture disempowers developers. I think there's two competing movements; the attempt to make programming more like engineering, and the belief that programming is an art.

For the software engineer camp, programming is quantified and implicitly egalitarian. The mantra is "the work speaks for itself" for these folks.

For the creative camp, programming isn't so easily measured and turned on or off.

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. The first step to solving a problem is being able to talk about it. Many people of all genders and races are interested in being developers. They just don't want to give up their lives to do so.

Imagine being in an interview and being asked about golf balls and school busses. On the other side of the table is a suitcase with $100k. Is it really reasonable to ask them to shake things up when their livelihood is on the line?

The good news is that for all the warts software has, there are no barriers other than personal determination. Anyone can be a developer so long as they're interested.

[generic_user]

There is a reason why the software industry and many others try hard to keep a young 'fresh' workforce even tho it contributes to more inexperienced and costly labor force.

After a few years the stars in the eyes ware off. You realise that all the idealism and hype is simply marketing a dream that will get you in the door. Your a cog in the wheel of a rather boring pedestrian industry and replaceable.

At that point you might start to realise that all that overtime is just wasting your life away not work that is going to change the world. All the free food and drink you get at work is just making you fat and you don't have a social life anymore, etc, etc.

We are all like that to one degree or another in the beginning. But the level of sugar coated frothy idealism laid on the SJW's at university now is going to cause serious mental problems for these kids when the sugar high starts to ware off after a few years in the real world.