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samir, unbelievable

How many professional programmers are working on pointless and/or actively harmful products?

Give me your best guess.

(If you vote, please boost to diversify the results. It’s polite.)

Anonymous poll

Poll

0–25%
392
6.3%
25–50%
1,544
24.9%
50–75%
3,001
48.4%
75–100%
1,264
20.4%
6,201 people voted.
Voting ended 20 June at 17:05.
145 comments
brennen

@samir questions like this get a lot easier to answer once one has concluded that software is fundamentally a harmful activity.

kosure

@ekennedy80 To be fair, there's no such thing as ethical software under capitalism. 😉

Edward Kennedy

@kosure moral software development? Def no! Ethical software development? Absolutely! In my opinion, it all depends on the culture of the company/team/project you’re working with/on.

Asnabel

@brennen you are literally using one right now?

brennen

@Asnabel on the one hand, to a first approximation no humans have much choice about engaging with software, so i'd say no it's more like i'm trapped in a matrix of evil by forces vastly beyond my control.

on the other hand, it's actually much worse than that: i work on software _for making software_ for a living, so really i'm deeply entangled in the operating machinery of said matrix and too constrained by my own past choices and fundamental cowardice to extricate myself in any meaningful way.

Wilfried Klaebe

@brennen But why would a sane person come to that conclusion?

@samir

brennen

@wonka i dunno in my case all it took was decades of experience with software.

Rune :BlobhajShock:

@samir I see almost a majority are as jaded as I am

Inga stands with Ukraine

@samir judging by the job openings I see, I'd say around half of products in IT are very, very harmful, and out of the second half, 90% range from mostly pointless to somewhat/indirectly harmful.
Meanwhile I'm a professional programmer :blobcat_googly_notlikethis:

James 🌈💜

@IngaLovinde It's okay. In your "compiling" time, you get to work on the things you actually enjoy.

Angry Sun
@samir i worked on socially productive software my entire life and now I am working on cryptocurrency because I got old and need to think about my future survival
Marquis de Geek

@samir but which is it? I do 100% pointless, and 0% harmful!

Jeremy Wadhams

@samir I imagine if your definition of "pointless" expands to include "ripoffs of things that already exist" the number approaches 90%. I myself spent years writing "Instagram for beauticians" because the venture capitalists were willing to ignore "but why wouldn't the beauticians just use the Instagram they have at home?"

Gerbrand van Dieyen

@jeremywadhams @samir a lot of programming is creating something which already exists just in a slightly different combination. That doesn't make it pointless. If only, gaining understanding is already extremely useful, often reinventing is the only way to get understanding

Jason Lefkowitz

@samir If your product isn’t harming somebody, how did they raise the money to pay you

Toni 🌸

@samir @jalefkowit Hey, I don't know you but I wish that you may be well and happy 🙏

levampyre

@samir My guess is that about 99% of professional devs work on either pointless or actively harmful stuff. But my definition of 'pointless' is wide. Anything that serves capitalist goals, i.e. exists for the purpose of profitability or financial growths is pointless in my view. Most of the not pointless stuff is developed by volunteers, i.e. unpaid devs or scientists, who need software for doing their science, but who are not software engineers by profession.

james

@levampyre @samir

I’m genuinely just curious: can we not assume some of those scientists doing software development could also be acting harmfully or pointlessly?

betalars :antifa:

@james yeah but the argument was about non pointless software development, not science in general.

And a lot of the software development that is not pointless happens in science.

james

@betalars and I was wanting to talk about scientists doing software development, not scientists in general. I do not know how we can conclude that most scientists are acting good™️, so I am genuinely curious if we can and if so, how. I’ll edit my post as I did not make this clear, thank you.

betalars :antifa:

@james ah okay.

In that sense: I think some scientists will probably claim moral neutrality and I would disagree with that.

Because while I think the scientific process can be described as morally neutral or positive depending on your world view, the question of what is being researched is a highly moral one.

Besides that there's without a doubt scientists acting in bad faith too ... although I feel like science is less lucrative and less vulnerable compared to other fields.

levampyre

@james No, I agree, we absolutely can. All this weapon and war technology is developed at subsidized programmes in universities to just name one area of actively harmful.

But I also think that there is some genuinely good science being done of software developed, that is actually helping humanity or the planet (weather forecasts, climate data analytics, etc). It's just by no means the majority. Or often times the very same tech can be used for good and evil and it's an ethical dilemma.

@samir

levampyre

@james So, no, in conclusion, we cannot and should not assume that all science or all software developed by scientists is necessarily good or absolutely valuable. To most software there's a caveat. And be it just the fact that processing and storing data costs a shitload of energy, and burns fossil fuels like crazy, which we cannot actually afford anymore.

@samir

pixx

@james @levampyre @samir also, some scientists get paid?

if a corporation sponsors what was previously a volunteer project, does that automatically make it less valuable / more harmful?

levampyre

@pixx Well, if they do, i.e. if they suddenly show interest in your product, you should ask yourself why next. The answer might point you towards spoting the harmful aspect that you had missed previously.
@james @samir

Morgan

@james @levampyre @samir I think you might have accidentally read "most of the non-pointless software is being made by ... scientists" as "most of the scientists developing software are making non-pointless software," but I don't think that was ever said. Like if someone said most NASA engineers are neurodivergent, it wouldn't mean most neurodivergent people are NASA engineers
But like I get it, I switch things like that all the time

james

@raphaelmorgan @levampyre @samir

I didn’t, no.

I was simply wondering how levampyre could come to the conclusion that of the non-pointless software out there, is mostly made by scientists and the like. And not generic non-scientist developers.

I did not think the suggestion was that most scientists make non-pointless software.

Whilst I understand you were trying to be helpful, it’s really uncomfortable to be told by someone else what I was thinking and have it framed in this way.

Perhaps it was my wording that I fucked up, but I’d appreciate requests to explain rather than being told I did wrong.

@raphaelmorgan @levampyre @samir

I didn’t, no.

I was simply wondering how levampyre could come to the conclusion that of the non-pointless software out there, is mostly made by scientists and the like. And not generic non-scientist developers.

I did not think the suggestion was that most scientists make non-pointless software.

james

@samir

contrary to what folk might expect, I picked 25-50%, though it's on the lower end if not sub 25%.

I think it's quite unfair if folk think it's the majority. Ignore the AI Fintech predatory shitlords, most devs are just doing little bits of code that you won't hear about that are just keeping things going.

I understand the general public think it's super high numbers, and I am generally very "fuck devs" out loud, but I wanted to take a rare moment to say "I don't think it's as high as people are voting".

I'm not trying to defend myself. Well, maybe a little hehe. as I try my very best to argue against pointless shit at work all the time, and avoid unethical harmful shit at all costs (though it might be getting harder).

But this is more for the computer pokers quietly poking, just trying to get by and who often don't earn the salaries people assume.

@samir

contrary to what folk might expect, I picked 25-50%, though it's on the lower end if not sub 25%.

I think it's quite unfair if folk think it's the majority. Ignore the AI Fintech predatory shitlords, most devs are just doing little bits of code that you won't hear about that are just keeping things going.

james

@samir I suppose a lot rests on peoples definition of "pointless".

I could argue it's all pointless, but in accepting that we live in a capitalist society and people need to make a living and also need some sort of job satisfaction, I cannot.

Just thinking out loud.

Computers suck due to what we're using them to achieve and the goals behind that

But many programmers are just random ppl trying to get by I guess, a tonne of them do not earn the money folk assume (though most, not all, likely earn more than the avg income for their locale, which is only justifiable in terms of get as much as you can out of your boss, and are still not paid fairly in terms of what your work earns a business, like everyone in every job should be)

@samir I suppose a lot rests on peoples definition of "pointless".

I could argue it's all pointless, but in accepting that we live in a capitalist society and people need to make a living and also need some sort of job satisfaction, I cannot.

Just thinking out loud.

Computers suck due to what we're using them to achieve and the goals behind that

skze :nonbinary_flag:

@james @samir possibly a problem is also that people generally get paid for Making Products.

and i… i don’t think i have seen a zero-harms product in my entire life.

so i have to vote high because inside a harmful system, every product is harmful in one way or another

NotHelpfulUntilIAm🥤 🌛 🗄️

@james @samir Oh, you include "i need to live so i program pointless stuff to earn money" in not pointless?
I would argue it can be pointless (like the thousandth website including backend that does exactly the same thing) and people working on it have a point (earning money). The software itself is still pointless (how i understood the question, "pointless products") while the people have a good reason to write it.

samir, unbelievable

@james That’s my guess too. IBM’s a massive employer of programmers, but they’re not nearly as big as all the little shops making little WordPress sites combined.

I’m trying to put my finger on an emotion, not a real value.

I think the majority of people voting here are tech nerds, BTW. My guess is that the general public would vote lower.

james

@samir

I think very online and also reasonably ethical devs are probably voting quite high, heh

samir, unbelievable

@james Say one thing about Fedi, it’s full of people who are Very Online.

Mx Verda

@samir @james hey! Ur online therefore so’s ur mum

james

@MxVerda @samir

my mum doesn’t use the internet
check mate

DELETED

@samir I'd say that a good many of the government projects I've worked on could have been made irrelevant by a robust single-payer healthcare system and universal basic income.

samir, unbelievable

@starbreaker That’s probably a definition of “pointless” that reaches too far for me, but I encourage you to vote how you feel.

DELETED

@samir I have been, and I write to my representatives in Congress, too.

Zorro Notorious MEB 😡

@samir 0 - 25%. Anyone who thinks it's higher has succumbed to propaganda.

Amgine

@samir

A key qualification was the word "professional".

In most places 'programmers' are not members of a professional association with codes of conduct/ethics, nor are there standards of education/training, nor licensure or bond.

Which ultimately means the professionals do not know they can refuse unethical/immoral work requirements, nor have they organized to enforce their rights.

Warlock Of Wires

@amgine @samir PEs can and do gatekeep for the safety of life ect.

I wish software Engineers had the same Arrangement ..

Amgine

@Warlockofwires @samir

Unfortunately, software engineering is more akin to building trades than PE: the area of its applied sciences is very large, not well-defined, and entails a myriad of sub-specialization.

That does not mean, like trades or finance, they cannot form guilds and unions to build standards and enforce regulations and ethics. It just means PE will not accept them into the fold.

liber

@samir
Conflating pointless and harmful? Yeah, no vote.

Also, "pointless" is so damn subjective. Prima facie, everything I'm not using and I'm not interacting with in any way would be pointless. But that would raise the "pointless" percentage to 99.999...%, and also, the world doesn't revolve around one individual.
Then again, excluding ANYTHING that at least SOMEONE uses would drop it to basically 0.

IMHO, this applies perfectly:

goodreads.com/quotes/4173-ther

@samir
Conflating pointless and harmful? Yeah, no vote.

Also, "pointless" is so damn subjective. Prima facie, everything I'm not using and I'm not interacting with in any way would be pointless. But that would raise the "pointless" percentage to 99.999...%, and also, the world doesn't revolve around one individual.
Then again, excluding ANYTHING that at least SOMEONE uses would drop it to basically 0.

samir, unbelievable

@liber Right, this is not a measure of whether the software is valuable, but a measure of how a (biased, mostly left-leaning, nerdy) group values the software.

betalars :antifa:

@liber
People want to do jobs that have a positive (non-harmful) impact (non-pointless). This is likely why those thighs are mentioned in the same post.

Also: pointless is a subjective term ... I can find stuff pointless that other people enjoy. But I feel like you're trying to distract from the point and I don't know it's arguing about that has a point.

liber

@betalars
My point is that something pointless (with no positive impact, if you like) is not actively harmful (as per the original post).
Developing another office suite, or another ERP, that's doomed to fail, should never, even for the sake of online opinion pools, be placed on the same level with this piece of "human ingenuity", for example:
npr.org/2023/12/14/1218643254/
It's unfair to those stuck in the former scenario, and it trivializes the latter.
Maybe I'm wrong.

@betalars
My point is that something pointless (with no positive impact, if you like) is not actively harmful (as per the original post).
Developing another office suite, or another ERP, that's doomed to fail, should never, even for the sake of online opinion pools, be placed on the same level with this piece of "human ingenuity", for example:
npr.org/2023/12/14/1218643254/
It's unfair to those stuck in the...

betalars :antifa:

@liber When I say I don't like encountering muddy paths and bears when biking trough the woods I am not saying those things are equally bad.

pointless is having no impact. People don't like that.

Pointless is without a doubt less bad than harmful.

But as people look for jobs that do a meaningful good, they want to avoid stuff that's either pointless or harmful.

Hisham

@samir the number skews way downwards once one realizes that the vast majority of programmers are not only not in Silicon Valley, but really not in tech companies.

So many programmers all around the world working in local systems to help drive local businesses of all sizes and local governments.

The "tech industry" that is overrepresented in English-speaking social media is only a part of what programming as a global activity really is, even if they hold great power over that whole.

Kaye

@samir I'm gonna say 20% work on software that is pointless or directly evil, but another 25% work on software that is harmless but exists to *enable* evil. (As an example, Peter Thiel's companies have websites)

crazyeddie

@samir Those feeling that way should look at medical programming. It can be damn tedious sometimes but at least what I'm working on right now is trying to help people who are disabled. Feels great to be working on that rather than fleecing lonely, rich old ladies out of their money (slot machines on ipads--play is with virtual money but you buy it with the real thing and they were making MILLIONS from rich old ladies).

Lö(h)we 🤘

@samir including but not limited to enterprise business software

OddOpinions5

@samir

Sturgeon's Rule always applies to everything; programming is really not that different

🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦

@samir

*cough* A.I. *cough* *cough*

Creating the dystopia of your childhood sci-fi novels.

Saupreiss #Präparat500

@samir

I’ll let you know when I found anything that isn‘t harmful to something.

Orjan

@samir My perspective is skewed by having mostly worked on embedded systems the last 30 years. Things like roadside weather monitoring, cell culture growth and analysis systems for medical research, and printers for date markings on eggs. I'm used to working on things that by and large are both useful and arguably beneficial.
On the other hand, I did spend a couple of years working for a bank before going back to the embedded world...

Edward Kennedy

@samir can you give me some examples of ‘actively harmful products”?

i love being maple

@samir@mastodon.functional.computer never in my career have i worked on something i could stand by ethically on its own merits. now, the fact that it cost the company more to pay me to make it than it will ever bring them income or savings... thats praxis but still overall useless

Dym Sohin

@samir pointlessness and harmfulness changes over time of a project, so those percentages are slightly meaningless

Json Doh

@samir
It is known that in the software industry about 80% of work goes to trash, so essentially pointless. But one can't know which until they try.

David Brookes 🔶🎸

@samir Really that depends on how 'professional' is defined. If merely being paid then quite a lot. If properly trained, qualified and a member of the professional body and signed up to its code of practice then lower.

dark_stang

@samir most of the software I've been paid to develop professionally (>10 years) has been to solve imaginary or man-made problems.

utopiArte

@samir Actually everyone who is coding for non free open source software.
That's probably like 99%.

Considering work as synonym for paid labor, it would be actually very interesting to know how many are coding free software in their spare time.

speechless
DELETED

@samir I think the number is small, because of the sheer number of "invisible" programmers doing vital but thankless work behind the scenes on internal systems and integrations.

DELETED

@samir Think "Alice and Bob in accounts who tie everything together with VBA", or pretty much every COBOL programmer out there.

mks

@samir I’m a little optimistic on this front, actually. I think grifts like AI and crypto get disproportionate attention, but I think an awful lot of developers are just keeping the lights on at boring, normal, non-tech companies.

BiggestBulb 💡🏳️‍🌈🧑‍💻

@samir as a programmer, I would say 50-75%. Most programmers I know are either clinging to FAANG jobs for the life of them (which are, obviously, evil - I long for the days of "don't be evil") or they are in some random startup creating a super shitty, niche product that has no possibility for a future. Most of the second category is caused by middle managers fundamentally not knowing what is right from a product point of view, but doing shit anyway.

BiggestBulb 💡🏳️‍🌈🧑‍💻

@samir I'll also add that very, very few repos I have seen have any form of meaningful testing or QA (let alone timesavers like Hygen). Seeing a solid ESLint setup with jax-a11y is like finding a treasure chest in a Kmart parking lot - fucking impossible these days.

Mike J👹🐀 🤘🏻

@samir Most professional programmers are making sure the accounting system continues to work and other similarly mundane things. Not pointless, just not exciting.

Roger Moore

@samir
I suspect the majority of professional programmers are doing something tedious and uninteresting that basically amounts to "convert company business logic into code".

tuban_muzuru

@samir

The question is: useful /to whom/ ?

Useful to the people who will have to use the grotesque, duplicative monster of a vanity project. They talk in terms of rules.

Do not listen to the people who talk in exceptions.

Jérôme Carretero

@samir

You could formulate the question otherwise, like if you are writing software, on a scale of 1 to 4, how pointless or harmful is it? And define pointless... like, #libcaca is uber-pointless but probably not harmful, compared to a video game, casino software, social media, emissions-cheating firmware, autonomous weapons?

Phosphenes

@samir

A good fraction of those jobs were mine.

Paul SomeoneElse

@samir I want my vote back, this is all posturing.

Rich Felker

@samir The ones who are working on stuff that's not pointless or actively harmful mostly aren't getting paid for it, and I guess thereby don't fall under "professional"... 🤦

DELETED

@samir actually i'd say 80-90% but somehow picked the third option weird me

Michaela

@samir huh, didn't expect this much optimism about the profession. i'd say at least 95%. mind you, i'm jaded and bitter after somewhat abruptly realizing how much harm i've contributed to at my old job. leave tech to amateurs, everyone will be better off.

Craig Nicol

@samir the only reason I didn't put a majority is because I know there's a lot of professional programmers in boring companies making boring products, which are almost but not completely pointless, and are net harmless if not net harm reducing.

But then there's a lot of programmers in tech, military, banking, fossil fuels, which make me think the overall impact is pointless harmful work

epicdemiologist

@samir "Shapes on shapes, wasted time/Pointless points along a line;/Head down, straight on, you'll be fine." --Jonathan Coulton, "Robots.txt"

pinskia

@samir There are few things here. Is there ever a point to anything? Also hasn't all progress been pointless or actively harmful to some folks? This is a philosophy question that most folks don't like or even think about. Progress for progress sake is very harmful. A lot of medical progress has been very harmful to some group of people because people think they have the moral high ground but most don't. Programmers are not immune to this too.

Zachary Perkins

@samir pointless and actively harmful are very different things

Carl Muckenhoupt

@samir This figure used to be higher. Nowadays, a lot of professional programmers are working on pointless or harmful *services* instead.

It’s not that software is intrinsically antisocial, though. It’s just that prosocial programming tends to not pay.

Zorro Notorious MEB 😡

@samir 0-25%. Anyone who thinks it's higher than that has succumbed to propaganda.

David Neto

@samir

I think the vast majority of programmers are doing business logic inside non tech companies. Banks and insurance, manufacturing.
Think: database procedures and accounting. COBOL. The vast majority.

Fish Id Wardrobe

@samir "pointless"? If you include "someone else has already done this" in that, it must approach 100%.

John Abbe (aka Slow)

@samir Yeah I hovered over 50-75%, then I remembered reading somewhere that 90% of projects never even get put into use.

wraptile

@samir my guess would be <10% if we're talking relative.

I know I'm not going to break this circlejerk here but on average other jobs are much more harmful and wasteful than software engineering ever was.

There are millions of people doing what they're told to and this involves:
- raising and slaughtering animals
- working on industries that are directly destroying us like war, oil etc.

But those people "are just trying to make a living" so it doesn't count 🤷‍♂️

@samir my guess would be <10% if we're talking relative.

I know I'm not going to break this circlejerk here but on average other jobs are much more harmful and wasteful than software engineering ever was.

There are millions of people doing what they're told to and this involves:
- raising and slaughtering animals
- working on industries that are directly destroying us like war, oil etc.

Elena

@samir most of them are probably forced to make shit programs by corporate companies. I doubt all the programmers that work on fake ai stuff want this future

necromantic

@samir i got my first tech job in 1998. i have been in this field a loooooong time. the correct answer is definitely 75-100. almost all of tech is completely toxic at this point.

VHG 🇪🇺🇮🇱🇺🇦

@samir how many software guys work at meta, google and Microsoft again?

Markus Werle

@samir when I use the official #mastodon app, clicking on the vote button lets the result switch to 75-100%. Voting in #fediverse is so buggy you could assume it is done by Microsoft.

Cykonot

@samir depends on what you think of side grades (maybe to use a more "modern" stack with no real purpose), pointless updates corporate clients want, what is a valid point (gaming? Convenience?), etc. I said pretty low, cuz I'm counting sidegrades & wrong-feeling opinions from clients & stuff that supports eye-rolley businesses

SCRUMschau

@samir
Who decides that the software is pointless or harmful?

If there is sponsor to give money then the sponsor expect a return of investment.

The world is to busy and money is often an issue, it means that it is easier to cancel a negative ROI product than investing more money in it.

Leonard Ritter

@samir ITT: depressed and burned out programmers

Solar Pierre

@samir more pointless than actively harmful but maybe at that point in time, given the progress of climate catastrophe, pointsless is already harmful in itself and not active in the right direction is already active in the opposite direction?

Winnie 🏳️‍🌈

@samir I don't think those categories are always clearly separated. I'm currently working on a great and useful product but the work environment makes sure that it will become useless in the end.

so in this case it is not a property of the product itself but of the organizational structure.

Random Host 🐕

@samir I'm definitely one of them. I work in the advertising industry which actively violates everyone's privacy and gets away with it every day.

Ryan Castellucci :nonbinary_flag:

@samir I'm not a "professional programmer" (I'm a hacker whose job title says "security engineer") and I do R&D work that protects the surveillance capitalism "Ad Tech" ecosystem from fraud, but this work gets botnets shut down.

Also, I spend a large portion of my income from this on fighting human rights violations.

I have no idea how to answer this, it's complicated, I really dislike advertising, but think people doing fraud are worse. 🤷

A 🐺 of ❄️ and 🔥

@samir it's going to depend on what the definition of pointless and harmful is

Jack Jackson

@samir fascinating question! One interesting cause of "pointlessness" is when multiple folks work on implementing their own nigh-identical versions of a thing for which they don't think it makes sense to publicize or share it

Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊

@samir

Is there such a thing as a pointless project that's not actively harmful?

Verain

@samir My very uneducated guess, around 50%. I hope less, I fear more.

Adam Piggott

@samir I'm voting high because so many of my customers suffer from lost time, confidence and data because of badly-designed software; mostly UX but often locking data behind proprietary formats, or being difficult to backup.

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