Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Surviving Disillusionment

spakhm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 179 posts

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#141

Post by Shacklet0n »

I worked in software for 15 years after graduating B.Sc. engineering (electrical). As a software engineer, I Worked in pharma, aerospace, heavy industry (mining), logistics and some general web development as well. I got so fed up with the industry BS; tool churn for tool churn's sake, brogrammer culture, etc. Particularly sick of BS mantras like "move fast and break things"; the attitude that technology is necessarily a force for good, because... well... its technology. Silicon valley "solving" non-existent or BS problems.

So I took a huge pay cut to go works as an electrical and control systems engineer (zero experience). I love every minute. After 5 years I've significantly overtaken my tech salary and I'm solving real problems for real people instead of the bullshit work that is 90% of software "engineering".

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#142

Post by mdorazio »

slumdev wrote: post #106
shay_ker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many doctors would still do the job if they got paid a middle class salary? It's pretty clear, to me at least, that very few would even bother. Veterinarians are a good comparison - there's very few, low salaries, passionate about animals, and high suicide rates due to unending debt. Yes - some doctors end up volunteering with Doctors without Borders & similar non-profit groups. Some engineers have gotten more po…

> How many doctors would still do the job if they got paid a middle class salary? Nearly all of them. The most common specialties do pay middle-class salaries. The very highest salaries (almost all in surgical specialties) skew the mean quite a bit, but the median is not as high as you think it is. It hasn't been a lifestyle profession for 20 years.

For those questioning this, see [1] for a decent list by state. The median doctor makes less than a FAANG employee, and that's after many more years of debt-fueled education and residency.

[1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Ph...

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#143

Post by friendlybus »

jlos wrote: post #109

I wonder if this disillusionment comes from trying to combine what gives you meaning and what gives you an income. I spent most of my 20's failing to become a religious minister before switching to CS and experienced a large amount of disillusionment in the process. My sense of meaning and purpose in life were so tightly tied to my vocation that the loss of one meant the loss of the other. Before I switched to CS, I…

Why would you spend 40hrs a week in a meaningless job for 30yrs when you wouldn't have to? That's 61k hours of your life milling about in someone else's dream factory.

The compartmentalization strategy is disastifying like polytheism.

I'm more curious why you failed or discovered it wasnt for you to become a minister?

Insulating one's life against risk is natural and we all have that instinct to grind out a simple life.

Why do you value identity so much? There's a big world out there without grasping at wind.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#145

Post by ornornor »

rademacher wrote: post #27

I 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…

There is another essay on that series from the same author (and linked at the beginning of that one) about this question. Is called how to get promoted but slap converts what you’re talking about regarding managerial vs technical value.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#146

Post by tolbish »

pdonis wrote: post #78
trustfundbaby wrote: post #70

I'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…

Are you going to lend him $500,000 to start this business? After all, banks and investors want to make sure they invest in the right people. Wouldn't want to throw your money away at a "risky investment".

Also where are their initial customers going to come from? If you don't attend the right schools or network with the right people from early on in life, why would people go out of their way to attach themselves socially to someone who is unproven?

Yes, just start a business...if only it were that easy!

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#147

Post by iaHN »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #70

I'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…

I worked at a big tech company for a few years. The moment I knew I was done with them was when the VP of our division said, during a quarterly all-hands "...and we're very hip too. We've hired quite a number of African Americans..."

People will be quick to remind you, both overtly and implicitly, that your skin color is a political tool.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#148

Post by [deleted] »

jimbokun wrote: post #85
trustfundbaby wrote: post #70

I'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…

Do you have any good links for anecdotes about the concrete ways in which this kind of discrimination occurs? The USA Today article is helpful for seeing aggregate statistics, but I don't really get how these kind of biases played out in real life. Does it look like explicit, unapologetic racist comments? Or micro-aggressions that where the speaker may not realize what they are doing? Or that and everything in betwee…

[deleted]

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#149

Post by coffeemug »

tolbish wrote: post #146
pdonis wrote: post #78

Earlier 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…

Are you going to lend him $500,000 to start this business? After all, banks and investors want to make sure they invest in the right people . Wouldn't want to throw your money away at a "risky investment". Also where are their initial customers going to come from? If you don't attend the right schools or network with the right people from early on in life, why would people go out of their way to attach themselves soc…

This is bullshit because (a) there are many VC funds now explicitly earmarked for minority founders and run by minority partners, and (b) an enormous number of successful startups are started by first generation immigrants who didn't go to fancy schools here.

Re: Surviving Disillusionment

#150

Post by logicslave »

cambalache wrote: post #103
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think getting older is part of it. I used to love learning about different assembly architectures and spent lots of time on it, but as I got older a couple things happened: one, other things take up more of my time. Two, I already know a lot about assembly, so I don't get much from learning a new architecture that is probably only marginally different from one I already know. I remember discovering HN around 2008 w…

> I remember discovering HN around 2008 when I was a teenager. > Now, it's rare for me to come across something I don't understand And here I was, reading you thinking you were Donald Knuth, I think you vastly overestimate the breadth and depth of your knowledge.

I agree with his point though, and I could have written that post myself. Its not that you fully understand everything on here, its that you are familiar enough that it removes the magic of it. I have been grappling with the same issue, in the past I could read manuals on distributed databases, but now I know enough about how those distributed systems work under the hood, its boring for me
Post reply on HN