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Comment by ryanisnan | Hacker News Reader

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> I've seldom met a dev who didn't enjoy the profession.

When you're an individual dev, if you think ads are bullshit, tracking is bullshit, /r/all is bullshit, non-chronological feeds are bullshit, infinite scroll is bullshit, promoting ragebait/clickbait to boost engagement is bullshit, gold/coins/stickers/premium is bullshit, inline images are bullshit, and anything that negatively impacts responsiveness/performance/stability is bullshit - it's within your power to improve the product - often by simply not implementing them.

When you're a dev for a big corporation like reddit, though, if your boss wants some bullshit that makes the product worse but more profitable, it's your job to make the product worse but more profitable.

I like rewriting things again and again. It would be funny to explain why. My gut told me to do it?

Passionless devs exist in droves, but I've never met a dev who didn't enjoy the salary. It's not far fetched at all to say that an individual working on something they care about has different incentives than an employee earning their pay.

> Passionless devs exist in droves, but I've never met a dev who didn't enjoy the salary.

You haven't worked outside specific areas of the states, eh? Pay here in Canada is nothing extraordinary.

Dev pay in Canada isn't extraordinary in comparison to US salaries, but the average salary of an associate dev is in the top 25th percentile for all age groups, and the low end of the scale is above the 50th percentile for all age groups. Note that this does not include people with senior in their title.

I would say that any career that essentially guarantees above average pay compared to your age cohort for your entire career without the need for a degree is a rather extraordinary industry.

If you can comfortably afford a place to live, some fun event a few times a month, and to eat out more than once a week, that’s pretty extraordinary.

I live and work in Louisiana, my pay is well below even the average entry level software engineer's.

I once had a job in Louisiana where they gave me a $12 hourly raise because the guy they were hiring to be my subordinate was going to be making $7 more than I was currently earning.

The devs at Reddit don't get to choose what they work on. They are paid to build what they are told to build. And that's fine. It's just a job.

There are many high caliber engineers who just do it for the paycheck. I’m not one of them, but given the crazy compensation, it’s no surprise the field attracts outsiders.

Under capitalism workers dont have autonomy to do what they want. They do what the bosses want who themselves do the dictates of the system, which is to maximize profit above everything else, in one form or another, for capital owners.

This is one of the main reasons why solo-dev passion projects vastly exceed quality, usefulness, etc than a commercial product. See also Windows Server vs Linux-based servers.

> Under capitalism workers dont have autonomy to do what they want

Curious what you think people under the USSR or hunter-gatherers were doing...

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