Software as a profession sucks, a rant.

[Matthew Gillen]

On 10/22/2009 11:33 AM, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
> On 10/22/2009 11:08 AM, Mark Woodward wrote:
>> What does BLU think?
> 
> I think a lot depends on what company you work for.

Ditto that.

> ...
> IME the negatives you point out appear far more often in larger and/or 
> more mature companies. 

I would venture to say it happens a lot in companies where software is
not the core product.  I can't say I have a lot of broad experience with
different kinds of companies (I'm still working at my first 'real'
employer), but there was a stark contrast in some of the interviews I
went on.  At an insurance company, I was interviewed by managers that
had no idea about technology; he looked like a deer in headlights when I
asked them why they were using a platform-specific version of Java (C#),
and I could see the red lights going off in his head.  They didn't want
someone who had technical opinions, they wanted cogs for their machine.

By contrast, when I interviewed at my current employer, there was a
department manager at my presentation asking better technical questions
than I would have asked.

My theory is that as IT has become less of something that people (MBAs)
see as a competitive advantage, and more of just the process of doing
business, they're less likely to be interested in pushing the envelope
and supporting excursions into risky (interesting/new) technology.  But
there will always be companies that are "high-technology", who have the
values you seem to be nostalgic for.  Likewise, there will always be
customers for those companies, businesses for which technology (and
software in particular) /will/ be a competitive advantage.  It's just
that the pool of companies in that category is smaller than it used to
be (it used to be everyone, but now a lot of core business software has
become a commodity).

Matt