Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help • Hacker News Board

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#681

Post by freedomben » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #654

ratww wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you enjoy cleaning up their mess? If so, is it not the perfect environment, where everyone is doing something they do best and enjoy? Or do you dislike cleaning it up? In this case, why do you do it? Noblesse Oblige? Asking because I love refactoring. I also love pushing features fast. But I absolutely dread having to do "perfect code" in the first try. I keep trying to push this idea (inspired by Mythical-Man-Mon…

> Do you enjoy cleaning up their mess? Of course not. I may enjoy cleaning up my own messes, but not one that someone else has foisted upon me. The problem with teams like this is that the fast-movers are long gone by the time the impact of their expediency is being felt. They benefit from the accolades of a launch while shirking the responsibility of operating a product. > In this case, why do you do it? Because the…

> The problem with teams like this is that the fast-movers are long gone by the time the impact of their expediency is being felt. They benefit from the accolades of a launch while shirking the responsibility of operating a product.

Yes, :100: :100:

I have seen this happen so many times. It's a vicious cycle of horribleness. The same people always seem to get the new development also because they were "so successful with the last launch" and the people maintaining it are perceived as slow and ineffectual because it takes so long to iterate (ironically because of the person who looks like a rock star).

I feel very lucky in my career that I don't have to put up with this anymore. If I could go back in time I would just tell myself to quit and find a more compatible company instead of suffering for years under a self-destructive system that punishes people like me. Since breaking free from that and starting my own projects, I've been very successful.

I don't mean to imply that I always write perfect code, or even great code, because surely I don't. I do expect some things to be throwaway that end up staying around. But doing something correct rather than fast in general is a much better long term strategy. Vary as necessary (but only when necessary).

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#682

Post by azhu » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

Both at the beginning and in the end the answer is always simple: hope. Not all people. There are good ones, even in technology. There are coworkers with whom your shared emotional experience was authentic. There will be more.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#683

Post by lkrubner » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

TomMckenny wrote: post #132

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…

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…

"Humans evolved to be in groups of about 30-100 people who they knew their whole lives"

When did this happen? A female chimpanzee will grow up in a tribe of 30 to 150 and then at adolescence move to another tribe of 30 to 150, and occasionally, after a tribal war, end up in another tribe of 30 to 150. Each tribe was typically surrounded by 1 to 5 other tribes of 30 to 150, and of course the chimpanzees had to keep track of their enemies, just as any species that engages in territory and warfare will have to keep track of what territory is held by who. So the average chimp has to keep track of several hundred other chimps, as well as tigers, gazelles, monkeys, etc. It's a complex situation.

When you say humans track 30 to 100 people, do you mean 10 million years ago? Because you can't mean homo sapiens? I personally know more than 12,000 people:

http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/i-know-more-than-1200...

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#684

Post by 101404 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

fjeifisjf wrote: post #620

101404 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. I am hoping for a trend where it becomes normal that a kid interrupts some business meeting, or you talk to your coworker or CEO in a video chat while they are cooking or folding clothes or something. Almost as if you were talking to real people.

Ask a parent (usually mother) what happens if they try to bring a kid to their (non coronavirus era) office because they don't have anyone else to care for the kid that day. Almost always completely unacceptable, for reasons ranging from arbitrary fake professionalism to lack of interest in setting up a support structure and expecting employees to sacrifice their personal lives for the company. I can only hope this "…

I will try to overlook the sexism in your posting. In my company, its not umgingen that someone brings their kid to work. Be it to show the kids what they are doing all day, or because of some logistics thing, or daycare closed or whatnot. Never a problem. Also not uncommon to work from home for the same reason. And it's usually the men who do that (sorry if that doesn't fit into your stereotype).

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#685

Post by bsanr2 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #672

tug0fwar wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are inclined to give your minimum at something you spend time on everyday, it essentially means you shouldn't have started it in the first place. Unless you are forced to do work you don't enjoy (work is what brings food to the table etc.), you should obviously find better work. Also, even if you are stuck, try to get out of it as soon as possible. Choosing to do work you don't care about is simply bad decisio…

You can take pride in your work, you can do a good job, you can even enjoy it (I don't usually). But when it's quitting time, unless it's an emergency, you're done. And if I overwork some days because of deadlines or emergencies, I will underwork when the dust settles. That's fair. I'll spend my time after work contracting or working on my own projects. Both of which benefit me more than over achieving in my day job.

And this is if you're working for someone else. If you have a stake - if it's something you are an equal partner with your collaborators on, something you believe in and stand to draw immensely from and have true decision-making ability - then of course it's reasonable to push more. You've already placed your stake, you want to be able to hold onto it.

But if you've been broughton to a project and you're not offerd that kind of stake, if you're there just for your labor, it's unreasonable to be asked for more than what was initially agreed upon, and it's also unreasonable for that initial offer to have included some kind of expectation of open-ended practice when compensation was defined and finite.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#686

Post by Sargos » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

fuball63 wrote: post #671

rabidrat wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spend the other 8-10 hours a day doing things you actually like to do How many hours are in your day? I don't even have kids and I don't even have 4 hours in a workday doing things I actually like to do.

I'm coming from the 8 hours sleep, 8 hours of work, 8 hours of other stuff. There will obviously be things like chores and eating in there, but I think there is meaning and purpose derived from those things as well.

Transportation and meals come from that "other stuff" bucket, at least for 90% of jobs out there. You work for 8 hours and hopefully sleep for the full 8 hours. The edge cases all get taken out of your "free time" and what is left over is the time you get to spend on you. Which is way, way less than 8 hours.

I would say it's closer to 4 hours max. With kids, zero. It's hard to find meaning in those 4 hours when life is so complex. I would even argue that you need a dedicated entertainment bucket just to stay sane which further limits this other stuff bucket to merely a large handful of minutes. This handful of minutes is where you live your real life and it's really not enough.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#687

Post by dang » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #488

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…

This sounds so American to me. I grew up in Eastern Europe and general attitude towards work, life, and friendship is so much different. Some of the best friendships I've made were at the companies I worked for. I've seen cases where people make so good friendships at work that it even makes them postpone switching jobs to move up the career ladder. Work is not everything in your life. Work is important for sure, but…

Only about 50% of the HN community is in the US, and many of the users who are came from other countries. You shouldn't assume a poster is American.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#688

Post by lkrubner » Tue, May 05, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

Everyone who reads Hacker News should also consider if there is a political component to this. The guidelines for Hacker News encourage us to keep politics out of the comments, and most of the time that is an advantage, but there are cases where politics might be a contributing factor that needs to be considered. I see some comments here that say "This is such a USA experience, it is different in my country." Well, why is that? If it's true that there is something in the USA that contributes to burnout, would it be useful to consider the political situation in the country? Surely there are cases where the macro circumstances impact people's personal lives?

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#689

Post by cyborgx7 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 6:01 PM UTC

Insanity wrote: post #487

cyborgx7 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alienation from the product of your labor existed before digitalization as well.

If I'm not mistaken it was Marx who said that people would be alienated from their product as they could not own the product created by their labor. So yeah, well before 'digitalization' but after industrialization I suppose. Hence we'd have to go back in time quite a bit (at least in Europe) to be pre-industrialized to not be distant from the product of labor.

Marx was not a Luddite.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#690

Post by ratww » Tue, May 05, 2020, 6:17 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…

I think for TDD, CI and CD really depends. When it makes my job easier? Sure.

A quick test framework that doesn't require too much boilerplate, a Github Actions CI that runs in a few seconds and help me, continuous deliver that has everything figured out for me?

I think those are a net positive.

When it makes my job a living hell? Nope.

A CI that takes 40 minutes to run? A CD that requires manual intervention and has "a line" of builds and you have to babysit your build? Testing that requires multiple lines of boilerplate?

Then I'd rather live without those things.

Now... don't get me started about JIRA and other tools, which are a tool for micromanagement.