Hacker News Reader

Comment by coderKen | Hacker News Reader

"most technical work or any work that requires deep focused thinking is a race to the bottom" - how is this true?

Developers being treated as a cost centre rather than an essential part of the business. To be streamlined and offshored wherever possible.

This attitude is widespread in the corporation I work for. Race to the bottom is an apt description, in my opinion. (I am not the OP)

I've seen this more and more (not that I've been /too/ many times around the block...): the engineering team viewed just as a machine that is turned on and off when required by sales and marketing.

Sales sold a new product that doesn't integrate in to billing/deployment/support processes? Just get Dev to make it work.

Marketing wants to redesign the corporate website? Fine, just jot down a todo item "talk to dev about changing a few things on website"

Perhaps twas ever thus though?

It depends on the company's management committee. If they do not come from an technical background, you'll be treated as such. If they came from a "technical background", but:

1) they have no open source projects or other tools made for developers 2) view software development as a low-level work 3) played Spreadsheet Warrior most of the time during their "technical career"

You'll know they gamed a corporate ladder. They turn out to be more vicious than "sales and marketing based" management committees: because with their "experience" they'll call out your "lack of skill" when things go wrong.

This attitude is standard in the UK. The comment from dfraser992 in this thread explains it well, I think.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10987237

I'm starting to realise that the only way to make decent money as a developer in the UK is through contracting.

Regarding dfraser992's comment, I think it's broadly true. I've worked at companies started by people with rich parents/family and every single day they work to keep that class divide between you and them. They're so crass about their wealth and rub it in your face daily.

HR will wax lyrical about professional development but in reality the owners want to keep people down and wages suppressed. It's infuriating. From my circle of friends, there seems to be a glass ceiling of about £60k ($5k/mo take home) in full time salary jobs, outside of management and London finance tech jobs.

This is also why we get those bullshit articles about the "shortage" of web developers or STEM graduates or "coders" or whatever the media buzzword du jour is. The only shortage is of people willing to work for below-market rates.

It's also why the UK will never have a tech scene anything like the USA.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com