[ilrwbwrkhv]

I think a big reason why a lot of people in tech feel like this is because tech has been reduced to getting a job and optimizing for total compensation.

If you look at employees at Google, you can see that they are there to coast. Intelligent, sharp folks, reduced to mere optimizing for compensation while tweaking an algorithm here and there.

Instead what devs need to do especially those who are new to the industry, is to think like hackers of yore. Have total disdain of big tech and organizations.

I remember early 2000s and if you asked anyone who was a good hacker if they want to join IBM they would laugh in your face.

That culture needs to return. Where is the Napster of this era? That would give people the fulfillment they want and make them feel useful. A simple way of doing this is to take any popular piece of software and think what the "out there" version will look like and start building it.

Maybe punk rock and the hacker culture both need to make a comeback into the mainstream, otherwise FAANG and Leetcode will eat the soul of tech.

[jackyalcine]

> I remember early 2000s and if you asked anyone who was a good hacker if they want to join IBM they would laugh in your face. That culture needs to return. Where is the Napster of this era? That would give people the fulfillment they want and make them feel useful. A simple way of doing this is to take any popular piece of software and think what the "out there" version will look like and start building it. Maybe punk rock and the hacker culture both need to make a comeback into the mainstream, otherwise FAANG and Leetcode will eat the soul of tech.

I'm glad you mentioned this. I was reading https://diversionbooks.com/books/the-spotify-play/ and the way that hacker culture has become effectively commercial (from anarchist ideals in finance being perverted into cryptocurrency, file sharing into cloud hosting, etc), we have to keep fighting to make control of it hard _while also_ protecting people's safety (bad actors - government or people - will always exist).

[hnthrow289570]

Coasting is fine in a sane company. Coasting is a sign of competence IMO as long as your work is also getting done and things are fairly estimated. We should get to coast because we practiced enough to be good at our job.

There's way too many jobs where the only reward for finishing your work is more work.

However, I don't think hacker or punk rock culture can make a come back here because there's too large of a pool of people willing to work even for underpaid tech jobs (since it's often a relatively a lot of money for them)

[kevindamm]

The hacker culture doesn't have to be larger than the corporate workforce to have a significant impact on the industry and the world. That was proven in an earlier era, too.

[VirusNewbie]

I went from a startup to Google in my last job hop. The former had way more coasters. You don’t survive long at google at L5+ if you coast.

Sounds like you’re extrapolating from internet anecdata rather than first hand experience.

[dghlsakjg]

> I remember early 2000s and if you asked anyone who was a good hacker if they want to join IBM they would laugh in your face.

To be fair, the most talented and ambitious still want nothing to do with big blue. Different reasons, but still.