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Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

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Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#341

Post by danenania »

cbmcgee wrote: post #262
throwaway839246 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind saying which nonprofit you joined? (or maybe throw out a couple of names of other non-profits, just as examples of what's possible)

I have interacted with some of the orgs in the list below. I'm fairly certain that they are all 501.3c orgs but hopefully this will give you an idea. I've tried to think of orgs that are mainly tech focused. Hope this helps. Volunteer Match Give Lively UPchieve WeVote Learning Equality

I was one of Give Lively's first employees a few years back. Great people and culture there.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#342

Post by brailsafe »

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 think tons of people fall into this trap in and outside tech, but just luckily never need to face the fact that they have no friends 10 years into their career.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#343

Post by kelnos »

dkural wrote: post #225
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…

For what is worth, "there's the product you produce to trade time for money, and then there's you" is precisely what alienation from labor feels like, and you're advocating that one must just accept it. People have a deep need to relate as full human beings to their work. Trying to be content with finding self-worth only outside of work doesn't solve burnout. Work is a big chunk of our time and energy. Humans need to…

I think there's a tendency, when confronted with a person who is upset about having made their work their identity, to swing to the other extreme and advocate complete separation and dispassion.

Like everything else, we need to find balance. I like my job and think that in general I do good work. But I am not my work and my work is not me. It's a part of me, to be sure, and I feel connected to it, but work is a relatively small part of my identity.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#345

Post by opan »

On mobile I couldn't get whole lines to wrap at my screen edge, couldn't figure out a way to view the raw txt instead of that weird web page. Opened termux, installed w3m, opened the url there, and then was able to view whole lines without repeatedly scrolling left and right. Maybe this will help someone else as well.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#346

Post by throwaway0214 »

I've been working as an engineer in high paced roles at one of the FANGs for about 15 years now. I've gone through ups-and-downs in terms of what I call "creative energy", which I will refer to as coding "mojo".

1. You have a limited amount of mojo that you can throw at a problem. When you're young, this focus and energy is easy. You can throw it at problems that you may not be that vested in for a reward like money. It's also easy to recover. These times are great.

2. As you get older, mojo will become more cyclical. When you're in the troughs it will be difficult to focus your energy on a problem if you're not that vested with it. When you work on projects that fail, this will be extremely draining. At this stage, you will need to build "refresh" mechanisms into your schedule. It will help to work on non-tech yet creative passions on the side that have easy to reach end-states. I personally had this successfully going for over a decade.

3. Sometimes instead of being cyclical, your mojo will just totally flat-line. Sometimes it was too many death-march projects, sometimes it's personal health related, dealing with aging family members, or the stress of being a parent. If you haven't built in a refresh cycle that works for you yet, it's going to be very difficult to get your mojo flowing again. At this point more drastic measures are necessary. One piece of advice I heard was "take a break until you get really bored again."

After joining a project a few years ago that caused me to sacrifice my "refresh cycle", I found myself quickly in #3 as well. I wish I had better advice, but I'm planning to take some extended time off from the grind. [Advice to younger devs: this lifestyle requires active maintenance on your part to sustain and you won't know about this until it's too late. Save up and plan for a mid-career break.] I'm planning on working on some fun projects to expose me to new technology stacks and try to see what problems I can get excited about again and do some self-investments to open up alternative career paths. [I've always considered "retiring" into education at some point but maybe I'll play with a few different self-employment ideas first.]

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#347

Post by graycat »

madengr wrote: post #291
graycat wrote: post #119

A view of technology : Watch an old movie and notice the many improvements in economic productivity, standard of living, quality of life. E.g.: To get salt, had to travel to the local village. For this had to saddle up or harness a horse or two. Now can get the salt delivered or eat in a restaurant or drive to the village on a smooth road in a car with HVAC. Car tires used to wear out in about 15,000 miles and were s…

I have his CD of Bach cello suites. Have you tried Idagio?

For that music, I like Maurice Gendron and Pierre Fornier.

Thanks for Idagio -- first I've heard of it -- I made a note!

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#348

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

Thorentis wrote: post #233
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…

I agree with the OP comment, and also with this one. It is important to understand two things in coping with the state of the world in my opinion. 1) The reality is you need to find validation and fulfilment outside of work, because in our current society you are just a drone. 2) Don't be depressed because it seems like this is how it's always been. It hasn't. Our work culture is broken. People never used to be so fa…

> I really get the sense that so much of the first world's unhappiness right now is due to compartmentalising (the containerising if you like) of our lives.

Division of labor is a tragedy. In the long run, it destroys the soul.

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