Big tech jobs used to be fun. "Move fast and break things". It was the ultimate job for the intelligent underachiever who didn't want to waste time on paperwork and routines.
Over the last ten years I have watched the number of PMs and middle managers explode across the industry. Executives from other industries have crept in, bastardized agile, commoditized developer work, and began micromanaging everything. You get to build less cool stuff - there's less opportunity for achievement or advancement. So now these jobs are not much different than garden variety white collar work.
I think there are a variety of valid reasons: The market capital that created unicorns is gone - and with high interest rates comes risk aversion. The NYTimes decision to adopt an anti-tech editorial policy changed public perception. Pushes for diverse hiring practices clashed with tech's original meritocracy structure. Increasing regulation. The age of the average coder has gone up and so the corps have matured too.
But more than anything, I think it comes down to nature abhorring a vacuum. The other corporations in our economy are mired by risk-averse gatekeeping admins and executives - it was only a matter of time before enough consultants and management firms made their way into the building.
Not necessarily. I am alluding to a specific policy that the NYT adopted that said only negative stories about the tech industry would be run. Some NYT writers like Matt Yglesias have confirmed this policy and the knock-on affect at other publications.
Amazon and Google and Apple all still have extremely high public perception of their brands, despite only receiving negative national press, so it's hard to pin this as a reason that people wouldn't want to work at these places. But I think it's contributed to places like Google transitioning from being open and publicly glowing places to work, to circle their wagons and becoming more private and cagey with their employees.
The weight of real world evidence is that no such policy ever existed, and the NYT is infamous for publishing a number of extremely pro-tech puff pieces for the last decade, at least, including the ones on Bankman-Fried and the Neumann. And the Vision Pro.
Hell, right now the NYT Technology page is full of puff pieces entirely uncritical of tech, despite the massive layoffs and ethical issues of AI.
And the only sources for the supposed policy are two "journalists" who have never actually worked for the NYT.
Comments
Big tech jobs used to be fun. "Move fast and break things". It was the ultimate job for the intelligent underachiever who didn't want to waste time on paperwork and routines.
Over the last ten years I have watched the number of PMs and middle managers explode across the industry. Executives from other industries have crept in, bastardized agile, commoditized developer work, and began micromanaging everything. You get to build less cool stuff - there's less opportunity for achievement or advancement. So now these jobs are not much different than garden variety white collar work.
I think there are a variety of valid reasons: The market capital that created unicorns is gone - and with high interest rates comes risk aversion. The NYTimes decision to adopt an anti-tech editorial policy changed public perception. Pushes for diverse hiring practices clashed with tech's original meritocracy structure. Increasing regulation. The age of the average coder has gone up and so the corps have matured too.
But more than anything, I think it comes down to nature abhorring a vacuum. The other corporations in our economy are mired by risk-averse gatekeeping admins and executives - it was only a matter of time before enough consultants and management firms made their way into the building.
The NYTimes decision to adopt an anti-tech editorial policy changed public perception
The "move fast and break things" culture of tech was what changed public perception. The NYT was just a manifestation of that change.
Not necessarily. I am alluding to a specific policy that the NYT adopted that said only negative stories about the tech industry would be run. Some NYT writers like Matt Yglesias have confirmed this policy and the knock-on affect at other publications.
Amazon and Google and Apple all still have extremely high public perception of their brands, despite only receiving negative national press, so it's hard to pin this as a reason that people wouldn't want to work at these places. But I think it's contributed to places like Google transitioning from being open and publicly glowing places to work, to circle their wagons and becoming more private and cagey with their employees.
The weight of real world evidence is that no such policy ever existed, and the NYT is infamous for publishing a number of extremely pro-tech puff pieces for the last decade, at least, including the ones on Bankman-Fried and the Neumann. And the Vision Pro.
Hell, right now the NYT Technology page is full of puff pieces entirely uncritical of tech, despite the massive layoffs and ethical issues of AI.
And the only sources for the supposed policy are two "journalists" who have never actually worked for the NYT.
You're seriously making the contention that Apple, in the US, has only received 'negative national press' ???