The conversation

varispeedHNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

In the past I did many mistakes like pulling all nighters to because I found a way to make checkout …

… In the past I did many mistakes like pulling all nighters to because I found a way to make checkout experience more pleasant. That resulted in massive increase of revenue and none of that benefitted me. Or unblocked other team, they couldn't find a reason why their app would randomly crash. Board was panicking as client was going to pull out. I saved the day. Multi-million contract gone through. "Thank yous" didn't help me pay off debts. Only be curious for your own stuff. For corporations? Do bare minimum.

Original discussionA shift in developer culture is impacting innovation and creativity287 source comments · at import
3

What was this responding to?

Parent context · original excerpt

NI
nine_kHN

I don't think that the curious developer is gone, very much like I don't think that the organic, non-corporate Web is not gone. But the curious and passionate developer is hard to notice in the crowd of developers who learned the craft just for the money it was bringing. Similarly, an indie Web site built as a passion project is hard to come by among the numerous Web sites built to extract money. There was time when being a software developer was not a particularly prestigious or well-paying job in corporations, or maybe a weird hobby of developing games for the toy 8-bit entertainment computers of the day. It was mostly attracting people who enjoyed interacting with computers, were highly curious, etc. Then there was a glorious time when the profession of software engineering was growing in importance by the day, hackers became heroes, some made fortunes (see e.g. Carmack or, well, Zuck…

Full original

Community replies 0

No community replies yet. Add your perspective.

Replies from the source 3

Direct replies available in this import. Original-language excerpts.

NI
nine_kHN

You should be curious if you wan to progress within the company, or when changing jobs. Knowing significantly more than a job requires was propelling me quite effectively when I was younger. This slowed down when I started to spend less time on lateral research (aka "curiosity").

Full original
RE
red_rechHN

Eh idk, there are certainly wage-labor jobs I’ve seen that I could get really excited for and fall for it all. Luckily though, none of those places would ever even look at my resume.

Full original
TY
tyg13HN

I weep for a world that is increasingly dominated by corporations, filled with people who are insistent (probably correctly) that they are being taken advantage of, doing the bare minimum, all resulting in an awful experience for everyone. Behind every support ticket that you just can't seem to get resolved, every horrible experience trying to use some product seemingly designed to drive you insane, behind every hare-brained decision that makes your life miserable for seemingly no reason, there's an apathetic worker who's taken your mindset. The impact of your efforts doesn't just affect your employer. We all work together to create the world. What kind of world do you want to live in? I would hope there to be a healthy medium between "pulling all nighters" and "Do bare minimum" -- perhaps somewhere where we all try to do our best, but don't push ourselves too hard for no reason? I mean,…

Full original
Continue on Hacker News

Respect different perspectives. Share concrete experiences.

Sign in to post, reply, repost, and quote.