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What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

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Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#211

Post by [deleted] »

m463 wrote: post #205
marginalia_nu wrote: post #54

Saw a meme on mastodon the other day contrasting people of the '90s going online to escape from offline reality, and people of the '20s going offline to escape from online reality. There's something to that. I think a big part of it is just how incredibly toxic the web has become. If you spend any time online, as most tech workers do, you have exceptional resiliency if you're able to stay sane and level headed. Going…

> '90s going online ... '20s going offline It feels to me like the change from: - old: going downtown to the restaurants and shops of your small village to enjoy a relaxing evening. - new: downtown is a crowded confusing mishmash of unregulated blaring music, over-the-top blinking flashing signs, intrusive people accosting you and dangerous thieves lurking everywhere. don't go. there's no "regulated" that makes thing…

[deleted]

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#212

Post by DeluluDon »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #162

This dropped off the front page in the time I read it, I assume because of the controversial gate that favors upvotes to comments (which I am making worse by replying to others). It is a shame, because this really resonated with me. I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new…

I used to daydream about homelessness until I did it for 6 years. You're surrounded by threats and your limbic system is in overdrive, deindividuation kicks in and takes a year of being rehoused before you're back to being the same person. Those daydreams generally stop after taking a hike or twenty over the weekends.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#213

Post by bluefirebrand »

xlii wrote: post #175
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been in tech for the tech for over 20 years now, heck over 30 years as a hobbyist. I have lost almost all interest in it these days. It feels increasingly meaningless, and actively harmful. I know it is my own fault for neglecting my health and relationships, but I can't help but feel this career makes the most important things more difficult.

The burnout is a separate topic, and it was always difficult to balance in this specific industry. All these "Working in IT isn't stressful at all - John 25yo" memes didn't come come from nothing. But I wouldn't really put it on LLMs/AI. It was always like this. Jokes about how hopeless development cycle is, and how everybody have impostor syndrome etc.

> The burnout is a separate topic

I think it's pretty strongly related, honestly

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#214

Post by [deleted] »

m463 wrote: post #205
marginalia_nu wrote: post #54

Saw a meme on mastodon the other day contrasting people of the '90s going online to escape from offline reality, and people of the '20s going offline to escape from online reality. There's something to that. I think a big part of it is just how incredibly toxic the web has become. If you spend any time online, as most tech workers do, you have exceptional resiliency if you're able to stay sane and level headed. Going…

> '90s going online ... '20s going offline It feels to me like the change from: - old: going downtown to the restaurants and shops of your small village to enjoy a relaxing evening. - new: downtown is a crowded confusing mishmash of unregulated blaring music, over-the-top blinking flashing signs, intrusive people accosting you and dangerous thieves lurking everywhere. don't go. there's no "regulated" that makes thing…

[deleted]

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#215

Post by watwut »

consensus1 wrote: post #209
MarkusQ wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's just been spiraling in a very dark direction for a long time. You have these blackpill depression cirklejerks everywhere. Astroturfing is getting worse every year." Agreed. From TFA: "This disillusionment is infectious." I would suggest it is in part being spread by articles like this one. If you look at the press surrounding earlier advances, it was largely neutral to positive. Nowadays, as you note, it's doom…

I remember reading a theory on this that basically it is a symptom of the decline of the news media industry. The positive attitude in the industry lined up with good times for them until around 2000 when their revenue peaked: https://compote.slate.com/images/42207fae-3603-4fe5-b4fe-a65... For them it really is doom and gloom, and they spread it to the rest of society like a contagion by their writing much like the t…

Except that journals pump one super positive article after another. It is everywhere else people get annoyed ... including at journalists that pretends tech is better then it is.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#216

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

ang_cire wrote: post #194
BigTTYGothGF wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> industry of tinkerers and designers At no point in history was it ever thus.

Yes and no. There were really 2 sides to the original 'tech' industry: military and consumer. The military side was always about profit, because it was just an extension of the already extant WW2 military industrial complex (and frankly, IBM falls here despite their mainframes being largely used in civilian businesses). But the consumer side that really grew out of universities into early gaming, internet, and consum…

> early gaming

Gaming got very corporate very quickly. Atari sold itself to Warner in 1976. Magnavox was a defense contractor. I don't have to tell you about Fairchild or Mattel or the Connecticut Leather Company. On the arcade side, Bally, Midway, and Williams had been making pinball machines for decades.

I'll grant you that there were a lot of "garage-start tinkerers" on the home-computer software side.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#217

Post by marginalia_nu »

tavavex wrote: post #207
marginalia_nu wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an experiment, completely stop consuming news and social media for a few weeks. People have lived their entire lives without these information streams, you'll survive unplugging a bit. Now I can't tell you what you will experience if you go through with this, but I can promise it's very enlightening.

Of course, not being exposed to negativity will make you more positive. But this advice strikes me as a request to plug my ears and close my eyes. Doing these things will not stop the negative things that are happening in the world, and having the information about it at least makes me more knowledgeable about the world and hopefully prepared for when something snaps and there is a crisis that affects me in the most…

The negativity is affecting you negatively though, that's my whole point. Doom scrolling and blackpill cirklejerking hasn't fixed even one singular problem in the history of the phenomena. Depressed chronically online people have fuck-all agency, they just want to lay in bed all day reading about how bad everything is.

If you want to make the world a better place, you have to retain a headspace that actually lets you do that, and right now, the easiest fix for that is to just unplug, and then work with what you can change, which typically involves things and people around you.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#218

Post by cheschire »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #162

This dropped off the front page in the time I read it, I assume because of the controversial gate that favors upvotes to comments (which I am making worse by replying to others). It is a shame, because this really resonated with me. I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new…

I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to.

Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this thing that made their lives worth living or whatever.

When it first happened I thought it was a weird interpersonal conflict situation. Maybe I had broached it wrong. But it kept happening! So many people were so upset when megacorp said they had to return or find other employment.

But I’m an extrovert and working from home was suffocating.

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#219

Post by [deleted] »

m463 wrote: post #205
marginalia_nu wrote: post #54

Saw a meme on mastodon the other day contrasting people of the '90s going online to escape from offline reality, and people of the '20s going offline to escape from online reality. There's something to that. I think a big part of it is just how incredibly toxic the web has become. If you spend any time online, as most tech workers do, you have exceptional resiliency if you're able to stay sane and level headed. Going…

> '90s going online ... '20s going offline It feels to me like the change from: - old: going downtown to the restaurants and shops of your small village to enjoy a relaxing evening. - new: downtown is a crowded confusing mishmash of unregulated blaring music, over-the-top blinking flashing signs, intrusive people accosting you and dangerous thieves lurking everywhere. don't go. there's no "regulated" that makes thing…

[deleted]

Re: What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers

#220

Post by jknoepfler »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #195
pseudalopex wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the news is just outrage porn and non-stop predictions of impending doom. No. And this shallow dismissal builds the mood you complained about.

As an experiment, completely stop consuming news and social media for a few weeks. People have lived their entire lives without these information streams, you'll survive unplugging a bit. Now I can't tell you what you will experience if you go through with this, but I can promise it's very enlightening.

No thank you. I had ICE flood the streets where I live with poorly trained thugs with assault rifles recruited from the ranks of neonazis illegally assaulting, detaining and abusing citizens of my country because they had brown skin. They shot dead two citizens (Renee Good and Alex Pretti) doing what I was also doing - relentlessly recording and documenting their behavior and addition to protesting.

I don't think you realize how ridiculous and out of touch it sounds to tell me to "disconnect" from politics to be less angry. I am extremely angry, and I will continue to let that anger fuel my choices until the vile bullshit that has infected this nation is gone.

Enlightening my ass. Tell that to the trodden upon and the dead. Reality sucks and sometimes you have to do something about it or else you're the problem. Tough shit if you don't like it.

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