Yeah, that’s true. It amazes me how some of my team in NYC will make double what I make, but live like I lived when I was a student, and be amazed that I own a car.

*If you’re in the US.

Some interns in the US make more than experienced engineers in Europe…

I work at a FAANG company. I’ve also worked at startups and smaller national companies. They’re all morally bankrupt, just in many different ways.

Hell, I’ve worked for “tech for good” clients that have done reprehensible things that required legal intervention…

That’s…exactly why you would get involved?

TikTok might lose out on revenue. Why not sell your US arm for lots of money?

This is literally one of the most widely talked-about options regarding the ban of TikTok…

Everything is for sale when you are a $1T+ company. That’s why Amazon has the likes of Blink, Ring, Alexa, Anthropic, etc.

I don’t know why Amazon hasn’t bought TikTok yet.

Lots of data, access to the Chinese market, a social media app under their wing, and an aligned work culture. Alongside the gains for ads, moving their shit to AWS, and retail gains, it seems like a better idea than throwing money into the AI fire.

I remember joining the industry and switching our company over to full Continuous Integration and Deployment. Instead of uploading DLL’s directly to prod via FTP, we could verify each build, deploy to each environment, run some service tests to see if pages were loading, all the way up to prod - with rollback. I showed my manager, and he shrugged. He didn’t see the benefit of this happening when, in his eyes, all he needed to do was drag and drop, and load the page to make sure all is fine.

Unsurprisingly, I found out that this is how he builds websites to this day…

From a company perspective, it’s a common sentiment. Google and Amazon have mantras around trying to stay agile and relevant despite being behemoths, and both have arguably kept into boomer tech territory the second they made a poor CEO hire. Microsoft had their Ballmer era, and while Nadella did a lot of good at Microsoft they’ve had a lot of failures in established divisions to be soaked up by AI and sales.

I think that all of big tech has struggled over the last 3 years. Sacrificing employee skill for shareholder value has ultimately moved them all into IBM territory, whereas the cool tech is happening at startups again. If AI is a bust, and another company comes along and eats their lunch in their established markets like consumer devices, web tooling, or cloud computing, they’re in real danger of another huge set of layoffs and resetting their businesses to only core profit-making ventures. What I think we’ve seen companies shift towards death, Day 2, rotting from the inside, or whatever your business calls stagnation.

I can somewhat understand this. I have IBS, and most people with a bowel issue will tell you that IBS is basically your doctor saying ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Instead of getting help from your doctor, you go online and you hear about people finding relief through taking weird supplements, or eating only rice, or taking pre and probiotics of varying types. None of it has any proof, but it’s better to try something than to struggle - and sometimes you’re lucky or you find some short-lived relief.

The difference is that there often isn’t evidence for these things working, whereas there is plenty of evidence out there that says that chiropractors are doing legitimately dangerous practices to your body. The difference is that someone is trying to make a profit from this lack of knowledge.

I’ve told this story before, but newborn chiropractors are a thing, and many new parents will take their BABIES to get their neck and back snapped around. It’s frankly fucking disgusting.

The same goes for pregnancy, where you essentially gain a deficiency because you’re building another person inside you.

It’s surprising how being stuck on music from your youth is common. While I do listen to new bands, I was reminded the other day that Futures by Jimmy Eat World is almost twenty years old.

To pair with this, we’re now bearing the fruits of having unlimited media available to us. You can hear rappers on SoundCloud that directly influence metal from the 2000’s, you can hear artists from small countries reference shows like Community, or US artists reference the UK show The Inbetweeners. Even at the top, Taylor Swift referenced a song called Best Of Me by The Starting Line in one of her songs, and now thousands of fans have swarmed to listen to their music, despite the band being split up and the front man now making new music under Vacationer - also getting a fan bump.

Years ago I listened to a podcast from someone that was in a band called Busted in the UK. The went deep into how they wanted their band to be like Sum 41, but how within about 6 weeks they had released a pop album, were on your, and on covers of magazines as the new face of pop. Many bands saw the rise of pop punk, and feel that the UK (and other countries in Europe) missed the boat because the recording industry was stuck in the past. Look back at pop punk and tell me how many bands of that era weren’t from North America, and look at how many were eventually churned out once the recording industry shifted towards downloads and streaming.

Influence is everywhere now, and those that seek out music are rewarded.

You can’t have it both ways.

Piracy took off because the ability to outright download any song you want within minutes was so much better than anything else available. Spotify dominated because it allowed for streaming, which again, much easier than downloading and wading through lists to get the right song.

Ultimately, utility wins. If I care about musicians, what is my option? I could download from Bandcamp, but that reduces the usability of just streaming, and most artists aren’t on Bandcamp. I could support their gigs, but frankly, Spotify does a decent job of this already by telling me when my favourite artists are touring. Any alternative needs to be as usable, but public about giving a shit about musicians.

With all that said, I’d say that most people don’t give a shit about musicians anyway. Hundreds of artists have come to prominence during the Spotify era, and they seem to be doing just fine, and while I’m being purposely facetious in this example, when most people are struggling in their own jobs due to rising costs, they probably don’t have fucks to give about musicians.

I graduated in CS alongside a guy in his fifties. He’s now retired, but he had easily 10-15 years as a software engineer, and was the lead of a group at a large company before he retired, so I assume it all went well for him.

If you want to learn something, do it. if you want to do it professionally, do it.

It’s funny how Stack Overflow was created because forums were shit for programming discussion, and because Q&A was dominated, sold, and locked down by Experts-Exchange.

Now, pretty much the second the final founder bailed (and jumped on the AI train) SO starts enshittifying its product…

It’s a mix of both. My wife makes good money as a teacher, primarily because she’s very senior in her role, and takes leadership responsibilities. Teachers are required in (mostly) equal measure everywhere, whereas software engineers always gravitate towards HCOL areas where the jobs are. If you’re not in one of these areas, you’re stuck with limited jobs, with limited pay.

My commute is close to two hours, one way, but the pay I can get here is over double what I’ll get where I live. Comparably, as a senior I probably get paid less than a new graduate in a HCOL city in the US.

My wife is a teacher. Her pay was mostly comparable to mine throughout our careers. My pay has literally tripled since working in London.

Currently, there are senior design and development roles in my home city of Bristol that pay less than what you’d get paid as a fast food manager.

Not all programmers live in the US. In the UK, especially outside of London, the pay is surprisingly bad.

Those offices are usually locked down anyway, on floors where the unwashed masses aren’t granted access. Hell, if you want to even be on a call with someone like the CTO you’ll have to reach out to three different entities, book a specific room, and reach out to that person’s team of assistants to ensure everything is aligned.

If they got access to the CTO office they definitely broke in, or evaded security in some way. That alone at any company will get you fired, and probably arrested.

Source: Once attended a meeting with a SVP at a big tech company. I genuinely think it would be easier to meet the president.