Sadly, I find that I have the heart of a craftsman, so I won’t compromise my own Principles.
True, some (a lot, maybe) folks will sneer at me as a “poor,” and look down on me, for not being willing to compromise my personal Integrity for money, but I learned to ignore that, a long time ago. I’m not competitive, and I don’t care about dying with the most toys.
I like making stuff that will improve lives, and make the world a better place. I’d much rather do free work that benefits a destitute, homeless, recovering drug addict, or a re-entering felon, than be paid for work that is really about entertaining some wealthy, bored, tech bro.
I know that is a minority stance, in this community. I don’t feel (or want to feel) as if I’m better than anyone here, but I also know that I’ll be vigorously attacked, just for saying things like “I want to care about the people that use my work.”
However, if you disclose this, expect large companies to demand your prompts as their work product, which will diminish the moat that you, as a craftsman, have created.
Unless you intend to do so, don’t accidentally turn your craft into a mass manufacturing template, that’s all I’m saying.
Prompt Engineering will probably become a thing.
I mean its more like a $40,000/yr job or an odd gig job here and there
If you want to capitalize on AI prompts you have to do it now in a venture
Now, he'd talk about principles and being a craftsman and doing things the right way. I'd say, sure, but I'd quietly wonder if he's procrastinating, being stubborn, being slow, prioritising the wrong things. My own foibles lead me to make similar mistakes, so I assume it's true for many others also.
If you have the means, or a market for attention to detail, then you absolutely can do things your way. Like you implied, you can get a lot of satisfaction out of simple things and meaningful things. But if, like 50+ friend, someone has bills to pay and desperately needs work, at what point are they making excuses when they should be recognising that many employers don't want stubborn employees prioritising what to them are the wrong things.
I worked for a company that actually had values similar to mine. It had lots of problems, but, in the aggregate, I ended up staying for a long time.
Could I have made a lot more, somewhere else? Absolutely. But that’s never been what I wanted. As it has turned out, I was able to leave the workforce at 55 (like I had a choice). I live humbly, but I also write code I want to write, the way I want to write it, for whom I want to write it, and I learn new stuff, every single day, without having anyone insisting that I compromise my Integrity, so they can make money.
I won’t lie. I was really pissed off (and still find it infuriating), when I realized what was happening.
In many ways, what I find most offensive, is the willful self-destruction, implicit in ignoring experience. It’s really no fun, watching companies, with so much talent and potential, implode, when they could have been so much better.
One of the characteristics of that company I worked for, was their frugality. They were (and still are) absolute tightwads. I got used to making do with limited resources, and figuring out how to motivate and reward employees, when I didn’t have the traditional leverage at my disposal.
It taught me a lot, but was also never comfortable. I would have loved the bucketfuls of money that so many companies seem to have, these days.
But maybe that whole gravy train is suffering a derailment.
I do very good code, based on excellent architectures, very quickly.
I do it for free, because no one thinks that’s worth paying for, and that suits me just fine. The last thing that I want, is some money-crazed manager, insisting that I ship crap, so they can get rich. The poor folks that use my software will get a Quality level that far surpasses much of the commercial stuff out there.
I actually find that thought rather satisfying.
You're out of touch if you think that architecture is what anyone cares about these days. It's about getting PMF and first to ship. Everything else is not even secondary but completely forgotten. If you can manage to make good architectural decisions while shipping incredibly fast - hey, congrats, you got lucky on this project. But I've worked with plenty of devs with 20+ years of experience and what holds them back is their reluctance to just ship shit code real fast.
This ultimately makes them less usable for management because we're not focused on sustainable and clean code - we're focused on getting that next round of funding, beating the competitor to the market, and pivoting wildly to get PMF. (or just more plainly - appeasing our bosses - whether that's the VC, the CEO, the CTO, a VP, a director, or another manager or some customer who gives us money)
You might think your practice is what matters but what you forgot is that no one gives a shit what you think. The employer gives a shit what you'll do and if you'll do what they want. You don't do what they want? HIT THE BRICKS JACK! Go retire.
Employment is for serfs. You want to dictate the rules? Start your own company.