Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help • Hacker News Board

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#281

Post by _coveredInBees » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:56 AM UTC

dkural wrote: post #225

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…

Yes, I was surprised by that line. I tried to do that. 10 years ago I was a newly minted Ph.D. and my wife and I had to solve the 2 body problem and we compromised with our jobs so we could both be employed together in a nice town with a relatively low cost of living and a great place to raise a family. Our lives outside of work were fantastic! Great friends, nice house, lots of weekend activities, got my first pup (waiting my whole life to have my own place so I could have one), had my twins a year later.

But good God was my job (big company, lots of politics and bad management... the usual) absolutely soul crushing. I thought that I'd be able to make my peace with it in lieu of everything else which was near perfect, but the more time dragged on, the more it crushed me and sucked joy out of the other areas of my life. I will never forget the sense of existential dread that would overcome me every Sunday evening and the relief on Friday evenings.

Fortunately I was able to leave and take up an opportunity at a small startup in the ML/consulting space. It's entirely bootstrapped, so no VC people fucking everything up, and the management are incredibly nice and decent humans, and several of them I count as close friends. I love the work that I do, and I am almost always learning new things. I've been working here for 4 years, and I have never yet experienced that existential dread on a Sunday evening. Work is just another part of my life that I enjoy now, and it is incredible how happy and fulfilled I am with my life. My wife has fortunately experienced the same with the move and change in jobs.

I get hit up by recruiters for the big tech companies all the time and there simply is no reason why I would ever consider working at any of those companies to be another cog in the wheel. No amount of money can ever make up for what I have now.

So I would strongly encourage anyone who is in the situation described by OP or me above to try their best to switch jobs if possible. I can't fathom going through my whole adult life as unhappy as I was at my first job and I wouldn't wish it on even my worst enemy.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#282

Post by cellularmitosis » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:00 AM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #260

I think building modern software is not programming any more. Now is about putting together libraries and open source plumbing, doing a bit of customization then testing, testing, monitoring, then figuring out why things aren't working. I remember writing a lot more simple stuff. Whole applications with maybe a handful of libraries. It was great.

Spot on. This is why MIT moved away from feeding undergrads SICP: it was a sad realization that the reality of modern software development was less about building/understanding a world from first-principles, and more about finding yourself in a sea of libraries/frameworks and having to do enough "basic science" on them to discover how to make them do what you want (reliably).

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#283

Post by invsblduck » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

dkdk8283 wrote: post #219

invsblduck wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds exactly like me. My burnout has gotten worse now that tech is mainstream. My current gig is more like a regular business that just happens to develop software. Most of the staff are social first technology second. I don’t fit in at all, and to be frank it depresses me. Not sure what I’m going to do in the future. I can’t shoot the shit and talk strace or gdb with any of them.

After reading your reply to OP below, I agree we have a super similar path. Especially the beginning:

> My first burnout was pure depletion of energy. I was young, passionate, and believed in doing the best work I could. I was addicted to work and pushed myself to deliver. I did, and built a career. I left after almost a decade at that company [...]

(However, I never found a way to leave "Tech" for another profession--especially once I achieved a certain salary range, and others depended on me.)

> I can’t shoot the shit and talk strace or gdb with any of them.

Know the feeling exactly...

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#284

Post by invsblduck » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

anthk wrote: post #227

invsblduck wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks, i'll give it a try. :)

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#285

Post by nixarian » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:17 AM UTC

_coveredInBees wrote: post #281

dkural wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I was surprised by that line. I tried to do that. 10 years ago I was a newly minted Ph.D. and my wife and I had to solve the 2 body problem and we compromised with our jobs so we could both be employed together in a nice town with a relatively low cost of living and a great place to raise a family. Our lives outside of work were fantastic! Great friends, nice house, lots of weekend activities, got my first pup (…

Wow I'm sure everyone can experience the exact same unique circumstances! all it takes is a few choices! there's nothing wrong with the fundamental structure of things! just follow my survivor's fallacy!

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#286

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

_coveredInBees wrote: post #281

dkural wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I was surprised by that line. I tried to do that. 10 years ago I was a newly minted Ph.D. and my wife and I had to solve the 2 body problem and we compromised with our jobs so we could both be employed together in a nice town with a relatively low cost of living and a great place to raise a family. Our lives outside of work were fantastic! Great friends, nice house, lots of weekend activities, got my first pup (…

[deleted]

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#287

Post by wp381640 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

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…

One of the best pieces of advice is to completely separate and isolate your work life from your social life. Build a wall around both and don't mix them, learned the lesson the hard way after a decade in the industry

It keeps your work life clean of any distractions and forces you to build and maintain a social network that isn't tied to your work. Also cuts out a lot of emotions from decision making.

Go to work, get your work done, and leave.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#288

Post by techslave » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #270

Balgair wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's understandable. Look at pre 2012 SV. All the ping-pong tables, all the beanbag chairs, the free beer, the free laundry, the sleep-pods, the cafeterias, etc. 'Cynical' people thought that these accruements were meant to keep you there and working all the time. People got rid of their apartments, set up Winnebagos in the parking lot. Intents do matter, but still, if you were that kind of person, the one that thoug…

When I visited the Google office in Mountain View, I noticed the streets around it were packed with parked RVs. Do those RVs belong to homeless employees?

no. homeless people

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#289

Post by battery_cowboy » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:28 AM UTC

highlysyntropic wrote: post #243

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 awesome. You, sir, took the red pill. BTW, do you work for Tesla? The batteries in your name.

I worked with Tesla grid batteries (powerpack installations) at my last job, but I'm currently looking for work. I just got tired of "engineering" my personal projects, i just "program" them now!

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#290

Post by jlbnjmn » Tue, May 05, 2020, 2:34 AM UTC

bearer_token wrote: post #247

Skunkleton wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also like to add that therapy is not just for the mentally ill, and nothing to be ashamed of. Navigating your career, and life in general, is tough and a good therapist can help put it in perspective. I personally went to therapy weekly for about six months to help deal with the impact of burnout on my life. I think I came away from it a more capable person.

I have an odd fear of going to a therapist in the bay area - when all my issues are caused by being yet another bay area stereotype. Do you think therapists get tired of dealing with people who are just unhappy with their job in a bubble?

Plenty of remote therapists available.