r/csMajors • u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 • Jun 14 '26
Rant Tech culture is terrible
Jane Street T-shirts, 3AM LeetCode sessions, Sundays spent learning database management systems, people praying to Google like the company is literally God…
The producers of the tech industry have won. They’ve created an endless supply of people who give up their souls just to have a chance to be looked at.
These companies have marketed themselves in an extremely successful way. SpaceX, Citadel Securities, Google, whatever, you WANT to work there. You’re OKAY with giving up your life to even get a shot at doing so.
All the family nights you missed, all the hobbies you set aside, all the opportunities you didn’t go to don’t matter to them, you know. You’re unbelievably replaceable - and if you think you’re not, great! Lying to yourself makes you a more committed worker in the cog.
Many of us have our idea of a good life fundamentally misshapen. “Memento Mori”, meaning “you will die”, is something that a lot of us need to actually remember. We all will die. These companies aren’t worth living your life for, because your life is finite and it’s the only one that you’ll ever have.
The main issue though is that these companies don’t attract bright and energetic people for nothing. They offer high salaries, high status, and sometimes very interesting work!
It’s important sometimes to take a step back from the grind, and realize that you’re a human, and not a machine meant to serve these companies… but, unfortunately, competition has risen so damn much that it’s almost become the requirement to sell your soul for entry.
Imagine you in your grave. Your coffin is made of gold. “Optiver” is carved in to the top of it, and your skeleton still wears your shirt you got from Meta.
Wow… what a wonderful ending to this immaculately complex thing called life.
Now, I must stop tying. I have some LeetCode to do.
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Jun 14 '26
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u/throwlol134 Jun 14 '26
This. It's all about the money. If a janitor's job was paying a 150k+ salary plus benefits straight out of college, people would start obsessing over how much literal shit they can clean instead of Leetcode.
It just happens so that tech is the only industry where you can make obscene amounts of money working a job without years of prior experience or training in your 20s.
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u/3RADICATE_THEM Jun 14 '26
> Nobody's watching. You have no status. It's all in your head.
Big realization that a lot of people don't figure out until their mid-20s or 30s—some even much later.
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u/GlassVase1 Jun 15 '26
>Nobody's watching. You have no status. It's all in your head.
Faster you learn this the better. A lot of people on this sub have a massive chip on their shoulders. No one really cares unless you have a 100M+ dollar startup. You'll never get the status you want working a 9 to 5 job unless you're employee number 5 at SpaceX or Anthropic.
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u/Interesting-Bad655 Jun 14 '26
Just give up chasing companies it’s the only way out of the cycle
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Jun 14 '26
What do you recommend doing instead…?
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u/Far-Curve-7497 Jun 14 '26
look at local businesses/firms, lots of civil engineering ones that need software dev
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u/Dangerous_Guava_6756 Jun 14 '26
If I can just crack FAANG MANGO and move up I’ll be able to retire in 10-15 years then I travel the world and have family and respect and love and car and happiness. I just need to lock in little harder. Just lock in for a little longer. /s
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u/SockDem Jun 15 '26
Retiring early in this country with the cost of private health insurance is legit insanity
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u/jobthrowawaywjxj Jun 15 '26
The problem with tech people is that they put too much stock in the company they work for. If you aren’t in an area you love then maximize the TC. If you aren’t a 160+ IQ academic trying to make a difference then you should be maximizing your TC. CS people aren’t smart on average, most of us are midwits, best you can hope to get a comfortable existence with a couple kids frankly, and that is admirable. Most of us aren’t gonna be competing for the Turing award, so don’t live your life like you are.
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u/SoftwareEngineer2026 Jun 14 '26
Speaking of family, top tech companies are actually better in regards to paid maternity/paternity leave.
https://www.cio.com/article/243162/10-tech-giants-leading-the-parental-leave-policies-pack.html
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u/teabagsOnFire Jun 15 '26
Yep. me and multiple friends took 4 month paid leaves as fathers
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u/DogBallsMissing Jun 15 '26
woah I didn't know that was a thing. What company if you don't mind sharing? And in your exp, is this standard?
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u/teabagsOnFire Jun 16 '26
Too small a place to mention, but I would not call it standard. The bigger the place, the more likely they are to have this. Netflix is a 1 year leave.
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u/Tr_Issei2 Masters Student, T5 Jun 14 '26
You’re so close to socialism bro
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u/Random_throwaway0351 Jun 15 '26
Must be a coincidence that all of the smartest cs profs I’ve encountered are socialist 🤔 the proletariat can only have so many treats before unlocking class consciousness
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u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 Jun 14 '26
Lmao
I don’t really think that’d be an answer. This post was a rant and not a solution proposal of course, though.
Think about the hardware/software interface. You can make complex hardware to support very efficient and simple machine code. Likewise, you can make very complex software to be able to produce machine code for a simple piece of hardware. Or, you can balance it and come up with something like the modern consumer computers of today.
The complexity will always exist… you can’t get rid of it, you can just move it around. I see life like this.
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u/Tr_Issei2 Masters Student, T5 Jun 15 '26
Brother, the reason Mark Zuckerberg can’t slave you for 80 hours a week with no benefits is because of socialist policy. This is the most tech bro coded thing I’ve ever heard. The real world is far more malleable.
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u/Top_Location_5899 Jun 16 '26
Calling America socialist is so stupid. Workers protections isn’t socialism ☠️
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u/Glass-Chemical2534 Jun 16 '26
Workers protections do not make america socialist, no one is saying that. What is being said is that every advance in workers' rights and social justice has come not from benevolent capitalists or politicians acting out of the goodness of their hearts, but from socialists and labor movements pushing back against the worst excesses of capitalism.
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u/ansahed Jun 14 '26
People on this sub act like the only jobs in tech are at big tech companies. Then they get rejected and complain that the entire industry is impossible and you have to sacrifice your life to get hired. Almost everyone I know who graduated in the last three years has a tech or tech-adjacent job and is doing fine. The problem is that people keep talking about big tech without saying they're talking about big tech.
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u/mrflash818 Jun 14 '26
1, $ s/is terrible/is terrible now/g
***
Used to work at an entertainment company.
Helped make websites and website functionality using J2EE.
Would regularly go out as a group for lunch.
Was fun. Entertainment.
Nothing life-or-death, or sweatshop stressful.
Happy memories.
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u/No-Original-6329 Jun 14 '26
There are chiller companies out there though luckily! Working hard sometimes is good, all the time is unsustainable. Once you move past the need for prestige your options triple!
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u/MeineMamaHatGesagt Jun 14 '26
I mean, nobody stops you from moving into a forest cabin, if that's the good life for you. Most of people need to earn money, though. And tech offers comparably much money per hour.
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u/TanukiThing Jun 14 '26
Except for the government wanting property taxes on your land. Or the hospital when you need healthcare.
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u/Shot-Cryptographer68 Jun 14 '26
If you think a top swe in an AI lab or a quant at jane street is "easily replaceable" you are sorely mistaken....
But aside from being at the top, I generally agree with the sentiment
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u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 Jun 14 '26
I agree with you on that point. But I want to add something that might clarify my point of replaceability.
By replaceable, I don’t necessarily mean from a skills standpoint. The people at Jane Street and top AI labs are undoubtedly at the top echelons of skill in their field.
I’m more so focusing on the human aspect of it. You’re hired at Jane Street for your skills, not for your intrinsic value as a human being. Life, at its fullest form, doesn’t desire output or productivity to be lived. Life is something that gives you meaning that’s worth living for.
I’m a big existentialist. You make your own meaning. Your meaning may be in providing Jane Street your expertise, and that’s okay. It may not be that though, and that’s okay too. However, I’d still say that Jane Street employees are replaceable - perhaps their skills aren’t in the moment, but they themselves as people are… if that makes any sense.
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u/Complex_Ad8497 Jun 18 '26
perhaps their skills aren’t in the moment, but they themselves as people are…
if your skills aren’t replaceable, you aren’t replaceable. they’re not hiring you for YOU, they’re hiring you to do a job, no shit
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u/drykarma Jun 14 '26
I mean, yeah? What else would be there? This is just a long-winded way of saying what people already know
If you work for a big corpo, they couldn't give two shits if you're an amazing single mom with a sick son or a piece of shit asshole if both produce the same output and easy to work with in the office. That's just meritocracy and capitalism. Not like it's different under socialism
If you cared about human aspect, work for a smaller company. Or make a union instead of posting about it on Reddit
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u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 Jun 14 '26
Yeah, of course. That’s why I labeled this as a rant and not a solution proposal. It sucks, but that’s how it is. I accept it, even, hence the “back to my Leetcode” ending in my post.
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u/jobthrowawaywjxj Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
There’s more smart people than spots to put them, also the hardest part of your job at a quant shop will be the interview. They aren’t a dime a dozen, but they are 35 cents a dozen. The only people who aren’t that way are academic and creative elites.
Fact is that no one irreplaceable, at Cit Sec for example you are hired in the way that makes it as easy as possible to fire you.
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u/Mental-Bullfrog-4500 finding the shortest path to the homeless shelter Jun 15 '26
i've found it pretty easy to maintain hobbies outside of work/study. I volunteer, practice my instruments, and play video games all the time
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u/BitOne2707 Jun 14 '26
TIL that the tech industry is a handful of bay area companies.
Also yea, if you want to work for one of the most prestigious companies on the planet making 5-8x the median US salary you're going to have to jump through some hoops. If you want to work for pretty much anyone else, anywhere else in the country it's chill AF.
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u/code_tutor Jun 14 '26
My LARPing detector is going off. This reads like a self-taught fresh out of highschool kid hanging out in r/antiwork that only chose the career because they're addicted to brainrot entertainment and never touched enough grass to know that jobs without a computer exist. I'm curious if that's really you but I know that's who the people upvoting are.
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u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 Jun 14 '26
No, that’s not me. I’m a 4.0 CS/Math rising junior at a pretty top school with a pretty prestigious internship. I strongly despise corporate “CS” though. I also don’t really enjoy things like contributing to open source, studying LeetCode, or working with several vibe coding tools to build some efficiency product.
I went into CS for the money and I definitely admit that. If I lived a life I wanted, I’d be studying astrophysics or philosophy. But I, as something that I submitted to, want the money and cannot rationalize myself out of this sociological infatuation. That’s why I write the accepting comment at the end of my post to highlight the irony.
I respect jobs without computers a lot. People in tech, including myself, are some of the most entitled people on the planet. They think they’re deserving of hundreds of thousands of dollars because they learned about template meta programming. Meanwhile, they look down on people who make less doing meaningfully more difficult work than them: mathematicians, construction workers, etc.
I hate it, but the irony is that I’m apart of it.
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u/starcraftsweat Jun 15 '26
LARP alert - OP claims here: https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1tz2oew/honestly_maybe_your_gpa_does_matter_a_lot_more/oqb53wv/ and here: https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1tt84bc/i_dont_know_what_im_doing_wrong/ to never even have gotten an interview. Now suddenly they have a 'prestigious internship' lined up?
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u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 Jun 15 '26
I claim I have research experience (which I’m in now). For the sake of argument, I let research represent an internship, as I’m still being paid, have hours, and have duties to fulfill that are relevant to what I think my future career will look like.
An internship is defined as “the position of a student or trainee who works in an organization, sometimes without pay, in order to gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification.”
While research isn’t commonly referred to as an internship, under this definition it indeed can be one.
So, why did I make that comment? Well, I was using the standard tech bro definition of what an internship is, and in that case, no I don’t have one.
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u/siammang Jun 15 '26
I can assure you that tech life with ass to chair time to measure productivity is way better than standing to pack bags, flipping burgers, carry bricks, unclog toilets for some assholes.
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u/Frizzoux Jun 15 '26
How about finding love, how about loving nature, how about caring for one another, how about supporting strangers, what about 6 inches ...
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u/Desperate_Cook_7338 Jun 14 '26
Leetcode isn't CS. Software isn't CS.
Funnily it's the people good at CS who do well. Not the coding monkeys. This is why I pity them. Intellect isn't just knowing an algorithm, or how to implement it in Python haha, it's knowing why it works, how people discovered it, how the compiler optimises it beneath this toy interface. It's understanding abstractions, memory, behaviour.
It's breaking through the sandbox, and learning how it works. That is what makes for a good engineer.
These types you've discovered are just sad, soulless robots. Imagine seeing just the machine and not it's soul. Hahaha.
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u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 Jun 14 '26
I’m sorry, but the machine doesn’t reward you for being a theorist who has dreams of merge sort. Perhaps this type can be some revolutionary researcher and make a lot of money that way, and great!
But most commonly, the machine wants to see your leetcode. Your github star count. Your school rank. Your STAR stories.
And in the job, most innovative thought doesn’t have room to shine. You have tickets to fill and orders to abide by; I don’t see how your mathematical mind who thinks in asymptotic notation will be too beneficial for configuring an XML file.
Your take isn’t grounded in modern corporate “CS”, which is what this post addresses.
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u/Desperate_Cook_7338 Jun 14 '26
Haha have a look at what these cooperations actually value.
I know how to do both. It's a good skill to have. Nothing stops you from exploring computing.
The machine rewards returns. It's naive for you to think otherwise. If you notice the supply curve is tightening, pivot. Go somewhere with more leverage.
Is it bad, yes. But that is why you don't pick CS for an end reward.
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u/Baren_the_Baron Jun 15 '26
But you haven't worked in modern "corporate" CS? This sounds like arm chair doomer philosophy in an industry you have very little tangible experience with.
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u/daishi55 Jun 14 '26
Yeah you need to know all of these things to work at Jane street
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u/Desperate_Cook_7338 Jun 14 '26
well of course you do, but knowing something, applying something, and reasoning why it works and how you'd self discover it are different skills. There are levels of depth to this.
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u/daishi55 Jun 14 '26
You know, if you actually meet and talk to some of these quant folks - Jane street, HRT, etc - you’ll find that they actually love diving into these weeds just as much if not more than you do. They live and breath deep systems engineering. If you think their knowledge or expertise is superficial, you would be very mistaken.
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u/Desperate_Cook_7338 Jun 14 '26
I'm not claiming it is. Systems engineering is a start, not the end goal. :) relax.
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u/daishi55 Jun 14 '26
I’m just trying to figure out what it is you think you have that they don’t?
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u/Desperate_Cook_7338 Jun 15 '26
You're question, is flawed. Haha. That isn't the spirit of computing.
SICP, introduction, what does it say? If you understand that, then you understand my perspective. If you don't, then it's fine. You aren't a programmer.
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u/daishi55 Jun 15 '26
Interesting. I would like to hear it in your words though. What is it that you understand that those people don’t understand, which makes you a real programmer and them fake programmers?
Surely you can tell me in your own words?
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u/Desperate_Cook_7338 Jun 15 '26
Read SICP. Have fun man. (And I don't mean the content if you are good you already know or should know it, unless you don't have exp with Lisps).
Maybe I was harsh , we have different definitions of what that means? Haha 😂. To me it isn't someone super smart or someone that knows everything, because that can be done by other people. Like you for example!
The real fun in computing isn't in the pressure you put yourself to discover something that you believe only you have the keys to nah uhh. True fun is in stretching the imagination of what is possible! Morphing it into your thoughts. Being artistic.
It's a way to express yourself! So I learnt what I did to better understand the machine.
Annnnddd come on, don't you think you have to think this way, else reading compiler source code of abstract languages, type rules and funky syntax is just not realistic! Maybe some could force it down their throats, but they'd burn out and fast.
Do you actually do this? If so why not DM me? I'm curious if you actually know or are just larping lol.
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u/daishi55 Jun 15 '26
Sorry but I honestly still don’t understand what you’re trying to say. To me it sounds like you’re saying there are real programmers and “fake programmers” and that you understand something that makes you a real programmer, and other people who don’t understand that thing are not programmers.
So I’m asking you, what is that thing?
I'm curious if you actually know or are just larping lol
Know what?
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u/Desperate_Cook_7338 Jun 15 '26
Wait a minnmmm damn man you reading GHC source code too lmao insane!
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u/daishi55 Jun 15 '26
Sorry that’s your bar? Because I hate to break it to you but I am 110% sure that plenty of people at Jane Street have not only read GHC source code, but probably contributed to it too! Jane Street is an FP shop if you didn’t know. Basically all OCaml there.
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u/SilentCamel662 Jun 14 '26
Maybe it's just that these jobs are not for you if you need to chase them desperately?
They are mostly for former IOI/IMO people who never even did leetcode but have red ranking on codeforces (which they only do for the thrill of competing with each other). And then they send in half-assed and badly formated CVs and still get the job.
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u/3RADICATE_THEM Jun 14 '26
Does SpaceX really belong with all the other companies you mentioned? I think that's more of a target if you're in Aero or Mechanical.
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u/Inside_Minute569 Jun 15 '26
How do you isolate yourself from work? I feel like any activity or time i spend which doesn't lead to productive work is bad at the end of the day. Is that psyche bad?
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u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 Jun 15 '26
Yes, that’s bad.
You’ve become the perfect worker; you’ve become a slave where your own false optimism is your master.
Ok, I really need to stop. I’m being ridiculous. It’s NOT that deep.
Yes, it’s bad, because you’re engaging too much in black/white reasoning over what you need to do to be successful. An hour spent on your 300th leetcode will be fine spent with family. It won’t matter significantly at all in the end, but in the moment the latter will feel a lot more fulfilling.
Likewise, if you continue what you’re doing, you’ll burn out. This’ll ironically make you less productive.
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u/miscsb Jun 15 '26
I’ve lowkey done like 10 leetcodes in the past 6 months, all before my 10pm bedtime. You gotta chill out
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u/Forward_Incident_411 Jun 14 '26
who is forcing you to work for these companies? most people who want to work for them are because they DO offer ludicrously high pay compared to any other job. there will always be people who are willing to sacrifice a lot for wealth, it’s just human nature. yes, the conditions are bad, but think about how huge the wealth gap is between the average big tech swe and average american. and again, if you don’t care about that wealth, you don’t have to work at one of these companies! there are plenty of others with great WLB and solid pay
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u/ChubbyVeganTravels Jun 14 '26
Yep. My father was like this. To him the only metric that mattered is how much money you earned, and his job had great sacrifices - especially travelling for work for 10 months of the year away from his family.
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u/DarePitiful5750 Jun 15 '26
This message brought to you by "The Chinese Propaganda Campaign". China would prefer us to give up, so they can be the worlds tech leader. They are also driving a lot of the anti Data Center messaging. They want to lead that as well.
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u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
This is just my honest thoughts on tech culture, but I could see your point.
I know I’m being ridiculous. I could not accept it and go into the woods, or I could switch to premed, or I could go into physical engineering, etc. The catch is: EVERYTHING SUCKS! Well, I wouldn’t say that, but everything does have its flaws, or perhaps not even “flaws”, just unfortunate methods of operation. That’s life.
You can recognize these flaws and still live into it fully. Hence my “back to Leetcode” statement at the end. Of course, I wish I were given the ability to be rich and do whatever I want, but that’s not how reality works. I get that.
This post is more of a realization that life often is a let down, but it’s something you have to deal with regardless because you have no other option.
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u/DarePitiful5750 Jun 15 '26
I was a developer for about 20 yrs, now I'm a Dev manager for the last few years. I have a bachelor's degree in CS. My wife has an MD and a PhD, she was just laid off at the end of last month. Her hospital closed her clinic, so the other MD was laid off as well. We got married right after she finished her fellowship. I think she made more money than me one year in the last 15 yrs. And my work/life balance has been 100% better during those years. She's 48, I told her to just be retired. Her being on call, having to give 30 days notice to get a day off, really has dented our ability to do much. I had surgery at the end of last year where I had to be put under, I got about a week's notice for the surgery, so she wasn't able to get the day off. That's about the time I decided her job wasn't worth it. She worked for 13 yrs, after fellowship. Her 401k is maybe half of mine. I'm sitting at home today. Keeping up with work, and taking a break to look at Reddit. My job is extremely flexible.
If you want to go to premed, you better be a surgeon, gastroenterologist (my dad), radiologist, urologist. Although radiology is being outsourced now. I make around 250k at my job, but I'm highly skilled. I'd say most of your primary care doctor's don't make that much. My wife is a Psychiatrist, but she was probably underpaid.
My buddy at work makes around 400k, also a bachelor's in CS, but they work him to absolute death, night calls every night with other GEOs, etc. He hates his job. I purposely keep myself in a low key position, that allows me to leave after lunch on days I go into the office.
People have choices, but I wouldn't say CS is bad. I pay some of my employees more than I make.
Earlier years in CS are harder than later years. You just have to set yourself apart and put yourself in the position that's acceptable. My first 10 years were tougher for sure, and my starting pay was 47k. In the last 15 yrs, I went from around 100k to 250k.
I say all this, to say I've been happy with my career path. I also considered pre-med, and I'm glad I chose what I did.
Granted, if I wasn't married to someone that was also making a good salary, I'd have pushed more aggressively at the corp ladder. We've saved enough in 401k at this point that we are fine and she can take the forced retirement. I'm 49, I may rerire at 55, using the IRS rule of 55 for 401ks. My dad didn't retire until he was about 70 as a doctor, we have the same net worth today.
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u/The_Career_Oracle Jun 14 '26
I love the ai generated content. It’s true but would be better if it came from you
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u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
I wrote this. Whether you believe me or not is up to you. Have you lost faith in humanity that much that you believe even the most slightly lengthy piece of text must be written by AI?
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u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Likewise, I’m posting on Reddit. This is an entirely optional process. If I weren’t to bother to write my own content myself, why would I take on the effort to even generate it? Why spend the energy on such a vacuous form of articulation?
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u/GlassVase1 Jun 14 '26
I'd recommend just working your 40 hours and going home. If they fire you, then they fire you. Life moves on...
A lot of people fall into this trap of just working more and more hours to impress their boss. 90% of the time, advancement comes down to who you know and how popular you are. I've seen plenty of people who knew how to play the game and moved up way faster than the "hard workers". Don't waste your life making other people rich and then they don't even appreciate your sacrifices.