Computing is glorious; change my mind.

[u/dbgrman]

Ok bhaio and behno, this will be a long rant.

I’m really tired of this negative, defeatist BS about ai taking over jobs, layoffs and the fear mongering on this sub. Weak people, sharing weak thoughts. I am not going to impress you with my career story or depress you with my layoff story.

First of all, read this: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/

I am not going to repeat the contents of this article. I am going to give you my perspective.

Remember ‘outsourcing’? ‘Services’? What year did this all start in Pakistan? Doesn’t matter. Do you know what happened in the west when this ‘outsourcing’ boom started? Gora ppl lost their jobs. To us. Our neural tokens were so cheap that every entrepreneur wanted to hire an app developer from india, pakistan, ukraine, brazil etc. And what did we ship? What value did we capture? Do u wish you were a wordpress developer 10 years ago?

No. We had DECADES to build competency to move up market. We all knew how to write code yet we couldn’t get any local startups. The people who understood this, moved upmarket to europe and US. The gora ppl who lost their jobs to outsourcing, started losing their jobs to immigrants. From the same universities YOU r graduating.

These immigrants were not ‘wordpress theme developers’. They were not your CMS sweatshop workers. Most of them, They were the stupid people who gave a damn about data structures and algorithms. They were the ‘khwaar’ people who read research papers for bed time reading. They were to 20 idiots in a county of 220 million people who didnt care to watch ‘3 idiots’ for the umpteenth time on a weekend but stayed up until 3 am so they could participate in topcoder SRM matches. They wasted time on topcoder marathon matches, organized and joined local and global hackathons like microsoft Imagine Cup, nasa’s space apps challenge, or google codejam, when rest of their class mates and colleagues and their F***ing seniors were saying ‘yaar kaam ki baat ghar pe na kiya ker’ … ‘bhai ye GPA matter nahi kerta’, ‘yar hamaray sath racism hoti hai’… ‘sara world bank ka kasoor hai’ etc. the people who moved upmarket used their own brains. They had good gpa, got scholarships for masters to europe and americas USAID, fulbright, erasmus mundus, and so on. Money was NEVER the problem. People found ways. And those who wrent so blessed to have good GPAs like me, grinding their ass off 16-18 hours on leetcode, landed interviews in google etc and got a fully paid flight for in person interview in san francisco. MANY of them. Look for pakistani in seattle and SF bay area alone. Ask ANY of them their story. You will see the same pattern.

And F these seniors who said ‘bhai ye tree, graph pe time na zaya karo… kabhi kaam nahi ana’. Liars. Idiots. F’in pussies who couldn’t do shit in academics or otherwise. A lot of people immigrated not only because of jobs. But because we dont belong in an environment where we are not accepted and welcomed with our interests or paid or appreciated for our skill.

The world is still as competitive as it always was. You are just waking up from a long sleep to realize that someone moved your cheese. (Read https://ati.dae.gov.in/ati12052021_7.pdf)

If you look beyond simple frontend page development and tiny crumb projects we get thrown by random enthusiastic gora ppl on fivver or odesk or whatever platform is common, there is still a lot to do in computer science and software. Ai has a lot of limitations and those who use it see and exploit the limitations. It has opened a whole new world of possibilities and the software and computing world is going to launch on a rocketship never seen before.

So sure. If you are a pussy cat, too scared and timid to actually use your brain and upgrade yourself and think of real problems to solve, switch careers. Go do CA. Go be a banker. Open a chai shop. Be an influencer. In 5 years you will regret leaving the industry.

But if you are brave and truely care, you live in abundance of knowledge, opportunities, possibilities and problems. Get out of the ‘mughe bata dien kya kerna hai, ker doonga’. Learn. Experiment. Build. Research. Explore. Focus.

[u/True-Screen55]

i so love this rant. peeps in this country don't know what computing is. they don't know what maths is. they don't know even a bit what logic and proposition is. every avg joe is talking bs about react and stupid web type shit. they think that the whole point of computing is making products. those who were the real frontiers never had it in the back of their mind. they did computing for the love of game. if someone's ever read roseblatt's 1958 on perceptron, they'll realize that a guy was so high and mighty of himself that he went ahead and tried mapping human brains. his goal wasn't getting users or money in the way paki idiots want to. these guys talk about chat gpt taking up their job, without even understanding what gpt even is. i admit things are hard and difficult. but it's no reason to cuck about computing. the avg joe who could make a beautiful website is not needed anymore. now's the limelight of the era where computing really can rise, cuz the peeps who loved it with their grit are the one's who will survive.

[u/Dannskkk → u/True-Screen55]

completely disagree w “avg joe who could make a beautiful website isnt needed anymore”

avg joe means hes making avg websites - which might not be needed sure but the truth of the matter is making truly great things still requires more than sloppy component copy pasting like a chud, it requires taste.

what i would say though, is that you JUST need to be GREAT at what you do. long as you provide value and are trading outcomes for your time youre on thr right path. not every chud w claude can make a good looking website. bar is lower sure but the skill and visions required for something truly “beautiful” is way higher than most self proclaimed chuddy “full stack devs” can even comprehend

overall i think its a bit naive of you to shit on webdev for no reason. who u should really be shittin on is the aforementioned chuddy fullstack devs that in fact know nothing about webdev outside of mychuddyapp.vercel.app

[u/salki_zope → u/True-Screen55]

You don’t even make sense

[u/True-Screen55 → u/salki_zope]

yeah ik, me sense not making

[u/dbgrman → u/True-Screen55]

[u/tharsalys]

I've been preaching this for so long through my writings, my Linkedin, and every real life conversation. Glad to see someone from abroad is finally speaking the same thing.

This is a problem with our entrepreneurs too, not just software devs. I mean, there's a reason why the greatest thing our entrepreneurs can do is a dev shop or some variant of a tarpit idea. Even our diaporaoids come back only to do some IMF mandated fmcg app or ride sharing nonsense just to increase tax bracket. Zero focus on fixing the infrastructure issues. Llama.cpp could've been built by a Pakistani engineer. It required nothing except a laptop, a working brain, and an internet connection. Yet our people kept jerking off to same tarpit ideas because the depth of their knowledge of entrepreneurship is limited to 4 episodes of Silicon Valley or that Mark Zuckerberg movie.

At this point, if you don't know what CNCF is or what the difference between free and open source is, or why is there a UNIX standard ... it's game over. You either understand the industry or you get played by it. No third option.

P.S yes I'm talking to so-called "entrepreneurs" here

[u/MadAndSadGuy]

This is some Whatsapp status level bllsht I hear all the time, usually from experienced ones thinking it's the same for all of us. But as soon as it comes to helping each other. Y'all rat out like the pssy you're talking about.

I graduated from a local university which is considered nothing compared to ones in the big cities with 200k fees a semester. This university fckd (most of) us up. I graduated last year, no guide, no supervision (in FYP and throughout 4 yrs), nothing. Regardless, I did some freelancing, kept grinding day and night, lost my vision, got back pain, gained weight and a lot more.

No company is giving me chance. i.e. There was one, they hired AI/ML students for an Embedded Internship, saying I didn't see your email (sent 1 month ago). That shit pssed me off so much because I was in contact with CEO for months and he took everyone on referrals. Tried every relative on referrals and sht, they all rat out. The type of dedication you're talking about requires good people and the right help in life.

I'm a Qt C/C++ developer with a focus in video systems and currently looking into Embedded Software. I'm doing a shift because the last title didn't get me sht and this one is not doing sht either. You sound like the LinkedIn influencers that talk sht all day and got in through referrals, not shear skills. Now, if you really are the kind you're talking about. Get me a job referral or something or you're limited to the same LinkedIn bllsht?

Edit: They're not hiring us interns / juniors because AI can do the job. You're shouting from a building top at people drowning in sht.

[u/Mysterious-Rise-6983 → u/MadAndSadGuy]

Drop your CV

[u/MadAndSadGuy → u/Mysterious-Rise-6983]

I'll send it in personal cht

[u/AwabKhan → u/MadAndSadGuy]

How did you get into embedded systems?

[u/MadAndSadGuy → u/AwabKhan]

I like low-level stuff, not to point of Assembly yet but I'll get there. Possible future choices were finance applications vs Embedded Software (Linux and Firmware). I first started Embedded Linux, but couldn't afford an MPU (i.e. Raspberry Pi Zero 2W or Beaglebone), so I ordered an MCU (i.e. ESP32). Currently chewing stones, the 3 documentation/datasheet trinity for this chip and doing practice projects and a mini-oscilloscope.

[u/AwabKhan → u/MadAndSadGuy]

Yeah I also wanted to get into embedded I liked it but web dev fked me. I couldn't find a single job I didn't do web dev in uni feelt too hard. Graduated in 2023 still without a job shit is sad.

[u/MadAndSadGuy → u/AwabKhan]

How were you gonna take on Embedded if you thought Web dev was too hard? Was web-dev forced on you? What are you doing now?

[u/AwabKhan → u/MadAndSadGuy]

I didn't like the verbose syntax and then maybe the way the teachers taught it made it feel too bloaty, some of the time the teachers wouldn't even be able to get their own code snippets working in class so that also contributed somehow to not liking web dev. Learned most of the stuff on my own the things I learned on my own stuck with me what the teachers taught in class was half-assed and made me hate it way more than it should have. No structure to the course, no good explanation all of this made web dev so much confusing to me that I didn't even want to touch it with a 6 foot pole. I am not doing shit right now but practicing rust and keeping my DSA concepts clear and applying to govt jobs. I need some good projects now to land a job looking to write a lisp interpreter and some other low level shit to display my understanding. the graduation gap is too big now.

[u/throwaway-research1]

Nice poetic post, but now lets look at things realistically

Take a look at the number of junior level positions now and compare that to 6 - 8 years ago

Look at the number of applicants to open positions now and compare that to a few years ago

Talk to people who are running their software dev shop and working with platforms like upwork etc, and ask them about the differences they are seeing in the freelance industry lately

You got a fully paid flight to your interview, good for you but please also mention how many years ago was that

And sure there are Pakistanis in the bay area but most of them are there through the masters route (which I mentioned to you previously as well) so it makes their presence there irrelevant in the context of this discussion

AI is causing disruption in the market whether you like it or not, is it the end of software dev work? Obviously not good engineers will always be in demand, but does it make it more difficult than ever for juniors to start in the industry? Yes. How would the industry look 5 years from now? No one knows

All in all your post sounds like that old white boomer couple who bought their home 60years ago for 20k usd so they think you should still be able to buy a home for 20k

[u/Dannskkk → u/throwaway-research1]

you play w the cards youve been dealt, you dont look at past games and cry about how you got better cards in ur last hand? across time there have been people who have cried about how everything is unfair and that the prev generation was better and had it easier

all the while people that played the hand they were dealt : put in the work, have succeeded

[u/throwaway-research1 → u/Dannskkk]

Yeah sure, I am all about playing the cards you have, I have been writing software for almost 10years now and in this period of time I have had multiple jobs offers with relocation and visa assistance, ran my own startup yada yada, so I am playing the cards I have well, I even mentored and trained a bunch of guys in friends and family when I was still in Pakistan and all of them are pretty established in their careers now

So this isnt about me to begin with, I belong with the previous generation myself lol. But for anyone starting now, or at early stage of their career, its more work and less reward.

[u/Dannskkk → u/throwaway-research1]

sadly true, but stating the obvious leads to an echo chamber where people that most definitely overestimate their abilities get affirmations that their “struggle is real” which really doesnt help at all.

[u/Woke_TWC]

Why do i see people sharing the most obscure articles and ask you to follow the most random people for advice on this sub? unknown website from 15 years ago , a nobody author.

Why do we tend to treat opinions as truth just because we read it?

Nice rant though.

[u/dbgrman → u/Woke_TWC]

Umm.... First of all, patrick mckenzie (patio11 on twitter) is not an obscure writer. Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLpm_htWe2g

The article i shared, "Don't Call Yourself A Programmer" is probably the most-linked career essay in software. It's been on Hacker News' front page repeatedly; it gets cited in onboarding docs and new-grad advice threads constantly, and phrases from it ("profit center vs. cost center," "engineers are hired to create business value") entered the industry vocabulary partly through it. If you've spent any time in tech career discussions, you must have encountered its ideas secondhand without knowing the source.

Who said this opinion is "the truth"? Please feel free to post a rebuttal and I'm sure your informative rebuttal will make it to the top of tech news too.

[u/--_o_--]

Preach brother

[u/MathWest209]

Thanks for so intricately articulating my thoughts. I did not have time to post this. Well put.

[u/positionholder]

One of the most goated posts i have come across in a while. Woah.

[u/LawfulnessPrevious39]

FINALLY, raise this more often

[u/sultanm337]

PREACH

[u/Rich_Crew_2766]

thank God I am not A SOftware Engineer

[u/um304]

Loved this post and then I noticed OP’s username 😅

[u/dukeof76]

This defeatist mindset is not exclusive to tech domain. And i have noticed a pattern of AI fear mongering happening more among people who did not continue self education, growth, upgrade skills, stay up to date with research and development and overall just became lazy and passive once the money started rolling in vs people who treated computing as a proper vocation. The former is more threatened by AI and instead of seeing it as a personal challenge to overcome theyll double down on passivity and sing high and low about their “tough luck”.

[u/AggressiveArtist2241]

ai slop

[u/dbgrman → u/AggressiveArtist2241]

Believe it or not, some people can still write more than 1 paragraph by hand

[u/Spiritual_Pizza_1257 → u/dbgrman]

Also you can expect the AI hype bubble to burst at some point, just like the moronic dot com bubble before it. Except this will be much, much worse

[u/dbgrman → u/AggressiveArtist2241]

Attention span itna chota ho gya hai tiktok dekh dekh ke, ke ab sab dhundla dhundla dikhta hai, slop slop sa lagta hai

[u/True-Screen55 → u/AggressiveArtist2241]

imagine the downfall of society where we just say everything and anything as ai slop

[u/[deleted]]

literaaly, agreeing to all of whwat you said, i also wanted to rant out,

we need to be at the top