[cosmiccatnap]

The thing I find most sad about articles like this is that it doesn't seem to actually address any of the reasons that it got this way, it blames individuals within the field not a series of MBA graduates telling you what the spec is and hiring 50 people to hit an arbitrary deadline for a software project moving in the wrong direction FAST.

It's a false dichotomy to say you only have rock stars and as this person smugly tip toes around "normal people" when in reality you don't need rock stars anymore to make good software and let's be honest... Most rock stars didn't make good software they just make it in a time when software was generally even more crap than it is now.

You want to stop suffering among us plebs? Don't advocate for goofy rockstar developer propaganda, advocate for healthy work life balance and reasonable deadlines for things that truly don't matter. Stop letting sales and marketing write your software and stop taking opinions about systems design from your project managers and "technical leads" when they do not work in these systems day to day.

If you treat engineers well and respect them before a client who will drop you the moment a new product fits their need then yes you will lose clients from time to time but if you focus on making good software and happy people then you will attract stable clients who do the same and maybe the stock holders at the top don't get the ridiculous return per year that they expect out of more shameless companies but at least you have a half decent chance of sleeping at night...

I am well aware that we live in a world where this will be borderline impossible but the first step to solving a problem is admitting it