Post #1811522

2026-04-28 19:55 UTC

It&#39;s bizarre coming back into tech after taking a break. I come back to an industry falling over itself to trade our daily sessions in our code editor with paying sketchy companies for the convenience of having tedious things done for us. The industry almost seems to hate itself now? &quot;Join in or get left behind&quot;. I&#39;ve had two people close to me say almost that exact thing in the last 24 hours. Perhaps it&#39;s just me. I want to code slowly and think about what I&#39;m doing. I want to craft.

Replies (6)

@soph@grrl.me 2026-04-28 19:58

We realise that the idea of a 10x engineer was *always* a myth, right? That was a gimmick to try to get engineers to push themselves to be better than their peers. The best engineers I've ever worked with were able to navigate nasty spots and produce successful fixes. I've never met *anyone* who was a 10x engineer, who shipped 10x the number of features at a high level of quality. It's always a trade, you code worse as you go faster. We know that. And we've read No Silver Bullet.

Open ##2352804
@superfunc@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-04-28 20:01

@soph@grrl.me you're not alone, Sophia. its really hard seeing the cognitive dissonance in people I really respect and cherish as well. appreciate your willingness to speak up

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@loucyx@mastodon.social 2026-04-28 20:02

@soph@grrl.me I 100% share your sentiment. The analogy I used recently is that they are telling a person who likes to draw to “just take photos with this 2MP Webcam”. It isn’t the same. Yeah, it’s “faster”, but it takes all the enjoyment out of the craft, to produce the same result anyone with the same tool would produce. I think these trends are working as a filter for people who code because they like to code from those who do it because the end product gives them money.

Open ##2352813
@lexplt@hachyderm.io 2026-04-28 20:33

@soph@grrl.me I’ve got rejected from a job for this! Don’t want to use AI and told them why, then got an email today that my views wouldn’t align with their team (including on ai)

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@webslinger@hachyderm.io 2026-04-28 20:50

@soph@grrl.me Far from just you. I think investors have moved on from asking for volunteers and made it compulsory for entire industries to eat their young, and the self-hate is one of the responses to an unprecedented lack of agency. 💔

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@tonymottaz@social.lol 2026-04-29 04:07

@soph@grrl.me it’s not just you. But I also cannot find work at a place that understands this. Every company seems to be fully bought in, or at the very least convinced they need to use AI to “keep up with the industry”, as if it wasn’t always *the quality of what you make* that actually matters. I don’t know what to do

Open ##2352819