Comment by noduerme
3 years ago
This hits home. 20+ years of being a sysadmin, writing software, I've written and rewritten the same shit over and over. I'm disgusted by the world that was created around these network apps and I'm disgusted by my own minor role in helping the vultures build that world. It's nothing I wanted or imagined. Every time I think about it, I think of the Leonard Cohen lyrics:
Your servant here he has been told / To say it clear, to say it bold / it's over, it ain't goin any further.
And now the wheels of heaven stop / you feel the devil's riding crop / get ready for the future, it is murder.
I've been worried of feeling the same. Now, I try to do software dev at companies whose product isn't software. Currently, that is souvenir manufacturing automation. The job is producing the simplest software that speeds up the production process. No need for fancy modern UIs, no need for subscriptions, no need for handling large amounts of private user data... it's nice. Much more gratifying than working at <insert-generic-big-tech-company-here>.
I see a lot of disenfrachised, highly skilled software engineers in this thread that I think would be very well welcomed into the electronics industry if they spent a few weeks trying their hand at using those skills for embedded systems.
Although I work for a big tech company now (the fun kind for me at least, making hardware platforms), in a previous life I made consumer products. Hair dryers, hoover's, ovens, lamp's, etc. It's amazing how much more your average person's eyes light up when you say that you helped design their kettle, compared to the chip in their phone or the backend of their social media, and there really is a certain amount of joy in that.
Do you also feel that you are on the wrong side of history? Not on the side of the active evil, but on the side of the passive spectator?