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Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

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Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#171

Post by stefkors »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #105
hobs wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like moralizing claptrap to be honest. I have worked at multiple companies with the churn'n'burn mindset, and while some handle the stress better than others, the only thing that handling the stress will get you is more work and stress. Are there people out there who are taking the world too personally? Yeah, definitely. When I see people weeping in a bathroom, not once, but so many times I dont even notice it…

We have one stall at work that's called "the crying box". It's got a box of extra box tissues, it's a little bigger than most (handicapped), and we keep an old Game Boy with Tetris hidden behind the soap dispenser. Pretty much everyone disappears in their for about 30 minutes once a week. And this is the men's restroom by the way. Not sure how the ladies deal with things.

That shouldn’t be normal

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#172

Post by samirm »

wccrawford wrote: post #2

Correction: "Decided to become a therapist". >Shortly after beginning my Hakomi training, I applied and was accepted to the professional mental health counseling masters program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I'm studying and training through 2020 to get my licensure. Going through schooling is not the same as becoming something. The title implies that there was success found here, but so far…

>The title implies that there was success found here, but so far it's just aspirations.

I don't see that. Just because the author has/had aspirations, doesn't me he hasn't already reached/achieved them partially, if not completely.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#173

Post by BucketSort »

nabnob wrote: post #36

I've been having the same existential crisis for a couple years now. I started working at a FAANG company right out of college, then after a bunch of personal health problems ended up taking a leave of absence that I didn't return from. I took a long break from software and started learning politics, philosophy, and history, and eventually came to the conclusion that most of the world's problems are social/political…

What was your reasoning that lead you to believe that the social/political problems of the world won't be fixed with technology? I personally have come to the opposite conclusion. I think we need systems to help us reason about and model various social and political issues. Many issues of today go unresolved because they are hidden by complexity. We need systems to help us navigate this complexity. I'm tired of seeing people talk nonsense in circles, I want to create systems that allow them to craft their arguments rigorously without the need for rigorous training. If we can help people reason about problems, would that help us at all?

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#174

Post by dsfyu404ed »

richardhod wrote: post #120
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't that a criminal offence? Think how it plays out. "Accountant said she'd kill me." "I did not." Ends with nothing happening.

That's why your pocket phone is on record

Legality varies by state.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#175

Post by genezeta »

ben7799 wrote: post #90

Maybe too many people are trying to find all their meaning in life through their work. It's not a recipe for success for most people, I think the media plays it up a bit too much. They're only covering the success stories in terms of people who are single minded and who make their work everything. The author of the article doesn't mention any relationships or other interests in life, no passion for anything but work.…

> Maybe too many people are trying to find all their meaning in life through their work.

You probably shouldn't make your "meaning in life" reside completely in your work. But then again, you can't work at a job that is completely meaningless to you.

The problem with burnout generally comes from the feeling of pointlessness. And IT excels at that feeling. We've built an industry that is accustomed -almost to the point of being a fraud to society- to such things as:

- Extremely low productivity in the large. While workers may be fully occupied, and even over-worked sometimes, in the large, a lot of productivity is simply wasted in projects which never take off, are discarded, scratched, changed, etc.

- Low accountability. Current trends like #NoEstimates #NoTesting #NoProductOwners etc, while may or may not have valid points all lead to a larger #NoAccountability "ideal" where developers seem to want no accountability at all for whatever they do. Not having any responsibilities in what you do is actually not the good idea some think it is.

- The pervasive idea that it's all horrible but that's alright. That you don't really need to know how to do stuff, you can just copy-paste it from SO or whatever you find on Google. That programmers just don't know what they are doing but haha I change this line here and it works and I don't know why but it works and that's what matters so I'm going to sarcastically twit about it because everyone will understand and concur. That everything could just crash and burn in microseconds but that won't really happen, right?

- The masterful move of claiming that anyone can program with just good will and disposition. That a degree doesn't matter, that experience doesn't matter, that actual knowledge is secondary to "passion".

All this ends up producing the result that a lot -most? probably so- of jobs in the industry and a large part of every job in the industry is mostly pointless, or at least feels so. And this pointlessness in turn is what produces the burnout.

And I don't really know, but I would tend to think that no matter how much meaning you find outside your job, if that job doesn't at least give you a minimum meaning, you will have a very hard time fighting burnout.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#176

Post by collyw »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #9

There is a severe workplace burnout problem in IT(especially MSPs); which when not addressed grows into bigger mental health issues and even literal sicknesses. There just isn't enough skilled IT people. The industry is immature and is bottom heavy. The top performers and seniors, are then overwhelmed with work and the business is unable to hire more senior people to reduce workload. Then the business keeps growing a…

Interesting. I am in Spain and earn a lot less than the SF salaries that I see posted here. But I don't stress about work and earn enough for a comfortable lifestyle. (I have been stressed at work, but that was down to very poor management. It was easy enough to find another job). I don't feel so bad about the poor pay here after reading your comment.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#177

Post by andromedavision »

balabaster wrote: post #129
richardhod wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, of course, is the worst part of the poem, belying its Imperial age genesis, where men were men, and women were ignored. But, if you can ignore the wince-inducing ending, it's a very worthy poem and comes top of British polls of favourite poems almost every time.

> "of course"? You say this as if a foregone conclusion, a statement of fact. There's zero wrong with considering what it means to be a man. Just because I don't address what it means to be a woman doesn't make me sexist. It's not toxic to consider who you are and what values you hold dear. Perhaps the wince that's induced in you is projection on your part? It doesn't make me wince. Nor do I apologize for it. I don't…

This is what I have a problem with; one cannot even share a simple poem without it degenerating into a virtue signalling debate. Now you're forced to defend something that you had nothing to do with. Yuck.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#178

Post by driverdan »

jeofken wrote: post #169

For years I struggled to become financially independent (as Mr Money Mustache). Years upon years of watching the clock until it hit 17:30, hating the dumb coders who made a mess for me to clean up (because I know FP, and if we had types these bugs wouldn’t be here in the first place!). A year ago, I pulled the plug, and retired. Finally, I could work on my dream project every day. I did so for 6 months, and travelled…

A common problem with FIRE is that people don't have hobbies other than FIRE. Once they retire they don't know what to do. Get some hobbies, try new things, build something physical, volunteer with non-profits.

If I could stop working today I'd never be bored. I've taken two extended periods of time off (6 months and 18 months) and both times the primary reason for going back to work was money. I had plenty of things to do.

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#179

Post by taurath »

jeofken wrote: post #169

For years I struggled to become financially independent (as Mr Money Mustache). Years upon years of watching the clock until it hit 17:30, hating the dumb coders who made a mess for me to clean up (because I know FP, and if we had types these bugs wouldn’t be here in the first place!). A year ago, I pulled the plug, and retired. Finally, I could work on my dream project every day. I did so for 6 months, and travelled…

What will you do when you retire for good?

Re: Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

#180

Post by Diederich »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #94
agumonkey wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slight digression: how many thinks that there's also a strong "burnout" trend across the whole job surface ? health, teachers, programmers ..

These statistics exist and have been reconfirmed many times. For the last 10 years healthcare has been #1 burnt out. IT following up very closely. In the last 1-2 years IT has been showing up as #1 in the studies done. Up around ~65%. Major corps like Nvidia and Cisco being worse yet. ER was something like 90%. Nursing was 40%. Over 1/3 of healthcare has been diagnosed with depression. Whereas industries like Educati…

> [Burnout]: In the last 1-2 years IT has been showing up as #1 in the studies done. Up around ~65%. Major corps like Nvidia and Cisco being worse yet.

I've read all of your comments here with great interest, thank you for sharing all of that.

In what follows, I'm not doubting or challenging what you said. It's just that my professional experience has been really different.

I've been getting paid to do what I guess is called 'IT' since 1993. The first few years, it was extremely broad work, everything from installing new desktops (Windows 95 Beta!) to writing web apps to installing and configuring Cisco routers.

Starting in the late 1990s, my work focused on and has pretty much remained on what is now called devops or SRE. Working with apps teams and writing code to automate all the things.

I have worked at a > $250billion USD (revenue) company, and a 35 person startup, and a big tech company based in Germany (from California), and two different companies in the 'FAANG' group, and several in between.

I not only have, overall, really enjoyed my work, but most of the people I worked with have as well.

Not perfect; lots of different kinds of bullshit, and many frustrations.

More objectively, I've never seen a lot of turnover.

So...a question: is the 'IT' you've been in fundamentally different than the 'IT' I've been in?

Thanks!

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