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I quit the tech industry (2015)

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Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#161

Post by mattgreenrocks »

21723 wrote: post #49
yodsanklai wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds to me like a very selfish view of life It's not selfish not to have kids. And in western countries, spouses/parents can take care of themselves financially.

I'd argue that, while it may not be selfish to have kids, most people who are having kids do it for selfish reasons. They don't want to "die alone". They want to show that they can afford it. They want to vicariously get into Harvard and work in publishing (if traditional publishing still exists in the 2040s at all) and live some imagined high life... even though the probabilities are minuscule and most children are…

I suggest avoiding the temptation to judge the motives and choices of other people when they don't affect you. I did the same for a good chunk of time. I was an excellent Internet commenter, and had it all figured out. Then I got older, and sometimes found myself understanding why those choices were made, and occasionally even making those same choices I'd despised.

Doing so was a deeply bitter pill to swallow, both in terms of the choices available and the sunk cost of previous opinions.

Working on yourself is a lifetime of effort. I suggest you focus more on that and less on casting aspersions on large groups of people for whom you know little about.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#162

Post by lijogdfljk »

robotburrito wrote: post #137

Seems like a huge # of techies I meet out here are trying to reach a million dollars in savings in a job they hate so that they can "go live in a cabin in the woods." I try to tell them that my Cousin has been doing that for 40 years, and he dropped out of high school and worked at a gas station.

Funny, i'm doing that - sort of, but i just like having a fair amount of space. I still want the same job, good internet, modern features, etc. I just want it on 10 acres so i have minimal neighbors lol.

For me it's about recharging. Something about being on computers all day makes me dislike the suburbs. I don't dislike my job, but i really enjoy being in my yard, growing things, the simplicity of maintaining my yard/gardens, etc.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#163

Post by gkop »

slategruen wrote: post #84

So, what could you advice for people who's about to enter the tech industry? I've been having extreme senioritis for more than two years and one of the reasons, I think, is fear of entering this industry. Don't get me wrong, I love tech and all, it's just that I don't think my personality fits the standard employers look for. I don't want to constantly learn new skills just to prove my worth. Yes, most jobs nowadays…

2022 is a great time to join a start up. Tech compensation has plateaued at a high level. The “recession” is good for innovation. And in recent years early and extended exercise have become the norm, so equity is less of a scam.

And start ups are fun. https://zachholman.com/posts/the-basement/

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#164

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ctvo wrote: post #138
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doing that now. For free. I've written infrastructure software that has, without a doubt, saved a lot of lives, and will continue to do so, for many years to come. I've been working on a client implementation that leverages that software, for the last couple of years. It's approaching ship (but still a ways off). One of the goals of that project, is to help train a few young friends in the ins and outs of what it…

> Society (especially US society) does not value vocations that help others. Teachers are incredibly well-educated, but treated like dirt. The same with social workers. We value individuality and selfishness. In fact, we actually deify these qualities. What about doctors? Nurses? Tenured professors? Blanket statements are fun but probably miss the more nuanced issue. Systemically public education is broken leading to…

>Nurses?

I know a lot of nurses. They make decent (not outrageous) money, but their work environment is frequently a shitshow. Many are quitting.

>Tenured professors?

I know a few. I guess some of them are paid well, but they often make a lot less than their students. They do have job security (like tenured teachers).

Doctors don't make money because they help people. They make money, because people with money think what they do is important.

[UPDATE]: Note the downvotes. I didn't post anything that attacked anyone. I made a "blanket statement" that has been made millions of times, and is, regardless, quite true.

I also talked about some projects that I've done (a few that are easily accessible, for anyone interested). These were not mentioned to be "snotty." They are simply what I have done, out of Gratitude and for deeply personal reasons.

Don't like to look at things that make us uncomfortable? Join the club. However, it often makes us better people.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#165

Post by barrysteve »

jseban wrote: post #79
barrysteve wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's arbitrary about a family? It's changed in size over the history of homo sapiens, but it has always existed and is pretty obviously a biological necessity and unavoidable natural law for us. The arguments against it are entirely abstract and ungrounded.

You assign an enormous amount of special status to certain people who you happen to be related to by blood, and that's arbitrary. It works when it works, and it doesn't work when it doesn't. What natural law says it's better to spend time with/live only with people who are related to by blood? The only necessity for reproduction is sexual intercourse. A family is susceptible to the same abuse and corruption as any ot…

What "special status"? It simply is how the world is, as we've seen over all of history.

Yes some marriages end in divorce and families disconnect in some cases, with various outcomes. The family still exists even if no-one participates in it. The guy is being overworked and unable to see his kids, I'm all for that guy seeing his kids. It can have huge knock on effects if it's ignored. You aren't forced to participate in family.

Family is built from natural impulses, biological connections and installs in the children an inheritance of values, schooling and relationships. There are reasons from first principles for families and the surrounding neighbourhood, city and country benefits from families. You can't hand-wave away the meaning of family as 'power' and 'arbitrary'.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#166

Post by nonrandomstring »

CalRobert wrote: post #43
nonrandomstring wrote: post #37

We talk about externalities. A chemical company pours toxins into a river, an automaker knows its products kill X people per year. These are tangible, understandable. But we don't yet think of the effects on the workforce as social externalities. Industrial safety has made the workplace a much safer space physically, but not mentally. The reality is, a great many jobs make us sick. Depression, anxiety, heightened agg…

There's a great read on this at https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/workplace-killing-peop... Unfortunately we're not good at handling externalities we can't easily measure. """ She has said that the real inconvenient truth is not just that there is environmental pollution, which there certainly is, but that there is also social pollution. The work hours that companies are demanding of their employees are causing t…

Great link, thanks for that.

The dark cynic in me says that in a country with a for-profit health system all these effects are considered good features of the workplace.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#167

Post by PragmaticPulp »

robotburrito wrote: post #137

Seems like a huge # of techies I meet out here are trying to reach a million dollars in savings in a job they hate so that they can "go live in a cabin in the woods." I try to tell them that my Cousin has been doing that for 40 years, and he dropped out of high school and worked at a gas station.

One of the weirder side effects of the early retirement (FIRE) movement is that it selects for people who value freedom and time away from work and then convince them that they need to work the highest paid job they can find no matter how miserable it makes them right now. A lot of tech companies capitalize on this by offering 20% raises to recruit people and then demand 50-100% more work until they burn out. They can always recruit more people to backfill because 20% (or more) raises are hard to turn down.

Not everyone, of course, but this theme plays out far too frequently in FIRE communities.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#168

Post by throwaway894345 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #123
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> companies they’ve worked for are actually providing any benefit to society and are perhaps even a net negative Right? When I started out, 1/3 of my interviews were with gambling machine companies, another was with a company that only existed to arbitrage betting odds for their own profit, and one was some kind of quasi-AI surveillance thing. A lot of GDP is generated on completely parasitic activities, and you can…

I'm doing that now. For free. I've written infrastructure software that has, without a doubt, saved a lot of lives, and will continue to do so, for many years to come. I've been working on a client implementation that leverages that software, for the last couple of years. It's approaching ship (but still a ways off). One of the goals of that project, is to help train a few young friends in the ins and outs of what it…

> We value individuality and selfishness. In fact, we actually deify these qualities... (especially US society)

I don't think it's "US society", as much as it is urban and suburban society which has become dominant over the last few decades. Traditionally in the US, people were a lot more communal--neighbors and families would share farm equipment, help each other through busy seasons, watch each other's farm while the other was away, help raise each other's kids, etc. Maybe the problem isn't our Americanism, but rather the lack of it, and maybe the solution is figuring out how to integrate more of it into our modern society rather than doubling down on our increasingly isolated, me-first sub/urban existences.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#169

Post by wollsmoth »

saos wrote: post #127

> I had stock options, and I cashed them all in last week. I net enough to pay off the mortgage, so I’m doing that, which will leave the entire household debt-free and cut our expenses drastically. There’s not a whole lot left after that (lol taxes ), but I can keep us afloat for a while. There you go. These type of post piss me the hell off!!! This type of person you will see making a video on YouTube convincing man…

Lol, yeah no shit. If I owned a place and could afford to live indefinitely yeah, I might just quit my job for mental health reasons.

Until then I'll have to work on these minor feats of engineering. lol.

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