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.)
Poll
Voting ended 20 June at 17:05.
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%
6,201 people voted. 1,264
20.4%
Voting ended 20 June at 17:05. 145 comments
@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 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. @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. @IngaLovinde It's okay. In your "compiling" time, you get to work on the things you actually enjoy. @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?" @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 @samir If your product isn’t harming somebody, how did they raise the money to pay you @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. I’m genuinely just curious: can we not assume some of those scientists doing software development could also be acting harmfully or pointlessly? @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 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. @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. @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. @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? @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 @james @samir Oh, you include "i need to live so i program pointless stuff to earn money" in not pointless? @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. @starbreaker That’s probably a definition of “pointless” that reaches too far for me, but I encourage you to vote how you feel. 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. 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 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. @liber 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 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. @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. @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). @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. @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 @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. @samir most of the software I've been paid to develop professionally (>10 years) has been to solve imaginary or man-made problems. @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. @samir Think "Alice and Bob in accounts who tie everything together with VBA", or pretty much every COBOL programmer out there. @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. @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. @samir Most professional programmers are making sure the accounting system continues to work and other similarly mundane things. Not pointless, just not exciting. @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. 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? @samir That's funny, I was just reading this earlier: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/the-complex-problem-of-lying-for-jobs/ @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"... 🤦 @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 @samir "Shapes on shapes, wasted time/Pointless points along a line;/Head down, straight on, you'll be fine." --Jonathan Coulton, "Robots.txt" @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. @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. @samir 0-25%. Anyone who thinks it's higher than that has succumbed to propaganda. I think the vast majority of programmers are doing business logic inside non tech companies. Banks and insurance, manufacturing. @samir "pointless"? If you include "someone else has already done this" in that, it must approach 100%. @samir Yeah I hovered over 50-75%, then I remembered reading somewhere that 90% of projects never even get put into use. @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. @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. @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 @samir 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. @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? @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. @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. @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 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. 🤷 @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 Is there such a thing as a pointless project that's not actively harmful? @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. |
@samir questions like this get a lot easier to answer once one has concluded that software is fundamentally a harmful activity.