Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help • Hacker News Board

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#181

Post by pnw_hazor » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:28 PM UTC

unclebucknasty wrote: post #98

battery_cowboy wrote: post #2

I'm having similar issues, and i think i found a way out: stop playing their game. Don't make enterprise software. Don't write unit tests. Don't accept pull requests. Simply write software for yourself and have fun doing it. Forget refactoring code into modules, just fucking code. Don't worry about deployment with k8s, just copy the Python script to your production folder and run it. Fuck all that shit about git bran…

This is a great point, laced with justified indignation. As a graybeard, I've seen multiple generations of "how to do software" and the most recent are the least fun. A lot of this is driven by the agile approach. It's tailor-made for dev burnout: from the endless tight cycles that force people into an infinite loop of productivity with scant satisfaction that comes with "completion", to all of the tools and philosop…

The commodification/fungibilty of programmers is the goal. See, also open office plans.

I think the bad started for me (long ago) when the Microsoft style management and so-called MS best practices began to conquer the PNW.

In the late 90's a company I was in started driving to an exit. First they hired an ex-MS Group Program Mgr, whatever that means. Next, came tons of PMs pulling one or two devs into their projects/features. Doing it the MS way I guess (at least the MS way back then).

I was a manager, I refused to dole out my team members to PMs -- everything my team did was run through me. I don't even think I let them enter individual devs into their project plans. Just the team.

This worked well for us (my team) because I knew their capabilities, interests, family commitments, likes/dislikes, etc. I could adjust resources as needed to meet the team commitments. We had successes and failures as a team.

PMs who tried put pressure on my devs behind my back would really catch it from me.

My management style wasn't any new idea, it was what we did in the Army. Assign a team a task, then the team leader ensures the task is completed by the team.

It was a good time, we were the only real team in the place as the other managers embraced the MS way of doing things.

At end (right before dotcom bust) the company started doing some Agile-lite with two-week release cycles absent stories, standups, etc. I did like that enough to put it place at the next company I worked at.

I did get burned out though, mostly because I didn't want deal with what the industry had become as the last startup I was at petered out.

I still love programming but not enough to do it in modern shop.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#182

Post by Aeolun » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:29 PM UTC

BrandonM wrote: post #103

dilandau wrote: post #63

Interesting venue to post this on. But as it's the afternoon in the US workday, it's a fair chance that many responses will come from US tech workers who are slacking off or taking a break from their job and were enticed in by the headline. Given the culture of HN comments I reckon you'll get grooming tips and pointless anecdotes, condescending advice, or unhelpful peptalks. What I'll say is that you probably are dis…

Your third and even fourth paragraphs are pretty interesting. It's a shame that they come after the speculation and jabs in the first two paragraphs.

Looking at the comments, it certainly seems like he’s got all bases covered though.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#183

Post by mrits » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

euske wrote: post #165

bcrosby95 wrote: post #53

> I lost many friends. They weren't ever your friends. People at work rarely transcend beyond co-workers and into actual friendship. If all you do together is work and around-work activities, they probably aren't your friends. You're effectively people locked in a cage together that happen to get along. If you get together on days you don't work together then they might actually be your friend. If they've met your no…

I feel that Americans tend to use the term "friend" a lot more casually than, say, the Japanese. In Japan, your boss is never your friend. Neither is your teachers, colleagues, parents or siblings. A "friend" in Japan is somewhat closer to a soulmate, and not surprisingly we don't have many (for some people, not at all).

What happens when your best friend starts working at the same place or even becomes your boss?

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#184

Post by tomc1985 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:32 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #166

cblum wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how I read it too. I've recently started doing that and it's been a breath of fresh air. I don't really like the stuff I work with, which is services. I think I've become good at it given the feedback I get from my peers every review cycle, but I really don't like it. I felt burned out for a long time because of that. Recently I've simply been doing what I'm interested in, in my spare time. That's learning abo…

It's hard to do just the fun stuff because that's not what makes good software. It's the unit tests and pull reviews and such that make the software reliable and covering all the niggling edge cases. And that ultimately is what makes a piece of software good.

Not so sure about that. Unit tests and pull reviews are stopgaps so that you don't have to hire 1000x engineers just to get some work done. The true masters of this craft may not need those things

Believe it or not "all the edge cases" can still be perceived by the right mind. It's just that we as an industry have done seemingly everything we can to push those folks out, just look at OP as an example

I've supported ten-digits-per-year (non-SAAS) businesses without unit tests or code reviews and oftentimes deploying straight to production. As the sole SWE for my codebase. Supporting hundreds of remote installations with nothing more than SSH tunnels relayed through an ancient, colocated linux box. And the software was very good, didn't ship with many bugs (and when it did they got fixed real quick), and there were never any catastrophic, non-recoverable issues, nor ever any questions on the integrity of the system or my reporting. We were never seriously hacked (to our knowledge). Crazy times... not sure I would do it again, but.... it can be done.

My first dev job we did most of our work in vim sessions on the development server, and more than once I was asked to hotfix live code running in production. Through the grace of God and an abundance of caution nothing ever seriously blew up as a result of all this madness. (Though, ask my boss about the time he tried to move our MySQL instance onto some very early SSDs) Again, it can be done. I'm sure most of the old hats lying around have tons of stories like this.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#185

Post by tygrak » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

rwesty wrote: post #95

battery_cowboy wrote: post #2

I'm having similar issues, and i think i found a way out: stop playing their game. Don't make enterprise software. Don't write unit tests. Don't accept pull requests. Simply write software for yourself and have fun doing it. Forget refactoring code into modules, just fucking code. Don't worry about deployment with k8s, just copy the Python script to your production folder and run it. Fuck all that shit about git bran…

This is really, really bad advice. Mutiny is hardly an answer to the problem here. It will certainly temporarily avoid the problems you face but if you are a member of a team and this is truly how you act you will get chucked out very quickly. But since you bring up a few of the issues you are facing it's important to address them. I want to focus on unit tests to start. When I started my first programming job a coup…

The person you are replying to isn't suggesting to not do these things while working as a programmer professionally.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#186

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:35 PM UTC

ajavascriptdude wrote: post #68

this does seem like burnout but there is something else at play here. something which i have felt quite a lot is that in the 90s a lot of programming was creative and fun. it was to challenge authority. it created things like winamp.. it really whips the llama's ass. when is the last time you heard of a recent startup with a title like that? nowadays everyone around me is working on startups or talking to investors w…

[deleted]

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#187

Post by ohiovr » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

To address the writer I say to you that splendid and amazing technical achievments do not really lead to long term satisfaction unless they coinside well with a well defined long term buisness objective. I am an entrepenur also but I'm a small time life style technologist. I have a small means and I'm happy with it. It gives me freedom most of all. Think of all those big shot names that people were celebrating great valuations.If I only made one penny in my life its more than they have netted this whole time and probably ever will. Softbank is the poster child for stupid businesses. An app that will help you walk your dog. They billed a quarter billion for it. So if you lost people a billion say they are lucky because so and so would have lost you two!

The point is you are young and learning what failure tastes like. Its ok to be happy. Its ok to do all your internet browsing on a commodore 64. There are people crazy enough to do that.

Technology, science, and learning is good for its own sake only if it doesn't dominate your life. Don't make that stuff the ends in life. Remember technology are tools they are means. Archamedes made his best discovery just taking a bath.

Take a break and enjoy life. Maybe watch a movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuiUXOTE4M

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#188

Post by kbenson » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #78

throwaway839246 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the advice. It's really good. > Think about all the food stands that you have walked past in your life, within each stand is an immigrant family who slave away for decades hoping for a better life. Have you ever thought about them and gave them time/money for their suffering? I know what you mean and know what you're getting at. But I feel compelled to point out this particular example isn't quite the same…

Yeah the lying is really gross. It's an odd arrangement in this country where "shareholder value" can literally justify most things in the eyes of those with money. For a more personal anecdote, I have a friend who's been in the VC industry for 5+ years, and we had a very interesting conversation. He was closing a deal with a company and they asked for a higher valuation, and he thought objectively it's merited. But…

> It's an odd arrangement in this country where "shareholder value" can literally justify most things in the eyes of those with money.

I think a lot of the problem is not necessarily what the VC's do when it comes to situations, but that they lie, to themselves, to others, or both, about what they will do and at a fundamental level who they are. There's a world of difference between telling someone you're their friend and will protect them and nothing will go wrong when you know there's a good chance it will, and telling (or being) a friend but being up front that your job means you will act a certain way in specific situations, and that may be against the interests of others.

This happens in business, and it happens in personal life. I respect people that are consistent and represent themselves accurately, even if I don't like them or agree with them. People that misrepresent themselves are relying on an information asymmetry that they're creating to give themselves an advantage. This clearly works in many instances, but it also a "burnt-bridges" strategy that only works because of the relative anonymity that modern society provides. In some ways, this could be solved by more information about these people and how they function (which is how the free market works, best with more and more accurate info), but that's hard to accomplish because of their relative power.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#189

Post by 2019-nCoV » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

Let this be another lesson in sheltering your children too much. The real world is full of psychopaths and sycophants who can smell that naivety a mile away. The only way to fully internalise this is by being burnt. Again and again. Slowly one learns to see the telltale signs of self-interest and look past the smiles and colourful verbiage.

> Has anyone been through this who managed to recover their optimism and creative spirit? Please help me. What can I do?

If you've come from a baseline of over-optimism your outlook sounds healthier now. Many look to start a family and coast through the next 30 years once they become disillusioned with their career.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#190

Post by Teknoman117 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

TallGuyShort wrote: post #127

bcrosby95 wrote: post #53

> I lost many friends. They weren't ever your friends. People at work rarely transcend beyond co-workers and into actual friendship. If all you do together is work and around-work activities, they probably aren't your friends. You're effectively people locked in a cage together that happen to get along. If you get together on days you don't work together then they might actually be your friend. If they've met your no…

I was shocked at the beginning of the lockdown in Silicon Valley how many colleagues immediately went to a dark place because they had virtually no support structure, social interaction, or even sense of identity outside of their in-person workplace associations. Granted, a lot of in-person socialization out of the office is also off-the-table, but that's not the problem I heard from people. It's not healthy to live…

I live alone and ended up going to live with my parents during this whole thing, since I can do my entire job remotely. It's largest amount of contiguous time I've spent with them in about a decade.