[ChrisMarshallNY]

Well, as someone who considers themselves to be a "software craftsman," I have come to the conclusion that the work I do will never be valued, and will always be considered "too expensive." Since I work for free, that's not an issue for me, but that's economically unfeasible for most folks.

The issue with an industry awash with cheap dross, is that it becomes prohibitively expensive to produce high Quality stuff. Anyone that tries, will get driven out of business. Some clever folks will figure out how to do "slightly better" stuff, and charge more for it, but a good way to go out of business, is to focus on Quality as a principal axis.

That's basic market dynamics. It is what it is, and is neither evil, nor good.

It does mean that only "niche" craftsmen, like myself, will produce anything of decent Quality, but will be unable to do so at scale, because we can't get a team together, large enough to do big things.

I guess the saddest thing, is that I have really wanted to help teach my techniques to others, but have found that no one wants to learn, so I gave up on that, many years ago.

[burlesona]

> The issue with an industry awash with cheap dross, is that it becomes prohibitively expensive to produce high Quality stuff.

This seems to be one of the brutal truths of the modern world, and as far as I can tell it applies to everything. There's always a race to the bottom to make everything as cheaply as possible, and the further the industry goes down that "cheapness" scale, the more "quality" loses market share, the more expensive "quality" must be in order to operate at all, and finally things that used to be just "normal" and not too expensive are now luxury goods.

Consider textiles, carpentry, masonry, machine tooling, appliances, etc. etc.

This doesn't feel like a good outcome, but I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it.

[gallerdude]

I can see both sides of it. There’s a fancy bread bakery by where I live. I go infrequently, the bread is great. But it’s expensive, most of the I just want a cheap loaf from Target, as do most people.

Instead of broad employment of artisan breadsmiths, we have people doing email work, because it’s more economically valuable. If the government mandated a higher quality of bread, we’d be slightly richer and bread and slightly poorer in everything else.

[mercenario]

> There's always a race to the bottom to make everything as cheaply as possible

Not true at all. Apple and its expensive devices are the best selling devices in their categories.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Yes, but Apple has deep pockets, and a very mature brand.

I worked for a 100-year-old company that has one of the most respected brands in the world. I am quite familiar with what it takes, to make the highest-Quality stuff.

That said, it's downright impossible to start from scratch, creating high-Quality stuff.

[mercenario]

> That said, it's downright impossible to start from scratch, creating high-Quality stuff.

I'm not so sure. It is not common, but it seems that some companies actually start with high quality and only much after offer popular options. Just a random example is uber, at least here it started with only uber black and only after it was very popular it offered uber x.

Another counter example to cheap stuff is luxury clothing/purse/perfume brands. Actually, I'm not so sure if this is about quality or status.

[mooreds]

I've actually thought over my career that software is one of the last places for well compensated craftmanship. In the sense of solving unique problems for good pay. I think that was due to:

- the explosion of software needs due to the internet

- the scalability of software solutions (zero marginal cost for additional copies is a hell of a drug)

I still think that is true, but it may be fading away for many people. That said, the newer devs that I've met that have found jobs tend to find them at bespoke consulting shops (rather than product companies).

I think there will always be room for quality craftmanship in software, but it will be boutique, the same way that there is craftmanship for high quality furniture or cabinetry. ~95% is manufactured mass market and cheap, ~5% is high quality bespoke and expensive.

[pdimitar]

> It does mean that only "niche" craftsmen, like myself, will produce anything of decent Quality, but will be unable to do so at scale, because we can't get a team together, large enough to do big things.

Why can't you get a team together?

I dream of working on big and meaningful things ever since a teenager (and I'm 45 currently) but yeah, I can't afford doing it for free. I keep being a drone.

But if somebody were to stretch out a helping hand and pay me to do the big and meaningful things I'll likely accept two days later.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> and pay me to do the big and meaningful things

Ay, there's the rub...

It is a lot more expensive to do high-Quality work, than it is to do shoddy (or, to be fair, barely acceptable) work. You need to hire more experienced (expensive) people, and then, you need to hire better managers, because you don't want the usual crap managers in charge of them.

And then, you need to pay for the time they take, "polishing the fenders."

Once you have an established brand, you can do these kinds of things, but it's pretty much impossible to start from scratch (without deep, patient pockets).

[pdimitar]

Well money is always the rub. And many people, once they become better off, become stingy and paranoid and don't want to reinvest -- which I completely understand, especially if they didn't have rich parents and trust fund(s) and had to grind their boots off to get where they are. If I ever make it I know I am absolutely joining that exact group. I owe the world nothing -- definitely not after decades of abuse and zero appreciation.

> it's pretty much impossible to start from scratch (without deep, patient pockets).

Well, I was not referring to myself here, FWIW. I ain't ever going below $10k a month (not to mention that for any meaningful life plans $18k - $25k a month is much more strategically desirable) but I was somewhat referring to many certain techies here on HN who (1) have the talents and tech skills and (2) are very well-off and could work for charity wages for 5+ years without a problem (think $3k - $5k a month).

I am just very sad that these people, who are in a 10x better position than I ever was for 23+ years of career, did not group up and did not create the next-gen lab experience, the likes of which we haven't seen since the days of UNIX. :/

As for the rest of the world, the owning class are quite fine with what they already have -- they know tech currently is not 100% reliable but they are never making 5x the investment for what they see as a 10% improvement (which is exactly the part where they are wrong -- but these people can't think beyond 2-3 quarters ahead anyway).

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Yes, I have been fortunate to be in a position to pay it back (not forward). I'm nowhere near as well-off as a substantial portion of the folks here, but I have enough to live (humbly), and get the equipment I need to do my work.

But I also know that I am an outlier, and, quite frankly, an anachronism.

Just a little while ago, I made a new release of this app[0]. I talked to someone this morning, and realized that they had no idea that you could swipe the screen, to get to different times.

I added a small label to the bottom of the main screen, telling folks that they could swipe to see different times. I had to translate it to Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese, which ChatGPT was ideal for (I don't think that I'd use it for bulk translations, but it was great for a "spot translation").

That kind of thing may seem silly, but it's also exactly the kind of thing that many, many apps don't do. It's quite easy to say that "any power user knows to swipe," but that often excludes a huge number of folks. Since I started hiding the main time selection control panel, swiping has become the main navigation technique.

[0] https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/VirtualMeetingFinder