It isn't that they are crappy web devs. It is that often the org paying for the development doesn't care.

I am a web developer of over 20 years. I can create insanely optimised pages using nothing other than vanilla CSS and JS.

I have been paid exactly once to do this. There is a site I built in 2023 that has a JS and CSS footprint of less than 100KB after GZip (large site). We even had the Go templates compiled when the web app initialised so the server responded as fast as possible.

Guess what happened when it went live? The content team use 8mb images for everything and every single optimisation I did at CSS/JS was totally useless.

Devs don't care because the people above them don't care and therefore there is zero incentive to even bother.

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josephg 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> therefore there is zero incentive to even bother.

I hear you, and this is a real problem. But it's kind of depressing to need incentives to care about the quality of your work.

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JollySharp0 6 hours ago | parent [-]

There is something very wrong now with how companies operate in general.

You get beaten down eventually. Late last year. I spent like an hour going through why a PR (and this developer's work) in general wasn't acceptable to my superior. He said to me that he was perfectly fine with someone not understanding basic language features (after 6 months using the langauge). He then merged it.

It didn't work (as I had warned) and created a situation where I had to turn off tests in some projects as it totally broke them. I've spent months fixing his crap and still haven't recovered from one bad PR. Now add two other employees that are like this and my manager does nothing about it. I bought a AI package from Jetbrains and now have it do almost all the work. I normally spend some time cleaning it up. Management have made it clear to me that they don't care about quality, they won't hold anyone accountable and won't even fire people that clearly cannot program.

I am 43 years old this year. I just can't be bothered trying to be a hero anymore.

Similarly, my father who retired last week was a joiner/carpenter and would be considered a master boat builder. When my sister was little my dad made her new bed with hearts and flowers carved in the headboard.

He described how adversarial he was too his employer before he retired. He was engaging in Malicious compliance (he is a layman and didn't know it was called that) because management was making his life miserable by employing the same sort of the stand-up meeting ceremony nonsense in carpentry.

They managed to make someone with that level of skill hate their job because of process.

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josephg 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> There is something very wrong now with how companies operate in general.

Some companies. A lot of companies, maybe. But far from all of them.

I've done a lot of consulting work, which means I've done short stints at a lot of different places over the years. Some were absolute stinkers - like you describe. But I've also worked with some wonderful people and on some great, high performance teams. I understand that its not so easy when you're 43 (and maybe, with kids). But you don't need to stay in a job like this. Its not worth getting ground down like this. Its bad for your health. And its horrible for your career in the long run.

Move to a smaller company. Or sniff around and find a better team within your existing org. In the words of my favorite poet: The world is made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

	▲	JollySharp0 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Some companies. A lot of companies, maybe. But far from all of them. I honestly think it is most of them. > Some were absolute stinkers - like you describe. But I've also worked with some wonderful people and on some great, high performance teams. I've totally given up on it. People don't value your work. I did a piece for a particular company. It worked perfectly. It was thrown away after a year and half because management decided everything should be rewritten in <new framework> ignoring the fact that what I had written was well documented and worked absolutely fine. Now I shouldn't really care right? I was paid and all. But it pissed me off. What the point in doing a good job if people just throw your work in the bin? I am looking at what my options are going forward. I am honestly considering being a car mechanic (I fix my own vehicles) or work outside for the canal trust. Realistically I suspect I might pivot to QA or doing something security related. > I understand that its not so easy when you're 43 (and maybe, with kids). But you don't need to stay in a job like this. Its not worth getting ground down like this. Its bad for your health. And its horrible for your career in the long run. I've been looking for over 2 years. I want to move to be closer to my family which are 300 miles away (the other side of the UK). So remote is a must. A large number of positions are hybrid, so not an option. Outside of that many of the position in the UK are working Defence, Intelligence or Law Enforcement. All of those I have ethical reasons why I won't work for them. Outside of that there is Gambling, Pay day loans, and spooky stuff like tracking people via facial recognition. > In the words of my favorite poet: The world is made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. I find this condescending.

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nullbyte808 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Dear god how do I get these jobs? I'm 35 yo and would work with you and accept your work, not jam crap code into things. I'm open minded and realize when someone's idea or code is better than mine.