Its a good rant, even if some of the details are wrong. I think what he's really getting at is just that software is flooded with bad developers. Its only become more true as salaries go up and everyone flocks to the field.
By bad I DON'T mean junior or inexperienced. Bad is someone who really doesn't have any intrinsic motivation or drive to improve their craft, or worse doesn't care how it impacts the world - they're in it exclusively for the money. It really sucks working with people like that. Like this is literally what this entire stupid orange website used to cheer for 10 years ago when recruitment and VCs all talked about hiring for passion, its why github contributions and side projects and an interest in tech were valuable signals before they became another metric to be gamed.
Tech really does seem to be increasingly full of mercenary types now. People who give 0 fucks about ethics or integrity. Don't care what their employer does, don't care about their craft, don't care about working multiple jobs in secret. Just robots you put a coin in and turn the crank to get some code out. Github Copilot has admitted to using all Github code, regardless of license. Mass theft. But some robots built that because they were paid enough.
I do blame the player. "Dont blame the player" is a bullshit copout. Players are all there is. If no one builds evil shit, it simply doesn't get built. People who either learn to sometimes put their self-interest below something bigger or robots who are easily bought. Concretely, candidates can choose not to enter a field they are uninterested in or make an effort to develop an interest, and managers can design hiring pipelines that test for these things.
This attitude achieves nothing but quickly becoming that guy as far as peers and management are concerned (assuming you can even get through the door to begin with)
I feel like my attitude has a chance of creating change, whereas the attitude of going along with whatever as long as you get paid is guaranteed to change nothing. And yeah I have worked at and gotten offers from FAANG and adjacent startups with hard interviews - competence has nothing to do with it.
By bad I DON'T mean junior or inexperienced. Bad is someone who really doesn't have any intrinsic motivation or drive to improve their craft, or worse doesn't care how it impacts the world - they're in it exclusively for the money. It really sucks working with people like that. Like this is literally what this entire stupid orange website used to cheer for 10 years ago when recruitment and VCs all talked about hiring for passion, its why github contributions and side projects and an interest in tech were valuable signals before they became another metric to be gamed.
Tech really does seem to be increasingly full of mercenary types now. People who give 0 fucks about ethics or integrity. Don't care what their employer does, don't care about their craft, don't care about working multiple jobs in secret. Just robots you put a coin in and turn the crank to get some code out. Github Copilot has admitted to using all Github code, regardless of license. Mass theft. But some robots built that because they were paid enough.