Vince Aggrippino 🇺🇸🇲🇾

The attached image shows a quote from reddit by someone with a software development job...

Years ago I was ridiculed, insulted, hated, and harassed for saying that you kinda need to enjoy it to make a career out of software development. You can't just do it "for the money".

I suspect I'd get a similar reaction from a lot of people today.

Now, social skills matter much more than software development skills and the people who got the jobs don't even want them.

#employment #SoftwareEngineering #SoftwareDevelopment #programming

Oct 10, 2024 at 2:30pmWeb
Show threadRaccoon🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈Oct 10, 2024

@VinceAggrippino
I repeatedly told people this about pretty much every field back when I was working on my management degree. Now, I know plenty of people who got engineering, management, and accounting degrees, and are trying to pay off the debt from them in dead-end jobs because they couldn't handle the competition from the people who loved those fields. I also knew at least one gender studies major now who makes six figures.

If you don't like the job, you aren't going to be able to push yourself through the long hours, or do the off-hours thinking, or the independent study, that makes people good at these jobs. You're going to put in a resume that lacks clear interest in the field, and the interview will show that you aren't anywhere near as competent as the people who are interested in the field. Even if you do get into the job somehow, you're going to be miserable compared to other jobs.

It really is true that you should follow a career you actually like, not chase money.

Show threadLainTrainOct 10, 2024
@Raccoon @VinceAggrippino meh, soft disagree on this one. Career shcmareer everybody deserves to have a roof over their heads and be able to feed, heat and water themselves. For as long as society isn't providing that without jobs people will get jobs and a job is a job, so long as a person does the work they're given idgaf what they're into. The whole "passion for a field" is a capitalism scam meant to gaslight you into thinking you're supposed to give a shit about your job outside of work, which you definitely shouldn't. I say this as someone who is passionate about the field, I just recognise there's more to the world than exploits and the latest web brainrot.js framework.
Show threadVince Aggrippino 🇺🇸🇲🇾Oct 10, 2024

@LainTrain @Raccoon I would really like to agree that everybody deserves a job, but I've been excluded from that group for a long time.

Does a guy who goes into work late every day and doesn't even care any more really deserve that job?

If there's a "capitalist scam", I'm pretty sure I'd find it with the people who are making bank selling 6-week programming courses and promising a 6-figure income by the end of next year.

Sure, "passion for a field" would be a bit much, but all I said was you need to kinda enjoy it.

It's been years since my last opportunity and I still enjoy programming every day.

I do care about this field and this work and I think people should care about their work beyond what's required for their employer. But I'm not makin' any money off of it and I don't even have a "following". How is it a scam?

Show threadLainTrainOct 10, 2024

@VinceAggrippino @Raccoon imagine calling jobs "opportunities" man come on, that's the scam right there and you're the victim.

For most people programming is like fixing pipes or sweeping floors, it's not that they like it, it's that they dislike it the least out of all the things they could to make money, and they have to pick one.

I'm not defending grifters on YT selling courses, I'm just sympathetic to those who fall for them because they often do so out of desperation and lack of adult cynicism and wisdom knowing every course is a scam.

Hell I was pretty pissed at them when I was at uni, assigned to group work with students who clearly stole their code or didn't know what Ethernet was. But as an adult, I get them.

I love CompSci. Sometimes my dayjob in cybersec is just the beginning of my day, warmup for grinding away at HackTheBox, ends up such that in the grand scheme of things I'll be staring into the output of the same few tools all day, tweaking things here and there and still come back for more tomorrow, messing with my homelab in my dreams meanwhile.

Other days though? I could care less, I want to make music instead, or write, read politsci or even fic, consoom a classic film or two, or whatever, I just want to get my paycheck without tiring out my brain so I can do what I want later - something that actually matters to me, not the bottom line of some filthy rich asshole scooping up the value created for him by labour.

CompSci isn't my life, I'm not Torvalds or Carmack or Bill Joy. Its just one of my many interests and pursuits, and it just so happens that being a filthy corpo defender doing soul-sucking admin of use to no one to accelerate the biosphere collapse pays well, and I gotta have money to not die, so there ain't much choice there, but I'll never "like" it and I'll never go out of my way for it.

Show threadVince Aggrippino 🇺🇸🇲🇾Oct 10, 2024

@LainTrain @Raccoon You're saying that employment is the scam? Or the idea that people could enjoy creating software?

Who benefits from this scam? I mean, if it's a scam, there has to be a scammer, right?

...

Like those people who call you claiming to be from your bank, right... They issue a fake refund for too much money then withdraw a real amount from your bank account to compensate them for the "error". In that scam, it's really easy to identify the scammer and the victim.

So, is the employer the scammer and they benefit when I do work for them? I'm the victim even though I get a paycheck?

...

It would be naive of me to claim I know what programming is like for _most_ people, but _I_ enjoy programming and I'm confident that I'm not rare in this sentiment.

In the absence of an employment _opportunity_, I do it for free, working on whatever I feel like working on... because it's fun.

Show threadVince Aggrippino 🇺🇸🇲🇾Oct 10, 2024

@LainTrain @Raccoon I should probably mention that I'm really not a product of this system or even a victim in the context you described.

I'm unemployed and I have been for a very long time.

I did work as a Software Engineer for several years, but I was self taught.

I could never afford any formal education and I came up before bootcamps or intensive training programs were even a thing.

Show threadLainTrainOct 29, 2024
@VinceAggrippino @Raccoon jobs aren't a scam, but you simping for corpos is a scam. You and your co-labourers trade your lives for bottom lines, and you're never paid the full value of your labour, or there'd be no profits left. The least you can do is not call these things opportunities.
Show threadJoeOct 10, 2024

@VinceAggrippino I lived and breathed writing code. I lived to learn a new language and knew many including several processor assembly languages. I needed to use JCL to communicate with the mainframe at work, I learned it and soon became a resource to many who had written JCL for years. To them, it was a job, to me it was an adventure.

Way back when I wrote a subroutine for the Apple ][ that transposed any key signature to another, such as C Major to F Mixolydian. In a tiny space of < 1K.

Show threadJoeOct 10, 2024

@VinceAggrippino So yes, there were some who wanted to be programmers in the abstract, however when the fingers meet the keyboard, they found it to not be to their liking. They were not good at it and uninspired to try to become good.

I miss writing code like I did, I play with it these days, but being retired, it doesn't have the compelling need it did when I worked and a production system relied on my efforts.

Show threadCuteroll, autistic transgender otterOct 10, 2024
@VinceAggrippino 3h20 of commute everyday
team that doesnt care


has nothing to do with liking touching computers
Show threadVince Aggrippino 🇺🇸🇲🇾Oct 10, 2024

@ctrl I'm starting to realize that the "team that doesn't care" doesn't hit me the same as it does everybody else.

I've got a personality disorder.

In the past, I've found long commutes to be a positive experience. Time for contemplation, almost meditation.

Maybe it's my own oddness that makes me think that guy is irredeemable 🤔

Show threadCuteroll, autistic transgender otterOct 10, 2024
@VinceAggrippino respectfully but we got personality disorder too

and 3h20 is beyond long idk
Show threadVince Aggrippino 🇺🇸🇲🇾Oct 10, 2024

@ctrl Well, mine is called Schizoid Personality Disorder.

When I was diagnosed, I was told it was very rare. And when it was confirmed by a second psychiatrist and a psychologist, I still thought it was total BS.

It took a while, but I finally accepted that it's real.

When others care about me, I find it a little unnerving.

When I _don't_ care about others, it doesn't look like a "personality disorder". It just looks like I'm a jerk.

And I guess that explains my insensitivity to the uncaring team ::shrug::

Show threadCuteroll, autistic transgender otterOct 10, 2024
@VinceAggrippino we don't wanna try do a competition about it, and we certainly dont want to deny your experience either


but yeah from what you say it seems comprehensible you wouldnt care about cold or distance coworkers
Show threadkira :3Oct 10, 2024
@VinceAggrippino while im not sure if this screenshot definitely exemplifies a case of that (a lot of people get burned out in this field) i can say from being in the "probably jobless forever" cohort of people who didn't get in during the 2010s that anyone still trying almost has to be more motivated by liking it than by money 
Show threadVince Aggrippino 🇺🇸🇲🇾Oct 10, 2024

@chrisisgr8 Admittedly, I don't talk to people in real life.

Looking through relevant groups on reddit, though, I seem to see a lot of experienced people who are unhappy with their career choice and new people who ask about money first and foremost before anything else.

Show threadkira :3Oct 10, 2024
@VinceAggrippino i am pretty engaged with this at my school (i'm a student but i have secondary duties where i engage with a lot of CS students) and i can say from seeing it firsthand that even the raw subject matter is a lot more difficult if you don't have an interest in it. I don't take it upon myself to ruin anyone's dreams but if anyone asked me in a neutral setting if this was worth doing for the money, at this point i'd say absolutely not