Our industry feels like it's in the decline of the Roman Empire right now.
Our craft is becoming arcane: Microsoft is building VSCode for the cloud. Few people own desktop computers anymore. Apple is locking down MacOS to signed binaries. Soon we'll all have thin clients and will write software in the cloud for the cloud. Few will be able to learn how to engineer at home anymore - you'll have to go to a university or trade school. Building a simple website will require JS package management, kubernetes, and AWS. The "free tier" will fall away.
Employees aren't excited by what they do: People job hop for promos, raises, and resume fodder, not because there's an actual interest in the product. The majority of software projects are mundane glue, pipes, optimization tweaks, or migrations.
Companies don't care about employees: Wages are adjusted for cost of living. Companies are trying to hire more outside of California in order to lower wages across the board. Employees at "passion project" companies (gaming, SpaceX, Tesla) are overworked and underpaid.
Incentives are wrong: Google bestows promos on launches, not KTLO. Google kills products that make customers and engineers happy and doesn't spend enough effort to make them better.
The industry is eating the commons: The web is turning into shit. Devices are being locked down. Ads and tracking are everywhere. Open source is being co-opted, but the benefits are not returned. The cool things to hack on and integrate with (remember "mashups"?) are all siloed up, full of ads, and dumbed down to the most basic products.
The Internet now treats everyone using it like we're all brainless idiots to be injected with dopamine. Like we're not smart enough to choose how to consume it. And working for companies in this field now feels like working for the insurance industry. Optimize for the average.
For those curious, below are some kinds of primary math questions we model after to test teacher applicants.
In my experience, many kids are much more enthusiastic about this kind of "challenging" problems than the drills in many standard textbooks, as long as the problems are chosen to match their level. They definitely learn a lot more as well.
Note that although they do require a little arithmetic to solve, the challenging part is not arithmetic.
Some problems focus on geometry, logic, patterns, or other kinds of puzzles. More examples can be found at the source below.
"- The edge of a cube is 8 cm. All the faces are painted orange. It is then cut into small cubes of edge 1 cm.
How many small cubes have exactly two faces painted?
- What is the greatest possible number one can get by discarding 100 digits, in any order, from the number 1234567891011121314151617…57585960?
- Eleven consecutive positive integers are written on a board. Maria erases one of the numbers. If the sum of the remaining numbers is 2012, what number did Maria erase?
- You must color each square in the figure below in red, green or blue. Any two squares with adjacent sides must be of a different color. In how many different ways can this coloring be done?
Figure at question 11 here: https://gato-docs.its.txstate.edu/jcr:450cce10-3b6a-4ddd-a19... "
WPP Group is the biggest in the world. Does Google have the same DNA as WPP Group? Does that mean we can tell what Google will do by watching what WPP group does?
Google was an engineering and search company before they had any advertising whatsoever. There are just things about what Google did then, and do now, that pushed them into an advertising based revenue model.
Google's technology is based on gathering information about the structure of the web and user behaviour. That is their core competency, nobody does it better than them. They leverage that core competency, that killer unique advantage, to earn revenue through advertising. Is HBO's DNA advertising and subscriptions? Sounds like a magazine publisher to me, does HBO have the same DNA as Vogue Magazine or Time?
Yes understanding their revenue model can tell you useful things about the constraints on a company. It can tell you about the forces that act on them to direct their behaviour, but to say that it constitutes their DNA is to put the cart way out in front of the horse.
If Google finds a new revenue stream other than advertising, they will deploy their core competencies to exploit it, just as the carniverous ancestors of Panda Bears adapted to a herbivorous diet. Dont confuse ecological niche for innate nature.
Yes Werner Herzog mentions the collective insanity of humanity in conjunction with text messaging in one of his documentaries. Games and text messages and social media have captured peoples brains. People are drawn into their devices mentally and emotionally in a way that barely makes them present in the actual world, even when they are walking to work or dining with friends or driving. There is something so magnetic about these devices that draws in almost every person who encounters them in a way that is not healthy.
Because it's all happening in real time to humanity as a whole it's hard to see the bigger picture of how we are changing. I think of it as probably being like how people responded to the invention of fire. It just made perfect sense and took over the world and happened to everyone together. Being present in the midst of this historical change is an opportunity to know something very deep about human beings, who we are.
The biggest thing about these changes from my perspective is that people are devolving into something that looks like a collective autism. Like they are obsessed with the fact that something is happening somewhere else at all times and the device has opened a window to seeing it. And yet when you look out that window into the collective digital consciousness of pictures and texts and advertising you see that there is actually nothing happening at all that isn't exactly what you would expect. People doing things. But always somewhere else.
The main thing I don't like is when I am walking downtown and people are literally just wandering mindlessly as a herd texting on their phones not even looking up at traffic as they cross the street. They navigate by being aware of other people's direction and path but oblivious to their own. For example, I will be crossing the street and another person who is texting will walk just a few steps behind me texting, looking at their phone, never looking up at traffic and trusting that if they follow my path they will end up on the other side of the street. I don't even know really how to describe that experience but I am sure everyone else has it too. It's like people have been reduced to herd animals walking collectively while immersed deeply in their devices... because there isn't possibly anything at all happening in this present moment that is worth paying attention to. And I am not talking about one or two people walking around in this way. It's practically everyone.
Honestly, am I the only person who notices this? I wonder.
Our craft is becoming arcane: Microsoft is building VSCode for the cloud. Few people own desktop computers anymore. Apple is locking down MacOS to signed binaries. Soon we'll all have thin clients and will write software in the cloud for the cloud. Few will be able to learn how to engineer at home anymore - you'll have to go to a university or trade school. Building a simple website will require JS package management, kubernetes, and AWS. The "free tier" will fall away.
Employees aren't excited by what they do: People job hop for promos, raises, and resume fodder, not because there's an actual interest in the product. The majority of software projects are mundane glue, pipes, optimization tweaks, or migrations.
Companies don't care about employees: Wages are adjusted for cost of living. Companies are trying to hire more outside of California in order to lower wages across the board. Employees at "passion project" companies (gaming, SpaceX, Tesla) are overworked and underpaid.
Incentives are wrong: Google bestows promos on launches, not KTLO. Google kills products that make customers and engineers happy and doesn't spend enough effort to make them better.
The industry is eating the commons: The web is turning into shit. Devices are being locked down. Ads and tracking are everywhere. Open source is being co-opted, but the benefits are not returned. The cool things to hack on and integrate with (remember "mashups"?) are all siloed up, full of ads, and dumbed down to the most basic products.
The Internet now treats everyone using it like we're all brainless idiots to be injected with dopamine. Like we're not smart enough to choose how to consume it. And working for companies in this field now feels like working for the insurance industry. Optimize for the average.