IT Devs of of Lemmy, How do You Cope with Being Forced to Contribute to 'Social Media Pornshow of the Web'™ or Die? - eviltoast

(begin rant)

Hi. Do you ever have a feeling that you have technical skills to qualify as a programmer, and there’s a demand for specialists, but, ironically, nobody needs them to design some useful information system or optimize the workflow in the factories, or do real science and push the limitations of human knowledge, but rather, all is just to spread some crappy advertising message as cheap as possible to the broadest audience as possible, usually without giving any respect to consumers, that feels like you’re losing your brain cells when interacting with the app/content you create. Quality level zero, consumerism level over 9k. Tons of boilerplate because ‘everything must be kept proprietary’ and it probably won’t work after 2 years because the framework you were using is down and the very idea of the becomes dated. Also, the more advanced technology, the more it’s used for shit. Like, we have generative neural networks that are used for turdposting conspiracies and generating profit/influence for some party.

I would say this clearly: I am very, very angry when I’m seeing this. I don’t want to participate in something that forces consumers to eat shit. Fuck SEO and e-commerce. Everything’s generative-AI, GANs, LLMs… now, which do not produce any value, at least to the user, or extracting every single bit of data of the user. Everything’s just to bombard people with information nowadays. Even Project Managers get biased (mostly because of naïve hype) and promote this crap.

(end rant)

So, my question is, how do you go through all of it? Of course, devs are better paid, but I don’t care about money. I’m still a student and, although I really like programming, and I’m really good at solving Competitive Programming problems (been at ICPC several times), I’m tired of this junk, besides I have a feeling I’ll be forced to do it. But, if I’m going to do it, somebody’s gonna get hurt. But it seems that it’s the only thing I’m skilled at, and I have no alternatives. So, how do you get through all of it, and what do you see it as relief, what does reward you at the very end?

EDIT: uncensored all swear words at request. I hope now you’re happy.

  • EnderMB@lemmy.world
    22·
    1 year ago

    Without doxxing myself, I worked for a small firm that helped “tech for good” companies to build their MVP or product towards Series A-C funding.

    In the four years I worked with them, I don’t remember a single project there that wasn’t tainted by corruption, dodgy owners, or outright lies. This ranges from:

    • The owner of a popular wellness and workplace stress app getting pissed off with me because a bug was found in a Node backend I had built for her (a PDF upload didn’t fill the correct fields in the DB). Her support contract was up with us, so she took the sane approach - literally calling my employer out on LinkedIn, and me by name as being an “incompetent developer”. Legal got involved, and she had to issue an apology online.
    • Several instances of outright lying in pitch decks about customer numbers and eco credentials to get “green” funding.
    • The company itself transitioning to crypto, despite pushing the fact that they only work on tech for good projects, while being run by a COO with a history of being inappropriate, having heavy drug/alcohol use, and being genuinely fucking useless in the world of tech.
    • A workplace surveying tool to unlock happiness in the workplace getting funding through our work, then deciding to fire the entire fucking team we had built to run their product because they wanted to cut costs and sell to the highest bidder - a company notorious for horrendous workplace practices.
    • Someone bragging about their CTO working at Amazon for 5 years. While true, it was in a fulfillment center.
    • Countless charities that burn through money in ways you wouldn’t believe, or act hypocritical to their main mission. Imagine trying to fire someone at a mental health charity because they needed time off from stress, or making dead kid jokes at a fundraiser for a children’s charity…

    Working at that place made me realise that sometimes the best you can hope for is a leadership structure that aren’t total assholes, and to work on something that you at least have some faith in.