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Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

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Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#421

Post by meheleventyone »

woah wrote: post #222
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.

Not having unit tests doesn’t imply not testing nor suggest anything about the value of testing.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#422

Post by zozbot234 »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #408
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…

> Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives and thus making catastrophic deception nearly impossible. A plausible just-so story, but still only that.

American Indians and Aboriginal Australians have been living like that well into historical times, and people were around to document their lives and societies - there's no real reason to suppose that humans at the most primitive state of society were living any differently. In a way, it's the one style of social organization that has truly stood the test of time; everything else has been a glorified self-imposed experiment. We're all guinea pigs living in self-enforced captivity.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#423

Post by AndrewThrowaway »

mattlondon wrote: post #382

The solution for me in the past has been a religious approach to work-life balance: LEAVE THE OFFICE AT 5 PM. Every day. Sure have some leeway for the real genuine emergencies, but fixing a random bug or "finishing this off" is not worth hanging around after 5 for. I did this and went from feeling burnt out, drained, and ultimately crushed at the end of each day, to leaving the office "hungry" and looking forward to…

I always keep in mind this story from 101 Zen Tales:

---

Muddy Road

Tanzan and Ekido were once travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't do near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

---

Don't carry your work all the way to your temple!

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#424

Post by isakkeyten »

mesaframe wrote: post #412
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…

But, what if you want to improve? What if you actually want to write better code? Robust code is something you earn.

But what is good code? What is bad code? I know what is slow code and what is fast, but not always fast is good and slow bad. So basically, good/bad code is mainly around maintainability. And if you are the only person that maintains it and can maintain it then you only need the code to be 'as good' as your ability to retain the memory of it's structure.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#425

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#427

Post by throwaway839246 »

nikofeyn wrote: post #407

> I can't say it's because I wanted to make the world a better place. i see you saying this, but i don't think you believe this. the way you ended your essay sounds like you do want to make the world a better place through technology. i am myself burnt out on technology, and i have come to a realization on something that's been burning a while. the simple fact of the matter is that society cannot be helped with techn…

> i don't understand why you want to force a path

This isn't the right metaphor. I'm not trying to force a path; I have a very strong internal sense of a general direction I need to go. But there is no path in that direction. So I'm trying to forge one.

As for why that direction, I don't know of course. But if I were to speculate it's because I have a strong intuition that that's where my personal growth is.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#428

Post by dchyrdvh »

aazaa wrote: post #151

> Has anyone been through this who managed to recover their optimism and creative spirit? Please help me. What can I do? Have you tried helping someone? If not, find someone who needs help, then help them. This seems to be a good way to hack past the kind of burnout you're talking about. It's best if the thing a person needs help with is something you like to do (or once liked to do). It won't even seem like you're h…

"A magical thing happens when you help someone. You forget about yourself." - that's a remarkable statement, actually.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#429

Post by cblum »

tonyarkles wrote: post #250
unclebucknasty wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Reading through this thread, and looking in the mirror, it's reinforcing the fact that I, too, am becoming a graybeard. > Likewise, with CI/CD. And don't get me started on the monkey-work that is TDD. You might argue that it improves code quality. But, it's hard to make the case that it improves job satisfaction. If you move more work from the creative, problem-solving bucket into the busy-work bucket, the result wil…

How did you get into that space? What was your background? I hope you don’t mind me asking.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#430

Post by lnsru »

theanine wrote: post #300

I wrote nearly this exact message in my mood journal today. I haven't had it quite as bad as the author, but I'm extremely, and it feels like permanently, burned out of working for a business/corporation. I fundamentally hate it. I walked out of my first corporate job after a month and now that I'm on my second, all I can think about is walking out. I hate it. I hate it so much. Every single day feels like I'm ruinin…

I had this exact situation with numbers few weeks ago. Wasn’t able to figure out how much to pay for my groceries. It took five times for cashier to repeat until I understood. Felt like on other planet.

It started in January, affected my health in strange way. It’s my second week when don’t feel ill. Working from home works well, I didn’t lost my interest in engineering. But I don’t know what to do when I must sit in the office again. It’s hard to quit being single person who has a job in family.

I am not a pro giving advices, bet my email is in my profile. Talking makes it easier.

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