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Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

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Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#211

Post by mypalmike »

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.

Counterpoint: Before the late 90s, neither of these things were common at all, yet great software existed.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#212

Post by ozten »

zw123456 wrote: post #202

Looks like you are getting a lot of advice. Meh, I will throw my 3 cents in.... Buy a guitar, or whatever musical instrument interests you. Play music, where no one can hear you if possible Get a sketch book and a set of sketch pencils. Draw things you see, birds trees... don't show them to anyone, do it for you. or paint set. take an art class. Buy a trail bicycle and go for a ride on a trail in the wilderness. You…

They already have Knot theory, which is probably the coolest hobby I've heard of all week.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#213

Post by GuiA »

zozbot234 wrote: post #167
TomMckenny wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All accurate and objective and good for everyone to know early rather than late. Moving a bit further from the specifics, it's worth noting that this is not a natural state of affairs. Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives and thus making catastrophic deception nearly impossible. Likewise vast sums of wealth did not exist nor total social and fiscal isolation surrounded…

> Moving a bit further from the specifics, it's worth noting that this is not a natural state of affairs. Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives Yup, there are still some anarcho-primitivists who think technology was a bad deal for us humans overall, and that living in a tribal setting of hunters-gatherers is best. The infamous "unabomber manifesto" was broadly advocatin…

One can have the viewpoint that on average humans were likely happier 30,000 years ago, and that technology was a bad deal for us overall, without advocating that the solution is bombing society back in time.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#214

Post by ayakura »

mrits wrote: post #183
euske wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Then you're still friends. Depending on your performance and how both of you treat each other, that friendship may become affected but as long as you still treat each other as friends and hang out, that friendship will continue.

Of course, that was just my anecdotal experience.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#215

Post by aaaaarghZombies »

Sounds like a bad case of capitalism. Doing skilled work you're proud of, with people you love and respect is one of the most rewarding things you can do. Doing it to make line go up is what prostitution is to enthusiastically consenting sex with people you love and respect.

It's not a suprise your playing a lot of sports. Depending on the sport you can momentarily tick those boxes. But your not left with anything afterwards.

Find something that needs doing in the world, find people who feel the same way. Try science fiction as a practice.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#217

Post by HighPlainsDrftr »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #109
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #39

I have also experience close to burnout and recovered multiple times, in the process I have lost very precious relationships, and entire years were spent in darkness. I also have friends who have been in tech for close to ten years, and are close to burning out though they would never admit to such. This is the nature of the beast, all things that appear glamorous on the outside ( Hollywood, Finance, Tech, many nonpr…

> I also have friends who have been in tech for close to ten years, and are close to burning out I realize the audience here is probably mostly younger folks but 10 years doing anything is not that much time IMO. I think a 3rd or 4th burnout at 30 years of service is a lot harder to recover from, but I’m biased from my own experience.

Same here. I've been at it for 25 years - I've had at least 3 major burnouts. For 24 years, I've constantly been saying, I gotta find something else that is far more constructive and rewarding.

Yet...Here i am.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#218

Post by wetmore »

paypalcust83 wrote: post #192
zozbot234 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moving a bit further from the specifics, it's worth noting that this is not a natural state of affairs. Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives Yup, there are still some anarcho-primitivists who think technology was a bad deal for us humans overall, and that living in a tribal setting of hunters-gatherers is best. The infamous "unabomber manifesto" was broadly advocatin…

UB started with the right observations, but arrived at the wrong means prescriptions. He wandered off alone into the weeds, in both senses. A wiser realization is that it's those in established power and the rich who are actively or willfully ignorantly sabotaging the planet and condemning billions of people to relatively more poverty, misery, disease, and death. A million people nonviolently showing up to the seats…

Arresting carries with it an implicit threat of violence, if the arrestee does not want to comply.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#219

Post by dkdk8283 »

invsblduck wrote: post #199
dkdk8283 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also have friends who have been in tech for close to ten years, and are close to burning out I realize the audience here is probably mostly younger folks but 10 years doing anything is not that much time IMO. I think a 3rd or 4th burnout at 30 years of service is a lot harder to recover from, but I’m biased from my own experience.

i'm about 40 yrs old - been working in tech (with linux) since the late 90s. gave my life to it, lost my physical and mental health; burned out numerous times. can't stand this industry anymore. moral of the story: 99% of people still don't understand the nature of software. very few people--like rich hickey (clojure), or fpb (mythical man-month)--seem to get it. tech is mainstream and most people are missing histori…

Sounds exactly like me. My burnout has gotten worse now that tech is mainstream. My current gig is more like a regular business that just happens to develop software. Most of the staff are social first technology second. I don’t fit in at all, and to be frank it depresses me. Not sure what I’m going to do in the future.

I can’t shoot the shit and talk strace or gdb with any of them.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#220

Post by treis »

tomc1985 wrote: post #184
treis wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

If your expectations are not shipping with many bugs and avoiding serious blow ups then yes that's a fine way to do things. And if we're happy relying on a single SWE (what happens if you get hit by the proverbial bus?) then yes that's fine too. And if we never need to scale then SSHing into 100s of boxes is fine too.

Most of my job is replacing stuff like you describe. And it's definitely not fine. Nobody knows how it works because that single SWE is gone. It can't scale with the business and it's a huge drag on productivity because nothing can change without a massive testing effort to ensure it's not broken.

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