Sorry it sounds like you’ve had some bad experiences, but let’s try not to fall into that trap.
Any field with any kind of specialization in our “competitive market culture” seems to go this way. People hone their skills, learn more, and yet they need to constantly find reasons to justify their existence and skillset in a world trying to replace them at every turn, so things get toxic and everybody’s got a “one true way” because everyone sees each other as competition. It’s an adversarial system top to bottom.
For honest working people no field is “the right field” right now because we’re sandwiched between techbro grifters and idiot despots who are both committed to ruining everybody’s job prospects.
Everybody’s on edge, everybody’s pissed, everyone has to show off “I know what I’m doing more than these people” so they can keep the lights on. I do wish that culture would stop sabotaging itself with toxicity, but that’s another matter.
We shouldn’t discourage people from pursuing something that fascinates them, unless maybe they indicated “I only took compsci because I heard the money was good and the people are cool.” . . .which, in the right environment isn’t even untrue, necessarily.
Oof you picked the wrong field. Honestly, programmer culture is elitist and toxic as fuck, speaking as someone who made that mistake before.
Sorry it sounds like you’ve had some bad experiences, but let’s try not to fall into that trap.
Any field with any kind of specialization in our “competitive market culture” seems to go this way. People hone their skills, learn more, and yet they need to constantly find reasons to justify their existence and skillset in a world trying to replace them at every turn, so things get toxic and everybody’s got a “one true way” because everyone sees each other as competition. It’s an adversarial system top to bottom.
For honest working people no field is “the right field” right now because we’re sandwiched between techbro grifters and idiot despots who are both committed to ruining everybody’s job prospects.
Everybody’s on edge, everybody’s pissed, everyone has to show off “I know what I’m doing more than these people” so they can keep the lights on. I do wish that culture would stop sabotaging itself with toxicity, but that’s another matter.
We shouldn’t discourage people from pursuing something that fascinates them, unless maybe they indicated “I only took compsci because I heard the money was good and the people are cool.” . . .which, in the right environment isn’t even untrue, necessarily.
Why do you think I would want to know if I picked the wrong field?