[Mountain_Skies]

If programmers are some of the most in-demand workers in the world, why do they have to send out over 1000 job applications and are still treated like trash by hiring processes? Hacker News is one of the few places on Earth where this belief that programmers are in control of everything still exists. Pretty much everywhere else has adapted to the reality where programmers are in great surplus, but the investor class won't be happy until it's a minimum wage job, or even better, an unpaid internship. No wonder HN has a reputation for being a bunch of out of touch Bay Area investors with little concept of the real world.

[ravenstine]

Programmers have control over things product owners and management don't care about. Frankly, those are things nobody but programmers cares about. When it comes to meaningful decisions that would either improve or harm the user experience, I have only ever seen programmers treated as advisors at best and obedient little foot soldiers at worst. And why wouldn't they be treated this way by MBA types? Programmers are a necessary evil that management would rather not exist at all. Just because there are startups founded by programmers doesn't mean that's the reality of the vast majority of the software industry, or that said startups won't soon replace their leadership with MBA bozos whose only goal is making it to the next quarter.

[saagarjha]

Do you think this accurately describes a Google engineer?

[smallmancontrov]

Yesterday? No. Today? Maybe. Tomorrow? Yes.