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.)
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 "that's not the case".
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 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, using them to achieve the main goals that we use them for, sucks too.
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)
@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.
