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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

#311

Post by chillwaves »

shade wrote: post #27
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #9

There is a severe workplace burnout problem in IT(especially MSPs); which when not addressed grows into bigger mental health issues and even literal sicknesses. There just isn't enough skilled IT people. The industry is immature and is bottom heavy. The top performers and seniors, are then overwhelmed with work and the business is unable to hire more senior people to reduce workload. Then the business keeps growing a…

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 recommend cardio. You can't be depressed or anxious if you are at high heart bpm.

Indoor exercise bikes are super cheap. I pair mine with noise canceling headphones and a tablet and I can exercise comfortably while being entertained.

The best cure for my brain by far (that or riding a motorcycle -- another experience that puts your conscious firmly in your body).

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#312

Post by hindsightbias »

sesteel wrote: post #243
hindsightbias wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I guess that is what "leaders" and mentors are supposed to do; lead people around or away from problems. The fact that people feel like they are "chasing the latest fad every year" is in and of itself a problem. They obviously are missing out on the financial advantage stability provides and getting poor returns on their investments. A shop like that might be better off running on all junior staff. So, in my humble o…

Sadly, don’t get to school the youts in my end-job, but when I look at my peers, they would just be seen as gatekeepers.

For me, old-dog-learns-new-tricks, I spent the weekend debugging why an ansible script failed. This would be the fourth in the last half year.

Now, I appreciate the work people did, but in the end, I had to figure out why packages x, y and z and dependencies a, b and c would not play on distro N. The deeper I go, the less google is my friend.

I agree that everything is cyclical, but if I was 20-something, I’d just go to a bootcamp for mainframes. 30 years ago, my worst case was RTFM, and damn if the answers weren’t in there.

Today... your mentor is barely keeping it together.

I am so blessed to have entered when I did. But even then, the road was littered with peers who are not the same.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#313

Post by arvinsim »

genezeta wrote: post #175
ben7799 wrote: 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…

> Extremely low productivity in the large. While workers may be fully occupied, and even over-worked sometimes, in the large, a lot of productivity is simply wasted in projects which never take off, are discarded, scratched, changed, etc.

When speed became a major factor in this new startup dominated tech world, people think that they just don't have time to plan.

> Low accountability. Current trends like #NoEstimates #NoTesting #NoProductOwners etc, while may or may not have valid points all lead to a larger #NoAccountability "ideal" where developers seem to want no accountability at all for whatever they do. Not having any responsibilities in what you do is actually not the good idea some think it is.

When developers are not given time to plan and test, what does one expect?

That programmers put in their spare time for the company? Ha!

> - The pervasive idea that it's all horrible but that's alright. That you don't really need to know how to do stuff, you can just copy-paste it from SO or whatever you find on Google. That programmers just don't know what they are doing but haha I change this line here and it works and I don't know why but it works and that's what matters so I'm going to sarcastically twit about it because everyone will understand and concur. That everything could just crash and burn in microseconds but that won't really happen, right?

Again, if developers are not given time to reflect like post-mortems and such, what do you expect?

> - The masterful move of claiming that anyone can program with just good will and disposition. That a degree doesn't matter, that experience doesn't matter, that actual knowledge is secondary to "passion".

I used to believe that passion is important. But after a few years in the field, more often than not, it is used as an exploitation vector.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#314

Post by nunodonato »

balabaster wrote: post #84
nunodonato wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was that easy, everyone would have it ;) (source: meditation for 15+ years now)

Happiness for me is found in moments of joy and laughter. None of which in my life I've ever experienced without people to share them with. I've certainly never found that inside my own head.

That's ok, it's your experience :)

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#315

Post by GuB-42 »

lm28469 wrote: post #58
short_sells_poo wrote: post #37

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…

The problem is that we shouldn't feel the need to use drugs to make our lives bearable. Depression, burnout and other mental issues is amplified by our lifestyles and the system that allowed them. Sure you can take psychedelics, anti depressant, alcohol, and other drugs to make it bearable, it won't fix the underlying issue(s). I agree with most of what you say on psychedelics, I don't see it as a cure to what we're…

Psychedelics are not like anti-depressants, alcohol and a lot of other drugs. They don't just make you feel better while the effect lasts. They actually have a chance to fix the underlying issue after a single and only take, for example by triggering a change of lifestyle.

Psychedelics are not addictive. In fact they are known to have cured addictions.

The problem is that you don't know if it will make your life better or worse or cause no change at all.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#316

Post by derangedHorse »

silveroriole wrote: post #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…

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…

That's how society works though. Funneling money from one place to another for profit and manipulating people for profit is business as usual. I really don't understand the recent public opinion of some people thinking tech will become the downfall of our society.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#317

Post by enimodas »

jeofken wrote: post #169

For years I struggled to become financially independent (as Mr Money Mustache). Years upon years of watching the clock until it hit 17:30, hating the dumb coders who made a mess for me to clean up (because I know FP, and if we had types these bugs wouldn’t be here in the first place!). A year ago, I pulled the plug, and retired. Finally, I could work on my dream project every day. I did so for 6 months, and travelled…

What did you invest in? When I briefly checked these things they were mostly targeted to an American audience, with their on average well performing stock markets. EU markets seem to be a lot worse.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#318

Post by danans »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #305
danans wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual awareness is different than individual actions. Awareness can actually scale through individual change due to the non linear way that information spreads, and that can in turn influence policy, which then operates over the whole domain. That's sort of the whole political process in a nutshell. But individual acts of sacrifice for the common good are not scalable in the same way, due to our inherent aversio…

> But individual acts of sacrifice for the common good are not scalable in the same way, due to our inherent aversion to loss. I submit that this is a convenient excuse. You have to be the change you want to see in the world. It is easy to say "yeah, I'm making things worse, but its ok because so is everyone else", and thus nothing changes.

> I submit that this is a convenient excuse.

More of an observation that people will tend toward their local maximum utility even while global utility is compromised. Sometimes you might discover a way to increase both, but for most ongoing concerns the way to balance the two is via laws and regulation.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#319

Post by sigi45 »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #201
sigi45 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have seen negativity as well also have been the source of it but luckily I realized it. But that's the problem: You are invested because you care and there is too much around you you can't control. Not caring is basically quitting inside. Is that better than negativity? Perhaps. Perhaps a new company would help but perhaps not.

You're retreading the exact thought process that great artists have put to song[0]. 0: https://youtu.be/hO0TuYMIsGg

I tried but i just don't get the lyrics.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#320

Post by Grangar »

asdfman123 wrote: post #234
ben7799 wrote: 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.…

To me, this guy sounds like he's suffering from classic burnout. I know because I could have written the exact same thing when I burnt out in undergrad: "I tried prioritizing my work, focusing on the things I felt the most passionately about, but when I tried to work on the projects at the top of this list I couldn't summon any energy. Yet I spent hours and hours thinking obsessively about the ultimate point of my wo…

The plastic gear thing sounds incredibly familiar. (How) did you fix it?
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