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Surviving Disillusionment

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Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#91

Post by mattgreenrocks »

layoric wrote: post #89
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #74

Disillusionment was a crucible for my career. I went through it and wouldn't have it any other way. On the other side of it you attain focus on what is valuable to you, which is singularly useful for evaluating subsequent jobs. However, the crucible for me consisted of: depression, burnout, tendonitis. It sucked. From that, I decided I'd never do webdev again, including so-called backend. The web as a medium is not w…

I’ve recently come to a similar conclusion around “Focus” being something in short supply in most workplaces and no matter how often I point out its power (with examples), people push to solve 3-5 large scale problems concurrently. I’m not sure where I’ll find more focused environment but I’m sure I want little todo with the constant “hustle” mentality.

Some people prefer the feeing of being busy to actually shipping things.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#92

Post by grep_name »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #74

Disillusionment was a crucible for my career. I went through it and wouldn't have it any other way. On the other side of it you attain focus on what is valuable to you, which is singularly useful for evaluating subsequent jobs. However, the crucible for me consisted of: depression, burnout, tendonitis. It sucked. From that, I decided I'd never do webdev again, including so-called backend. The web as a medium is not w…

I feel similarly but pretty much knew by the end of college that I wasn't interested in the typical web dev roles. I wound up in database development for my last couple jobs and now have ended up in charge of a lot of systems I built myself that interact with those databases and serve as the backend (and pseudo-frontend?) for all kinds of integrations for a small manufacturing company.

I'm not really well compensated for my work, but am somewhat paralyzed by the fact that I just don't know what to look for in a job anymore. I considered looking for a devops role in a company that prioritizes ownership of their systems (i.e. implementation of their own pipelines on their own metal rather than aws or similar), but it seems like the likelihood of finding a company like that which also values good infrastructure practices is pretty unlikely. I find that when I ask about whether finding such a role is realistic in chat rooms or forums about devops work the responses range from confused to derisive.

Did you find the crowd that resonated with your sentiments through contributions to open source? I've been thinking about looking into open source meetups in my area as a way of expanding my understanding of what I want to do.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#93

Post by zornthewise »

freeqaz wrote: post #84
ci5er wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I have for a long time. Now with Kindles, I don't have to load 10 paperbacks into my computer bag every time I go on a global jaunt. A lot of time in airplanes and hotels gives you a lot of time for this (on average - which is why I said "per week", not "per day"). But, most under 250 page non-fiction books can be polished off in less than two hours. A lot of people spend two-hours/day watching some Netflix movie…

I've spent a long time trying to speed read and I'm still much slower than where I'd like to be. How are you able to read through 2 pages per minute and still have context on what's going on? Do you have any advice for learning to do that?

While there can be advantages to reading a lot and reading fast, I would also suggest that there is value to reading less (but still consistently) and letting your brain mull things over. Some thoughts really do require time.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#94

Post by kbenson »

ci5er wrote: post #64
Bodell wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Touchy-feely" doesn't really explain to me what potion you hold that would be criticized. What is it you usually read? Why would your comments on the emotional content on a book ostracize you?

I guess it depends on workplace culture? I have worked and/or consulted at places where I would not have been (in general) afraid to be bold. Books like "Think" by Simon Blackburn don't bother me to comment on. They are pretty light treatments of the underlying topics, but (as philosophy), they are framed as rational discourses. (Whether they are or not is a different topic). Topics about things like emotional intell…

It certainly does feel like people (in the US at least, which is my exposure) are quicker to categorize you than before. It doesn't matter if 95% of your beliefs are similar, if you happen to be in a situation where that other 5% are relevant and express them, it certainly seems like there's a good chance the people around you that are less acquainted with you are going to assume you're part of whatever group generally expressed those opinions, and categorize you as such. That can have repercussions at work, where there are often many people you have a passing acquaintance with, but may individually or together have an impact on your work life.

I think what this really means is that the more moderate you are, the more likely you are to feel stifled. Whether you're a liberal or conservative, the farther you are to one side the easier it is to know when and around who you can speak. Either you're in a stronghold for your respective group, or you wait until you're within the safe-haven of like-minded people in that area. As a moderate, you hold some views of both sides, and all you ever want to do if discussion comes up is explain how there are reasons why you hold these views that are you believe are rational, but to do so risks people categorizing you as "the other" from both sides. You learn to keep you mouth shut at all times, not just in one place or the other.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#95

Post by mianos »

unemphysbro wrote: post #35

The reason I got into tech/coding as a teen was the diy punk rock ethos. I remember spending weeks trying to figuring out if I could break drm in the latest video game ('tricking' starforce in splinter cell 3 was such a cool thing). Then I moved on to academia where I felt the ethos extended. Academia was life consuming and by the end I just had to leave. Now that I'm job hunting post-phd, I'm trying to rekindle that…

You will find there are still a lot of companies that value people and broad skills. Some company leadership principles are even anti leadedship principles and factory pop-out leet coding developers.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#96

Post by jeffreyrogers »

claudiulodro wrote: post #81

His mention of Masters of Doom was interesting, because that book is really what got me into programming. The reality of corporate programming when compared to the freewheeling hang-out-with-your-friends-eating-pizza-listening-to-metal-inventing-cool-things programming described in the book has been a real bummer. Does that style of programming even exist any more?

I don't think it does since everything is more complex. Carmack has even noted that mods that used to be done by a single person now require a full team since there is just so much more to do.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#97

Post by mattgreenrocks »

grep_name wrote: post #92
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #74

Disillusionment was a crucible for my career. I went through it and wouldn't have it any other way. On the other side of it you attain focus on what is valuable to you, which is singularly useful for evaluating subsequent jobs. However, the crucible for me consisted of: depression, burnout, tendonitis. It sucked. From that, I decided I'd never do webdev again, including so-called backend. The web as a medium is not w…

I feel similarly but pretty much knew by the end of college that I wasn't interested in the typical web dev roles. I wound up in database development for my last couple jobs and now have ended up in charge of a lot of systems I built myself that interact with those databases and serve as the backend (and pseudo-frontend?) for all kinds of integrations for a small manufacturing company. I'm not really well compensated…

> I find that when I ask about whether finding such a role is realistic in chat rooms or forums about devops work the responses range from confused to derisive.

That's interesting. Conflicts of values like those can be deep and hard to reconcile. It becomes a sort of paper cut you can't quite get away from, because everyone's too invested in perpetuating the status quo.

I have to imagine there are companies that care about that, however. (There have to be those that aren't magnets for the hyper-competitive, too.)

> Did you find the crowd that resonated with your sentiments through contributions to open source?

A bit. I had a nice side quest through OSS, where I learned a lot about shipping, customers (e.g. users), and using it as a way to try out other domains/technologies. Ultimately, it was more something to help me pivot than a place to stay, mostly because I need to make money. But I am grateful for those that build those communities.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#98

Post by jventura »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #74

Disillusionment was a crucible for my career. I went through it and wouldn't have it any other way. On the other side of it you attain focus on what is valuable to you, which is singularly useful for evaluating subsequent jobs. However, the crucible for me consisted of: depression, burnout, tendonitis. It sucked. From that, I decided I'd never do webdev again, including so-called backend. The web as a medium is not w…

> I'm doing quite fine now.

You got my curiosity! Can I ask you in which field are you working on?

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#99

Post by burntoutfire »

claudiulodro wrote: post #81

His mention of Masters of Doom was interesting, because that book is really what got me into programming. The reality of corporate programming when compared to the freewheeling hang-out-with-your-friends-eating-pizza-listening-to-metal-inventing-cool-things programming described in the book has been a real bummer. Does that style of programming even exist any more?

It does, in startups and game dev ventures you do with your friends. However, as it did back then, it mostly ends up with bankruptcy and getting a corporate job...

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#100

Post by endymi0n »

heroHACK17 wrote: post #5

I struggle with this and I am only two years into my career. I look back on my CS education and miss it so much. About three months ago, I started a ritual where I would spend 60 minutes before work every morning reading books about the internals of popular software or programming languages, histories of technology, etc. It rekindles my love for computing that brought me to CS in the first place. Instead of constantl…

Interesting. For me it's the opposite. I hated university with a passion. The synthetic problems, the fake currency of citations, the dogmatic and first-principle free way of learning.

It took me all of quitting, years of depression and accidentally restarting my career through a tech support gig to rediscover the massive joy I had solving problems with code.

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