Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help • Hacker News Board

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#591

Post by strken » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

unclebucknasty wrote: post #98

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 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…

I don't really care about CI/CD (they just run), Git (better than project_name_final-03 on an unsecured ftp server), or TDD (just cheat and write post hoc tests).

What I really hate is filling in form A, which directs you to form B, which you fill in to see whether form C is required. Form B was put in place by a legal team, who don't provide any point of contact, and who are not your friendly local legal team.

Because the process of filling out forms is so time-consuming, your engineering team uses Asana to track it. However, your PMs use an excel spreadsheet, the legal team uses JIRA, your copywriters use a google doc, and the teams that own forms B and C use separate internally created tools. You update your form-filling progress in 6 different places, some of which have bugs and others of which aren't actively monitored, so you also have to use email/slack/skype messages to follow up the right people. Some of the right people are actually the wrong people. Some of the right people reject your proposal because they didn't read it properly. A few of them reject your proposal for reasons that are actually valid, but which you could not possibly have known, because they're based on tribal knowledge which is not documented anywhere.

Filling in the forms and fixing the issues takes literally 3 months and at least 4 group meetings as well as several skype/zoom calls. One day you are finally allowed to write the code. It's 150 lines including tests, across two services, and you're done in two days. Everything that caused your proposal to be rejected would have been found in development. You quietly wonder whether you would have been happier as a bricklayer.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#592

Post by myth_drannon » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:42 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's different because in Eastern Europe you had to rely on your network to survive. Friendships are extremely important in Eastern Europe, N.A. is more individualistic and competitive(especially in the workplace) hence more loneliness, burnouts.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#593

Post by tomhoward » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

seneca wrote: post #572

tomhoward wrote: post #378

My startup experience isn't quite the same as this, but it shares some aspects, and I've had some similar feelings in my lowest moments in the aftermath. It's now almost six years since I walked away from my startup, and I left feeling some combination of exhaustion, shame, resentment, anger and sadness. As time passed, and the fog has gradually lifted on the state I sometimes think of as "startup drunkenness", I've…

Meta response, but why do people write like this? I see this all over linked-in. Dramatic phrasing "But I'm just one person", coupled with the linebreak per line of text.

I write short paragraphs as they're easier to scan-read than long paragraphs.

And if you think that's dramatic phrasing, you should see the way I wrote back in my startup days 7+ years ago :)

My approach is to tread carefully and avoid seeming dogmatic. These are complex issues and discussions can easily go bad if they're not handled sensitively.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#594

Post by tomhoward » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

gmtx725 wrote: post #510

tomhoward wrote: post #378

My startup experience isn't quite the same as this, but it shares some aspects, and I've had some similar feelings in my lowest moments in the aftermath. It's now almost six years since I walked away from my startup, and I left feeling some combination of exhaustion, shame, resentment, anger and sadness. As time passed, and the fog has gradually lifted on the state I sometimes think of as "startup drunkenness", I've…

out of interest, what are some of the unconventional approaches to personal growth you adopted?

Thanks for the interest; as stated in the comment, best to email me and I'll happily share info privately (address in profile).

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#595

Post by orestarod » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #547

zozbot234 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason for those institutions, though. Within any social group larger than a primitive tribe, you can't coordinate pro-social behavior or resolve disputes without some formal institutions and structures of sorts. We've got to give the anarcho-primitivists credit where credit is due: at least they understand what it would take to get actual anarchism to work!

Perhaps this will change your mind to some extent https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10933-what_the_world_can_learn_f... Specifically talks about how Hong Kong protestors have almost no formal hierarchical structures (to avoid the Chinese state arresting the leaders), yet remain highly functional and effective.

To have a group of protestors who volunteer for a commonly accepted goal among them be organized, functioning and effective without hierarchical structures is vastly different from having a whole society functional and effective without hierarchical structures. What every system first and foremost must face is how conflicts are resolved, because conflicts of every level of severity will arise without fail. A group without conflicts, that exists exactly because it is made of people who truly think exactly alike, like HK protesters, is not a good example. ANY group of people who truly think exactly alike is perfectly functional, no matter what it is they collectively value.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#596

Post by fuball63 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

This is just my personal approach to being disillusioned with tech, but I think about it a lot so I thought I'd share.

I think one of the most dangerous cliches we are taught when we are young is "do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life".

It sets up the expectation that your passion and your job should be tightly coupled, and if they aren't, there's something flawed with you.

Having a job where you feel creative, productive, and generally fulfilled is a great thing, but if you don't have it, that's fine too. Work the job as best you can, get whatever good parts you can strip from it (learning, socialization, coffee), and spend the other 8-10 hours a day doing things you actually like to do, tech or otherwise.

I try to walk the line of not leaving my friends and teammates out to dry, but also never "laying my body on the tracks" for the corporation. Your friends will return the favor; the company won't.

This definitely won't help you climb the ladder, and it won't garner you fame or fortune from your employment, but you'll be left with an identity and a soul that isn't controlled by profits. I've found it to be worth it, despite the prevailing culture.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#597

Post by tvanbeek » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

Do not listen to anonymous people online but talk to a professional like a coach or psychologist.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#598

Post by RIMR » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

You're not disillusioned with technology. You seem to have a great deal of interest and faith in technology.

You seem disillusioned with Capitalism.

The unfortunate truth is that Venture Capitalists run the entire tech industry, and they simply do not care about technology for technology's sake. They care about making money, for money's sake. No matter how innovative and impressive your technology may be, they are only measuring it in dollars.

If you are forced into a decision where you have to make your technology worse to make your bottom line better, you will be expected to make your technology worse ASAP. If you don't do it, the capitalists will take their money and go home.

You should look into some more altruistic tech projects. I have friends that work at a digital accessibility company that is funded almost entirely by donations. They seem to be in the unique situation of being funded for making software that works best for the users, not for making software that earns the most for their investors, as their investors expect no returns on their donations.

But as long as you're working in the commercial tech sector, you're going to have to deal with VCs who don't care one bit about the tech you're producing, only that it maximizes their returns.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#599

Post by orestarod » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:51 PM UTC

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #532

zozbot234 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exp…

> American Indians and Aboriginal Australians have been living like that well into historical times... They're not time travelers from the past. They're our contemporaries, who are every bit as 'modern' as us. They just made a different set of choices along their historical arc. > ...there's no real reason to suppose that humans at the most primitive state of society were living any differently. At the same time ther…

Larger number of humans were only made possible after we started farming. Primitives times refer to that old an age.

If these people never went through the social evolutions the rest of the world underwent, they are indeed travelers from the past.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#600

Post by _coveredInBees » Tue, May 05, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

yMPJXgDvj wrote: post #330

_coveredInBees wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

I appreciate reading your story. I'm ~6 years out of school having been in large companies and am wondering if it's normal to have the joy sucked out like I'm experiencing. If you don't mind me asking, how did you end up finding the small startup job? When I look at the job boards they're often dominated by the big guns or it's hard to sort through lots of small (oftentimes shady) postings - I don't know where to go…

I wish I had a better answer but like in almost all cases, it ends up being your network. In my case, my brother-in-law had been working for a few years at the company and he knew the founders as a couple of them were his mentors in grad school. So I knew enough about the company and when they needed to hire someone, him being able to vouch for me was enough to get me an interview with them.

That being said, I think places like ziprecruiter / indeed will still have job postings from smaller companies. The challenge, as you mentioned, is trying to figure out the good ones from the sketchy/shitty ones. Small companies can also be challenging if the management isn't great and they have bad culture. So I would definitely place a lot of weight on that if I were interviewing at smaller companies.