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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

> It lets me be a bit more objective in a field that's prone to a lot of subjectivity and - like almost any field - pride and ego

Unpopular opinion: pride and ego actually drive personal ambition, technological achievements, and human progress. No one accidentally stumbles over being "passionate" and no one truly passionate divorces their personal identity from their work. That's why some of the most successful people in their respective fields also are often the most egotistical. There should obviously be some checks and balances there that everyone needs to take stock of, but that's just my two cents.

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It wasn't my experience at all. The best software developers I've met were the nicest guys ever, no ego at all. The ones with big ego typically think very highly of themselves but are in fact mediocre developers. And their high ego often prevents them from working productively in a team resulting in negative value contribution.

I would bet the best ones took a lot of pride in their work, and we should remember that ego is not the same as bragging or bluster, which are often masks for insecurities.

Best =/= most successful

I didn't know that one. I only knew != and <>...

Since I love both nitpicking and off-topics, let me digress telling you that Lua uses ~= .

That's like a fuzzy match or regex match in things like gcp log search

Yea I don’t get why people don’t just use != which is used in most programming languages…

Can’t ever be completely sure, but perhaps it’s fashionable nonconformism, I’ve seen it quite frequently lately, including the insane variant =|=

You are right, but you're missing the flipside of this: they also drive mental illness. Adaptations like these can be constructive or destructive to a person and society, and it's current consensus (which may be wrong), that it's better to have less of an ego in average case.

Maybe so, but I'm struggling to think of any trait that wouldn't moderate mental illness when manifest in its extreme.

> Unpopular opinion: pride and ego actually drive personal ambition, technological achievements, and human progress.

Yes, for the 0.0001 percent of us that actually do something monumental and worthwhile. For the rest of us who are working in a glorified ad agency, it's just pride and ego if we think otherwise.

--Realistic cynic

Counterargument: if you had any pride at all, you would quit working for a glorified ad agency.

True pride is being homeless? Or do you think that anyone can just go to a company, ask for a job, and be given one?

There are 2.7 million developers in the US. Most do not work at any company doing adTech. Most are “Dark Matter Developers” writing line of business apps working in “the enterprise”

99.9999% of software engineers do not work at glorified ad agencies. That's you, projecting on everyone else.

Citation needed. I do not believe this is true for a second.

It is definitely possible that a majority don’t, but my guess would be closer to 60-70% that do. Of course, I also don’t have a source for that, but it is by no means a remotely obvious spread.

I'd believe that 60-70% of HN works at a glorified ad agency. Not that the whole industry does.

Neither of us has any data to back it up at the moment; my point was that just as you claim GP was projecting, I think you may be projecting.

I’m genuinely curious about the spread, but without data it is impossible to make even a remotely accurate guess.

I merely said "I would believe". I wasn't intending to make any claims without evidence, other than that "99.9999%" is a wild overestimate.

Ah, I see. I misunderstood your comment slightly, as it was the counterpoint to the GP’s 0.00001% comment, and not a number you came up with.

Apologies!

You including Google in that calculation?

Google is a glorified ad agency.

That begs the question, why do I want to be the most successful person in my field?

Software development is a means to exchange labor for money and to support my addiction to food and shelter.

The list of things I’m more passionate about than software development is a mile long.

I haven’t written a single line of code that wasn’t in direct service to exchanging my time for money since 1996. I was “passionate” from the time I was 12 until I graduated from college.

There's another layer to this, people who work for a simple exchange of money (and the important part is we're talking people making more than the average in the field, not somebody at mcdonalds) are prone to going along with decisions even if they negatively affect the community. To be passionate is to care about your work and the only way you can produce high quality sustainable work is to care. But most jobs aren't creating products/services worth caring about (or worse, harming/exploiting people) is the catch.

See: the average Meta employee vs passionate successful figures like Carmack or Sweeney who can aggressively push back on ideas they feel are negative for the community. Although the comparison I bring up is a little funny since Carmack did work at Meta...

So I think there is value in wanting to be a passionate successful figure beyond just personal gain.

The question that should be asked is why we cannot have a society that has enough of a safety net for everyone so that they can work on what they care about? If that were to happen, what would you actually be working on? These questions are the reason why a lot of people wind up leaving software once they've accumulated enough of a financial safety net.

As you say Carmack worked at Meta who ignored every promise they made when it relates to Occulus, not sure where he pushed back but it seems Meta doesn't care so he left, which is the same as any of us can do.

As for Sweeney he doesn't care about the community, he cares about his bottom line. He may have some goals that overlap with "good for the community" (see challenging apple app store) but he also has goals that are community hostile (see Epic buying exclusives for its own store). Both of which are driven by the bottom line, not a care for the community. Money made by extracting money from literall children with dark pattern and skinner boxes.

You're searching for purity when it does not and cannot exist in our current system. Of course a figure like Sweeney isn't some pure altruistic being, but the fact remains that due to his main goal overlapping with the good of the community, and his passionate position in the space, means he can challenge that. Unlike every Meta employee who sticks with the status quo and were the reasons Carmack left the company.

It came out in the Epic trial that 80% of App Store revenue comes from in all purchases for pay to win games.

The myth of the indie developer being hurt by the App Store tax is just that.

Besides, most businesses other than games that make money from mobile are selling services where money never goes through the App Store.

> The myth of the indie developer being hurt by the App Store tax is just that.

They statistic you presented does not support that assertion.

30% of your revenue is 30% of your revenue. Indie developers who have fewer distribution channels than a big name like Epic will of course be hurt more by the requirement that they share a big chunk of their revenue with their (often sole) distributor.

Who do you think these Indy developers are and how would they get exposure and distribution outside of the App Store?

There is a reason that in the physical world, smaller sellers, authors, etc use Amazon instead of selling from their own site and use Amazon’s distribution.

How many Indy game developers for PCs try to sell on their own instead of going through the stores?

If I am going to start a business, why wouldn’t I take distribution costs into account and raise my prices?

Another question, Android allows side loading. Why do most app creators still go through Google Play?

You mean the same Sweeney who makes millions selling loot boxes to whales and in app purchases for pay to win games?

You notice he didn’t go after console makers who have the same policies as the mobile app stores because he knew where his money came from.

> That begs the question, why do I want to be the most successful person in my field?

I'm not sure how this begs any question. Some baristas work at coffee shops to make ends meet; others want to be the best at what they do and compete in barista competitions, learn to roast, maybe eventually start their own coffee shops, etc. Why some do the former while others do the latter is just a question of priorities, dreams, desires, and so on.

Specialization of passion.

Nobody can or should be passionate about all the things. But we can be thankful for those who are passionate about the domains where we are not, since we collectively benefit from those domains being loved and nurtured. At least in many cases.

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