Hacker News Reader

The reality for most of us I suspect was sitting at home on our couch fixing an obscure bug in a CI pipeline while half-listening along to an all-hands meeting.

...while helping the kids do the homework (during the lockdowns).

Nah, they were making those years ago too. 2021 was a much crazier time.

Yeah, the "day in the life of a software engineer at X name brand company" has been on YouTube for years and definitely predates the TikTok trend. It dates to at least a few years prior to the pandemic.

Tiktok is optimized for clicks (or at best amusement), not honesty.