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Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

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Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#121

Post by throwaway839246 »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #109
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…

> I also have friends who have been in tech for close to ten years, and are close to burning out I realize the audience here is probably mostly younger folks but 10 years doing anything is not that much time IMO. I think a 3rd or 4th burnout at 30 years of service is a lot harder to recover from, but I’m biased from my own experience.

Would you share yours? I'd really like to hear from an older person. I'd imagine you know 10x of what I do now. It would be incredibly helpful if you could share some of what you've experienced and learned.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#122

Post by Aeolun »

icedchai wrote: post #93
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the lying is really gross. It's an odd arrangement in this country where "shareholder value" can literally justify most things in the eyes of those with money. For a more personal anecdote, I have a friend who's been in the VC industry for 5+ years, and we had a very interesting conversation. He was closing a deal with a company and they asked for a higher valuation, and he thought objectively it's merited. But…

Divide it by two? He must be an optimist. I divide it by 10.

100M dollar unicorn!

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#123

Post by hindsightbias »

deanCommie wrote: post #90

> Then I worked for a tech giant, and then for a high-growth unicorn. It shocked me how dilbertesque they both were. Full of politicians, and burnt out engineers in golden handcuffs who can't wait to get out, and meaningless business speak, and checked out employees who pretend they're "excited" about everything all the time. The young, wide-eyed engineers seem hopelessly naive to me now. I don't know this person. I…

In the old days, people went to church, played sports or bought a new pair of $300 sneakers to find fulfillment. Maybe bootcamps need a liberal arts or sports track.

How long will this hangover from change-the-world-itis last?

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#124

Post by _bxg1 »

__throwawy1234 wrote: post #118

I think you haven't even hit bottom yet. Reality is much, much worse. There are notable exceptions, but the overwhelming odds are that every single relationship in your life-- your wife, family, friends, etc-- are just as dishonest and transactional. Think about it. If you really screw up badly, your wife will leave you, your friends won't return your calls and will refer to you only in hushed tones clucking about "w…

I don't know what happened to you to make you so cynical, and I honestly pity you for it, but I think this is the exact opposite of what someone in the OP's position needs to hear. It's well and good that you've found a zen way of looking at things despite how bleak you seem to find the whole world, but not everyone can manage such a radical mindset shift and don't need to have their faith in humanity eagerly torched.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#125

Post by cosmodisk »

rwesty wrote: post #95
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…

This is really, really bad advice. Mutiny is hardly an answer to the problem here. It will certainly temporarily avoid the problems you face but if you are a member of a team and this is truly how you act you will get chucked out very quickly. But since you bring up a few of the issues you are facing it's important to address them. I want to focus on unit tests to start. When I started my first programming job a coup…

While I dabbled with python and Delphi for a bit,my first real development was on Salesforce platform with their proprietary language called Apex. The first thing every developer learns on thos platform is that your code has to have at least 75% test coverage before it can be pushed to production.Testing was inevitable and ultimately part of anything I had to write. With time,I started reading more and more about development, tried different languages and etc.It was really fascinating to read how a lot of people hate testing or teams skip them if the deadlines need to be met. What testing taught me is that if the test is hard to write,it means that the code is crap.Every time I wrote some quick hack,it used to take me 10 times longer to write unit test.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#126

Post by downerending »

I'm kind of there, too, though I was never as successful are you (I infer).

As far as sleeping well at night, unless you were a sadistic bastard to your employees, I think all else is (or should be) easily forgiven.

If you behaved monstrously to anyone (and I've been on the receiving end of a couple of those deals), you might apologize. Don't expect that it will be received well, but that's really all you can do.

Beyond that, I think you've mostly just discovered the nature of our reality. The Buddhists call it suffering, or just the inherent broken-ness or insufficiency of the world. Ecclesiastes knew it as well, along with many Western philosophers who followed.

What's to be done? Not much. Try to enjoy your life, which is almost over anyway. Try to have good time with your wife and whatever friends or people may be around. Eat, drink, and be merry, as you can. Godspeed.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#127

Post by TallGuyShort »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #53

> I lost many friends. They weren't ever your friends. People at work rarely transcend beyond co-workers and into actual friendship. If all you do together is work and around-work activities, they probably aren't your friends. You're effectively people locked in a cage together that happen to get along. If you get together on days you don't work together then they might actually be your friend. If they've met your no…

I was shocked at the beginning of the lockdown in Silicon Valley how many colleagues immediately went to a dark place because they had virtually no support structure, social interaction, or even sense of identity outside of their in-person workplace associations. Granted, a lot of in-person socialization out of the office is also off-the-table, but that's not the problem I heard from people.

It's not healthy to live your entire life so embedded within a corporation.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#129

Post by __throwawy1234 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #124
__throwawy1234 wrote: post #118

I think you haven't even hit bottom yet. Reality is much, much worse. There are notable exceptions, but the overwhelming odds are that every single relationship in your life-- your wife, family, friends, etc-- are just as dishonest and transactional. Think about it. If you really screw up badly, your wife will leave you, your friends won't return your calls and will refer to you only in hushed tones clucking about "w…

I don't know what happened to you to make you so cynical, and I honestly pity you for it, but I think this is the exact opposite of what someone in the OP's position needs to hear. It's well and good that you've found a zen way of looking at things despite how bleak you seem to find the whole world, but not everyone can manage such a radical mindset shift and don't need to have their faith in humanity eagerly torched…

Honestly, it's not cynicism, although it used to be until I really thought things through. It's just the truth. I have a great life, I have truly been blessed, and I am very thankful. But to me the glass is already broken. Things may come, things may go, the only thing I control is me, and I am at peace.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#130

Post by throwaway839246 »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #98
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…

This is a great point, laced with justified indignation. As a graybeard, I've seen multiple generations of "how to do software" and the most recent are the least fun. A lot of this is driven by the agile approach. It's tailor-made for dev burnout: from the endless tight cycles that force people into an infinite loop of productivity with scant satisfaction that comes with "completion", to all of the tools and philosop…

I'd add open office plans to this. It's awful. You never quite get to focus, you don't build the rapport with your team, you don't get to customize your physical environment. Development really became a white collar version of the assembly line.
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