Defeated tribe? How about a tribe that surrendered without a fight?
Okay, so maybe, despite a still ongoing shortage, it's not a good time to stand up and fight in the middle of a crisis, but before that, when people who could barely operate a keyboard got hired as programmers, very few did or said anything either. Except maybe quietly leave, only to find out things weren't much better elsewhere.
Also, I find that very few programmers (and HN is not particularly representative of this profession) are willing to take responsibility for the result. Because that's the price if you want to get rid of micromanagement, pick your own tools, work decent hours etc.: be 100% accountable for getting a result that ships and makes clients/users/investors happy.
If you want to take control of "this game", you have to take control of the entire product/service, not just the code.
You probably are one of those who are willing to do that, but the vast majority of those who also call themselves "programmers" aren't.
Okay, so maybe, despite a still ongoing shortage, it's not a good time to stand up and fight in the middle of a crisis, but before that, when people who could barely operate a keyboard got hired as programmers, very few did or said anything either. Except maybe quietly leave, only to find out things weren't much better elsewhere.
Also, I find that very few programmers (and HN is not particularly representative of this profession) are willing to take responsibility for the result. Because that's the price if you want to get rid of micromanagement, pick your own tools, work decent hours etc.: be 100% accountable for getting a result that ships and makes clients/users/investors happy.
If you want to take control of "this game", you have to take control of the entire product/service, not just the code.
You probably are one of those who are willing to do that, but the vast majority of those who also call themselves "programmers" aren't.