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Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

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Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#151

Post by snazz »

mfoy_ wrote: post #32
shade wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've commented on this previously, but I think there's some aspects of the tech industry that really do lead to burnout, depression, and cynicism among the people who work in it - and this applies to both software dev and IT support. We spend so much time dealing with tools that tend to be extremely pedantic and detail-focused. We're constantly thinking about all of the stuff that's gone wrong with our applications p…

I harness that mindset-spillover by playing board games as a hobby.

Playing some board games almost feels like meditation because it makes time slow down as you wait for the other person to complete their turn. It’s quite nice, really, although I found it mildly frustrating at first.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#152

Post by cpeterso »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #37
thraway-burnout wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please congratulate that person on my behalf. Even though it may be the result of an epiphany, self-restraint is still hard to achieve and a noble goal in itself :-)

I'd like to prefix this as _anecdotal_ as it is only some speculation I've done on the matter, but here is my take on it: The brain is in the end a neural network, and like all such devices, can get stuck in various local minima that are difficult to get out of. An old habit that has been reinforced through many years can take a considerable "shock" to dislodge. All the little cognitive and behavioral biases that one…

> the visual cortex normally applies a filtering mechanism to what the eyes see and correct problems. It acts as a common-sense filter to remove improbable or impossible information and augment, perhaps even add some extra detail to save the conscious part from being swamped with ridiculous data.

Your comment reminded me the "SEP field" (Somebody Else's Problem) from Douglas Adams' "Life, the Universe and Everything". It was a sort of invisibility cloak where people perceive something so inconceivable that it can't exist, so they ignore it. (In this book, a space ship landed at a cricket match.)

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Proble...

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#153

Post by ZeroFries »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #94
agumonkey wrote: post #82

Earlier 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…

Who's making $140k as a teacher?

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#154

Post by Radim »

coffeebean wrote: post #130

IT is bottom-heavy, and seniors are leaving because they're either giving up or retiring. More problematic is that a lot of senior level people are either out of jobs, or can't move from the job they're in because the hiring focus seems to be on the under-30 crowd.

In a mature market, the two extremes eventually balance out:

* Companies that hire only cheap starry-eyed love-my-latest-fad youngster crash and burn due to poor execution and short-sighted design choices.

* Companies that hire only experienced devs move along a less erratic path but burn way more on payroll.

You could argue the market is not mature though. Lots of turmoil all around, lots of "dumb money".

In that atmosphere, "fund it & flip it & long-term be damned!" definitely favours the cheap and fast. Horror stories of shitty systems and general lack of accountability ensue… The price we pay for living in exciting times.

And senior devs better be mindful of "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" (or alive).

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#155

Post by ZeroFries »

pickle-wizard wrote: post #115
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is salaries are usually highly regulated, so you get capped pretty quick, and it's usually based on your degrees rather than your job performance.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#156

Post by 52-6F-62 »

nabnob wrote: post #36

I've been having the same existential crisis for a couple years now. I started working at a FAANG company right out of college, then after a bunch of personal health problems ended up taking a leave of absence that I didn't return from. I took a long break from software and started learning politics, philosophy, and history, and eventually came to the conclusion that most of the world's problems are social/political…

As an aside, I've done work with United Nations Online Volunteers previously. That is one way you can use your skills to the benefit of organizations in need.

It doesn't help with your systemic problems directly, but it can provide valuable service to groups that need all the help they can get.

Often this includes groups like children's mentoring organizations that provide access to education and other extracurricular activities. In that way it can indirectly help dig at the root of a variety of problems.

https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en

https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/opportunities?f[0]=fie... (development tasks)

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#157

Post by danans »

nabnob wrote: post #36

I've been having the same existential crisis for a couple years now. I started working at a FAANG company right out of college, then after a bunch of personal health problems ended up taking a leave of absence that I didn't return from. I took a long break from software and started learning politics, philosophy, and history, and eventually came to the conclusion that most of the world's problems are social/political…

> But why is my own intellectual curiosity more important than whether someone else gets to eat?

It's not, but unless you are working on something that is directly impoverishing someone to this point, then the economic or social system that allows people to go hungry and without basics is more to blame than your particular role.

People don't go hungry anymore due to lack of societal resources. It's due to either a lack of sufficient collective concern, or even a belief that it is largely acceptable that this occurs.

That the effect of your inequality inducing job is hunger for someone can only be countered with policy and incentives that work at societal, not with individual choices to disengage from jobs that optimize productivity.

It's similar to the fallacy of asking Warren Buffet to cut an additional check to the IRS vs raising tax rates, or the fallacy of thinking that an individual's choice not to eat meat has any meaningful effect on climate change.

> I don't want to just donate to charities, I want to end systemic problems that lead to charities needing to exist in the first place.

This is actually a great way to think about it, and if you have the personal means to pursue the systemic issues without having to worry about your own survival, then go for it. But know that this will almost certainly involve spurring on the collective human will to act towards that goal, not inventing a technology as an individual that will fix the problem.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#158

Post by ggggtez »

operakadabra wrote: post #19
wccrawford wrote: post #2

Correction: "Decided to become a therapist". >Shortly after beginning my Hakomi training, I applied and was accepted to the professional mental health counseling masters program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I'm studying and training through 2020 to get my licensure. Going through schooling is not the same as becoming something. The title implies that there was success found here, but so far…

"Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome." -Arthur Ashe

But the "doing" of being a therapist is actually seeing patients! Get out of here with your motivational poster level wisdom.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#160

Post by Izkata »

hindsightbias wrote: post #102
sesteel wrote: post #29

Earlier 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…

> 3 decades ago IT used to be a comparatively stable environment if you were supporting servers or infrastructure. How do you mentor someone in environments where chasing the latest fad every year is the norm?

Abstract out a level. I've been getting some decent results recently by going over conceptual stuff, based on my CS degree, with new hires who got into development bootcamp-style.
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