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Posted by zdw 12/28/2025

Software engineers should be a little bit cynical(www.seangoedecke.com)
259 points | 188 commentspage 5
29athrowaway 12/28/2025||
> "you should do things that make your manager happy"

If doing things ethically (not defrauding investors and customers) keeps your manager happy, then do it. If not, do it fucking anyways.

alehlopeh 12/29/2025||
I have a somewhat tangential question. If this is late stage capitalism, and tech CEOs are compared to robber barons to show how rich and greedy they’ve become, then what stage was capitalism in when the actual robber barons were doing their thing a hundred years ago?
tamimio 12/28/2025||
>cynical: concerned only with one's own interests and typically disregarding accepted standards in order to achieve them

Indeed you are, for calling software developers “engineers” meanwhile software development is actually writing, so they are more closer to writers than engineers.

mettamage 12/28/2025||
I disagree with your view. It’s the thinking needed that makes it engineering, especially when you have a lot of constraints (massive scale, low latency, etc.).

Consider this: math is mostly doodling some glyphs on paper, so clearly it is closer to drawing than engineering.

s5300 12/29/2025|||
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bdangubic 12/28/2025|||
> especially when you have a lot of constraints (massive scale, low latency, etc.)

there are roughly 0.082% of software "engineers" that deal with these constraints or have to "think about them"

chasd00 12/28/2025||
To be fair most actual engineers just copy paste from a previous project (MEP engineers in architecture) or just look up numbers or equipment in a table (every structural engineer I’ve known). A vanishingly small percentage of any engineer (software or otherwise) are actually doing what most people think as “engineering”.
bdangubic 12/28/2025||
this type of comment will get you downvoted here faaaast… ;) bunch of “engineers” here engineering and shit
wiseowise 12/28/2025||
Do you also say this shit in real life?
the_cat_kittles 12/28/2025||
i genuinely believe the correct response to a post like this is: "shut the fuck up"
dfilppi 12/29/2025||
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khana 12/29/2025||
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black_13 12/28/2025||
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subdavis 12/28/2025|
> We live in a late-stage-capitalist hellscape, where large companies are run by aspiring robber barons who have no serious convictions beyond desiring power. All those companies want is for obedient engineering drones to churn out bad code fast, so they can goose the (largely fictional) stock price. Meanwhile, end-users are left holding the bag: paying more for worse software, being hassled by advertisements, and dealing with bugs that are unprofitable to fix.

This is quite a straw man. I think a lot of engineers believe that other parts of the org lack perspective, sure. I’ve certainly seen managers or salespeople genuinely convinced that they’re delivering value when I know for a fact they’re selling snake oil. But I never assume it’s in bad faith, just an artifact of a shitty feedback and communication culture. People want to do good work, they just don’t often get good signal when they aren’t.

Sniffnoy 12/28/2025||
Why do you say it's a strawman? All of those claims seem pretty familiar to me, even if, as the post says, the full exact combination might not be. You say you never assume it's in bad faith. Well, great! But that doesn't mean it's a strawman, it seems that other people do!
subdavis 12/28/2025||
I say it’s a straw man because it’s a caricature that is easy to knock down. The point of my comment was that I would be surprised to find out that even 20% of people think this, much less a majority.
Sniffnoy 12/28/2025||
20% is a lot of people! If 20% of people think something is true, that's something worth arguing against!

"Straw man" strictly speaking means something you invented, although, yes, that is likely overly strict, since you can find someone saying just about anything. But 20%? That's a substantial fraction of the relevant population!

The other thing worth noting here is that the point of a straw-man fallacy is. In a straw-man fallacy, you replace your opponent's argument with a ridiculous version, and argue against that instead of what they actually said. Or, alternatively, it's where you are arguing against some general nebulous concept, and you instantiate it as something ridiculous -- which maybe someone is actually saying! -- and use your argument against the ridiculous version as an argument against the more general concept, tarring other versions by association. (The real solution here of course is to not argue about nebulous concepts like that in the first place, it's not a useful way of arguing, but that's another matter.)

But if you're not performing either of these types of substitution, if the ridiculous position is actually out there and you're simply arguing against it as it is and not trying to use it to substitute for something else or tar something else by association... then that's not a straw man, that's just people believing ridiculous things and you having to argue against them.

chasd00 12/28/2025|||
> late-stage-capitalist hellscape

Isn’t this the most prosperous, peaceful, and just period in history like ever? What “hellscape”?

NedF 12/28/2025||
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