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Ask HN: Anyone else tired of working in tech?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else tired of working in tech?

#31

Post by keiferski »

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #26

No because I used to work at McDonald's and loading trailers from warehouses before working in tech. That gave me perspective that lasts even to this day. I'm not saying this is true of OP but I've met a few people who constantly complained about working in tech and one thing I noticed is a lot of them never worked a really shitty/physical job. It blew my mind in university meeting people who's first ever job was a s…

Just a counter anecdote:

I worked in a bakery / dessert place for 4+ years making barely above minimum wage. 8-12 hours a day on my feet, making dough, talking to customers, etc.

I didn’t absolutely love the job at the time, but I miss the realness of it constantly. Making a real piece of food, talking to real people. The tech industry increasingly seems obsessed with making everything as fake as possible, and I can relate to OP on multiple levels.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else tired of working in tech?

#32

Post by fuzzfactor »

codevark wrote: post #5

I'm tired of working in tech but fortunately (or not) it's my hobby so even if I retired I would still be doing all the techy things at home on my 17 'puters (loose count). Plus being the IT Guy for several extended families. I'm live. I'm nationwide. But, I do plan to do more art, music, gardening, etc.

fyi it seems like all your other comments are shadowbanned?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else tired of working in tech?

#33

Post by fuzzfactor »

disillussioned wrote: post #18
SolubleSnake wrote: post #9

I now see groups of people just meandering between buzzwords and sort of calling it a career. Honestly I know people who were 'crypto developers' 3 years ago who are now 'senior AI implementation architects' and similar..and they have a 'bootcamp' etc....I am a software engineer who qualified in cs but after working around engineering and manufacturing a lot I'm also qualified in CAD...thinking to get into more physi…

One thing I find distressing is how useless most of the knowledge I've accumulated is! I use to try to refresh my knowledge of things learned long ago, once or twice a year, but that's pointless now: everything is a prompt away. All that, plus the skeleton crew due to my company's offshoring is making me jaded.

>One thing I find distressing is how useless most of the knowledge I've accumulated is!

When I was still a teenager I just had to have it be the complete opposite way.

Years later I could see it coming first hand, back in the early '80's after PCs came out and the industry grew so fast it sucked the vast majority of technical minds away from natural science like never before.

I already knew as a student, that I would need for everything I do to build on everything I had done before, as an advantage not everybody would have.

The mainstream was always for lots of people to get their degree, stop learning, and they'll be fine.

With plenty more who never stop learning, although traditionally concentrated in academic environments.

For me to do mostly the latter outside a formal academic effort, it was even more important for as much of my work as possible to build for my entire life.

With the personal computer boom you could see the rug-pulls that the growing digital workforce was enduring, where they often could't even use the same computer language for very long before migrating toward another fad. Which wouldn't happen if the growth was not out-of-control chasing as much dream as reality. They could afford it though, the tech debt was swept under the rug, two steps forward with one step back is still progress, and it mainly affected employees below the executive level, which has always made things more subject to fads.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else tired of working in tech?

#34

Post by fuzzfactor »

SenHeng wrote: post #20

I’ve been fantasising about getting certified as a CPA. People don’t believe me when I say this but my childhood ( Having run a business for almost a decade, I’ve accumulated a lot of accounting and tax knowledge that I think would be cool to properly certify. Also it would be to re-live a childhood dream.

Have you ever done anything else that you always wanted to do?

That can be a feeling all its own :)

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else tired of working in tech?

#35

Post by fuzzfactor »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #15

Funny you should ask that. I'm retiring today. But turn on "showdead" and read nivcmo's top-level reply. Or if you won't, here's what for me was the most important line: > Smaller teams, clearer missions, direct customer relationships. That's the antidote. Maybe, after a few months off, I'll be open to that, if I can find it.

>I'm retiring today.

Congratulations, it's once in a lifetime :)

Oh wait, they keep calling me out of retirement too ;)

>direct customer relationships.

That's the main thing I would put full-time effort into now.

It's nice to be off the treadmill until you are good and ready, once I get going again I don't plan to stop for a long time, if ever again, so retirement has been a good break.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else tired of working in tech?

#36

Post by austin-cheney »

When I want an education I write my own software to solve real world problems. Otherwise I do what they tell me and get paid.

You have to realize corporate software exists within a bell curve, which means don’t be awesome. Be compatible, at least at work. In your own software be as awesome as possible according to features and numeric measures.

You also have to also understand you will likely be surrounded by people who think they are awesome when they actually suck really bad. You can look for some place that does not have shitty people or learn to let them make all the noise so that you can just chill and use company time for your own personal desires. To avoid shitty people look for jobs with the highest barrier to entry.

If you want to be in management learn to do 6 things at once all day, really care about people, and develop vastly superior communication skills, and finally learn when to STFU.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else tired of working in tech?

#37

Post by SenHeng »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #34
SenHeng wrote: post #20

I’ve been fantasising about getting certified as a CPA. People don’t believe me when I say this but my childhood ( Having run a business for almost a decade, I’ve accumulated a lot of accounting and tax knowledge that I think would be cool to properly certify. Also it would be to re-live a childhood dream.

Have you ever done anything else that you always wanted to do? That can be a feeling all its own :)

Despite (or maybe because of) my upbringing, I’ve had the fortune of mostly doing things I wanted to do. Not exactly as I wanted, but more or less in the general direction.

Which is why I’m now in the position to choose whether to study to be a CPA or go back to work.[0]

[0]: https://senhongo.com/blog/sabbatical-update/

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else tired of working in tech?

#38

Post by markus_zhang »

Definitely burned out already. But, hey, it is what keeps bread on the table, so I can't complain too much. I just need to patiently wait until my kid goes to college and then I can drift by. We plan to pay for his tuition, gift him a small apartment once he goes job hunting, which I think is pretty generous. Of course he needs to earn as much $$ as he can and be independent.

I should make myself a clock saying "X days until college". Once it clicks I'll go straight to a local university to register some courses, rent some cabins, and enjoy life.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else tired of working in tech?

#40

Post by atlgator »

I think what people are actually tired of isn't "tech" — it's the gap between what they thought the job would be and what it's become.

When most of us got into this field, the implicit promise was: learn hard things, solve interesting problems, build stuff that works. And for a while, that's what it was. The disillusionment isn't really about AI or crypto or whatever the current hype cycle is. It's that the job has slowly drifted from "engineer solving problems" to "employee managing process." You spend your morning in standups, your afternoon fighting with CI pipelines someone else configured, and your evening wondering what you actually built.

The people in this thread who say "just get perspective, you could be loading trucks" aren't wrong exactly, but they're answering a different question. Nobody here is saying the pay is bad or the chairs are uncomfortable. They're saying the work feels hollow. Those are different problems, and "be grateful" has never been a lasting fix for the second one.

What I've noticed — both in myself and in people around me — is that the ones who stay engaged tend to have found a way to shrink their world back down. Fewer layers between them and the user. Fewer abstractions between them and the machine. Whether that means a tiny company, freelancing, or just a side project you actually care about, the pattern is the same: make the feedback loop short and real again.

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