I've had the chance to get to know some more people -- people who are indeed in tech for mostly financial reasons, but who are still fantastic developers and care a lot about the craft. I realized that having dreams outside of software doesn't necessarily make you worse at it, or "less deserving" of the job.
And, I definitely wouldn't conflate "in tech for the money" with "playing politics" / stupid ladder-climbing -- I bet there's some nontrivial overlap there, but there are other reasons one might need strong financial stability, like if they don't have any kind of other safety net (from the government, from their family) to fall back on, and thus feel worried without a good foundation.
I personally love to code, I literally do it in my free time to solve my own little problems and/or just to learn, but I don't resent people who are only doing it for the money or because it's easier than most alternatives.
The worst people in the world already know this and run our industry. There's no reason we have to accept them.
If it wasn’t for science, art and tech for their own sake we would still be on the trees gathering bananas
Not sure what you're referring to with science at all.
What about:
- curiosity (much of science, mathematics, etc.)
- artistic expression (musical instruments, demoscene)
- fortunate accidents (penicillin)
- just tinkering around (all sorts of inventions)
- play and fun (many non-commercial computer games)
- communication (telegraph, telephone, email, ...)
- self-expression (blogs)
- being dissatisfied with something and trying to change it (many more inventions)
- basic needs (advances in food, shelter, medicine...)
- trying to gain a military advantage (all sorts of weaponry and defenses)
- exploration (e.g. traveling to the bottom of the ocean, or landing on the moon)
- ideology/philosophy/religion (GNU and free software; cathedrals; pyramids)
etc.
At the end of the day much of technology is motivated by human needs, interests, desires, fears, etc.
OP's move from tech to comedy writing shows that interest or passion can be powerful motivators.
Also, a military advantage is an economic one, there's no real difference between the concepts.
If nothing else, you just dismissed most of mathematics and basic physics.
It's also not confusing to me what the other person is saying, maybe you can clarify what your misunderstandings are before anyone can address them.
sure, all ambitions have a goal. I think the point is that not all goals have some economic goal in mind. The original blogging platform and internet as a structure did not have the goal of monetizing writing. And we're honestly seeing the consequences of attempts and failures to try and monetize such stuff on the net.
Maybe there was prestige, or research grants, or whatnot, but it's clear that there's many pieces of tech who's goals wasn't to sell off to a billionaire and retire in style. I'd call such research "tech for tech's sake".
tbh until we change the way to go about politics, or collective decision making, this isn't going to change.
Sometimes you have to do shit you don’t want to do in order to accomplish what you do want to do. It’s on you.
If it wasn’t for “those people” or for tech being so lucrative to attract them, I would probably still do the same but struggle to make ends meet.
So I’m very grateful that tech is what it is today.