Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help • Hacker News Board

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#561

Post by watwut » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:52 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #458

watwut wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I always wonder where and when exactly when people say things like that. Because whatever period I look…

It is like that right now in many small villages in Italy, Spain, Germany, and possibly other places I haven't visited. This overwhelming sense of anonymity is in my opinion typical for US suburbs and US mega shopping malls. Most other countries have smaller and more intimate town squares, optimized for waking rather than driving.

They have huge unemployment.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#562

Post by lubesGordi » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:56 PM UTC

Dude, you just got to get the fuck out of Silicon Valley. Tech in general has been raided by finance douches. You need to find a medium sized, profitable company somewhere not in california, new york, or florida, and go work there. You can mentor people and enjoy your life outside work and generally explore tech as you please.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#563

Post by kasey_junk » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:00 PM UTC

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…

More likely selection bias for people that comment on threads like these. I’ve worked in finance and vc backed tech for my whole career. I don’t agree with any of the sentiments expressed in the threads like these.

I’ve got friends from every job I’ve had in the last 20 years who I still see routinely including some of my best friends.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#564

Post by sanderjd » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

christophilus wrote: post #538

dgudkov wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in the US and my experience is the same as yours. Maybe 50% of my friends are coworkers and former coworkers. I have almost always stayed at companies longer than I otherwise would because I loved my coworkers. Burnout for me is caused by too much bureaucracy, too many meetings, and incompatible programming philosophies. Only twice in my long career have I left a job due to an insufferable coworker.

> incompatible programming philosophies

This really hits home for me. I'm at my most miserable when working with people who value doing things fast more than doing them well. I suspect those people are also at their most miserable when working with me. I see them as creating work that I'll have to do eventually to clean up their mess, and I suspect they see me as an insufferable gatekeeper.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#565

Post by djhaskin987 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

1. Insist on work life balance, a40 hour work week, and stick to it. Employers very much do exist which want this just as much as you do. 2. Ensure you get plenty of unstructured time (play time) and also rest every day. 3. Realize that your employment does not define who you are. 4. Not all employers are awful. Seek out employers from publicly traded, midsize companies with profit motive (no government jobs/insurance companies, but no startups either). I find these jobs to be the "funnest", though I am currently a cog in the machine if a large company. They are fun because there's no time for politics, but there's no huge rush either, just get your job done and do it well. If you cannot switch, do whatever you need to do to stay sane in your current environment. Take care of you. 5. Exercise creativity -- a few minutes of "fun" programming a day -- and it will get fun again. 6. See a therapist. "Burnout" generally is accompanied anxiety and/or depression. It is certainly helping me.

Burnout can be temporary. But it requires work to overcome it.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#566

Post by throwaway23419 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:03 PM UTC

TomMckenny wrote: post #132

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…

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…

> Not to criticize any poster, but it is unfortunate than seeking advice from the web is currently the best one can do.

Having experienced some kind of a burnout and depression myself, one of the reasons for seeking out help on the web might be the need to find that help from like-minded people, not just someone with some generic wisdom.

People are quick to recommend professional help, and they aren't wrong. But a person with burnout, depression or other internal turmoil may be in dire need (or at least desire) for camaraderie from people who he considers like-minded. I knew I was. It may be very difficult to find that from mental health professionals, and of course that may not even be a therapist's task. It still leaves a hole to fill.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#567

Post by peterwoerner » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:03 PM UTC

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…

It is probably also industry (and city) dependent, I have found at my job in a midsized city that there are a number of probably life long friends within my company. Also, because it is one of the largest tech employers in the area, many of the intelligent people who want to stay in city (due to family and growing up in the area) want to and do spend their entire career there. We also have pretty reasonable career paths for people who want to only work 40 hours a week and for people who want to work more.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#568

Post by awake » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

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'm going through similar feelings right now and I tend to bounce in and out of this state every couple of years. I think the root of it is depression and anxiety. I would seek mental health care before you make a life altering choice. If you had the flu you would go to the doctor, you wouldn't wake up and say wow I'm so tired I should quit my job. Mental health is no different. Medication, therapy, and changes to your routine can help and often quite quickly.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#569

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

throwaway0214 wrote: post #346

I've been working as an engineer in high paced roles at one of the FANGs for about 15 years now. I've gone through ups-and-downs in terms of what I call "creative energy", which I will refer to as coding "mojo". 1. You have a limited amount of mojo that you can throw at a problem. When you're young, this focus and energy is easy. You can throw it at problems that you may not be that vested in for a reward like money.…

[deleted]

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#570

Post by not_a_moth » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

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…

Rails was engineered around developer happiness, and I kind of miss those days. And while React is cool I'm still kind of resentful that companies insist on using React and adding a whole Node env when basic jQuery would have done the job.

Web development could be stupidly simple if we wanted it to be. I feel like it got too easy, and suddenly there were waves of bootcamp grads, and a lot of developers resented that.