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Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

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Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#221

Post by felipemnoa »

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.

I was about to share it with people claiming it was from Neruda. I did a bit of searching and it appears that it is indeed apocryphal. Thanks for saving me the embarrassment.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#222

Post by woah »

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…

No unit tests?? You should just recommend never running your code if that's where you're going.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#223

Post by _7fvc »

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 comment resonates with me. I've been to meetings where we spent hours and discussed these things. I tend to ignore them and do as instructed. The work is pretty boring. But I get paid for it. I think my peers don't like me. I don't blend in. I'm not part of the culture. I will eventually get dismissed. But I'm not mad or angry. I move on to the next project where I contribute more effectively.

We need to accept change. Your company eventually will move you to a new project or dismiss you. They need to put your software baby on maintenance and squeeze out the last bucks before they shut it down. Life continues with or without you. If you become pro-active, you'll have a fun ride with it.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#224

Post by HighPlainsDrftr »

invsblduck wrote: post #199
dkdk8283 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 histori…

> 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.

This is it. As engineers, we want to build the best can. As managers of a business, we want to product the most profit we can. As marketers, the more income that comes in, the better off we are.

Chose 2 of the 3. Marketing almost always wins one of those slots.

If someone could produce a solid infrastructure to get rid of ads and all that nonsense, but still get a product out in front of everyone, I think that might be the holy grail.

(I hope that if you figure this out - you might give me a .5% royalty) when your successful.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#225

Post by dkural »

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…

For what is worth, "there's the product you produce to trade time for money, and then there's you" is precisely what alienation from labor feels like, and you're advocating that one must just accept it. People have a deep need to relate as full human beings to their work. Trying to be content with finding self-worth only outside of work doesn't solve burnout. Work is a big chunk of our time and energy. Humans need to human.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#226

Post by tomc1985 »

treis wrote: post #220
tomc1985 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so sure about that. Unit tests and pull reviews are stopgaps so that you don't have to hire 1000x engineers just to get some work done. The true masters of this craft may not need those things Believe it or not "all the edge cases" can still be perceived by the right mind. It's just that we as an industry have done seemingly everything we can to push those folks out, just look at OP as an example I've supported t…

If your expectations are not shipping with many bugs and avoiding serious blow ups then yes that's a fine way to do things. And if we're happy relying on a single SWE (what happens if you get hit by the proverbial bus?) then yes that's fine too. And if we never need to scale then SSHing into 100s of boxes is fine too. Most of my job is replacing stuff like you describe. And it's definitely not fine. Nobody knows how…

Agreed, but who can you really get mad at? The lone, inevitably overworked SWE that was asked to shoulder the entire burden of the business he worked for? Or management, who most likely denied that SWE the support he wanted?

In my last job I'd advocate tirelessly for unit tests, code reviews, all that. And it was always denied. Ironic given that the other engineers I worked with were MEs, who had notebooks full of processes describing how they were to work so that engineering issues would be caught. But the software? "I don't care how you do it, just ship the feature"

As an aside, I've always found "nobody knows how it worked because XXXXX is gone" to be kind of funny: the code knows, so go read the code. It'll mean everything takes 100x longer but the knowledge is there.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#227

Post by anthk »

invsblduck wrote: post #199
dkdk8283 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 histori…

Get collapseos, it has a bundled z80 emulator and some shell. Learn forth and continue doing Z80 coding. It's really fun.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#228

Post by yters »

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…

Well, there are the billions who are now alive thanks to modern agriculture and medicine. We are perhaps comparing the best of the past with the worst of the present, which may not be a fair comparison. Best is to collect the best of past and present to create the best future.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#229

Post by hvasilev »

The issue is that even the venture capitalists and the the managers have own oppressors and there is no external solution to the issue that this person is facing.

I remember one time a manager explaining to me how incredibly aggressive and unrealistic targets the CEO sets for them and that is why we were getting the push. The reason is that the CEO is a result-based position and is receiving unrealistic pressure from the board of directors. On the other hand the members of the board of directors are trying to keep the company afloat and avoid this being their next-in-a-row investment failure so that they can officially be classified as "serial loser". In this world you are either oppressed by someone else or by pure reality. The Hollywood image of a 1920s oppressive capitalist smoking cigars all day and thinking of who's life he should destroy in the name of profit is laughable nonsense. That is just not how the world works.

I generally agree with this person's premises, but I reject his conclusion. He basically got the slap that he deserved, since there was a huge disconnect between his model of reality and actual reality. I know because I used to be this person and am currently recovering from what this person is experiencing. The solution can only come from within and as far as I can tell it involves finding inner peace and at the same time adopting a highly disagreeable personality traits.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#230

Post by Animats »

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…

On the other side, VCs want founders who believe. Would YC fund a group that said they had a 10% chance of success, based on YC's own statistics?
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