I regularly did some work at a relatively important law firm that still used Lotus Notes, the old one and it somehow tied into email and other things. It was so deeply rooted it couldn't be replaced without serious disruptions but I don't know anything about Lotus. The owner of the firm was a complete bitch that would stomp everyone into the ground and she was also super nice. It all depended on if it was work, or lunch, or work, or after work. It was on and off. She was very similar to a Gordon Ramsay type of person actually. I guess you have to be like that.
I swear the Microsoft design department is staffed by absolute mongoloids. We've gone nowhere UI wise in almost 20 years. XP was genuinelly a better user experience than any of the latest Windows.
The prevailing view on how Windows 10's UI was designed and implemented is that two different factors royally fucked things up.
TL;DR: Boomer management did all the designs themselves using Powerpoint (I'm not even joking) and ordered the developers to follow the designs exactly. Because of rampant brain drain at Microsoft over the years, they didn't really have anyone left who knew how the old control panel UIs (some dating all the way back to Windows NT 4.0) even worked, much less modify them to accommodate the new designs. These two factors required building yet another god damn UI API (Microsoft has produced like 20 of the fucking things over Windows' lifetime, all mutually incompatible and each with different looks from the others) to make it look right. Their pajeet developers couldn't make it all work well enough to migrate all the old control panels to it in time for launch, so we got this schizophrenic mishmash of system dialogs and control panels.
First, management decided to take a much more direct role in deciding how things should look (control panels are the most obvious victim of this interference), making the mockups themselves then demanding that the developers implement them exactly as shown with no deviation. The trouble is those managers were all fucking boomers who insisted on doing all the mockups in Powerpoint yet didn't understand how to use their own product, so everything they churned out and mandated was the monochrome, flat, disorganized, cluttered and poorly thought out garbage we see in the finished product.
Second, they've suffered some massive brain drain over the past decade, and (just like Google, which I'll revisit later in this reply) they're running out of people who know how the "older" stuff even works. Basic stuff like how to add a dropdown widget to an existing "old-style" control panel or dialog window. There are leaked and/or anonymous chats where former MS developers have openly admitted that entire teams lack basic working knowledge of core Windows UI APIs, and can only implement changes to existing components (like adding a new button or checkbox to an existing dialog or panel -- we're talking simple stuff like dropdowns and combo boxes) by copying and pasting the code for an already working widget on the component.
In fairness to those developers, Windows' UI API options Microsoft provides are a fucking piecemeal mess. Win32 (the oldest "native" low-level UI API), GDI, WinForms, MFC, WPF, XAML, UWP, WTL, ActiveX, ATL, OLE+OCX, VBX and Windows DNA were all released at different points of Microsoft's history. They each work differently (some are C/C++ libraries with lots of macro hackery, some are .NET abominations, some tried to mix & match code, XML and text, and all of them have different APIs with different programming paradigms). They're rarely directly compatible with each other, which is a real shame since although there's lots of overlap for "basic" interface elements (checkboxes, buttons, text fields, etc.) across them all, each one also provides some fancy unique things that the others don't.
They also each have their own look and feel. Since they were developed at different stages of Windows' development, some support theming, skinning, adjustable styles, reactive layouts, high-DPI displays, font smoothing and so on, while others don't. This leads to programs and features all looking either slightly or radically different, even when it comes to stuff that comes with Windows.
Example: on Windows 10, press [Win]-[R] then type "services.msc" and hit [enter]. That's the "classic" Services panel, introduced in Windows NT 4.0, as part of the Microsoft Management Console (yet another "framework" implementing wrappers around "native" GUI elements). Even in the newest Windows builds, this old dinosaur is still present and remains the only control panel for a good number of Windows settings. It doesn't support high-DPI displays, text scaling or even cleartype, so it tends to look blurry on modern systems.
Microsoft's solution throughout its lifespan when it encounters problems with its own shitty Windows APIs has been to just develop a new one using then-current practices and technologies and deprecate the old one. They provide backwards-compatibility by leaving the old API completely in place (warts and all) and calling the new one something different, with different library names, entry points and resources. It's the same for all the UI APIs.
The trouble is that they don't port all the old controls when they make a new API (or reimplement them), so there's stuff the old API can do that the new one can't. Maybe it's a rarely-used UI widget, or even a common one they decided they just didn't like and didn't want to replicate or redesign in the new API. Or they just can't figure out how it worked or how to build a clean-room reimplementation of it. So it just gets left out and whatever new stuff wants to use it is just shit out of luck.
Example: the "new" style Windows control panels (built with the totally-unique-and-creatively-named "Windows UI" part of UWP) very obviously lack some very basic dialog layout features that older UI APIs had like tabs, modal popups, columns, tables, non-collapsed lists (i.e. non-dropdown multiple choice selection without radio buttons), and so on. They can't produce tight, compact and smart layouts. They all look like very barebones web 1.0 pages designed for mobile (they actually are, but that's a different issue). Any time any kind of advanced interface is needed, the new panels just launch a "legacy" control panel to handle it. The two separate "styles" of control panel also never talk to each other in any way.
Now imagine being told to go write a new control panel. Which of these fucking garbage APIs are you going to use to do it? Or, more realistically, which one are they going to mandate you use, and how much pain will it involve (especially if the design mandates a new kind of control widget the API doesn't provide natively)?
The result is Windows 10's UI confused, broken jumble of old and new UI elements where the new UI elements can't do as much as the old UI elements, so settings and controls that used to live in a single compact, reasonably-well organized (or at least familiar) dialogs and panels are now scattered across multiple flat "pages" with fucking scrollbars.
As a side note, if you're writing a proper desktop app in C/C++/C# instead of using a "web browser can make desktop app too!" tool like Electron, first of all bless you for making that wise choice, and second, if you need a GUI for it, use Qt. It's native C++, loaded with features, very high performance, stable, cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac), has lots of language bindings, has a mobile version for native mobile apps, etc. Good stuff, and it spares you the misery of sifting through the Windows UI API landfill.
Times New Roman is the patrician's choice for serif fonts, especially in print. There's nothing better for any kind of written correspondence that's meant to be taken seriously, like legal documents, agreements and contracts, notices, that sort of thing. It's good for books too, though I'll admit I have a fondness for Palatino/Palladio in technical books. Whatever asshole at Microsoft decided to make that "Calibri" garbage the default font in Word has singlehandedly cursed the world with amateurish looking correspondence.
I don't really like shopping but like a lot of people find myself mindlessly browsing Amazon recently during COVID lockdown. Holy shit Amazon is awful and I don't remember it being this bad a few years back.
Their search engine is hot garbage. It commits the three cardinal sins of search: it returns results you didn't ask for (i.e. they don't match any search terms you entered), it returns results you explicitly told it to to exclude (i.e. negate operators are only "suggestions") and it routinely fails to return relevant results even though they match your search terms. It's aggravating.
I heard that's why Google has gone on a killing spree in recent years against their products and services. All the people who created the were fired in favor of diversity hires and now no one knows how to maintain them.
I cant wait for this to become more widespread. It reminds me of various sci fi settings where the character will be on a spaceship, something made by humans, and yet it's falling apart as no one knows how it works anymore.
The brain drain at Google is real. They're losing competent developers and managers by attrition (i.e. scaring them off with their endless diversity hires, asinine political wanking and well-documented internal witch hunts against wrong-thinkers) and hostile action (the afore-mentioned witch hunts) and they're having a massive problem attracting new talent because of that increasingly negative reputation, not to mention grumblings of a very cult-like corporate culture that quietly filters out "family men" during interviews because they expect 80+ hour work weeks from their employees and such.
Who in their right mind would actually want to work in an environment like that, where you're discouraged from having a social life outside work, subjected to endless political sperging from leadership all the way down to the grunts, have to walk on eggshells to avoid offending snowflake coworkers and keep your powerlevel to yourself lest you become the subject of a witch hunt? All that plus the outrageous cost of living in California, and Silicon Valley in particular and the batshit politics of the state in general? Even if they're offering very competitive pay and benefits, I doubt it's enough anymore to convince someone to put up with their bullshit.
I hate the trend of aggressive marketing. One could argue that it's probably the same shit and I'm just a Zoomennial bitching about modern problems. I'll accept that criticism, but it feels like advertisements have slowly gotten more aggressive as I've grown up.
I despise advertising in all its forms and firmly believe it's the second worst "innovation" in the history of mankind (right behind social media). It's literally an entire industry built around the concept of manipulating people into buying things they otherwise wouldn't. Essentially just commercial propaganda. But I definitely agree that it's gotten much worse in the past ten years.
And speaking of "aggressive marketing" -- all telemarketers must hang. Those fucking car warranty calls are so god damned irritating and persistent. Every call comes from a different phone number from a local area code (so they can't really be effectively blocked), they call at least twice every weekday, always leave a voicemail (with varying content each time) and there's no apparent way to stop the pricks.
There's got to be some combination of regulatory bitch-slapping available to put the assholes out of business. It's absurd that the telecoms enable this shit with trivial-to-spoof caller ID and almost-too-cheap-to-meter VoIP and DID service, and it's equally absurd that the FCC or FTC don't clamp down on these shitty companies. I'm [this] close to advocating for companies who engage telemarketers to peddle their wares should be held accountable for the telemarketers' misbehavior. And regulators really do need to start classifying telemarketing calls as nuisance calls. It's already illegal to harass people by phone, so why the fuck do these cunts get away with calling people dozens or hundreds of times?
The prevailing view on how Windows 10's UI was designed and implemented is that two different factors royally fucked things up.
TL;DR: Boomer management did all the designs themselves using Powerpoint (I'm not even joking) and ordered the developers to follow the designs exactly. Because of rampant brain drain at Microsoft over the years, they didn't really have anyone left who knew how the old control panel UIs (some dating all the way back to Windows NT 4.0) even worked, much less modify them to accommodate the new designs. These two factors required building yet another god damn UI API (Microsoft has produced like 20 of the fucking things over Windows' lifetime, all mutually incompatible and each with different looks from the others) to make it look right. Their pajeet developers couldn't make it all work well enough to migrate all the old control panels to it in time for launch, so we got this schizophrenic mishmash of system dialogs and control panels.
First, management decided to take a much more direct role in deciding how things should look (control panels are the most obvious victim of this interference), making the mockups themselves then demanding that the developers implement them exactly as shown with no deviation. The trouble is those managers were all fucking boomers who insisted on doing all the mockups in Powerpoint yet didn't understand how to use their own product, so everything they churned out and mandated was the monochrome, flat, disorganized, cluttered and poorly thought out garbage we see in the finished product.
Second, they've suffered some massive brain drain over the past decade, and (just like Google, which I'll revisit later in this reply) they're running out of people who know how the "older" stuff even works. Basic stuff like how to add a dropdown widget to an existing "old-style" control panel or dialog window. There are leaked and/or anonymous chats where former MS developers have openly admitted that entire teams lack basic working knowledge of core Windows UI APIs, and can only implement changes to existing components (like adding a new button or checkbox to an existing dialog or panel -- we're talking simple stuff like dropdowns and combo boxes) by copying and pasting the code for an already working widget on the component.
In fairness to those developers, Windows' UI API options Microsoft provides are a fucking piecemeal mess. Win32 (the oldest "native" low-level UI API), GDI, WinForms, MFC, WPF, XAML, UWP, WTL, ActiveX, ATL, OLE+OCX, VBX and Windows DNA were all released at different points of Microsoft's history. They each work differently (some are C/C++ libraries with lots of macro hackery, some are .NET abominations, some tried to mix & match code, XML and text, and all of them have different APIs with different programming paradigms). They're rarely directly compatible with each other, which is a real shame since although there's lots of overlap for "basic" interface elements (checkboxes, buttons, text fields, etc.) across them all, each one also provides some fancy unique things that the others don't.
They also each have their own look and feel. Since they were developed at different stages of Windows' development, some support theming, skinning, adjustable styles, reactive layouts, high-DPI displays, font smoothing and so on, while others don't. This leads to programs and features all looking either slightly or radically different, even when it comes to stuff that comes with Windows.
Example: on Windows 10, press [Win]-[R] then type "services.msc" and hit [enter]. That's the "classic" Services panel, introduced in Windows NT 4.0, as part of the Microsoft Management Console (yet another "framework" implementing wrappers around "native" GUI elements). Even in the newest Windows builds, this old dinosaur is still present and remains the only control panel for a good number of Windows settings. It doesn't support high-DPI displays, text scaling or even cleartype, so it tends to look blurry on modern systems.
Microsoft's solution throughout its lifespan when it encounters problems with its own shitty Windows APIs has been to just develop a new one using then-current practices and technologies and deprecate the old one. They provide backwards-compatibility by leaving the old API completely in place (warts and all) and calling the new one something different, with different library names, entry points and resources. It's the same for all the UI APIs.
The trouble is that they don't port all the old controls when they make a new API (or reimplement them), so there's stuff the old API can do that the new one can't. Maybe it's a rarely-used UI widget, or even a common one they decided they just didn't like and didn't want to replicate or redesign in the new API. Or they just can't figure out how it worked or how to build a clean-room reimplementation of it. So it just gets left out and whatever new stuff wants to use it is just shit out of luck.
Example: the "new" style Windows control panels (built with the totally-unique-and-creatively-named "Windows UI" part of UWP) very obviously lack some very basic dialog layout features that older UI APIs had like tabs, modal popups, columns, tables, non-collapsed lists (i.e. non-dropdown multiple choice selection without radio buttons), and so on. They can't produce tight, compact and smart layouts. They all look like very barebones web 1.0 pages designed for mobile (they actually are, but that's a different issue). Any time any kind of advanced interface is needed, the new panels just launch a "legacy" control panel to handle it. The two separate "styles" of control panel also never talk to each other in any way.
Now imagine being told to go write a new control panel. Which of these fucking garbage APIs are you going to use to do it? Or, more realistically, which one are they going to mandate you use, and how much pain will it involve (especially if the design mandates a new kind of control widget the API doesn't provide natively)?
The result is Windows 10's UI confused, broken jumble of old and new UI elements where the new UI elements can't do as much as the old UI elements, so settings and controls that used to live in a single compact, reasonably-well organized (or at least familiar) dialogs and panels are now scattered across multiple flat "pages" with fucking scrollbars.
As a side note, if you're writing a proper desktop app in C/C++/C# instead of using a "web browser can make desktop app too!" tool like Electron, first of all bless you for making that wise choice, and second, if you need a GUI for it, use Qt. It's native C++, loaded with features, very high performance, stable, cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac), has lots of language bindings, has a mobile version for native mobile apps, etc. Good stuff, and it spares you the misery of sifting through the Windows UI API landfill.
Times New Roman is the patrician's choice for serif fonts, especially in print. There's nothing better for any kind of written correspondence that's meant to be taken seriously, like legal documents, agreements and contracts, notices, that sort of thing. It's good for books too, though I'll admit I have a fondness for Palatino/Palladio in technical books. Whatever asshole at Microsoft decided to make that "Calibri" garbage the default font in Word has singlehandedly cursed the world with amateurish looking correspondence.
Their search engine is hot garbage. It commits the three cardinal sins of search: it returns results you didn't ask for (i.e. they don't match any search terms you entered), it returns results you explicitly told it to to exclude (i.e. negate operators are only "suggestions") and it routinely fails to return relevant results even though they match your search terms. It's aggravating.
The brain drain at Google is real. They're losing competent developers and managers by attrition (i.e. scaring them off with their endless diversity hires, asinine political wanking and well-documented internal witch hunts against wrong-thinkers) and hostile action (the afore-mentioned witch hunts) and they're having a massive problem attracting new talent because of that increasingly negative reputation, not to mention grumblings of a very cult-like corporate culture that quietly filters out "family men" during interviews because they expect 80+ hour work weeks from their employees and such.
Who in their right mind would actually want to work in an environment like that, where you're discouraged from having a social life outside work, subjected to endless political sperging from leadership all the way down to the grunts, have to walk on eggshells to avoid offending snowflake coworkers and keep your powerlevel to yourself lest you become the subject of a witch hunt? All that plus the outrageous cost of living in California, and Silicon Valley in particular and the batshit politics of the state in general? Even if they're offering very competitive pay and benefits, I doubt it's enough anymore to convince someone to put up with their bullshit.
I despise advertising in all its forms and firmly believe it's the second worst "innovation" in the history of mankind (right behind social media). It's literally an entire industry built around the concept of manipulating people into buying things they otherwise wouldn't. Essentially just commercial propaganda. But I definitely agree that it's gotten much worse in the past ten years.
And speaking of "aggressive marketing" -- all telemarketers must hang. Those fucking car warranty calls are so god damned irritating and persistent. Every call comes from a different phone number from a local area code (so they can't really be effectively blocked), they call at least twice every weekday, always leave a voicemail (with varying content each time) and there's no apparent way to stop the pricks.
There's got to be some combination of regulatory bitch-slapping available to put the assholes out of business. It's absurd that the telecoms enable this shit with trivial-to-spoof caller ID and almost-too-cheap-to-meter VoIP and DID service, and it's equally absurd that the FCC or FTC don't clamp down on these shitty companies. I'm [this] close to advocating for companies who engage telemarketers to peddle their wares should be held accountable for the telemarketers' misbehavior. And regulators really do need to start classifying telemarketing calls as nuisance calls. It's already illegal to harass people by phone, so why the fuck do these cunts get away with calling people dozens or hundreds of times?
I don't know how you know all this shit or follow it, but if the brain drain is real in those companies, where the fuck is it going? Because I'm not really seeing anything fill the void as these huge brands get worse.
Startups. And mid sized companies you never hear about because they do actual work and make their money by selling products, rather than scamming investors. And, of course, straight out off the tech industry, because everybody with a working brain can find something better to do with their time than working in tech.
Startups. And mid sized companies you never hear about because they do actual work and make their money by selling products, rather than scamming investors. And, of course, straight out off the tech industry, because everybody with a working brain can find something better to do with their time than working in tech.
But if they make good products how don't we hear about them? Thats my issue, there isn't anything getting better despite the big companies getting worse.
Tech is better than most fields. I'm not in tech, but they are in higher demand than most fields and probably have better wages. Fuck they could even work from home to avoid spending money on stupidly high living expenses. Add in how everything is being automated, meaning everything needs to have software running, and I think that it's probably one of the better fields to be in. I know google and others tried to flood tech with "learn to code" bs, but even before covid it seemed tech was safer than most jobs.
But if they make good products how don't we hear about them? Thats my issue, there isn't anything getting better despite the big companies getting worse.
They may not be making consumer-oriented products or providing consumer-oriented services. Those are hard markets to penetrate. Just imagine someone trying to build a Youtube, Twitter or Facebook competitor. For one thing "Big Tech" loves to crush any and all comers with open censorship (app store bans, etc.), media smears ("lol they're not-sees!") and tortious interference ("hey banking industry and Visa/MC, mind completely banning these guys for us plz kthxbye!"), and for another, it's fucking expensive and absurdly hard to get "momentum" going enough to gain a good following enough to keep things afloat.
Why bother with all that bullshit as a startup or even a mid-sized business when you can build some niche thing you can find buyers for and keep steady business going with? Business-to-business work can be insanely lucrative if you're not directly competing with some industry giant for big fish clients.
But if they make good products how don't we hear about them? Thats my issue, there isn't anything getting better despite the big companies getting worse.
Tech is better than most fields. I'm not in tech, but they are in higher demand than most fields and probably have better wages. Fuck they could even work from home to avoid spending money on stupidly high living expenses. Add in how everything is being automated, meaning everything needs to have software running, and I think that it's probably one of the better fields to be in. I know google and others tried to flood tech with "learn to code" bs, but even before covid it seemed tech was safer than most jobs.
If you lived in a society, Eric Schmidt would have his door kicked in in the middle of the night, and he would be dragged out in his underwear to an uncertain fate.
But if they make good products how don't we hear about them? Thats my issue, there isn't anything getting better despite the big companies getting worse.
Tech is better than most fields. I'm not in tech, but they are in higher demand than most fields and probably have better wages. Fuck they could even work from home to avoid spending money on stupidly high living expenses. Add in how everything is being automated, meaning everything needs to have software running, and I think that it's probably one of the better fields to be in. I know google and others tried to flood tech with "learn to code" bs, but even before covid it seemed tech was safer than most jobs.
This is an issue of "The grass is greener on the other side"
1) IT Admin (system, network, desktop, etc) and programing: Often gets outsourced to Pajeed who can't "do the needful" and doesn't actually have the credentials claimed.
2) HR and beancounters fuck over IT all they can HR will demand BA/BS and 4+ years experence for entry level help desk for min wage or slightly above, (honestly most IT jobs don't need a degree) along with 5+ Years experence in a tech that has only been out to the public for 3 years or less. Bean counters (accounting and MBAs/C levels) only sees IT as a cost center even when their operation is 100% dependent on the IT back bone (computers, servers, networking, databases, etc)
3) A lot of IT (non programming) people who don't work for a fortune 500 often are on call 24/7 365 as the solo or part of a small team that is stretched thin and all are burnt out because they don't get a break even when on holidays/vacation.
4) People assume "Oh you're IT you must be able to do x y z" (this includes HR and companies), IT is more like medicine where you have highly focused specialties and you don't want your Family Doctor giving you brain surgery, and you don't want your brain surgeon to be your Family Doctor. Both are skilled yes but in different things, both should be able to do the basics (CPR, first aid, etc) which is fine when shit hits the fan but after that they won't do well out side of their field.
5) Programming (and computer logic in general which is required in all fields) is different from human logic. If I tell you to "Go to the store and get some milk if they have eggs get a dozen", a computer will return with 12 gallons of milk, where as a person would return with a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. This logic most people have a hard time understanding and won't do well with. There is a reason why jouralists "telling coal miners to learn to 'code'" (note coding and programing are two different things, and the journalists meant programing) didn't go over too well.
I generally hated this because it made using the YouTube app on my phone a nightmare when I just wanted to lay in bed and look at videos, but last year was the absolute worst because that was when YouTube bombarded me with goddamn political ads. And it was nonstop too, every fucking video would have one or two ads dedicated to the presidential election or whatever senator was running, and even when I wasn't looking at videos I'd get banner ads showing the same thing. It was inescapable on most websites, sure, but YouTube was the only one I used consistently and I was sick to death of it long before Election Day.
Really, I think what disgusts me about last year was that it took your overall point about advertisements and added the ever-annoying topic that is politics. If last year was bad, I dread to think what will happen during the next election when the advertisements inevitably ramp up again and make 2020 look like a joke.
hate the trend of aggressive marketing. One could argue that it's probably the same shit and I'm just a Zoomennial bitching about modern problems. I'll accept that criticism, but it feels like advertisements have slowly gotten more aggressive as I've grown up.
What I hate in terms of aggressive marketing is when you call customer service for your credit card, telephone, etc. about a bill question and they try to upsell you products/services you neither want nor need. Bonus points if they act offended when you tell them no. If I wanted new products or services, I'd have called that particular department.
And speaking of "aggressive marketing" -- all telemarketers must hang. Those fucking car warranty calls are so god damned irritating and persistent. Every call comes from a different phone number from a local area code (so they can't really be effectively blocked), they call at least twice every weekday, always leave a voicemail (with varying content each time) and there's no apparent way to stop the pricks.
99% of my telemarketing calls don't even result in a voice mail or message on an answering machine. At my long-time job, I've noticed the second line gets robocallers that direct-dial it after hours or first thing in the morning and continue to call again at the same time daily 5-10 more times before giving up because nobody is there to answer the call at that time.
Unfortunately, a lot of the calls come from foreign countries (especially southeast Asia). So, the US lacks jurisdiction. For telemarketing companies that work within the US and actually get caught and fined, the company execs simply claim they can't pay the fine to get it reduced or eliminated and they form new companies so that they can start the telemarketing cycle all over again.
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I hate the fact Windows 10 updates take so long to install (and sometimes download) compared to previous versions' updates.
The phone companies offering the ability to fake your phone number are in the US' jurisdiction though. Just cracking down on that one "feature" would help things considerably.
If you’re on Android, there’s modded apps you can download that gives you the same functionality. If you have an iPhone, you can pay $20 for a service that lets you install third party apps, one of them being a modded YouTube with ads blocked.
Times New Roman is the patrician's choice for serif fonts, especially in print. There's nothing better for any kind of written correspondence that's meant to be taken seriously, like legal documents, agreements and contracts, notices, that sort of thing. It's good for books too, though I'll admit I have a fondness for Palatino/Palladio in technical books. Whatever asshole at Microsoft decided to make that "Calibri" garbage the default font in Word has singlehandedly cursed the world with amateurish looking correspondence.
I had a friend who's grandfather worked all his life as a typesetter. He wrote by hand in Times New Roman just out of habit.
I really dislike the "as part of our blah blah we might call you back to let you rate your experience". If it was a phone sex line, fine that makes sense I guess, if it's the business support at a telecom giant that I call up to five times each day and it was a 100% chance that for each call I got a robo-survey from a protected number at a random time, then go to hell. A lot of the people I worked for had blocked("secret") numbers so I always had to answer, just in case.
99% of my telemarketing calls don't even result in a voice mail or message on an answering machine. At my long-time job, I've noticed the second line gets robocallers that direct-dial it after hours or first thing in the morning and continue to call again at the same time daily 5-10 more times before giving up because nobody is there to answer the call at that time.
But if they make good products how don't we hear about them? Thats my issue, there isn't anything getting better despite the big companies getting worse.
Tech is better than most fields. I'm not in tech, but they are in higher demand than most fields and probably have better wages. Fuck they could even work from home to avoid spending money on stupidly high living expenses. Add in how everything is being automated, meaning everything needs to have software running, and I think that it's probably one of the better fields to be in. I know google and others tried to flood tech with "learn to code" bs, but even before covid it seemed tech was safer than most jobs.
They may not be making consumer-oriented products or providing consumer-oriented services. Those are hard markets to penetrate. Just imagine someone trying to build a Youtube, Twitter or Facebook competitor. For one thing "Big Tech" loves to crush any and all comers with open censorship (app store bans, etc.), media smears ("lol they're not-sees!") and tortious interference ("hey banking industry and Visa/MC, mind completely banning these guys for us plz kthxbye!"), and for another, it's fucking expensive and absurdly hard to get "momentum" going enough to gain a good following enough to keep things afloat.
Why bother with all that bullshit as a startup or even a mid-sized business when you can build some niche thing you can find buyers for and keep steady business going with? Business-to-business work can be insanely lucrative if you're not directly competing with some industry giant for big fish clients.
In my experience, a lot of the talented guys ended up in management/senior lead devs for startups and mid-sized companies that churn out enterprise software. Think SAP, or planning software or even one of those highly niche things like embedded software in your fridge. Not only is the pay and work-life balance better, you get to escape the toxic shittery surrounding all these super-mega tech companies.
The phone companies offering the ability to fake your phone number are in the US' jurisdiction though. Just cracking down on that one "feature" would help things considerably.
I just don't answer calls from unrecognized numbers, and my phone's pretty good at flagging "spam" calls anyway. I still think calling one number 30+ times in a month with a cold-call sales pitch should be actionable in some way.
