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Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

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Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#551

Post by irchans »

dgudkov wrote: post #488
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…

This sounds so American to me. I grew up in Eastern Europe and general attitude towards work, life, and friendship is so much different. Some of the best friendships I've made were at the companies I worked for. I've seen cases where people make so good friendships at work that it even makes them postpone switching jobs to move up the career ladder. Work is not everything in your life. Work is important for sure, but…

I'm 55 and I have mostly worked for three companies in my life: Penn State (10 years, started there 1990), Raytheon (3 years, started 1995), and a small hedge fund (started 1996, 12 years). I haven't worked for Penn State for about 4 years and I have lost touch with about 80% of the people I worked with there, but I still feel a strong bond to them. I have not worked at Raytheon for 15 years, and I've lost touch with 98% of my friends there, but every once in a while I do reconnect with them. I still work for the hedge fund and I do keep in touch with 50% of the people I met there even after they have moved on to other endeavors or retired. About half of my long term friendships came from work relationships.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#552

Post by mark_l_watson »

nicbou wrote: post #452
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…

> 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 I've found a really nice perspective on this recently: An app can be a home-cooked meal [1] It's okay to build things that aren't popular, that don't scale, or that aren't economically viable, for the delight of a few us…

I am in this place. I have been working for months on an app that perhaps a few dozen people might want (in the semantic web space). If I have a few enthusiastic users who provide some feedback, I am good with that.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#553

Post by batty_alex »

jacobolus wrote: post #309
Thorentis wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the OP comment, and also with this one. It is important to understand two things in coping with the state of the world in my opinion. 1) The reality is you need to find validation and fulfilment outside of work, because in our current society you are just a drone. 2) Don't be depressed because it seems like this is how it's always been. It hasn't. Our work culture is broken. People never used to be so fa…

> Working the land, being close to home, running a family business, belonging to a small town of people you all known, having the social safety net of many people that are close to you and your family, being an independent contributor in the town's economy, etc. etc. This is how things were a few hundred years ago. Let’s not overglamorize rural poverty. This life came with 20–40% infant mortality and a very high rate…

Which era in history are we referring to here? I feel like you’ve covered a couple.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#554

Post by badpun »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #446
jacobolus wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m talking about rural Mexico up through the 1960s, within the living memory of elderly people (with some of the features I mentioned persisting today or only recently changing). The US South was like this at least through the first few decades the 20th century (after WWII the US Federal government made a tremendous effort to bring jobs and infrastructure to underdeveloped parts of the country), as were many parts o…

The past was fairly horrible, of course, but we've definitely lost elements of it which were good. For example, commerce where both parties know and care about each other on some level like you might find in a farmers market or similar. Remnants still exist, but the mass market replacement, supermarkets, are missing a lot that was once better in the past. We've certainly vastly exceeded any previous material lifestyl…

> For example, commerce where both parties know and care about each other on some level like you might find in a farmers market or similar.

There are farmers market around my area and my impression is that, if anything, people selling there can be more dishonest than the big chain stores - i.e. they will try selling a batch of bad apples, because they're not wealthy and they just need the money. Whereas big chains have quality standards and will just throw away bad food.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#555

Post by shas3 »

dgudkov wrote: post #488
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…

This sounds so American to me. I grew up in Eastern Europe and general attitude towards work, life, and friendship is so much different. Some of the best friendships I've made were at the companies I worked for. I've seen cases where people make so good friendships at work that it even makes them postpone switching jobs to move up the career ladder. Work is not everything in your life. Work is important for sure, but…

In the US: culture is very important. If you have bad coworkers, no amount of technical excitement can compensate. I am willing to hypothetically trade technical excitement for great colleagues (up to a reasonable extent).

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#556

Post by Hendrikto »

Aeolun wrote: post #147
cosmodisk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dev…

But what do you do if your initial codebase is crap. You literally cannot test until you refactor 50% of it into something semi-sensible.

That is not an argument against unit testing. That is an argument for applying it from the beginning…

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#557

Post by throwanem »

Hendrikto wrote: post #548
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…

> just do whatever you want in the moment, bit by bit I thought we were talking about technology. You gave a recipe for spaghetti.

Sometimes making up a nice plate of spaghetti is just the thing to help get you through a rough time.

Engineering has its place. But you can also make art with an engine lathe, and doing just that every now and again can be a balm to the soul.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#558

Post by 101404 »

KineticLensman wrote: post #523
Thorentis wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the OP comment, and also with this one. It is important to understand two things in coping with the state of the world in my opinion. 1) The reality is you need to find validation and fulfilment outside of work, because in our current society you are just a drone. 2) Don't be depressed because it seems like this is how it's always been. It hasn't. Our work culture is broken. People never used to be so fa…

> This is why the working-from-home trend that I hope COVID will kick-off is going to be a good thing. While we may still be working for the same companies, having a tighter integration between work and home is actually good for our mental health. Alternatively, it extends the reach of companies further into the home environment, and may exacerbate the existing trend for people not to switch off, which in turn makes…

True. I am hoping for a trend where it becomes normal that a kid interrupts some business meeting, or you talk to your coworker or CEO in a video chat while they are cooking or folding clothes or something. Almost as if you were talking to real people.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#559

Post by tonyarkles »

_pmf_ wrote: post #397
tonyarkles wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that unit tests are really good for is providing a safety net when you make changes. And I love them. I have a few multi-year projects that sit and do their thing for months at a time with no changes; when I come back to them with a client request, the test suite is awesome for making sure that whatever I just changed didn't break something else (alternatively, the tests point out an assumption I made when…

> The thing that unit tests are really good for is providing a safety net when you make changes In all projects I have worked on, extensive unit tests were not a safety net against regressions, but a safety net against change.

> but a safety net against change

Heh, yeah, that's fair, although I think there's some nuance in terms: accidental changes (to things that were working) is a form of regression in my mind. Depending on how the codebase is structured, changing the tests to match the new desired behaviour might be trivial or might be excruciatingly complicated. These days (mentioned elsewhere in this discussion) I'm working on more embedded stuff, and the only time I'm generally writing unit tests are for things that shouldn't change.

As an example, last year I was working on a custom LoRaWAN stack. As I was building out the various pieces, I was writing tests to verify that the output from generally-pure functions came out as expected. (This packet) + (This key) = (This encrypted packet). Those kinds of tests help a ton for catching stupid mistakes.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#560

Post by kdtsh »

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…

That sounds awful, I'm really sorry to read this. Do you live somewhere where there's been a big uptick in hiring from grocery stores? I couldn't say whether it's a 'good' or a 'bad' move career-wise, bit it sounds like there are more important things for you right now, like your mental health and well-being. You should probably go for it if there's nothing stopping you. If there are things stopping you and there's no feasible way to work through them (financial constraints, culture, family commitments, etc.), you should seek someone you can talk to who can help you get a clearer picture of what you feel, where you are, and where you should go, like a therapist - it helps. In fact it's probably worth doing that whether you work in a grocery store or a corporate office. Good luck!
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