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Comment by throwawaaarrgh | Hacker News Reader

I. Hate. Technology. I hate working in this field. I hate how unprofessional every company is, from the largest to the smallest. I hate how incompetent all the engineers are. I hate how no business I have ever worked for has ever trained its workers on anything but how to fill out a time sheet. I hate all the blog posts about inane technical details. I hate how people start building a solution to a problem they're not familiar with. I hate how seemingly obvious and painful problems never get solved, because nobody has ever forced the entire product team to listen to a brand new user's feedback. I hate how this affects everything, so the problems just build and build and everything just gets worse and worse.

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Ok, but please don't fulminate on HN. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

What specifically should I have said to change it from fulminating to a declaration of the inherent problems in the technology industry that causes the concerns listed in the article (and nearly everyone else's comments) ? Should I just have said "I dislike very strongly ..." ?

Limiting yourself to the first "I hate ..." might have helped.

Though TBF what you wrote is pretty much 100% prime grade-A certified rant. A/K/A fulmination.

Substantiating a few of the claims / offering alternatives (either for the industry or yourself) might also skew dang's interpretation.

Posting from a throwaway account would also add to the overall effect, IMO.

I guess the best I can offer is the general principle that intellectual curiosity is the guiding value here (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) , and indignant/flamey/ranty comments tend to be out of that register.

One important aspect of this is repetition. If a comment is repeating something that has been said many times before, its curiosity value approaches zero—and indignation makes that happen faster.

Conversely, the more new information or unexpected twists a comment contains, the better it is for curiosity.

It's not even the UI or the tech stack ... it's that it's tech at all.

Am I required to own a smart phone now to park? Am I required to have a credit card to park?

Idea:

1) Park without paying

2) Get towed

3) Sue the living shit out of the municipality so that they shut down modern parking meters.

Today, I literally spent 10 minutes downloading, installing, creating an account, and adding payment methods to an app so I could pay $0.40 to park for 30 minutes because the meter didn't have a coin slot and the credit card reader was broken.

I was going to a local store to buy something. Amazon will probably get my business next time.

> Amazon will probably get my business next time.

I see we've hopped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

While I prefer to shop local for as much as possible, if I'm given the choice between fighting this town's terrible parking regulations and implementation or buying online, the latter is going to win.

Worst are the apps that force you to “charge” a card with some ridiculous minimum even if you only ever would be in that city once.

Who is going to track my balance 5 years from now when a different company is granted the rights to collect parking for the city?

I’m guessing there has to be a hidden option to only “charge” the app for what you want to reserve the spot for, else this seems illegal, but then again the city may be giving itself these mob-style rights.

Semi-related, there's a somewhat established YC company whose entire business is facilitating smartphone gig app usage for seniors who call in for help.

https://gogograndparent.com/

Oh jeez. This is a semi-decent idea for a company so not sure of the need for downvotes…but at the same time it’s a bit “we put a Service as a Service in your Service as a Service leveraged on Software as a Service!”

If we have good public transit, people can just walk and not have to worry about parking, and the space that's formerly for parking cars can be used for something else.

> I. Hate. Technology. I hate working in this field.

Periodically I joke around with my family that when I retire (I'm 49 now, so it's not all that far away), I'm never touching another computer again. Ever. Each time I make that joke, it's a little less joke and a little more of an actual plan.

In the book "soul of a new machine", one of the engineers burns out.

> He went away from the basement and left this note on his terminal: "I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."

I’m sorry to say but you guys haven’t had a single hard day in your life if computers and technology are this traumatic to you. You would crumble under the weight of life just a hundred years ago.

You are an artist with a blank canvas that countless people in the world will pay you life changing amounts of money to draw on. If you choose to paint in a way that you hate, that’s on you.

Humans are quick at adapting. Saying that our specie has been living in absolute terror for the past millenniums and that we somehow solved it in our century is pretty arrogant.

Yeah it’s funny. Same here. I just want simple things, maybe with an occasional link with my phone.

I don’t want 500 knobs, a touchscreen on everything. I don’t want your app, I don’t want an account.

The example of car parking.. the technology is there to make is 100% automatic. But then you can’t fine people

Yeah. Don't take it too seriously, though. It's probably the same in other branches. You just happen to know this one best.

Try to concentrate on the other stuff in life, maybe.

You can practice the craft of software for money without working on horseshit. You just might get paid a little less

Yes, I do that one. I work with small team that is excited about the space. Each team member has opportunity (and obligation) to interact with clients. The relationships are great. The money is less than at $BigCo but still above median for the area. Actively working against enshittification -- but I still feel it's a futile battle.

> I hate how seemingly obvious and painful problems never get solved, because nobody has ever forced the entire product team to listen to a brand new user's feedback.

Usually in this case the user is not the customer, so it does not matter.

100% completely agree, the only reason I work in this field is because it's both easier and pays significantly more compared to every other job I've had and could potentially ever get.

Get out if you still can. Or w forced out in the current market. It will suck though for sure because most jobs pay shit.

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