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Dissenting_voice t1_j5blypr wrote

My partner and all of our friends work in tech. I work in the restaurant business. I will regularly be in social situations and listen to them talk about work, and to me, there are few devides greater than that which exists between those who are ensconced in the tech industry, and everyone else.

I realize that these a quite different industries, and I would never want to dismiss the work work that my partner puts in on a day-to-day basis, but if there was such a thing as a measurable metric known as “work” - that included things like time spent 100% focused on a task, energy and effort expended, product produced, stress and angst generated, pride in product etc, there would be no question who was “working” more in any given day.

Over the years - particularly the recent WFH years where her commute has dropped from one hour to 1 minute - I have observed my partner’s day-to-day “work” with a certain amount of shock. The amount of time spent on useless products that immediately get shelved, fucking around, socializing, team building games, endless meetings, time off at the slightest suggestion of a cold, time off because the internet is down, time off because the network is down or undergoing updates, hackathons, office event planning meetings, and long lunch breaks suggests to me that the entire industry is absolutely lousy with excess and waste - and that’s before I even mention the insane salaries that she and her colleagues are earning.

To put it bluntly, I am not surprised that the industry is laying people off. I am surprised that they weren’t doing it sooner - and if the industry as a whole really needed to save money, my bet is that they could cut much deeper.

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uleekunkel t1_j5bx4vv wrote

I don't totally disagree, but a lot of the "work" in tech is problem solving. It doesn't have a visible achievement meter in a lot of cases until the problem is solved. Experience and intellect can lead to some people solving problems faster, but it doesn't make them worth less than someone who needs to grind it out.

I liken it to a time I had some drywall repaired. It took the guy maybe 20 mins, but it wasn't cheap. It was skilled labor, so I was paying for expertise more than time.

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5cafcg wrote

> but a lot of the "work" in tech is problem solving. It doesn't have a visible achievement meter in a lot of cases until the problem is solved. Experience and intellect can lead to some people solving problems faster, but it doesn't make them worth less than someone who needs to grind it out.

This describes virtually all work that isn’t mindless, production line or autopilot work . It really describes hospitality work.

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uleekunkel t1_j5ccgfs wrote

Sure, I'm not suggesting it isn't. But there's a difference with hospitality where you have to be open and have people physically present X number of hours per week or you can't deliver what you're selling.

I have a quality bar I have to keep with what I deliver, but staring at datasets has a point of diminishing returns. At a certain point I have to start making hypothesis and designing tests and that doesn't always look like me typing furiously. And it can happen at 9pm as easily as 11am.

There is fluff in tech, there's fluff in just about any large organization in any large industry. But what the work looks like is probably not perceptible except my peers and boss.

For what it's worth I want to break into hospitality (small occupancy hotels)

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throwaway92715 t1_j5dsoju wrote

The difference in hospitality is that if you and your team do a really good job, the restaurant might double its profits for a night. In tech, if you and your team hit it just right, your firm could qualify for nine figures of progressive funding and IPO with a multibillion dollar market cap, catapulting the owner's wealth into the 0.01%. Guess which one is gonna pay six figures.

A restaurant is limited by the size of its kitchen, the number of seats, local demand, parking... A tech company is not nearly as limited by scale factors like that.

Tech companies are usually limited by their high risk of failure, but that risk is mainly held by the investors, not the owners and employees. If you can get funding, you can pay yourself gravy for as long as it lasts, as long as you don't violate a contract or screw yourself some other way.

Some are just grifters who are bluffing. Others really are potential billionaires with brilliant ideas. It's a gamble. People gamble when they're flush with cash, and the upper class in the US has been for awhile.

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5cd6gk wrote

For the love of god, stay out of hospitality.

E. Lol, ok. Forget what I said. Get in to hospitality. In fact, I will sell you everything! Oh, and be sure not to do any research. Your passion and good idea is all you need.

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quantumfucker t1_j5ddmg2 wrote

I don’t think anyone wants to leave tech for hospitality lmao

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uleekunkel t1_j5dea8a wrote

If you're in tech and surrounded by coworkers who love their tech jobs I wish I had that.

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ten-million t1_j5czkj4 wrote

For a while they were idolizing failure, writing articles about how much they learned by failing, even TED talks about the benefits of failure. But not one of them lost their own money. Nobody lost a house. All of it was other people’s money. It’s easy to think you’re a genius when the money is so stupid. Tech bros are a pretty arrogant lot, very similar to young Wall Street bros.

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throwaway92715 t1_j5dsiag wrote

Yep. You're not getting paid for working hard and being a good worker. You're getting paid for doing the thing that makes the money go up. That can take 30 seconds or 3 years.

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saintpetejackboy t1_j5i5bes wrote

I like this post. I've been developing proprietary software pretty much my whole life and I learned a long time ago to take things at a relaxed pace. I'll work to burnout and crush the tasks of entire teams, solo. The worst part about all of that, though is:

1.) Some management or clients will then come to expect the same performance 24/7/365

2.) Most projects never actually "end". You just unlock more work, known as scope creep :/.

If the task was: "Hey, move these bricks to the other side of that patio", you could look at the pile of bricks and know how close you were to getting finished.

Software development and a lot of other IT jobs are more akin to somebody saying "Hey, move every third brick to the other side of that patio and stack them in the shape of a tesseract", and you look over to the pile of bricks, which happens to just be an endless interdimensional vortex vomiting "brick-like" shapes that make it hard to tell when you've actually encountered the third "brick"... you begin doing all this, knowing full well that there is no way to eventually stack them into the shape of a tesseract.

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Battystearsinrain t1_j5eqp10 wrote

Right, X service is down or some business partner cannot do X, you fix it, and that includes troubleshooting, etc.

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rulesforrebels t1_j5gb6ik wrote

A lot of jobs involve creativity and problem solving yet people are productive

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SlowMotionPanic t1_j5ck32l wrote

And yet these companies are posting quarter after quarter of record profits.

SWE work is typically about results, not time on task.

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Columbus43219 t1_j5civht wrote

My personal opinion is that you are seeing the results of companies using non-technical folks to manage IT projects. It started back in the 80s about the same time as I started.

I remember people rolling their eyes at trying to explain why a job failed or a disk needs replacing. Now that's a full time job.

So of course the management now wants to measure everything, and they come up with nonsensical metrics and it ruins the flow for everyone.

Younger folks that come into IT see a bunch of metrics and just try to stay in the game.

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DMercenary t1_j5cmneb wrote

> see a bunch of metrics and just try to stay in the game.

And when a metric becomes the goal.... it ceases to be a useful metric.

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Columbus43219 t1_j5cv32z wrote

Exactly! We turned that corner about a decade ago. A "good" developer now just writes barely functioning code as fast as possible.

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5cn3aq wrote

My mother worked in a call centre where metrics were virtually the only method of gauging a workers worth. These metrics don’t appear to be the only answer to improving productivity in tech, but they are certainly must be some part of the answer.

The trouble seems to me (as an outsider) that at some point one tech giant decided to install pool tables, pinball machines, and lounging chains in the office, and every smaller tech company took it as gospel that these were things that improve productivity. The same appears to go for productivity metrics.

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Glystopher t1_j5cxehx wrote

Some shit company founder had office toys installed during the dot com boom, and after a couple months of watching who played with them, fired those people and removed the toys. Shitheads.

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5d8rt4 wrote

Ngl, that is pretty funny.

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Glystopher t1_j5gesfq wrote

In retrospect , it is. During that, he’ll no. I was let go with the excuse “we are not comfortable with having you on our team anymore”

Was a Christian nutrition mlm, so fuck ‘em. I had also publicly disagreed on dress code decrees to his face as well (no earrings on men?) I became a target. I was so pissed at the guy but he ended up dying 6mo later .

I didn’t do well after losing that job due to the recession and 9/11 plus my inability to cope without excessive partying. I got arrested and had to spend 3 months in county for assault. I was not able to re enter the IT field until 10 years later , and after going to get my undergrad. I can’t stand the certification crap. I now work tech support and development in dementia research. Love the public sector/academia, it’s a good fit.

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Theopneusty t1_j5dbpih wrote

I used to be a line cook, and later a shift manager in food service. I’m now a software dev. I don’t work anywhere near as “hard” as I used to but it is a different kind of stress and work.

Instead of the highly physical and social work (dealing with customers) I did before I do a lot more mental work and have to explain things to non-technical managers/clients. While I work less hours than before there is a lot of cram time where I am working all day long. I’m also paid to problem solve. When there is a production issue I have to research and figure out what’s going on.

One issue I dealt with directly affected 60 million people. I had to quickly solve that issue because every minute counts when that many people are impacted. My most used work is used by literally 25% of the global population in some capacity.

I’m not paid for the hours I work (quite literally because I’m salaried). I am paid for my knowledge and ability to solve problems, whether live with production issues or while designing and building software.

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commentingrobot t1_j5dfhho wrote

By the sounds of it, you're a good dev.

I've worked at a variety of companies, and have found that for every good dev there are a half dozen who spend their time in meaningless side-quests, doing the bare minimum and then blaming the PM when the project flops, or making mistakes that would be obvious if they'd tried to understand their user's point of view.

Very often I hear people talk about the minimal amount of work they perceive software devs as doing. Can't say I blame them. But I've never worked harder than as a lead dev for a small company, where the product succeeded or failed based on my work. Those who only ever work at FAANG type companies often never learn what that's like.

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YawnTractor_1756 t1_j5f0y9q wrote

Have you actually worked in FAANG company, or you're just speculating? Because I worked 15 years in small and large non-FAANG companies, and when I went working for FAANG-level company then comparatively speaking I see that every regular developer in FAANG experiences pressure compared to that of a Team Lead in a small company.

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commentingrobot t1_j5f195g wrote

I have indeed

Ymmv in FAANG of course. They're different from each other and they're huge companies which vary from team to team.

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houseofprimetofu t1_j5dax6b wrote

I watched my partner, who does recruiting in high tech, do literally nothing but check Slack and still get paid. I was dumbfounded. No software tracking on the work MBP, he was playing Hearthstone and on Twitter being a troll the entire day. As long as he attended meetings (in bed at 11am after having just work up with the sound on loud to hear his name while he drifted back to sleep) he skated by.

Got praised for doing good work. Got handed new projects.

Blows my mind that employees like him earn as much they do while I died making $25 an hour managing a 24/7 vet hospital.

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charlottespider t1_j5ex4ig wrote

These jobs aren't the norm, though. I'm a software engineer, and I work 40 hours, plus much more when deadline crunch time comes. I work hard on my off hours to ramp up skills because everything becomes stale really quickly. Like, I completely agree that most workers are underpaid, and some tech workers are overpaid, but no one I know has a job like you describe here.

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wooshoofoo t1_j5dqvy4 wrote

Tech, especially big tech which tends to be about software innovation, is fundamentally different than most work.

When you build the right things (according to the market needs) your reward is extremely disproportionate than the second place winner (typically). The network effect of software innovation is extremely strong, and the first to win typically wins big. Google did with search ads, MSFT with operating systems, Amazon with web services, LinkedIn with their professional big data, Salesforce with the cloud based CRM, the list goes on.

This means that companies are always either 1) jockeying to beat their competitors if they have a lot of them, thereby necessitating the race to the top with talent attracting salaries and perks or 2) trying to maintain their dominant monopoly if they don’t have any serious competitors, which still basically means the same.

Couple this “can’t be second place” mentality with the fact that software product engineering really is an art that has not been fully decoded, most executives treat engineers as R&D that they MUST invest in at all costs, especially to compete against others.

This is why you see a race to the top with perks; your partner might be useless or not, but in aggregate these tech folks represent the best chance for their company to win that outsize profitability and dominance in the market for years to come. So yeah, the free lunches and generous time off, the massages and onsite laundry and pet days and mental health days and whatnot are all factored into the calculation that IN AGGREGATE these people basically print money.

This is also why typically big tech cuts everything BUT R&D, so sales and marketing and recruiting go first. It’s also why the rest of the industry don’t tend to pull an Elon and cut R&D to the bone- you can do that in manufacturing because you don’t need R&D to crank out the value but doing so in software is like cutting off your own future money makers.

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[deleted] t1_j5dpus7 wrote

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5e0f38 wrote

This may be the most projection I have ever seen in a single, poorly lettered comment.

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[deleted] t1_j5e2zco wrote

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5e427y wrote

I wonder what kind of insecurity it takes to project all that negativity. Clearly job and relationship insecurity. But how can that be?! You’re obviously such a pleasant and intelligent person.

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[deleted] t1_j5e5rmf wrote

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5e6ayb wrote

There is also a clear superiority in what you choose to write, which is odd because you are so obviously insecure and write so poorly.

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[deleted] t1_j5e6z3i wrote

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5e78ah wrote

Be honest; did you get fired this week, sweetie?

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[deleted] t1_j5e7hgs wrote

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5e7ta5 wrote

Are all of these drinks that you’re demanding to drown your sorrows, sweetheart? The desperation in your comments is palpable.

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dark_salad t1_j5d9y8t wrote

The measurable metric for "work" is whatever you're being paid to do by your employer / clients.

>To put it bluntly, I am not surprised that the industry is laying people off.

And you're completely ignoring the fact that it's primarily the FAANG companies that are doing it in a concerted effort to manipulate the industry for cheaper labor.

You're also missing that they're still staffing well above their pre-covid numbers, so while this looks like a downturn -- it's not.

But tell me, how is the restaurant industry doing post-covid? Last I checked, not so bueno.

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5dduty wrote

Found the nerve, sweetheart? Set your mouse jiggler up and have a quick nap.

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dark_salad t1_j5h5j5h wrote

Says the person jacking off at the prospect of their girlfriend losing her job. Lol yikes dawg.

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Lowfrequencydrive t1_j5dl2cj wrote

I'm design adjacent to tech and one of the problems I saw even during the pandemic around when I graduated, was companies hiring a lot of people without always having a clear, long term need for those roles on the team. A lot of individuals who were really talented, great at their jobs being onboarded to do very little throughout the day or just hang out essentially.

My first company only had about two major clients and when one downscaled (the client shifted their content development internally) it meant half our creative wound up getting let go. They expanded too fast without having a clear need for a large design team.

Even where I work currently, there's an issue with having too much downtime, filler meetings, mandatory in office work, long breaks, alongside not enough concrete tasks throughout the day. So to agree with your points, I think this was going to happen sooner or later. There's a lot of belt tightening within tech, creative entertainment and design.

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Dissenting_voice t1_j5dn2hv wrote

I have seen what a slow, directionless operation can do to good employees in the short term. I can only imagine the long term effect this would have on the work culture of an entire industry where this was common.

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Lowfrequencydrive t1_j5dnxer wrote

Despite some of the day to day shortcomings, I've had the fortune of learning a lot from my boss in the short/ long term. And it's been a great knowledge + hands on experience in a lot of other ways too. However, it's really organization/ leadership dependent.

I've had the contrast of an org where they were beyond the pale passive aggressive, toxic short/ long term too. So that factor really does modulate the experience. I would never work in the theatrical design industry again for that reason tbh.

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Fair-Ad4270 t1_j5ds6hk wrote

You are absolutely right but while it is true for the big tech companies, it is not when you work in startups. My experience in startups was the opposite: crazy workload, high stress all because of general understaffing

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Iranfaraway85 t1_j5h069e wrote

Totally agree. I work in Agriculture in a decision making career, I spent a few years working in tech as well and couldn’t believe how little they do compared to Ag. In Ag things have to happen no matter what or livestock/people go hungry quickly. In tech people beat to their own drum, timeframes are never on schedule, or if they do hit the deadline it’s full of bugs that they rushed without testing. Also sucks Ag is low paying but absolutely critical and most of tech companies are useless comparatively speaking, yet tech worker are bringing down $3-$500k and top Ag people are lucky to make $175k after 20 years.

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look t1_j5g0vm8 wrote

It’s the difference in scale. There are times that I can “work” for just 10 seconds and a have multi-million dollar impact. And even the normal day-to-day isn’t like working “in the restaurant business”; it would be more like creating a complete replacement of the restaurant business.

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look t1_j5g0w1v wrote

It’s the difference in scale. There are times that I can “work” for just 10 seconds and a have multi-million dollar impact. And even the normal day-to-day isn’t like working “in the restaurant business”; it would be more like creating a complete replacement of the restaurant business.

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rulesforrebels t1_j5gb1n9 wrote

This if you got rid of party planning meal planning and events you could probably cut 15% of the staff on those things alone. Tech workers are constantly trying bragging online about how they do 4 actual hours of work per week and some are taking on 2 d and 3rd jobs

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azsori t1_j5fj63l wrote

This is just blue collar vs white collar work....that is how it is. You described my work life pretty well with that paragraph, the ins and outs of current corporate tech. Not to belittle you and other blue collar jobs at all, but it is just the different nature of the work. When shit hits the fan, it's up to me to do things like restore internet/tv for millions. One can't pick up what I do in a year of trying to swing it, it'll take a 10 year journey just to play at my current level.

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