You seem surprised at the notion of workers wanting maximum pay, perks and autonomy in exchange for minimum discomfort. How is it any different in any other occupation?
Nobody in any other occupation expects not to be managed or measured, not to need to meet with their coworkers to discuss their work, not to need to evaluate prospective hires, or not to be expected to to give estimates, timeframes and deadlines for their work.
Programmers commonly express all of those and more on this website and it isn't considered unusual or even particularly demanding. It is treated as a truism that you can't possibly expect a programmer to tell you how long a project will take, for example.
This has nothing to do with people wanting "minimum discomfort". It is about crazy and obviously unrealistic expectations of work structure, where people are never expected to ever do anything, being promoted as some kind of baseline work environment.
There will never be a serious business that does those things. It is impossible to run a business if you pay staff but:
- cannot evaluate their quality before hiring them
- cannot measure their work
- cannot get an estimate out of them
- cannot set them deadlines
- cannot talk to them
- cannot get them into the office
- cannot talk to them in groups
- cannot evaluate them over time
- cannot lay then off
etc.
It is different from other occupations because nobody outside the HN/reddit bubble thinks any of this let alone all of it.
can you please listen to yourself? this is babys first day managing software dev level observation. "there will never be a serious business that does those things" ok, i guess well ignore the entire industry then
But the industry DOES all of those things. That is what people are stupidly complaining about. People aren't complaining about meetings or job interviews or being expected to turn up at the office because of the theoretical possibility they will happen but because they do actually happen.
this is a perfect comment. you basically have a correct read, and express it pretty succinctly. except, you think by saying it directly, youve exposed it as ridiculous. whats ridiculous about it? just think of software like a trade, how do all tradespeople feel about those things?
Are you kidding about tradesmen? Tradesmen do all of these things without much complaint.
If you worked as a plumber and expected never to have to turn up on site, never to attend a site meeting, never to have to give an estimate of time or cost, never to have your work measured and evaluated, never to have to justify yourself in a performance evaluation, etc. you would be laughed out of the room.
A better comparison is probably professional services jobs: mostly done in offices with computers by university-educated people these days, like programming. I can't say I have met any that think they shouldn't have to give estimates or have meetings.
yeah, you dont go to alot of meetings, nor are your estimates and timeframes very exact. also, all the stuff that you mockingly said is bad is bad. you say a better comparison for a programming job is a programming job? hmm ok
Out of curiosity, what is your role? Programmer, manager, or owner? If the first, you should consider where your allegiances lie and why you’re so frustrated by those who advocate for your working conditions.
