Readers warning: No apologies shall be made for the following blackpill
Today, a friend asked me if he’s been treading water at a comfortable place in his life. He said someone told him that, and it seems like an accurate assessment. He’s not sure how he feels about it. I said I’ll be honest: we’ve chosen the wrong profession. We are absolutely, undoubtedly cogs in the machine. There is no meaning to anything we do—99% of the code we write this year alone will be legacy by 2030.
Legacy of Meaninglessness
Even the most “meaningful” examples of our work in software development are primarily just used to facilitate the loss of purpose for others, as if we’re exuding some horrible dark radiation of meaninglessness. Even the crown jewels of our industry: Instagram, Uber, Netflix, PornHub, Facebook—these institutions only serve to further alienate human beings from their autonomy as living beings. Yet, these are the highest peaks of our endeavors..
Disillusionment for Aspiring Programmers
Sorry, but this is the reality for the aspiring young programmer who really wants to improve the world and build cool things. Sadly, he will find this is rarely possible. In fact, getting back to work on his OnlyFans clone and casino app is probably his best chance at making a name for himself in a corrupt, overly complex game of Settlers of Catan, where the currency is no longer wheat and stone.. But dogecoins and thick latinas..
Pointlessness and Loss of Impact
Our pointless work has no positive bearing on the real world and barely influences it at all. It is the starkest representation of the hopelessness of a technical system void of meaning, consuming our souls, mental energy, and life. The same way mining farms in China burn electric and GPU power to produce non-existent digital gold dooblons. The first human currencies that will never even make it into a muesuem following the next major global cataclysm.
Acceptance and Anonymity
In the end, you must accept that this is the work laid out for you and learn to thrive in other areas of life. Embrace the mundanity, anonymity, and soullessness of a digital job, knowing that if you disappeared, Pajeet or Kumar from Pakistan could replace you in a matter of days, perhaps even hours, picking up right where you left off.
The Fleeting Nature of Our Work
You barely know your co-workers beyond what they did last weekend, and the week before that, and every other weekend following the calls you had to endure. Your impact on the real world is less tangible than a common plumber’s.
The final nail in the coffin: the plumber probably makes more —and maybe even occasionally a pickle ham sandwich from a satisfied customer, perhaps a lonely housewife. By comparison we produce ephemeral products that won’t last, content that’ll be forgotten, delivering meals that will be eaten and end up primarily in a landfill, facilitating high definition social connections that result in anything but definition, or connection.
The Illusion of Technological Achievement
In the end, technology serves to facilitate everything and simultaneously nothing at all. It’s the invisible hand that sticks its fingers into every pie, making those pies feel almost superfluous, yet inescapable. Yet the only real pie at the end of it is in the pie chart on the screens of your shareholders. A final mockery of our redundancy..
But at least those pie charts can be cross-referenced in real-time by dynamic visualizations across multiple dashboards… At least those pie charts offer live-update functionality, pulling in fresh data points across distributed networks, backed by multiple fail-safe APIs and supported by adaptive caching for seamless, data-driven insights at every stakeholder’s fingertips…
Because of the microservices you contributed…
(But I bet you. They will still. Be legacy. By 2030..)
