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Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

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Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#191

Post by tygrak »

BrandonM wrote: post #103
dilandau wrote: post #63

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 dis…

Your third and even fourth paragraphs are pretty interesting. It's a shame that they come after the speculation and jabs in the first two paragraphs.

they are right though. look at the other comments.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#192

Post by paypalcust83 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #167
TomMckenny wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All accurate and objective and good for everyone to know early rather than late. Moving a bit further from the specifics, it's worth noting that this is not a natural state of affairs. Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives and thus making catastrophic deception nearly impossible. Likewise vast sums of wealth did not exist nor total social and fiscal isolation surrounded…

> Moving a bit further from the specifics, it's worth noting that this is not a natural state of affairs. Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives Yup, there are still some anarcho-primitivists who think technology was a bad deal for us humans overall, and that living in a tribal setting of hunters-gatherers is best. The infamous "unabomber manifesto" was broadly advocatin…

UB started with the right observations, but arrived at the wrong means prescriptions. He wandered off alone into the weeds, in both senses.

A wiser realization is that it's those in established power and the rich who are actively or willfully ignorantly sabotaging the planet and condemning billions of people to relatively more poverty, misery, disease, and death.

A million people nonviolently showing up to the seats of power, arresting crooked politicians and their enablers, and fine-tuning what cannot be fixed (by any POTUS, SCOTUS, or COTUS) from within (separation between church and wealth and state, public campaign financing, clean elections observed with exit polls and international observers, de-emphasized celebrity political promotion perhaps by lottery [as the ancient Greeks] rather than mainstream media popularity contest) are the necessary first steps before fixing anything else.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#195

Post by golemiprague »

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…

I think it is excellent advice for someone who work by themselves and try to find some joy in coding after being in a rut. Yes, some conventions do emerge when being in a large team, it is inevitable, but this is not what this guy needs. Git + Trello is enough for personal projects or small teams. Anything else is a bonus or something you will add down the road and that includes testing or whatever other best practices. There are many jobs, especially in a non tech environments where you can be a sole dev or a part of a very small team, real small and mid businesses that generate value and are much more fun to work for for certain types of personality.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#196

Post by throwaway848483 »

You've got to restore the suspension of disbelief which resulted from your burnout.

If you have enough money to take some time off, do so.

The world is a shitty place ; The world doesn't care about what you can offer ; The world doesn't care for you ; The world doesn't even care for itself ; The world just doesn't care

The world won't be fine but that's not your fault.

The alternatives are either cynicism or escapism.

Protect yourself from toxic environment, grow inward, enjoy the beauty in life that you can find.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#197

Post by _7fvc »

I'm running through similar thoughts with this article. I graduated from college in 2006. My job survived the 2008 crisis. I rode out and built a stable life. I started a startup in 2011. Our product did not make it. I've been working on freelance and consulting gigs since then for small and big companies. My independent career taught me to be resilient: always saving, don't overspend. Your company does not have your backs. You need to take care of yourself and your family.

I notice I become less optimistic over the years. I got comfy with my successful gigs. To counter those trends, my important lesson is: keep learning. I got started as a C#/Java/C++ programmer. Over the years, I learned Rails, nodejs, React. I adapt to the new gigs. Heck, I even created a cryptocurrency. :)

Now, we're hit by a pandemic. My gig comes to an end. But I'm ready for the next thing. It's pretty exciting. Check out my new project built on redwoodjs. :)

https://github.com/vidalab/vida

PS: I'm available for work if you need Rails, nodejs, React. :)

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#199

Post by invsblduck »

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.

i'm about 40 yrs old - been working in tech (with linux) since the late 90s. gave my life to it, lost my physical and mental health; burned out numerous times. can't stand this industry anymore.

moral of the story: 99% of people still don't understand the nature of software. very few people--like rich hickey (clojure), or fpb (mythical man-month)--seem to get it. tech is mainstream and most people are missing historical context and experience.

(the goals of capitalism are typically at odds with building systems of the highest quality--and understandably so.)

the only creative spark in computing i have to sooth myself anymore is reading lisp or unix books from the 80s and 90s, because the content is so thoughtful (given the culture and smaller community at the time). the internet has become ruined by advertising and bloatware, and the culture has largely been ruined by bad habits and misunderstanding, imo.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#200

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

cambalache wrote: post #173
gtycomb wrote: post #164

It is here in HN that I first heard Pablo Neruda's "No culpes a nadie". Even though a fan of Neruda I somehow had missed this. Perhaps this speaks to you something too: ## Don't Blame Anyone Never complain about anyone, nor anything, because basically you have done what you wanted in your life. Accept the difficulty of improving yourself and the courage to start changing yourself. The triumph of the true man emerges…

That is not a Neruda poem. It is apocryphal. Pablo,ever the communist, would have never written such a piece of libertarian crap.I am surprised that such a fan of Neruda as you claim to be did not notice that.

Not surprised to see such a salty reply from a Neruda fan.
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