Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

please quit your job. it sounds like otherwise you'll hit a crisis point where life comes in and forces you to make a change (like a real accident) if you feel it so strongly that you're having those feelings and thinking about it all the time please just go ahead and quit. It seems like life is giving you the signs and signals.

I know it's a hard time with work right now but sounds like you have some good support networks around you and from my own experience I can recommend working in small hospitality like the people are cool and when it's busy you get to pass the time, even as a waiter in a cafe or kitchen hand or dishwasher. I recommend against a grocery store unless it's a tiny deli or Bodega because you don't just have to work the cashier you have to pack the shelves and it's less engaging for you as a human than working in hospitality I think.

but at this moment maybe that's not the best suggestion. I don't know how you feel about factory work but I guess it's an option anyway best of luck please quit.

you got to honor how you feel about it right? otherwise who else is going to live your life if you don't.

I would love to start today stopping capitalism and inventing a new system which optimizes for life stability, good food, travel, piece, sustainability and time with others.

Instead we optimize for revenue, growth and because everyone thinks they can do it better, they have the business idea, everyone likes to earn money.

Whats my conclusion? I try to optimze my work by making sure i control certain aspects, do what i think i enjoy and is more or less useful. But my goal is to stop working with 50 or so.

Funny enough, your story is strange though, you probably did not create your startup because you thought you would change the world, did you? Or did you do it because you thought its life fullfilling, it earns you respect and money?

Conviction comes from seeing the state of things not being right and seeing a vision of what the state of things being right looks like.

If you don't have conviction, you probably don't have a vision of the state of things being right. That's why most of the world doesn't have conviction - either they lack vision on how the world should be, or their vision of how the world should be lacks the element of being visionary.

I would ascribe 3 things for you to consider:

1) You sound similar to someone who got cheated on and can't date again. You probably need some help handling emotions like betrayal.

2) Betrayal is really difficult to get over and (sorry to say) but you may never really get back to normal. This is the inner psychologist talking, sometimes wounds leave scars that don't fade.

3) If you can't survive an environment with politics and betrayal (which is good, it means you have a simple and pure heart), you will have to live with the fact that your mission is probably not found in the business world.

4) There are many missions out there. Find the one that resonates with your personal values. OR, surround yourself with people that resonate with your values, and take on their mission.

I don't think it's good to go back to what killed your inner child. That reminds me of being in an abusive relationship.

"I lost many friends." That was entirely your choice. On a daily and hourly basis you chose striking it rich or satisfying your vainglory over people and relationships. You could have chosen to do this software as a side project, or via slow bootstrap, sans the shark investors. You didn't.

"But I can sleep at night fine. So I eventually decided it's mostly nobody's fault," then "hang out with my non-techy friends and my wife". Clearly you haven't put two and two together.

Let me guess: Your startup's business model was based on selling advertising, selling data on its users, and/or exploiting people in the "gig economy". Yet it's only your investors that you call "bloodthirsty vultures".

You blame everyone but yourself for becoming "soulless". Your very use of this word reveals a great lack of soul. You misuse it to describe working like a machine, an automaton. The nurse who is working like a machine to save lives at great risk to her own has the most wonderful, beautiful soul. What makes you soulless is that you're only thinking about yourself and "new products" (ways to make money) without any hint of a conscience troubled by the decisions made and actions taken in pursuit of those profits, and what that says about who you are. Or maybe the depression was a conscience trying hard to speak out, but it got snuffed by drugs rather than getting heard.

You can't "see past the cynicism" when you are the cynicism.

Spend less time figuring how much you can get and more time one what you can give. Ditch your transactional mindset. Give for giving's sake. Use your talents to make the world better, fuck the profits. Chose the more moral job over the more profitable one. The people you'll work with in those jobs will have lots of soul and it will rub off on you.

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[I know this post will not be well received here on Hacker News, the techie Twitter. It's like walking into a church in the middle of Sunday service and to rail against organized religion and the hypocrisy of the worshipers.]

https://gist.github.com/mGBUfLn9/7cadffcf7c3c23b7376350165a6...

We were all born spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1-3)

When we're dead spiritually, we're disconnected from the presence of God because of our sins.

Jesus' sacrifice made it possible to be brought back to spiritual life. By believing in Him, He wipes our sins clean. This is what it means to be saved :) (John 3:16)