Live data from Hacker News

Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

glench.com

251–260 of 328 posts

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#251

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…

Here is data from Stascan (official government source) about teacher salaries for 2016/2017 broken down by province, which is important. Much like states in the US each province is different.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-604-x/2018001/t/tblc....

One of the stronger public teachers unions is in Ontario. For Ontario the pay starts out at $51,904 and tops out at $95,794, which is some distance from $140,000.

The best for teachers is Northwest Territories, likely teaching in remote fly in/out communities. Teachers in NWT start at $78,600 and top out at $111,883.

Weighted averages for all of Canada based on the number of educators getting the salary gives a pay scale from: $53,163 - $88,746

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#252
post #90

Maybe too many people are trying to find all their meaning in life through their work. It's not a recipe for success for most people, I think the media plays it up a bit too much. They're only covering the success stories in terms of people who are single minded and who make their work everything. The author of the article doesn't mention any relationships or other interests in life, no passion for anything but work.…

> Maybe too many people are trying to find all their meaning in life through their work. You probably shouldn't make your "meaning in life" reside completely in your work. But then again, you can't work at a job that is completely meaningless to you. The problem with burnout generally comes from the feeling of pointlessness. And IT excels at that feeling. We 've built an industry that is accustomed -almost to the poi…

Just a minor quip about the NoEstimates thing. I have zero illusions that some people adopt it exactly as you state. However, AFAIK the original idea was to use metrics and modeling to eliminate the need for a human to make up an estimate. Instead, you have an estimate based on actual numbers and ideally even with a confidence tied to it.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#253
post #90

Maybe too many people are trying to find all their meaning in life through their work. It's not a recipe for success for most people, I think the media plays it up a bit too much. They're only covering the success stories in terms of people who are single minded and who make their work everything. The author of the article doesn't mention any relationships or other interests in life, no passion for anything but work.…

> Maybe too many people are trying to find all their meaning in life through their work. You probably shouldn't make your "meaning in life" reside completely in your work. But then again, you can't work at a job that is completely meaningless to you. The problem with burnout generally comes from the feeling of pointlessness. And IT excels at that feeling. We 've built an industry that is accustomed -almost to the poi…

You probably shouldn’t make your happiness contingent on a meaningful life. If your favorite team isn’t in last place, there’s beer in the fridge, and you’re not dealing with significant physical or emotional trauma, then be grateful you have the opportunity to worry about mastering Lagrangian comment design patterns, diverse leadership efficiency, or performant vested class b proxy options.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My question is: If drugs "remove the long standing subconscious filters and biases that one has built over their life," what replaces them? Does one simply continue living into posterity without filters? I argue not, and in fact that, over time, the filters tend to come back without repeated exposure to drugs and drug-thought, and one is given a choice: return slightly-modified to regular life, or commit to taking dr…

An interesting analogy I heard for psychedelics:

Your brain is like a snowy hill. As you ride a sled down it, you develop ruts/grooves in the snow. Eventually, no matter where you start sledding from, you'll end up at one of only a few locations at the bottom of the hill.

Psychedelics are like a fresh coat of powder, they let the brain reset some of the ruts, so certain starting conditions will end up in new resulting locations.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As for IT being understaffed, I do think this problem could be improved if companies invested more in their employees (e.g. training). And maybe took more chances on peoples capability, instead of requiring 2-3 years of experience on a range of skills prior to hiring them. I disagree. There are people who graduate with a 3 year degree and they know absolutely nothing. I've interviewed 7 CCNAs with 3 year degrees in…

This is obviously some command to run on a Cisco router. A CCNA certification is squarely about knowing networking from a Cisco equipment point of view. So this would be like some "Unix certified engineer" not knowing "ps" or "netstat", right?

It is, I have a grand total of a few hours experience with Cisco routers, and even I recognize it.

But doing my degree, I knew several people who hung out at the computer lab and relentlessly pestered people to do their work for them. And now people routinely pay for school essays.

I'm pretty sure there are a large number of people who invest enough effort into cheating that they could have learned the material.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As for IT being understaffed, I do think this problem could be improved if companies invested more in their employees (e.g. training). And maybe took more chances on peoples capability, instead of requiring 2-3 years of experience on a range of skills prior to hiring them. I disagree. There are people who graduate with a 3 year degree and they know absolutely nothing. I've interviewed 7 CCNAs with 3 year degrees in…

This is obviously some command to run on a Cisco router. A CCNA certification is squarely about knowing networking from a Cisco equipment point of view. So this would be like some "Unix certified engineer" not knowing "ps" or "netstat", right?

(Small detail: A lot of admin shells have auto-abbreviation of commands; it works because their command syntax is largely fixed.)

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#257
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…

I agree. The interesting, high-paying jobs in tech all seem to be centred around funnelling money from one place to another for profit, or manipulating people for profit. Most of the available work just seems to do harm. Working for public/charity companies doesn’t lead to satisfaction either, since all you see is an overworked, underpaid, too-junior workforce and an inferior, outdated product which you can do little…

> The interesting, high-paying jobs in tech all seem to be centred around funnelling money from one place to another for profit

Maybe that's because so much of tech nowadays is a branch of the finance industry (mostly through VC), and that's all finance has ever been.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#259
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question is: If drugs "remove the long standing subconscious filters and biases that one has built over their life," what replaces them? Does one simply continue living into posterity without filters? I argue not, and in fact that, over time, the filters tend to come back without repeated exposure to drugs and drug-thought, and one is given a choice: return slightly-modified to regular life, or commit to taking dr…

An interesting analogy I heard for psychedelics: Your brain is like a snowy hill. As you ride a sled down it, you develop ruts/grooves in the snow. Eventually, no matter where you start sledding from, you'll end up at one of only a few locations at the bottom of the hill. Psychedelics are like a fresh coat of powder, they let the brain reset some of the ruts, so certain starting conditions will end up in new resultin…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As for IT being understaffed, I do think this problem could be improved if companies invested more in their employees (e.g. training). And maybe took more chances on peoples capability, instead of requiring 2-3 years of experience on a range of skills prior to hiring them. I disagree. There are people who graduate with a 3 year degree and they know absolutely nothing. I've interviewed 7 CCNAs with 3 year degrees in…

This is obviously some command to run on a Cisco router. A CCNA certification is squarely about knowing networking from a Cisco equipment point of view. So this would be like some "Unix certified engineer" not knowing "ps" or "netstat", right?

Probably more like a "Unix engineer" not knowing "cat"

"show run" (aka sh run) is about the first command anyone commits to muscle memory on a Cisco - if they have done absolutely any real work with them whatsoever.

Post reply on HN