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varispeed 3 days ago

> I could sit for hours, figuring out how to wire something up just so and get an idea made into something real. And it didn’t feel like work.

That's why developers are poorly paid and viewed as disposable cogs. It feels "easy" to many people and so they internally think it is immoral to get paid and corporations ruthlessly prey on that feeling. Reality is that development is hard and requires immense mental work, constant upskilling and is not something you can switch off after 5pm and think of something else. Your brain is constantly at work. That work also is creating millions and billions that gets extracted from developers and flow to the greedy hands of the rich, who now control all the means of production (think of cloud services, regulation - try starting your own forum today, anything with user generated content etc.).

Developer did themselves dirty.

sokoloff 3 days ago | parent [-]

TIL that “developers are poorly paid”.

varispeed 3 days ago | parent [-]

TIL someone thinks a £60k dev job in London means you’re not being exploited - because you can afford a Tesco meal deal and a flatshare in Zone 4. Never mind your code prints money for people you’ll never meet, or that your “reward” is a Jira ticket and a perf review.

Developers went from garage-tinkerers to the backbone of the modern economy - and somehow ended up as overworked, disposable employees in open-plan office farms. The owners changed, the IDEs got fancier, but the deal stayed the same: build the machine, never own it.

You upskill constantly just to not fall behind. You work nights “for the launch.” You get gaslit into thinking stock options in a private company are equity. Then you’re laid off via email - while the founders post yacht selfies.

And the worst part? Most of you still believe you’re lucky. That’s the grift: teach engineers to think they’re “not like other workers” - then extract surplus value just like any other industry has done since the 19th century.

Developers are poorly paid - not because the salary is low, but because the upside is stolen. You created the wealth, they captured it.