>For people I know who are in tech for the tech nothing changed.
Yeah it did. The environments became a lot more toxic and the decisions became a lot more stupid.
I also miss working with people who actually cared about the craft. They exist on the IC level but they're burned out and on the executive level it's mostly just insecure morons these days.
It’s great to care about the craft as long as someone else is paying for it. I think most software developers are waking up to the reality that they were always just holding business at ransom with their craft. Software is a grudge purchase for businesses. No one has ever cared about the craft except the craftsmen.
The parent comment’s take resonates with me and your response is exactly, what I assume, frustrates us both.
I’ve been at companies that were founded on sales of physical goods that literally had vendors pick them for vended goods because they found the software made purchasing more convenient - as in they literally had customers tell them they bought their physical goods because of their software. They didn’t need the software. The software wasn’t critical to acquiring goods. They could have purchased goods elsewhere of similar quality and often potentially lower cost. The customers cared about the software, the software (that was not part of their core business) drove the core business.
Edit: I originally had a lot more typed about how craft matters and not being strictly about perfection. It wasn’t necessary to drive the point, so I removed it. People do buy craft and many pay a hefty premium for better craft (in all aspects, both producer COGS and customer needs/desires).