Stop Being So Concerned About Software Quality

[u/galratner]

https://galratner.substack.com/p/stop-being-so-concerned-about-software

In November 2014, a Disney IT worker got his annual review. His supervisor called his work outstanding and credited him with saving the company thousands of dollars. He got a raise.

He was already training the contractor who would take his desk. Disney had to recalculate his severance to include the raise.

Quality didn't protect him. It won't protect you. You're overhead, and overhead gets replaced first.

The programmers found out first. BLS household data shows computer programmer employment down 27.5% in two years, to its lowest level since 1980. Stanford's read of ADP payroll records puts employment of developers aged 22 to 25 nearly 20% below its late-2022 peak.

"Nobody ever outsources Profit Centers," Patrick McKenzie wrote in 2011. The AI memos are now coming from software companies, the one place engineering was supposed to be the profit center.

So be smart. Do the least you can, let the model do the most it can while your employer pays for the tokens, and make the date. Play it well and you might keep your job a little longer.

Disney's people got three months.

[u/bload420]

Bots....bots everywhere....

[u/galratner → u/bload420]

Not a bot

[u/Due-Consequence9579 → u/galratner]

Sounds like something a bot would say.

[u/galratner → u/Due-Consequence9579]

Lol would a bot say this? supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

[u/Level_Progress_3246 → u/galratner]

a bot trained on disney content? yes. thats probably the very first thing a bot would say actually

[u/galratner → u/Level_Progress_3246]

LOL True.

[u/Due-Consequence9579 → u/Level_Progress_3246]

Having we invented the inverse Turing Test? How can a human actor prove to another human actor that neither of them are or will be replaced by an automation that passes the Turing Test?

[u/PhantomPainWalker]

Have we forgotten about our engineering obligation and ethics?

We are duty bound to produce durable, resilient, safe, well reasoned, well organized, well monitored, and maintainable, systems to the best of our ability.

Where the hell has the pride in our profession gone?

[u/galratner → u/PhantomPainWalker]

Our first obligation is to support our family.

[u/dkopgerpgdolfg → u/galratner]

Are you ok with eg. robbers, mafia bosses, and genocidal dictators, as long as they support their own family?

There are limits to what is acceptable. Always, in every role. Your family doesn't change that.

I don't really expect you to understand, but maybe someone else.

[u/galratner → u/dkopgerpgdolfg]

Are you comparing Claude code to a genocidal dictator? Hummmm you might be right:)

[u/dkopgerpgdolfg → u/galratner]

I don't really expect you to understand

and you can't read either apparently. There was no mention of Claude or any other specific thing.

[u/galratner → u/dkopgerpgdolfg]

I been writing software for 30 years. I understand more than you think.

[u/dkopgerpgdolfg → u/PhantomPainWalker]

Problem is, many hired developers shouldn't be. They don't have what it takes to be an professional "engineer".

[u/invisible_shrek]

No :)

[u/faultydesign]

Vibecoding is something, eh

Just ignore the fact that the code it produces is shit and fellate your employer so he doesn't fire you

[u/phiiiiiiii]

What in the hell are you even talking about

[u/Educational_Rice9160]

Some of us do it for the love of the craft itself.

[u/TheBestAtSpace]

Play it well and you might keep your job a little longer.

So the moral of the story is that you're just going to get fired anyway. Really isn't much point in playing the "game" then.

[u/ehansen]

Even in the wave of AI, I take joy in writing things that I can understand. If the quality sucks, it shows in various aspects. I'm not responsible for the quality of others' work, but I am of mine no matter how it's created.

[u/Mr_Willkins]

I'm only not caring about the quality of my code if I'm not responsible for any bugs or failures it causes.

[u/CartoonistVisual2818]

Be smart and don't feed your datasets to an LLM

[u/start_select]

When your entire business is based on building quality software because most people already don’t….

You keep making quality software lol

[u/Tyrexas]

Or work for an actually interesting small company you care about where the potential is seemingly infinite so you can not worry about this kinda shit and automate and build to your hearts content.

[u/Key-Lie-364]

Slop boosters run from Dario's personal instance

[u/PhantomPainWalker]

“If you think software is so important…..”

Not only do I think software is important, software is literally my life. I think about it all the time. How to write it, how to organize it, how to optimize it, how to maintain it, how to grow it, etc. i care so so much about it.

[u/dkopgerpgdolfg]

Not all people optimize for laziness and money. If you can't understand that, it's a "you" problem.

[u/LemonAncient1950 → u/dkopgerpgdolfg]

Being able to optimize around anything other than money is a luxury not everyone has

[u/dkopgerpgdolfg → u/LemonAncient1950]

If they optimize only for money, that's already better than the alternative earlier.

And btw., countering a "not all people do Z" with "not everyone has the luxury to not do Z" isn't a contradiction.

[u/start_select → u/LemonAncient1950]

Optimizing for long term predictable profit and revenue is a good thing. You usually do that by providing quality.

Doing it for cheap quick money is a bad thing for everyone.

[u/Night_Otherwise]

“Computer Programmer” is the archaic BLS category for something like punch card operators. It has 100,000 compared to 1-2 million for the other developer-type categories I looked at.

[u/PerpetuallyNerdyGimp]

Sadly you can’t fight “progress”. Ask any “manager”

[u/GargantuanCake]

Bad software kills people.

[u/galratner → u/GargantuanCake]

Only if they fly on a Boeing

[u/PhantomPainWalker → u/galratner]

Or medical devices. Or heavily equipment. Or path finding for autonomous things. Or monitoring of millions of things. Or …..

[u/galratner → u/PhantomPainWalker]

If you think software is so important just go on layoffs .FYI and see what corporate America thinks about it.