Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help • Hacker News Board

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#61

Post by throwaway839246 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #39

I have also experience close to burnout and recovered multiple times, in the process I have lost very precious relationships, and entire years were spent in darkness. I also have friends who have been in tech for close to ten years, and are close to burning out though they would never admit to such. This is the nature of the beast, all things that appear glamorous on the outside ( Hollywood, Finance, Tech, many nonpr…

Thanks for the advice. It's really good.

> Think about all the food stands that you have walked past in your life, within each stand is an immigrant family who slave away for decades hoping for a better life. Have you ever thought about them and gave them time/money for their suffering?

I know what you mean and know what you're getting at. But I feel compelled to point out this particular example isn't quite the same. I never sought the immigrant family out, then told them that my motivation is to support amazing cooks rooted in authentic traditions. I just bought the food.

VCs will lie, literally. They explicitly say they will act in a particular way in a specific situation, and then, protected by nuanced 300 page contracts, will do the exact opposite of what they said they'll do. Assuming you accept that lying to people is unethical, people act transactionally with immigrant vendors, but not unethically in the same way.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#62

Post by remir » Mon, May 04, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

I'm bored of tech, apps, gadgets and all, despite the coollness factor. I was fascinated by technology when I was growing up, but I feel like the world's pressing needs and problems are not addressed because there's no "good money" to be made by solving them, which is absurd.

I wish beauty, wisdom and optimization would be better valued so we could find pleasure in designing things and cities with beautiful architectures with minimal negative impact on the environment. I wish we could redefine our position in the world as member of an ecosystem we should care for, instead of being merely consumers and "eyeballs" for advertisers.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#63

Post by dilandau » Mon, May 04, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

Interesting venue to post this on. But as it's the afternoon in the US workday, it's a fair chance that many responses will come from US tech workers who are slacking off or taking a break from their job and were enticed in by the headline.

Given the culture of HN comments I reckon you'll get grooming tips and pointless anecdotes, condescending advice, or unhelpful peptalks.

What I'll say is that you probably are disillusioned with it because you saw how illusory most of it is. The best stuff is always produced by very small, tightly-knit teams, in an environment where creativity is allowed to flourish. In a monoculture like tech giant / unicorn startup, you're living in the Silicon Valley series bro and that's all there is to it.

There are lots of engineers out here on the internet doing fun things. We just don't spam github shit or write fancy landing pages to shamelessly promote ourselves. Join us.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#64

Post by MattGaiser » Mon, May 04, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

Many of us engineers fancy ourselves as artisans who get to avoid working that 2nd job to pay for our art.

But the reality is that we pay the bill inside the companies we work for. Our art has to meet certain deadlines and specifications decided by others. We have to spend time in meetings about nothingness. Whether we get funded still comes down to dollars for value, with the exception that instead of the grants artists get, we call it salary.

Very little in life can be extracted from the fact that we must provide value to others and often on their terms, even if that value is doing little but filling up their meeting so they look very in charge.

I solve this by having a good book on my phone for when I am in meetings and ensuring that there are always many things I am doing beyond my job. There is plenty of opportunity for the purely fun "let's build something cool" type of engineering outside of work that can still contribute to your career.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#65

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 04, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

Royalaid wrote: post #32

battery_cowboy wrote: post #2

I'm having similar issues, and i think i found a way out: stop playing their game. Don't make enterprise software. Don't write unit tests. Don't accept pull requests. Simply write software for yourself and have fun doing it. Forget refactoring code into modules, just fucking code. Don't worry about deployment with k8s, just copy the Python script to your production folder and run it. Fuck all that shit about git bran…

I think this is a natural reaction to advice being over prescribed and totally agree that in your free time you should do whatever it is you want and this is solid advice. BUT I think we should also acknowledge that everything that slows you down in your free time has a reason for existing and most of that is communication or knowledge sharing within a team. Naming conventions, unit tests, and general documentation a…

[deleted]

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#66

Post by ninjakeyboard » Mon, May 04, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

There is burnout, then there is just being "done." If you're out of software and happy, then great. I think we reach a point where the draw of money + realization that software is horrible kind of collide and end up shaking you, making you realize life is short and limited and that there must be something more meaningful. Is that a bad thing? Only if you don't do something about it. you have an incredible opportunity to do good somewhere somehow. You'll need to fix your "charged emotional responses" and "reactivity" by learning to be with em instead of running and grasping, but there-after, you are freed of the animal-instinct burden. It' s a hard path to find and harder still to walk, but it's there. No words can capture it or give it, no thinking will show you the way out.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#67

Post by hurrdurr2 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

I work in semiconductor manufacturing and I'm in the same boat as OP.

I'm not enjoying the work anymore...working from home has helped somewhat with the burnout but the social isolation is getting to me too. At least I don't have to see my coworkers and boss who have stopped caring a long time ago.

Not sure what I am going to do if I just outright quit. My wife is supportive but I can't just sit at home doing hobbies.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#68

Post by ajavascriptdude » Mon, May 04, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

this does seem like burnout but there is something else at play here.

something which i have felt quite a lot is that in the 90s a lot of programming was creative and fun. it was to challenge authority.

it created things like winamp.. it really whips the llama's ass. when is the last time you heard of a recent startup with a title like that?

nowadays everyone around me is working on startups or talking to investors where they are simply falling in line.

the good old hacker spirit and the sheer disdain for authority and a great sense of wonder has gone. i see young kids, interns studying like crazy to get into faang, which drives me crazy.

in the 90s we didn't have that... there was only cool software like winamp... that too for free.. tell me a software as cool as that since ;)

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#69

Post by nnoitra » Mon, May 04, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

throwaway839246 wrote: post #61

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #39

I have also experience close to burnout and recovered multiple times, in the process I have lost very precious relationships, and entire years were spent in darkness. I also have friends who have been in tech for close to ten years, and are close to burning out though they would never admit to such. This is the nature of the beast, all things that appear glamorous on the outside ( Hollywood, Finance, Tech, many nonpr…

Thanks for the advice. It's really good. > Think about all the food stands that you have walked past in your life, within each stand is an immigrant family who slave away for decades hoping for a better life. Have you ever thought about them and gave them time/money for their suffering? I know what you mean and know what you're getting at. But I feel compelled to point out this particular example isn't quite the same…

How old are you?

Why would you be at all surprised that VCs lie?

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#70

Post by throwaway839246 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

gaze wrote: post #52

People will say you're burned out, and they're not wrong... but this doesn't address the substance of the issue. To be an engineer or a scientist today means tolerating a lot of the things you've mentioned. I would amend your list to engineers that had a passion for EE and value human life (who doesn't?) but took a job at Raytheon. The things you identify are valid issues. If you're worn so thin you can't ignore them…

Thanks for the advice. This all sounds right.

> I found that learning about politics and history-- specifically the history of engineering-- really helped me sort out my feelings.

Is there any specific reading you'd recommend?