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Re:Ask HN: Former software engineers who switched careers, w... by codeonfire on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:10PM (#10036586)
I'm about to do it because I recognized early on that the vast majority of people in tech don't actually do anything except try to ride the backs of software engineers and other technical people. There are so many people that just go to lunches and conferences related to a specific field like network technology, for instance, but that have never ever worked with network technology. They are only experts because their friends decided to get together and call each other experts.

There is no end to the people who think they are going to fake it until they make it to the point they can hire people beneath them that actually know what they are doing. Because of how group dynamics and social calculus works, they are able to ride a business all the way down to bankruptcy and then do the same thing somewhere else. Why the hell does anyone want to be a software engineer in an environment like that.

What's worse is these people think that software engineers must work for them because engineers are desperate, stupid, and inferior while they themselves are smart and superior for their proclivity to exploit people and organize.

Re:Ask HN: Former software engineers who switched careers, w... by littletimmy on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:19PM (#10036648)
Am curious, what career do you have now that is freer of labor exploitation?
Re:Ask HN: Former software engineers who switched careers, w... by NoCulturalFit on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:24PM (#10036674)
You're confusing internal politics with labour exploration just to create a straw man for the parent.
Re:Ask HN: Former software engineers who switched careers, w... by AnimalMuppet on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:34PM (#10036741)
> What's worse is these people think that software engineers must work for them because engineers are desperate, stupid, and inferior while they themselves are smart and superior for their proclivity to exploit people and organize.

What part of that doesn't sound like labor exploitation to you? (Yeah, it's not as bad as it gets in some other situations. It's still very much exploitation of those who do the actual work.)

Re:Ask HN: Former software engineers who switched careers, w... by bbcbasic on Monday August 10, 2015 @06:29PM (#10037875)
I've never seen this faking it thing going on. Maybe it is a USA problem? I have seen plenty of bad managers etc. But none were pretending they were experts in anything technical. Rather they would pretend they knew everything about running a business.
Re:Ask HN: Former software engineers who switched careers, w... by turk- on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:27PM (#10036697)
This seems like more of a gripe about life in general, capitalism and 80/20 rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Re:Ask HN: Former software engineers who switched careers, w... by NoCulturalFit on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:23PM (#10036671)
I switched to carpentry, but it's only temporarily. Everyone involved in my day to day job is a skilled labourer. We have clients we work for.

No product managers, no product owners, no product marketing, no business developer, no corrupted tech-site that shoves their own vested interests down our throats.