Me over here who just liked problem solving and making things.

too many people be like this. well, they're gonna have a rough awakening when the IT job market collapses.

I wish I could say the same. I didn't get into programming for the money, I got into it because it was the only thing I was any good at and generally wouldn't discriminate against me because of my disability.

Lol we tricked an entire generation into oversaturating the STEM market so Lockheed Martin could get cheaper labor :3

Tech workers have historically been respected and well-paid, without unions. The power of tech workers did not come from solidarity, but from scarcity, Doctorow said. The minute bosses ordered tech workers to enshittify the product they were loyally working on, perhaps missing various important social and family events to ship it on time, those workers could say no—perhaps in a much more coarse way. Tech workers could simply walk across the street ""and have a new job by the end of the day"" if the boss persisted.

So labor held off enshittification after competition, regulation, and interoperability were all systematically undermined and did so for quite some time—until the mass tech layoffs. There have been half a million tech workers laid off since 2023, more are announced regularly, sometimes in conjunction with raises for executive salaries and bonuses. Now, workers cannot turn their bosses down because there are ten others out there just waiting to take their job.

Source

Too many people like this have ruined the field.

If we hadn’t made this all 100% about the money the entire world would be running on the best possible software.

An example I’ll give is ghostty, where 1 guy who got rich enough to cash out gets to spend his time making insanely good software, using a somewhat risky pre 1.0 language that would never get approved by corporate/investors, just because he wants to and enjoys it. And he openly chastises people telling him to enshittify or turn it into a business, because he doesn’t need to.

The entire Web 2.0 was built on the exact same thing with pylons, Django, rails, flask, etc. being born out of people who just wanted to code.

If I had 5-10x more wealth so that I never had to worry about money, this is what I’d be doing too.

Actually, what I’d be doing is attending university classes every day and writing software and doing analysis on the side.

In the grand scheme of society, it’s kinda bonkers how there was such a short window to go to learn something like Web Development and get a job before it started being replaced. Basically a job that existed for ~30 years and won’t be around much longer.

(Yes I know AI is dumb, but it doesn’t matter if C-Suite execs think it can do it, they’ll replace jobs with AI)

I just think computers are neat 🤷‍♂️

I like solving puzzles, and I have a knack for programming specifically

Yeah that didn't pan out

Good luck finding a job at all and especially if you're in it only for the money

I thought it was interesting. Then I dropped out because programming was more fulfilling and I didn't need to become a CS major to be a programmer.

I, too, chose the career where you get paid to google your own problems all day.

Yes and no, I don't want to deal with people too much. But I'm in help desk so it's only half true

Whoooooops!

And I graduated into the era of AI to not make any anyways :V

Why the state of the industry is shit, in a nutshell.

Ask a finance pro why they went into finance. If you don't get the same answer, they are lying.

Anyway, I fell involve with computers and programing at 13 years old, and nothing else appealed to me, so guess what I became?

Honestly, not at all. If CS paid like shit I'd still do it. Out of all the things it's just what I enjoy most. Studying CS didn't feel like something I had to do but rather something I wanted to do most of the time. Programming is like solving puzzles but then much cooler

Open source devs working on literally the most important infrastructure that powers all other software development: Y'all are getting paid?

I was programming in basic when I was like 10 years old and have been hooked ever since. I have been enthralled with these machines for over 40 years. I mean I come home from work (in IT obviously) and mess around with my home lab. The money isn’t bad obviously but this is and always has been what I was destined to do.

I mean, for me personally money was only part of the equation considering I was willing to put myself in debt. I could have better job security doing a trade job if money was the only factor. I also found computers inheritly interesting and the job was in high demand at the time. It all has backfired now though, despite developing a passion for tech and software overtime. I honestly SHOULD have done something only for the money instead of finding the best of both worlds, but hindsight is 20/20 I suppose

I'm learning HTML and other stuff to make a webpage for fun. It'll be really low quality probably, but it doesn't have to be great, it's for me.

Coding is not dead, and it will not be until the last people with a passion for it die, if not, later than that