Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."
Chet's book on the early days of Android is super interesting. Lots of crazy OS building stories. He must have interviewed 50 people who worked on the first couple releases of Android. I had him share parts of that story on the podcast and result is one of my favorite episodes.
I always thought of Android as, of course it succeeded, it was a big google project. But the story is far more interesting. They were somewhat of a small group, part of an acquisition and didn't actually merge with the prevailing google culture. Kind of kept to themselves and worked insane hours and were really into coffee.
Also, most of them had previous worked on similar projects. They had done the T-Mobile Sidekick and some of them came from WebTV, I think and BeOS.
I joined Android in April 2012. Looking back, at that time Android was incredibly lean for what it was accomplishing. The entire Frameworks team reported to one manager, and we would fit in a medium size conference room. That included all of UI toolkit and the bulk of the Java APIs an app would call into, including Binder. (Networking, phone, graphics, Bluetooth, etc were other teams, but we worked closely together. And I think graphics was like 5 people). At the time I was slightly worried that I had joined a mature project and that it had already seen most of its success. Little did I know. (Disclosure: Chet was my manager for a couple years, until I left in late 2016 to join Fuchsia, largely because I was impatient to develop in Rust).
Chet is a great comedian, I think he'll do well in his new interest. I'll bend the norms here and tell a joke. It'll be funny to Android insiders, apologies otherwise.
At one point, he hosted a get-together in his house, which was one of many things that led to incredible team cohesion. It was somewhat chilly, and we were sitting around in our jackets shivering a bit. One person said, "we should have an Android app for turning on the heat to warm us up." My response: "we already do, it's called GMSCore."
That must have been an amazing ride. Note: in my opinion, a small, lean, focused team is the right way to build an OS. I haven't seen the "throw an army at it" approach succeed for building the core of an OS or platform, as it becomes almost impossible to keep coherence in the system.
And, yeah, that GMSCore joke is too real.
Maybe?
How many people worked on the core of Windows NT? On a number of the big Unixes? Various minicomputer OSs?
What you probably do need is a chief architect--like Cutler in the NT case--to keep everyone lined up.
The Mythical Man Month was literally written because Fred Brooks threw an army at the problem of writing an OS -- IBM's OS/360 -- then found it didn't work and decided to write down why it didn't work. His idea of an ideal software team he called the "surgical team" and your chief architect is the "surgeon" -- the one responsible for the major design decisions who calls all the shots. The surgeon and his team shouldn't exceed about ten people.
The Mythical Man Month is, like the Bible, one of those tomes that everyone cites with reverence, yet no one seems to read or follow the principles of. The ideal team from corporate's perspective is what I call the RAMP -- Redundant Array of Mid Programmers. The idea being that if you get a bunch of mid programmers together and have them constantly communicating, you can get the output of one good programmer without the risk of one good programmer, since you can always replace any of the mid programmers that fail or falter. But this approach has a number of drawbacks: you don't actually get the output of one good programmer this way, and you don't get the speed of one good programmer either. Furthermore, you run into the same problems you do with actual RAID: similar components tend to fail on similar timelines, so you end up having to replace all the components at around the same time anyway. Programmers tend to burn out, or quit and look for greener pa$ture$, after a few years, so you may end up losing a significant chunk, if not all, of your team at around the same time.
But if you're an organization with billions in the bank, you can remain idiotic for much longer periods of time than any of your people are willing to stick around for and attempt to positively change things.
The other key factor is probably the person hiring/hiring being able to identify a 'good' programmer. Whether that's through their own competence or having some knowledge of the candidate outside their resume.
Speed to market is also a factor. If you pushing to release a new product, good engineers are very important. For big corporates with established marketshare and profits, it seems to be the thousand monkeys with typewriters approach
Indeed. I've noticed that the more off the critical path is the corpo's software team, the more waste they are willing to tolerate when it comes to software development. That's how you come to things like super-scalable, cloud-based, kooberneteez-orchestrated microservice architectures for internal applications which serve a subset of a division of a company. And you need a team 200 strong to service that.
Depending on your definition of “core”, I think the cores of those were indeed implemented by a handful of people. Read “Showstopper” for the Windows NT story, for example, with a small gang of ex-DEC engineers putting the basic kernel abstractions in place.
Of course, the full functionality of the system comes after lots more people build functionality on top of that core. Which is exactly why it’s important for that core to be coherent, powerful, and well engineered.
You can have the best chief architect in the world, but if everyone’s building on sand you’re going to get a crappy system. Whereas if the core of the system is solid, it will guide people into doing things better even without an architect.
I've read Showstopper. Also Soul of a New Machine. Don't really disagree. A lot depends on what you consider core and what you consider a system in the words of Fred Brooks.
Small, lean, focused team is the correct way to build any massive undertaking in software. Maybe not in sending people to the moon, but in building consumer software.
Various individual components involved in sending people to the moon were also composed of small focused engineering teams.
Well, small, lean, and focused also implies that the time to deliver is still a bit longer. If you're willing to wait 5 years for something, then a small lean focused team is the way to go. The issue with hiring 10k devs to build the core of an os is that just by definition, you'll have people starting the user land at the same time as the core and now you have UI project managers dictating ABI interfaces at the same time as you're trying to make your core OS.
A large dev team for something that complex it the classic case of the mythical man month. Some things just need to happen in series, and some things just need to happen first.
Much like societies, there is no 'one way' to do it all.
Best is to really understand what you are trying to do in the first place.
Indeed, it was interesting when VW announced they‘d hire 10k engineers to build an automotive OS. Of course it hasn’t worked out and they needed to restart the effort (with 5k devs it seems?).
"until I left in late 2016 to join Fuchsia, largely because I was impatient to develop in Rust"
Shows how different people are. I only care what I am developing. I have my preferences but if generally language is the last thing I care about bar some pathological cases.
I used to think that way until I ran into one of the pathological cases (Ruby) and now I'll think very carefully about which job offers to accept based on the language(s) involved.
Me, before Ruby: “languages are languages, I can usually pick up what I need to in order to contribute.”
Me, after Ruby: “fools rush in where wise men fear to tread.”
exactly - last year I had to learn Go and Scala for a job, and it was a nice experience learning something new. 2 languages with advantages and disadvantages, and good support from VSCode and IntelliJ. This year, I had to learn Ruby, and found it to be a mess, with poor support from VSCode and RubyMine. Apparently you can't know what methods exist on a class until runtime, so the IDEs don't can't tell you much about your code.
Just like you shouldn't be so open-minded that your brain falls out, a language shouldn't be so dynamic that you can't tell anything about a line of code until you're in the middle of executing it. Maybe it's great for cranking out a CRUD web app in a weekend, but not so great for a product that's had 300 developers writing code for 10 years.
Is there any animosity towards the later efforts to “professionalize” some of the early simpler Android APIs? I’m thinking specifically of some of the drama surrounding the banning of SharedPreferences.
Most of that is being driven by the same people who worked on the original APIs. Being on a successful platform means all your rushed, good-enough APIs from years ago tend to now be load bearing regret.
As someone currently working on GMSCore…I couldn’t stop laughing.
I didn't work on Android until 2016. As someone who was very much not old guard, Chet's book helped fill in a lot of details and historical context for me. I enjoyed the read and recommend it. So long Chet, and thanks for all the fish.
I worked with some of them at WebTV and they were extraordinary hackers there, and at General Magic before that.
I miss Bowser the Rabbit most, though.
I always wanted to program, to create great things, got really good at it, but most of the time I was overtaken by folks playing politics that only used tech as a stepping stone to something they always wanted to do but only tech gave them financial resources to do that.
Tech for tech's sake helps nobody. Politics is a fact of nearly every facet of life—you can accept this and play the game or accept that you're in the backseat.
The worst people in the world already know this and run our industry. There's no reason we have to accept them.
Tech for tech's sake helps nobody
If it wasn’t for science, art and tech for their own sake we would still be on the trees gathering bananas
Art? Yes, of course! I have no clue what you're referring to with tech, though. Throughout history development of tech has almost always driven by seeking economic leverage. I'm sure there are exceptions but I can't think of any.
Not sure what you're referring to with science at all.
Throughout history development of tech has almost always driven by seeking economic leverage. I'm sure there are exceptions but I can't think of any.
What about:
- curiosity (much of science, mathematics, etc.)
- artistic expression (musical instruments, demoscene)
- fortunate accidents (penicillin)
- just tinkering around (all sorts of inventions)
- play and fun (many non-commercial computer games)
- communication (telegraph, telephone, email, ...)
- self-expression (blogs)
- being dissatisfied with something and trying to change it (many more inventions)
- basic needs (advances in food, shelter, medicine...)
- trying to gain a military advantage (all sorts of weaponry and defenses)
- exploration (e.g. traveling to the bottom of the ocean, or landing on the moon)
- ideology/philosophy/religion (GNU and free software; cathedrals; pyramids)
etc.
At the end of the day much of technology is motivated by human needs, interests, desires, fears, etc.
OP's move from tech to comedy writing shows that interest or passion can be powerful motivators.
I'm as keen to wax poetic about the non-economic potential of technology as the next person, but I'm not deluding myself into thinking that was why the technology was developed in the first place.
Also, a military advantage is an economic one, there's no real difference between the concepts.
So you’re saying all of technology is the result of saying “we could make money if we had a thing that did X”, and none of it is the result of “we found a way to do X because we thought it would be cool.”
If nothing else, you just dismissed most of mathematics and basic physics.
I think you value "art" too much, and think too little of "tech".
It's also not confusing to me what the other person is saying, maybe you can clarify what your misunderstandings are before anyone can address them.
Probably a true statement, in that those folks made contributions, but also misleading, since technology specifically, usually has a goal or outcome in mind. A problem to solve. Like let's assume one of the first technological innovations on that long arc from banana-gathering to whatever we're doing now, was somebody inventing a better way to gather bananas. Or a substitute for bananas. Or a way to grow your own bananas in a controlled way (which I guess would be agriculture, one of our foundational technologies). All of these are easy to imagine and not far-fetched. So were they done by some poseur/pretender who only cared about bananas, and we should look down on them, or were they nobly doing tech for tech's own sake? I don't think the dichotomy exists.
since technology specifically, usually has a goal or outcome in mind
sure, all ambitions have a goal. I think the point is that not all goals have some economic goal in mind. The original blogging platform and internet as a structure did not have the goal of monetizing writing. And we're honestly seeing the consequences of attempts and failures to try and monetize such stuff on the net.
Maybe there was prestige, or research grants, or whatnot, but it's clear that there's many pieces of tech who's goals wasn't to sell off to a billionaire and retire in style. I'd call such research "tech for tech's sake".
Please explain in detail. I'm not seeing the connection.
The worst people in the world already know this and run our industry. There's no reason we have to accept them.
tbh until we change the way to go about politics, or collective decision making, this isn't going to change.
I feel lucky and privileged to be in that position. I get to do what I love and get paid very generously.
If it wasn’t for “those people” or for tech being so lucrative to attract them, I would probably still do the same but struggle to make ends meet.
So I’m very grateful that tech is what it is today.
as a gamedev, I just get the worst of both worlds. no job security and below average pay. I can't relate. "Passion" hasn't saved me from layoffs.
People are lucky when there's some intersection between what they like doing, what they're good at, and what pays reasonably well.
You can make a personal project?
I remember feeling like this a while ago -- like there was something inherently different (...better?) about "us" (who are in tech because we just fundamentally love programming) compared to "them" (who are in tech because there's good money in it). Though over the last couple years I think I've been changing my mind a bit.
I've had the chance to get to know some more people -- people who are indeed in tech for mostly financial reasons, but who are still fantastic developers and care a lot about the craft. I realized that having dreams outside of software doesn't necessarily make you worse at it, or "less deserving" of the job.
And, I definitely wouldn't conflate "in tech for the money" with "playing politics" / stupid ladder-climbing -- I bet there's some nontrivial overlap there, but there are other reasons one might need strong financial stability, like if they don't have any kind of other safety net (from the government, from their family) to fall back on, and thus feel worried without a good foundation.
That's the system we live in. Feels pretty natural that people will optimise for the effort/$ ratio if they have the power to do so. Sitting in my home AC'd office, making a computer do things and getting paid more then basically every "essential service" is probably the sweetest deal outside of being born into a wealthy family.
I personally love to code, I literally do it in my free time to solve my own little problems and/or just to learn, but I don't resent people who are only doing it for the money or because it's easier than most alternatives.
That’s the game, yeah.
Sometimes you have to do shit you don’t want to do in order to accomplish what you do want to do. It’s on you.
The idea that another multi-millionaire tech worker would think that leaving their job is something people would be interested in is… strange. He’s letting the world know that in the second worst tech downturn in history, he’s going to retire and pursue comedy writing. Feels more appropriate for a Facebook post to this friends rather than a medium post.
I’m more interested on why he is posting it on medium when he has a blog.
I really like how Medium lets you know how "distraction free" their reading experience is (using huge popunders, privacy notices, sticky headers).
I'm not sure why anyone would use Medium at this point. It's not like there aren't free alternatives even if you don't want to self-host.
It's also strange that all those people in movies think we care about their current relationship status.
You might be interested in an excellent keyboard shortcut: control-W. (Or command-W on a Mac.)
I'm not sure why it did, but it's not his fault that this has made the top spot on HN.
To quote Gervais' bit:
On Twitter, people sometimes say, “Why don’t you keep your opinions to yourself?” I go, “You’re following me. I didn’t tweet at you.” That’s like going to a notice board in the middle of town, seeing a sign for guitar lessons, and yelling, “I DON’T WANT guitar lessons!” Well, it wasn’t for you.
Maybe hard to believe, but for a lot of people, it's way more interesting than hearing yet another self-proclaimed radical communist go on another rant about people making money.
He posted it on Medium, not the front page of the New York Times.
People follow him on Medium, presumably because they want to follow his thoughts and are interested in what he has to say.
So for him to post to a platform of followers, explaining the most major life change of his life and announcing that he effectively won't be as involved in the Android community anymore all seems pretty reasonable.
If someone has a gun to your head forcing you to read it against your will than I suggest dialing 911. For the rest of us, there is nothing forcing us from reading it. So if its not of interest we just move on.
Weirdly gatekeepy. Why shouldn't he be allowed to update his followers on his life?
It's actually fine for someone to post something you don't personally want to read.
that leaving their job is something people would be interested in is… strange.
Making it to the top of HN contradicts this
I though Google paid decent salaries, but it turns out even after 15 years there you’re still concerned about making ends meet it seems
I've been working at Google about 10 years as "only" an L5 and have about $3M in stock just from stuff I haven't sold
Yeah, every ex-Googler “riding off into the sunset” blog post like this is pretty annoying.
What’s even worse is when they do things like this post where there are little jokes about how it’s a financial burden to change careers or take a break rather than acknowledging how they have no risk of running out of money. Going to art school is the worst financial decision ever, tee hee! Yeah man, imagine what it must be like with student loans.
Great for OP for working at the right place at the right time and winning the proverbial lottery. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from it other than “must be nice.”
Going to a pricey private school as a hobby/retirement activity must be real fun.
What’s even worse is when they do things like this post where there are little jokes about how it’s a financial burden to change careers or take a break rather than acknowledging how they have no risk of running out of money.
I mean, I didn't read it like this. It is absolutely a horrible financial decision to quit a top position at google to go back to school and then try to be a comic (one of the hardest jobs to get paid anything for). I didn't take "bad financial decision" as "fatal decision that will land him on the streets".
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from it other than “must be nice.”
It's just a dude with a blog who clearly has engaged readers making a big update to his life (that may indirectly affect some readers who are involved in AOSP). I didn't take it as some pity party.
But my personal take is that it's okay to not spend your life minmaxing finances. and it's okay (if it's in your power) to "restart" your career, or make a lateral move. If you want to have a more cynical take: At some point money is made to be used and he has so much money that more money is less important than a true passion. If you ever make that much, consider it ass well.
Yeah, he presumably put away a nice nest egg working at Google. It's not in any way wrong to remind others that, if they're lucky enough to be in a similar position, they don't necessarily need to work until "normal" retirement time if they/their families don't want that.
Personally, I feel like I got a bit greedy and could probably have called it quits a year or three back and been happier for it. I partly blame COVID for disrupting what might have otherwise been a better transition.
Nicolas Cage can’t make ends meet, and he was one of the highest paid actors, once.
As they say in investing: "past performance is no guarantee of future results"
Salaries is one thing. Your lifestyle choices are another thing entirely.
The title is an allusion to "So long, and Thanks for All the Fish", a book by Douglas Adams.
(For those HNers not steeped in the HHGTTG trilogy of six books)
Which is a reference to what the Dolphins say at the start of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as they leave the earth just before it is destroyed for a new intergalactic roadway.
yeah, he swears he loves Google, Android and the rest - but he did put that title there didn't he? Come to think of it, that's one of the hallmarks of comedy - say one thing and subtly imply another ...
Just because you love a place doesn't mean you can't recognize when it's coming to an end. The Dolphins had a grand old time swimming and eating fish, but alas it was time to go.
Not saying Google is coming to an end, but perhaps the author feels this way?
Maybe he does, who knows, but one thing is sure: Google will come to an end at some point. Is it anywhere close to now? Not likely but Google's ad based business model is under brutal attack from LLMs, it came suddenly and is no doubt sending quakes down the organization. Old-timers might not feel all that welcome any more.
I've liked (often times a lot) parts of every job I've had. I've also been ready (or past ready really) to move on in I think every case.
Which made a lot of people sad, even the ones with digital watches...
On one hand computer and information science degrees have experienced the highest growth among undergrad degrees [1], so lots of people are joining in, but on the other I'm curious to hear from the people who have left.
Is anyone who has exited the tech world still reading HN? What's it like on the outside?
[1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-most-popular-u-s...
I remember being pleasantly surprised to find out that the guy who created the screensaver I used to use quit tech to make pizzas.
Author worked on android as his first job back when people hired entry level. Today, the entry level people I know struggle massively to get a foot in the door.
Author worked on android as his first job back when people hired entry level.
Not true.
Incidentally, just for fun I posted the whole article into GPT and asked it to evaluate the "correctness" of your comment. Its response was rather verbose, but here's the key portion:
The comment states, "Author worked on android as his first job back when people hired entry level." However, this is not accurate as per the information in the article. The author clarifies that working on Android at Google was neither his first job nor his second; he had been in the industry since 1992 and accumulated roughly 31 years of experience before deciding to switch careers. His position on the Android team appears to be a result of his already extensive career rather than an entry-level opportunity.
Reads like a good outline for a sitcom. Disillusioned tech exec enrolls in arts school with quirky green haired genZ : ^ )
Like Pierce in Community?
good for him and sounds like he really enjoyed tech. i burned out after 10 years and am going to art school now. makes me wonder if he wishes he did it earlier.
Took me about 6 years to go from "maybe I should understand computers, and Ruby seems pretty neat!" to "sight... devops is not a role". I'm getting into History professionally now and it's been a blast. Besides, with all the crazy bad primary source databases out there (there are some good ones, but some god-awful ones as well), I can see History needs developers who don't care about making the maximum bucks.
I remember Chet making delightful blog posts all the way back when he was at Sun. I wish him well on his new career, but hope that he doesn't give up technical writing completely.
Shouldn’t the correct office annotation be @Obsoleted ?
I wish you and the rest of the android team hadn't forced me to give you so many of my bytes, but you're most welcome, good luck.
Nice! I’ve been rewinding myself. Not sure where I’ll go though but it’s fun. After 25 years I’m ready for it. Not going to write comedies but I’ll figure something out.
Well, we need more Shazam like comedy to get us nerds through the day (Silicon Valley is good and the IT Crowd but Shazam is way more into it with the inside baseball), so I hope for selfish reasons he mixes the two passions!
It's his contribution to increase Android quality.
To quote musician Jon Wurster, roughly the same age as Chet, “I take whatever opportunities arise, no matter how weird or improbable they may be.”
Chet is a story-teller extraordinaire. imo, Devoxx 2019 remains his best presentation, so far: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/IEQj8ZxHejo (mirror: https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/IEQj8ZxHejo) And his best gift to all of us active in AOSP and Android developer ecosystem is his book Androids (https://www.chethaase.com/androids).
Thank you Chet. You have been sheer quality (q14) all year, every year.
Good luck Chet. Don’t give up the day job. Ooh…
Chet is going to be missed a lot in our community. His talks with Romain Guy were inspirational to me: whenever I saw them it was clear that they could each hold the stage on their own, but that having the both of them got more out of both of them, both technically and in entertainment value.
I hope he does well in comedy, but I will miss his example: that you can bring even unusual talents and interests into work life and make something worthwhile of it
good for you man.
I recently found out the creator of the show Suits was an investment banker previously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Korsh
It's great to see folks excel in multiple fields.
Some context for those that may be unaware; Chet has been a staple in the Android developer community for a very long time, having hosted a popular podcast and been a staple a conferences. His move into comedy will surprise no one, but he will be dearly missed.
Never had the pleasure of meeting him in person, but as most of my career so far has been in mobile (and Android specifically) for the past 14 years, Chat has been one of those Android experts that have always 'been there'.
I wish him all the best with the new endeavour, and thank him for all the great content and communication he has been part of over the years.
I will though miss the banter dynamic between Chet, Tor and Romain on ADB.
p.s Highly recommend reading his book Androids on the history of the early days of its development
Now I know why Android is written in Java - they are a bunch of comedians! Everything is a joke to them!
In all seriousness, career changes are very hard. I hope the best for him.
Honestly, and I don't know if he'll have an opportunity to read this, but as someone who's both a computer geek and has dabbled in improv and comedy improv, he may find that coding and comedy writing are not entirely separate paths.
There's definitely a STRUCTURE to successful comedy. Certain things have to be in certain conjunctions. Yes, there are definitely times when anticomedy will work, or deadpan comedy, but it's not an utter free-for-all.
If as a person you (yes, whomever's reading this comment) ever want to investigate what I mean, shell out for the Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improv Manual [1]. It's fascinating reading on the structure of something you've simply enjoyed without thinking.
[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources?isbn=979...
This chap sounds like a really cool person. I probably would have loved working with him, and wish him the best.
I'll bet he gave great presentations. Having a good speaker, who can draw out laughs, makes any kind of presentation a joy.
I assume that he has banked enough to follow his muse, so he can remain in the SF area.
I happen to love tech, so, when I retired, I actually increased my coding fervor (I was a manager, before, so I left all that stuff behind).
Tangential to the article since that was a voluntary departure, but this is absolutely happening, yes.
My partner decided to get "into tech" in ~2018. Her reason more or less amounted to looking at me and determining "it's a cushy job that pays very well." For a while, I tried pointing her to various sources to start learning a bit about software development and programming; there's no barrier to installing PyCharm CE and Github, after all. But there was zero interest and zero natural curiosity. She just did some certificate coursework, passed, then started looking for a job, and nothing beyond that.
In a lot of ways, software developer has been brought down to earth as a more "normal" career. You don't really hear about lawyers working on passion law projects at night or mechanical engineers designing skyscrapers as a hobby; the path for that is just go to school -> get internship -> get fulltime job -> do your 9-5.
The thing is, my partner isn't alone. She represents the vast, vast majority of new software developers in the past 15 years. The industry has grown, the pay has exploded, people who worked retail could parlay a 6-week bootcamp into a six-figure salary. Obviously people would hop in even if they didn't know what a compiler was.
But in a post-ZIRP world companies are seriously reevaluating the value of the average software developer. In 2010, a software dev was far more likely to have at least some personal interest in software, or even just computers in general. Now, you have software developers who never touched an actual, non-phone/tablet computer before entering their university courses. They're not stupid--they can pass a leetcode interview just fine--they just don't care about technology beyond using it as a means to pay rent.
Even if we return to near-ZIRP, there's going to be less demand for massive software dev teams. Everyone hates him, but you have to begrudgingly admit that Elon successfully demonstrated you don't need massive dev teams to build and run software, even at Twitter's scale. (obviously it has other problems due to Elon's incompetence, but nothing more developers would solve.) Most companies could cut their dev team size by 50% and end up net-positive due to less overhead--the challenge is figuring out which 50% to cut.
So, yes. The tech downturn for this group of people--the non-passionate 9-to-5ers, particularly juniors--will last for many years, and that will lead to many jumping to other careers.
What do you mean this revelation was recently demonstrated by Elon? The NATO Software Engineering Conference 1968 paper talks about the problems of having too many programmers of low skill. The 1969 paper talks about the same thing. Fred Brooks wrote the Mythical Man Month in 1975, covering this topic extensively. This has been talked about extensively for over half a century with regards to software, it wasn't just discovered by Elon in the last year.
Nothing you said contradicts GP, who didn't claim Elon discovered anything. Elon did recently demonstrate what has been known for a long time - but not widely believed.
>Elon did recently demonstrate what has been known for a long time
You mean because he fired a lot of people and the website is still up?
Revenue has been falling precipitously. I'm not sure anything has been demonstrated yet.
Revenue hasn’t fallen because devs were fired, but because people responsible for selling ads were.
No, I don't think that's what happend.
If I remember correctly, he reduced the content moderation team, which led to an increase in hate speech, misinformation and CSAM. That's why big advertisers left and revenues crashed.
He then told those big advertisers to piss off and refocused his advertising business on smaller customers, which is why he doesn't need so many ad sales people any more.
Perhaps he should hire some developers and data scientists to better automate content moderation.
The first line is the narrative of the MSM that's in bed with government censors and hate that it's no longer controlled by political interests. It is also directly contradicted by independent studies commissioned by Twitter. But speaking of "misinformation", people tend to parrot what they hear whether it's true or not. Thankfully on Twitter that is less effective, thanks to community notes.
Advertisers leaving is a combination of instability caused by Musk's impulsive decision-making, uninformed bandwagoning based on the perception projected by aforementioned MSM and parrots (AKA peer pressure), and the state of the economy combined with the above forcing them to reevaluate their investments. Advertisement revenue has been dropping everywhere as it turns out.
So, you agree with the GP but also think it's a conspiracy that brands care about their brand perception?
You may ot even be wrong about "peer pressure", but that's how so much of the rest of the world works. Part of the downturn isnt based on economic logic but peer pressure: "BigCo is sizing down so we should too!". The aforementioned brand perception is the exact same way, but based on the consumers over the company. The Stock market as a whole is literally based on speculation.
As long as stuff is run by peoople, people will influence other people to make decisions based more on gut feelings than raw facts.
He also did fire a lot of sales and account managers in those first weeks. There were advertising customers in the news who were no longer purchasing ads because they literally didn't know who to contact any longer.
This happened after the dot-com burst in 2000. At that time there were a lot of people in Tech who would have otherwise gone into marketing, accounting or whatever.
A lot of these moved out of tech into other fields. Or they moved into less technical roles like project manager or management.
I think this is a good call out. There are many in tech who, if salaries fall, will go into other industries. Then there are those who will figure out how to do with less—because they couldn't imagine working in anything else.
If the most valuable programmers have a personal interest in tech and use it as a hobby, then businesses will realize this and will look for people who do tech as a hobby or who go to hobbyist meetups, etc, and then people who just want the money will start going into the hobby spaces. I wonder how much more potent our industries could be if they were filled with only people who deeply cared, and everyone else just got a generous UBI?
They drove me out and my tears are made of C, so....
I think we have another problem looming, beyond the realization that many engineers are unnecessary:
Most of the business models in tech are unsustainable. The ad-revenue driven explosion of the Internet over the past ~15 years has long since reached saturation. The data mines are all tapped out, and what have we learned? Mostly, nothing. Following a person's habits can help you target ads and drive them towards (mostly) unnecessary consumption. Then what?
Without ZIRP we're going to run out of the easy credit fueling such consumption. The economic hamster wheel is going to have to slow down. Then the realization that the SnR on the data being collected is practically 0 will set in. An immense amount of investment dollars was thrown at companies that charge nothing to the end user but collect and sell data to third parties. Yet that data is almost completely worthless.
I personally think fee-for-service is eventually going to make a (bigger) comeback, though another round or two of ZIRP might stave it off for awhile. As it does return, it is going to put even more pressure on companies to run lean teams.
1. I don't like the implication that junior = non-passionate. I'd even argue the opposite. Those new and hungry are most likely to be exploited and take whatever over the grizzled vet who's long had reality slap them in the face. There will always be non-passionate people but well: that falling passion seems to correlate quite well with the falling passion of companies to even pretend they want to better the world. Tit for tat.
2. The downturn is very much not correlated with passion. I've seen some 9-5'ers survive several rounds of layoffs and I've seen some of the hardest working engineers with almost a decade of experience slashed to the surprise of everyone. You look further in industry and you see some vets of even 15,20+ years cut. This isn't some calculated move to "drain the swamp". As usual, corporate is throwing darts on the board instead of seeing what each engineer brings to the table. If you're unlucky enough to be working on the wrong product at the wrong time (which at this point is just anything non-AI. Nothing is safe), it doesn't matter how talented you are.
The games industry is very much full of underpaid, underappreciated passion and is being hit just as hard as the rest of tech, so passion clearly isn't the answer to job security.
I would assume that he just earned so much money that he’s rich and can now do something else with his life without caring about money. Good for him.
"Rich" is a bit of a loaded term. But, yes, if someone has had a successful 35-40 year career in tech and has managed their finances reasonably, it's not unreasonable that they might decide to pack things in some years early--especially if they're not wild about working at a behemoth company that isn't as much fun as it used to be.
Early? If you've been in tech (or any job, really) for 35 to 40 years you're going to be in your 60s (or close) which is a normal time to retire.
Yeah the real difference with tech, at least as it's been for the last while, is you can do it after 10-20 years. I've had a very middling career overall and after about 15 years I'm very close to being able to just move on and do anything else without worrying about day to day expenses.
Now people who have run faster and faster on the hedonic treadmill with their inflated tech salaries, they are going to be in trouble.
Lol, I’ve been at this for 36 years and am in more debt than ever with 4 kids to still support. I’m doing it wrong.
Retiring in late 50s vs. retiring at 65 (much less later) still qualifies as some years early I think. Obviously a step function difference from retiring/"retiring" in early 40s.
There is a vast difference - literally vast - between Google employee’s salary over 14 years vs the median salary in IT overall.
This is especially true if you consider salaries world wide vs just the United States.
Yeah, it’s really demoralising for those of us not on SV / FAANG salaries reading the comments on HN.
I'm not sure it's the downturn, necessarily. I used to be enthralled with tech, full of energy to explore new tools, programming languages, etc. I think I slowly awoke to the fact that it's not the tech but the people that make it interesting and rewarding. For me (and I'm not trying to project on anybody else), interactions and activities with people who were doing things that are not tech seemed deeper and more genuine -- almost as if it was easier for me to get to know them and enjoy their company in a non-tech context. As a result, my hobbies and interests have pivoted to activities that don't involve computers much at all. My career remains in tech and I try to put my best efforts into the work that I do, but it's becoming more difficult as I continue to realize that life, for me, is better when most of it is spent away from screens.
Tech pays so much, people can afford to move on. That's probably the biggest reason.
It's not most people or even most people in tech obviously. But I know a fair number of people in tech, especially post-pandemic, who reassessed things and decided they had enough money and really weren't enjoying their jobs any longer so they moved on.
I know a number of people that were true believers until the the pandemic. I think that as tech workers, we are generally really isolated from a lot of real problems people face. I remember having sick family members, kids that were out of school with nowhere to go and nothing to do and I could watch the weight of boardom and loneliness weighing on them and the additional responsibilities of having the kitchen stocked and open for 3 or 4 meals a day and then sitting there and listening to some shithead rambling on about a useless product and fake deadlines so someone I didn't know or care about could make 15% instead of 10% this year.
I kinda reassessed who is benefiting and the actual importance of a lot of the work you do. Even though it's all framed as 'mission driven' and 'Changing the world' a lot of it really is only important so some mega corp can make a couple extra points on their stock.
I've talked to a bunch of people in the industry that had similar realizations. I've heard things like 'it's not something I can do today, but in x years . . .'
I believe there were a lot of people who reassessed an have a different view and that is and will continue to change the trajectory of many tech careers over the coming decade.
Do you think remote work has made it less interesting for you?
No. The countless garbage-tier attempts to measure productivity have, however, and the interview process for ALL companies should absolutely be regulated. Until realism can change things, I'm going to retire.
Even in the best of times, the best engineers I've worked with basically we’re just putting up with companies and management because the work was interesting and pay was good.
With so many people looking for work at the moment, I think a lot of these same companies have kind of a big head about themselves. Interviewing always sucks, but having to jump through a bunch of hoops, be ignored, or ghosted by some dopey SaaS company is really discouraging for a lot of people.
I myself decided to take a sabbatical so as not to deal with all this right now.
It's not 2001 but it's almost certainly harder for a later career person in particular get hired than, say, 5 years ago. I know quite a few people who presumably feel comfortable financially and have walked away from at least full time involvement with tech.
In my case, I dove deeper into tech, but I love this stuff. Since no one wants to work with a greyhair (no beard), I just do it for free, for folks that couldn't come close to affording the kind of work that I can do.
My biggest fear. Ive never shaved and you can count the number of hairs on my chin after 30 years. At this rate, I'll never truly evolve into the endgame greybeard guru (/s)
Lots of people will be leaving tech, not by choice. Unlike longterm Googlers, not everyone can afford to not get paid for six months.
Also, this isn't a "downturn"...the companies are mostly doing better than ever. This is a permanent restructuring in resource allocation. Companies are going to shrink headcount even as their businesses flourish.
I loved tech until I started working in tech. What else is there though? I can’t really do anything else
I haven't given up, but the past few years have accellerated my plans to try and become self-suffient in the field instead of relying on corporate to respect and compensate me. At least if I fail to appeal to an audience it will be on my own laurels and not because The company was fine with my labor but needed a 0.1% better earning call statement.
I of course can't speak for everyone, but I imagine there will be more startups/small companies forming over the next few years from people that were otherwise satisfied at BigCo. Tech has definitely felt like it devolved to being a cog in the wheel of raw profits over a field of innovation meant to make lives easier. You can't really get that back without sizing down.
I was a software engineer for 20 years, now I'm an airline pilot. Change is a good thing!
I wouldn't over-generalize. But there is some belt tightening at companies. Many companies have grown/changed. People may not feel up for a late career reboot even if, under different circumstances, they might have put some more years in.
I suspect there will be quite a few people in this situation, but it won't be the majority of people simply for financial reasons. If your idea of a fulfilling career isn't tech, law, finance, medicine or business/management, it may simply be impossible to do it full time and have a decent quality of life in many places.
For instance, writing jobs pay terribly overall, with the quantity of them going down a lot due to the decline of traditional media and the advent of AI. Unless you've got a FAANG income nest egg or a trust fund to rely on, I wouldn't recommend anyone get into this kind of work as their main career, regardless of how fulfilling it might be.
Ultimately I suspect many people will be forced to try and stick out this recession/downturn just because tech is their best bet of a decent living.