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

raubarno@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 134 points –

(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.

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  1. Your attitude is correct, don't support enshittification and don't do anything you're not comfortable doing

  2. Don't replace cursewords with stupid characters, this is Lemmy.

I thought, I was having text encoding issues for a hot second there...

  1. Yes, but also, I do want to have a job because I want to make a positive impact. It's too easy to become a NEET and be negative at everything.
  2. I understand your concern. Next time, I'll go either no symbols or express my opinion without swearwords (because they are not pleasant, at least for me).

EDIT: but mainstream web is really that bad.

There are tons of IT jobs for more ethical companies where you can feel good about what you are working on.

Stay away from large, publicly traded companies, and companies whose user isn't the paying customer.

Startups, companies that are wholly privately owned (often by an individual into philanthropy or at least mostly concerned with their image and legacy), or those usually in smaller more focused markets are where the ethical jobs tend to be.

You guys are doing that in your interviews, right? Learning about the product, the company, its moral philosophy? Not just selling out to the highest paying job?... Right?

Maybe that's too much for some people. People do get squeezed and get desperate.

I’ll be honest, I do research companies and aim for ethical employers and all that, but

  1. the job market is fucked, techies come a dime a dozen nowadays - anything you apply to the competition is fucking fierce so you can’t really afford to be picky

  2. I care about how ethical my employer is, but not enough to be chocked in debt or live paycheck to paycheck without affording a single luxury in my life. I’m talking “eating out once per week” here, not yachts.

I usually try for the money if I see a job I feel will help utilise my skills.

I'm part SRE/system admin though, which means I don't care at all about the software that runs on top of the infra I handle. Except when I do need to care, and I try to minimise such interactions. For example: I'd like to work for a company that operates/uses a CDN heavily, because that's the kind of environment where the SRE mindset really shines. I don't care if Netflix is failing in the current market and their management is evil as long as I'm working on the SRE side. Of course, this is different from Devs whi are likely more hands-on with the product itself.

Local 👏 non 👏 profits (or govt)

I feel like those options are always immediately written off. It is possible to find good to great opportunities. Plenty of shit ones too of course but it's worth a look.

It feels good to work somewhere whose purpose is to support the community I live in.

express my opinion without swearwords (because they are not pleasant, at least for me).

I know this is completely beside the point, but one thing that just really activates my almonds for absolutely no reason is people "censoring" a swear word by replacing a couple of letters and then acting like they didn't swear.

Switching out one letter doesn't make it any less swearing (and since when is "porn" a swear word?), everybody knows what you wrote and you know what you wrote. If you think swearing is bad then don't fucking do it, but don't swear and then pretend you didn't just because you hid a letter.

It's just as silly as using darn or frick, except they have none of the punch which is the purpose of swear words, ya know?

I use those in some situations that don't call for a full-fledged swear, minor irritations like missing a metro when I'm not in any hurry.

It's good to have an escalation ladder for swearing 😀 don't have to go straight for the nuclear option

They’re not supposed to be pleasant. Swear words are part of your evolved self defense system, and generally speaking any time that’s active you won’t feel good.