> What they're saying is that it happens. Constantly.
And I’m personally not okay with that when it comes to the work I do.
It was a personally very eye opening experience to drive around with a guy who built homes. He'd point out every house he worked on, even ones 30 years ago and you could tell he was really, truly proud of his work and showing it off.
I realised if someone asked to see my past work it simply doesn't exist in any meaningful capacity. I take pride in my work, but it doesn't exist long term like his does. I want that same kind of satisfaction he had, but there's no way for me to get it. His work lasts a lifetime and makes the lives of people better, mine lasts a few years at best and often doesn't.
What I find interesting (and hard to reconcile) is how society loves to reward the intangible, derivative, overcomplicated stuff, and ignores the foundational things. The overused (and valid) example is "compare swe to teacher compensation".
In truly fractal fashion, this is also true within our own industry:
Build an engine capable of running an ML model very fast? Meh.
Take that, and layer an API on top, and charge $$ per image-generating call? Shut up and take my money.
I don't have an insightful mental model for how to deal with this, except to note that this pattern is prevalent in all human occupations -- the "higher up" you are in the "value chain", the more derived/bullshit-y your fundamental contribution to society is, and simultaneously, the more $$ you can make off of it.
And I’m personally not okay with that when it comes to the work I do.
It was a personally very eye opening experience to drive around with a guy who built homes. He'd point out every house he worked on, even ones 30 years ago and you could tell he was really, truly proud of his work and showing it off.
I realised if someone asked to see my past work it simply doesn't exist in any meaningful capacity. I take pride in my work, but it doesn't exist long term like his does. I want that same kind of satisfaction he had, but there's no way for me to get it. His work lasts a lifetime and makes the lives of people better, mine lasts a few years at best and often doesn't.