I've worked in tech for about 25 years now. I dropped out of college and into the first dot-com boom. I dearly wish I hadn't these days, as I've never completed my degree. But, it's part of my story.
I joined an aging software company first, not a shiny dot-com. I learned a great deal here. I was 19 when I started. The place was staffed with amazing engineers and some of the worst management I've ever encountered. I was pretty unsure of my path at this point and was willing to do anything they asked of me. So when I showed a little aptitude for system administration and fixed several glaring issues, they asked me to join that team. My joining made it a team of two. Over the course of the next week management determined that I was a better fit for the job. They asked me if I could do it solo. I wasn't sure but they seemed ok with it. Everyone in the office knew, including me, that the guy I was slated to replace had cancer. At a small company, everyone knew everything. The guy was literally family. Like many there, he had several other family members on staff. They fired him. While he had cancer. He lost his insurance. When I questioned this, I was told: "that sounds like his problem".
I left that job and moved on because I was rather disillusioned. I went looking for a job that was "fun" -- and ended up in the music industry. I immediately found solace for my low point in the form of drugs, booze, etc. I lived like a rock star for a couple of years, and my employers were more than happy to let me. It was the music industry, and it was flush with cash -- just before Napster! These were mind-boggling decisions at every level here, all of them motivated by greed, all of them tainted by cocaine. It was rough. Eventually, the drugs and booze caught up with me. I took some time to dry out before going back.
My thought process at the time was "ok, lets make some fast money and get out of this field", so I took a job on Wall Street. In hindsight, incredibly foolish. My drug problems returned, my work suffered, I moved on.
I spent the next several years doing private consulting work. I made more money than I ever had, but it always felt tainted somehow. The disillusionment of my earlier years was hard to shake. All these years later, I still haven't shaken it.
I've had many jobs at this point. There are several common threads running through them:
- First, profit above all else. The human toll is meaningless.
- Second, and highly related to the first, are compromised ethics. I don't think I've ever worked for good people.
- Third, incompetence is the rule. I've worked with "senior software engineers" who couldn't use an editor. Who didn't know how to use variables -- and not some weird syntax issue. I'm talking "thousands of files duplicated with hardcoded values where variables should be"
- Fourth, generally no consequences for bad actions. Ignore user security? "Not really our problem". Not meeting SLAs because management refused to properly staff/equip your project? End up the scapegoat because "we weren't aware". You SIGNED THE CONTRACT. Didn't you read it?
My most recent job was focused on correcting my personal physical health issues. Spending a long time behind a desk made me sedentary. I took a job doing datacenter operations work: racking, stacking, running cable, etc. Loads of fun, and for the fist time in ages I actually liked my day-to-day coworkers. Our clients were trashy though: spammers mostly, porn sites, and so on. As a customer of a huge datacenter, the business was deemed "essential", when clearly it was not. But that didn't matter to the company! They are more than happy to sacrifice their employees to COVID-19. Gotta protect those profits! I left at the end of March. I've subsequently learned that people have died. Because they show up when they have no other choice. Can't lose those benefits!
So that's my story. Neat, isn't it? It's a fair critique to say I've made bad decisions. I most certainly have, and I gotta own that. But at every step of the way, there's been a corporate vulture ready to pick the meat off my bones. I have so many regrets -- the biggest being my naive optimism where I take people at their word. A huge mistake that I constantly regret.
For these reasons, I plan to leave, or... I have already? But not leave tech. I do enjoy the work. I don't enjoy "the rest". One thing I've learned though, across all the industries I've worked in is this:
The problem isn't "tech". The problem is the culture of the United State of America. A "me first" culture. A culture that promotes races to the bottom at every level. A culture that glorifies ignorance. A culture that is based on lies, near as I can tell. But who can really tell anymore? What is truth these days, other than an anachronistic notion shared by the naive?
So I am leaving the United States if this pandemic ever ends. Because our culture is abhorrent. I won't support it any longer.
Oh, and why do I keep coming to HN? It's like driving past a traffic accident. I can't help but look at the destruction man creates. It reminds me of how NOT to be. How NOT to exist in this world. I hope, with any comment I leave, and I'll be honest I'm all on throwaways like this one, I hope that if I can change one person's mind in this field it will have a positive impact somewhere. Even if it's just one person that decides "hmm, maybe profit above people isn't the best idea" ... well, I'll take it as a win.