this mate psyched himself out all the way to a new career. So much irony in this.
Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist
111–120 of 328 posts
Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps there really is a severe workplace burnout problem in IT, but perhaps that's not the problem. There're ton of companies with burnout problems and worse turnover rates than IT. I personally believe that the issue we are seeing today is that most people don't know how to manager stress, emotion & energy. Most people are leading a very reactive life and constantly been pulled and pushed in all directions by "lif…
Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. I've heard it described as professional distance or professional objectivity and it is a key component of maturity. It is more prevalent in other industries, but tech has grown so fast that we have a serious mentoring problem. There isn't enough good mentors, people with decades of experience, to go around. I grew up in part of the industry where people had been working for…
> Detaching emotion from the outcome is key.
Performance will drop if you detach emotion from your work, even if it is supposedly 'rational' work.
We aren't robots, and the whole brain is supposed to work together to achieve a goal, and emotions have a part in that.
Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps there really is a severe workplace burnout problem in IT, but perhaps that's not the problem. There're ton of companies with burnout problems and worse turnover rates than IT. I personally believe that the issue we are seeing today is that most people don't know how to manager stress, emotion & energy. Most people are leading a very reactive life and constantly been pulled and pushed in all directions by "lif…
Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. I've heard it described as professional distance or professional objectivity and it is a key component of maturity. It is more prevalent in other industries, but tech has grown so fast that we have a serious mentoring problem. There isn't enough good mentors, people with decades of experience, to go around. I grew up in part of the industry where people had been working for…
I can certainly see how that can normalize behavior where death threats are part of the job (see other comments).
Pro tip: Don't work for any place where "maturity" means becoming less human.
Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. I've heard it described as professional distance or professional objectivity and it is a key component of maturity. It is more prevalent in other industries, but tech has grown so fast that we have a serious mentoring problem. There isn't enough good mentors, people with decades of experience, to go around. I grew up in part of the industry where people had been working for…
> Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. Performance will drop if you detach emotion from your work, even if it is supposedly 'rational' work. We aren't robots, and the whole brain is supposed to work together to achieve a goal, and emotions have a part in that.
> Detaching emotion from the outcome is key.
I think this means more, "however things might go, the outcome is not taken personally", the person's selfhood and worthiness is independent of the work they do.
I also agree that integrating work with deep care, passion, and excitement is worthwhile. Imagine if more people were finding purpose and meaning in their work, how happy and energized they would be!
Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slight digression: how many thinks that there's also a strong "burnout" trend across the whole job surface ? health, teachers, programmers ..
These statistics exist and have been reconfirmed many times. For the last 10 years healthcare has been #1 burnt out. IT following up very closely. In the last 1-2 years IT has been showing up as #1 in the studies done. Up around ~65%. Major corps like Nvidia and Cisco being worse yet. ER was something like 90%. Nursing was 40%. Over 1/3 of healthcare has been diagnosed with depression. Whereas industries like Educati…
I was prepared to call bullshit on the Canadian teacher salary, but I just googled it. My 30 second Google search showed the average salary in Alberta is right at $100K. So I could see $140 happening for the more senior people.
Maybe I need to move to Canada.
Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a cisco thing.
Yep. When I did a lot more router work (Cisco, Juniper, Ciena, Broke-aid!), my previous employer forked RANCID and wrote extensions for every router. From there, we then sent all the configs to a SVN server every hour. None of the fork was upstreamed, since it also had a ton of tie-ins to other inhouse infra. The idea was that we had hourly backups of every router. And if bad happened, we could run RANCID in reverse…
oh hey we did this too
Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. I've heard it described as professional distance or professional objectivity and it is a key component of maturity. It is more prevalent in other industries, but tech has grown so fast that we have a serious mentoring problem. There isn't enough good mentors, people with decades of experience, to go around. I grew up in part of the industry where people had been working for…
> Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. Performance will drop if you detach emotion from your work, even if it is supposedly 'rational' work. We aren't robots, and the whole brain is supposed to work together to achieve a goal, and emotions have a part in that.
I don't hold the same opinion. Being detached helps you to remain objective and consistent. Focusing on the process which creates the outcomes, gives you a means to improve in an objective way. That is why people have widespread religious debates about tools and methodology, but less so about outcomes. Certain tools and techniques work well and lead to better outcomes overall, they just can't be applied to all situations. Learning when to apply what technique to a given situation is what maturity and wisdom are. You gain that through failure or though guidance.
This isn't to say outcomes don't matter; but from a practitioners point of view, they matter only so much as they inform those involved on what works and what doesn't. In general, measure what you care about, but be careful because you WILL get more of what you measure and there are often unintended consequences (cobra effect).
edited for additional clarity
Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reminds me of part of that poem by Kipling... "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:" (I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Not that long.) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/…
...and which is more, you'll be a man, my son. This poem was hung on my bedroom wall for my whole childhood. Great poem. It taught me everything about finding the patience to be understanding of other people.
This, of course, is the worst part of the poem, belying its Imperial age genesis, where men were men, and women were ignored. But, if you can ignore the wince-inducing ending, it's a very worthy poem and comes top of British polls of favourite poems almost every time.
Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. Performance will drop if you detach emotion from your work, even if it is supposedly 'rational' work. We aren't robots, and the whole brain is supposed to work together to achieve a goal, and emotions have a part in that.
> Detaching emotion from the outcome is key. I think this means more, "however things might go, the outcome is not taken personally", the person's selfhood and worthiness is independent of the work they do. I also agree that integrating work with deep care, passion, and excitement is worthwhile. Imagine if more people were finding purpose and meaning in their work, how happy and energized they would be!
Yes, passion about how you go about it, not about how it ends up.
Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I had places where I would go onsite to resolve an emergency. I never caused the outage, I was there to help. I would still get death threats from clients. "The accounting files are the server, if you lost them I'm going to go to your office and kill everyone." Isn't that a criminal offence?
>Isn't that a criminal offence? Think how it plays out. "Accountant said she'd kill me." "I did not." Ends with nothing happening.
That's why your pocket phone is on record