I've been trying to figure this out for a while, and basically came to the same conclusions. It's really challenging however to try and find a place to be if you have ADHD and are dissolusioned. Once the job loses it's novelty, magic, or value, I become functionally unable to do the more mundane drudgery, even if I have a bunch of other stuff to play with, and either leave or get fired. Now on the hunt again, I have no clue what to look for. The qualities the author describes are seemingly present almost everywhere.
Surviving Disillusionment
131–140 of 179 posts
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#132There was a post on HN a couple days ago about a loss of tech optimism. I've been searching for a bit and unable to find it for linking. It (and the associated comment thread) had no answers. This feels like as close as you can get to an answer. My advice to anyone struggling with disillusionment in tech: get a job doing software at a non-tech company with a mission you care about. You'll remember that technology is…
While i somewhat agree with your advice, i think the solution you propose is incomplete/omitting (not on purpose) some important parts. I would rephrase it as "find a software job at a non-tech company that works in the industry or with the topic that you enjoy/care about". Otherwise, you get all the negatives of working for a non-tech company with none of the benefits, since working a software job at a non-tech comp…
I guess I tend to use the terms "mission" and "topic" interchangeably ;)
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I hated university too. I mean, I thought it would be a walk in the park and fun to boot. Computer Science - the computer part was cool. Science was cool too, so a Computer Science course would be amazing! Except... it's not really about computers. And it's not about science either. It's a complete misnomer. Only after the sunken cost fallacy had taken full hold I realized that it was actually a math course. If you t…
For sure; I found it pretty stark how a given Computer Science curriculum doesn't cover much of what you actually need to be successful in the field: architecting, engineering, planning, testing, wiring services/api's together, etc.
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Reading two hours gives you 22 hours to "mull"
(Not disagreeing at all, btw)
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I suspect a lot of it has to do with the kinds of books one reads. Many years ago a friend claimed to read a book a day. She was referring to cheap paperback fantasy books, her preferred genre. She could read them very fast because she already knew what was in them. She told me she mostly read the dialogue, which would definitely cut down on the time spent reading. So perhaps the OP is reading mostly books they're al…
Maybe. I would say that for fiction, this is almost certainly true, but for non-fiction, a lot has been molecular biology, or nonlinear economics. Which are neither native to me. YMMV.
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#136There was a post on HN a couple days ago about a loss of tech optimism. I've been searching for a bit and unable to find it for linking. It (and the associated comment thread) had no answers. This feels like as close as you can get to an answer. My advice to anyone struggling with disillusionment in tech: get a job doing software at a non-tech company with a mission you care about. You'll remember that technology is…
Was it "No more bold visions of the future"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24882565
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#137I'd like to chip in with a slightly different take ... as a minority engineer, one of my greatest sources of frustration and disillusionment is how an occupation that is ostensibly lends itself to much clearer and objective outcomes and approaches is anything but. There is an unfairness that is so hard to see if you're not a minority in tech, that leads to lots of minority men just saying 'fuck it, this isn't worth i…
> It really sucks to find out that the whole idea of it just being about the code, meritocracy blah blah blah ... isn't really true. Have you considered starting your own company so you have control of how employees are treated? More generally, this seems to me to be a potential solution to the disillusionment problem described in the article that is not often considered. Bad management and bad treatment of employees…
Statistically minorities are also undervalued in terms of investment, FWIW. People are less likely to invest in your company if you're a minority. (Some will even refuse to provide you business because you're a minority.)
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#138I think this suffices as a summary, "The other reality is the frustration and drudgery of operating in a world of corporate politics, bureaucracy, envy and greed— a world so depressing, that many people quit in frustration, never to come back." Some of us just aren't cut out to work in a big corporate environment. From what I've seen, large technical companies are made up of two sets, the technical set and the manage…
"Some people aren't cut out for it" explains nothing and is an unfalsifiable statement. It's simply restating what's happening, but in a way that removes empathy. As someone with 10 years of management experience at big corporations, I encourage you to consider the possibility that managers are not valued more and this attitude, itself, is evidence of the beginnings corporate burnout.
It's ok to make unfalsifiable statements, we're not in a laboratory, we're not constructing a proof here.
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It really sucks to find out that the whole idea of it just being about the code, meritocracy blah blah blah ... isn't really true. Have you considered starting your own company so you have control of how employees are treated? More generally, this seems to me to be a potential solution to the disillusionment problem described in the article that is not often considered. Bad management and bad treatment of employees…
Statistically minorities are also undervalued in terms of investment, FWIW. People are less likely to invest in your company if you're a minority. (Some will even refuse to provide you business because you're a minority.)
> Statistically minorities are also undervalued in terms of investment
Have you considered starting a venture capital fund that does a better job of investing in businesses that existing capital allocation underinvests in? Again, failing to invest enough in businesses that are worth the investment should be bad business, and companies that fail in that way should face competition from companies that don't.
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#140[deleted]