[edited to correct a couple of typos]
- Project managers putting constant pressure on developers to deliver as fast as possible. It doesn't even matter if velocity will be lost in the future, or if the company might lose customers, or even if it breaks the law.
- Developers pushing back on things that can backfire and burning political capital and causing constant burnout. And when things DO backfire, the developer is to blame for letting it happen and not having pushed it more in the first place.
- Developers who learned that the only way to win is by not giving a single fuck, and just trucking on through the tasks without much thought.
This might sound highly cynical, but unfortunately this is what it has become.
Developers are way too isolated from the end result, and accountability is non-existent for PMs who isolate devs from the result, because "isolating developers" is seem as their only job.
EDIT: This is a cultural problem that can't be solved by individual contributors or by middle management without raising hell and putting a target on their backs. Only cultural change enforced by C-Levels is able to change this, but this is *not* in the interest of most CEOs or CTOs.
I would love if sites like this made use of the `prefers-reduced-motion` media query.
This doesn’t just apply to the arts, if all junior dev roles are stripped away by llm’s where do the talented developers of tomorrow come from? Those who can learn the craft on their own time, those with independent wealth.
At a societal level there is a huge amount of potential talent being left on the table, and imo redistributive policies are the obvious fix. In think this is really important both from a mortal point of view and an economically pragmatic one.
The first time I went to Defcon, I felt lonely and lost -- it was the first year they had those cool electronic badges, and at the time they were only given out as entrance tokens for an exclusive party that was the talk of the con.
I didn't really "know" anyone there -- like a lot of young hackers, I was part of one of those vBulletin board hacker crews that have been lost to time and I'd exhausted the meager savings I had built up that summer on my plane ticket and hotel room at the Riviera.
A lot of people who had expense accounts were going out to nice places for dinner -- the guy with per diem would get drinks, the guy who had to itemize, and me, the guy trying to get a group together to visit that cool looking dive bar next to Bally's kept getting laughed at and called a newbie...
Then none other than Dan Kaminsky[1] strolls up, tells me he knows who I am (!) and heard I'd been asking about the ninja party, tells me he can't get me in but he knows a room party. Shows me a room next to the pool with a keg in the bathtub, I threw them a five and we sat around talking until late in the night. They had some good tips on cheap places to eat, how to get free drinks at the penny slots, that sort of thing.
And then, every year since that I visited, I did what he did... wander the convention looking for the budget travel crew, the folks who don't do it for a salary and whom this is their reality, and I'd take them on a quest for two dollar hot dogs, show them the little store next to the dive bar where they could stock up on beer and liquor and ice and then disappear into the night like some kind of helpful spirit of the hacker night.
Anyways... long, profuse thank yous are not needed. What you should do is make sure you keep the gates open that were not gatekept for you. Be the person who connects others, in ways that you can't always list on your CV.
[1] Rest in power