Because software development back in the day wasn’t like how it’s now now, the charade so called software development now is a clown show: scrum, daily stand ups, open office style, tickets, tons of ci/cd BS, and of course, the wrangler aka PM and all politics involved, none of this existed like the cult it is now, I only had one experience in such environment and despite the effort I had to ask for some common sense, it was like insulting someone’s religion, “how dare you challenge the sacred methods that the silicone valley companies are using?!!”

Additionally, back in the day there was true ownership for the code you write, the code is owned by you not the company, and I know few old engineers that until now (they are retired) the companies still pay them for using their code they wrote while working there. That sense of ownership encourages you to tackle hard issues rather feeling like a machine spewing code for someone else’s business, I have seen some contracts too where the company will have ownership for anything you do while you are in the contract, including your personal projects on your own free time.

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philipallstar 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Rose-tinted glasses, eh? They ain't what they used to be.

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ourmandave 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Still paid for the code you wrote while working there sounds like a consultant with a hell of a contract, not an employee.

	▲	tamimio 30 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Employees, auto industry, although it was in Europe not US.
	▲	mschuster91 32 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Or like many a company that prefers to paper old hands with cash to keep an old system running until it is really, really no longer feasible. Banks and airlines are the most common example, many of them run on mainframe systems with code that's old enough for humans to go into retirement - and replacement projects usually tend to go into the billions of euros range with many of them failing catastrophically. Even paying some greybeard 500k a year to deal with that stuff despite him being retired is far more profitable in the short term. That's the problem with letting beancounters run the show because eventually, there will literally be barely anyone left alive who is capable - and even less who know all the "implicit knowledge" behind edge cases.

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sublinear 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> none of this existed like the cult it is now

So you'd prefer for all this project management drama and power struggle to be invisible?

All this scaffolding is not a cult. It exists to democratize the process. Your personal comfort is irrelevant to the results.

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hilariously 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Unfortunately in many places it is indeed a cult and serves to ossify management decisions. We ARE doing Agile, what do you mean? No this person is the scrum master and they tell us what Agile is and then we do it, see?

I have worked at 8 different software places and none of them implemented things in a way I would call "genuinely agile" and most of them were just bad waterfall with more meetings and telling the engineers they are accountable for the bad ideas that are now their job.

CI/CD? How about make that only "Devops" job and then make the exact same undemocratized system before with gatekeepers who spend a significant amount of time blocking your work because they are afraid of things changing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

	▲	sublinear 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		My point is you would never even have a clue that there is dysfunction at all without these methodologies. These days you at least have some idea in your head how it should be vs how it is. I think there's something critical being lost in younger people who have never been exposed to the bad old ways and only understand their current situation through memes. We need to get a grip here.

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FpUser 5 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

>"So you'd prefer for all this project management drama and power struggle to be invisible?"

Well project managers can have their dramas. Just do not involve developers. Or what is even better - get the fuck out and leave it to people who can do things without drama.

>"All this scaffolding is not a cult. It exists to democratize the process. Your personal comfort is irrelevant to the results."

Pile of BS. It exists to feed whole layer of self serving people who contribute very little and grow like a cancer.

In my career I was lucky. I am an independent software developer. Designed and developed many products for various clients (including some of my own ventures) and have managed without Agile, Scrum and the likes. My largest products - I had teams of up to 35 people under me and somehow we've survived.

On few occasions I had pleasure to be on some of those meetings as a visitor - felt nothing but disgust. Again luckily I was spared from direct participation