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Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

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Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#691

Post by haskellandchill »

I think they found the answer, work outside of the tech industry. You can code in your free time for fun and personal development, do open source, or find a way for programming to add value to your workplace or community. I went from data science to day labor and I’m much happier.

Eventually I’ll save up and start a local business and I can always integrate technology as needed. Tech companies start with the premise of business following from technology and that’s not something I believe in or find meaningful anymore.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#692

Post by goatinaboat »

irchans wrote: post #551
dgudkov wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm 55 and I have mostly worked for three companies in my life: Penn State (10 years, started there 1990), Raytheon (3 years, started 1995), and a small hedge fund (started 1996, 12 years). I haven't worked for Penn State for about 4 years and I have lost touch with about 80% of the people I worked with there, but I still feel a strong bond to them. I have not worked at Raytheon for 15 years, and I've lost touch with…

Penn State (10 years, started there 1990), Raytheon (3 years, started 1995), and a small hedge fund (started 1996, 12 years)

Overlapping jobs like that indicates you are following a very different career structure than most people, so I’d hesitate to generalise your experience.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#693

Post by eloff »

bsanr2 wrote: post #685
eloff wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Exactly. I work 50-60 hours a week if I get paid by the hour. More if it's my own company. If it's a standard 40 hour week, then that's all I work. That's the deal we agreed to. The company doesn't give me anything for going that extra mile, so I just do regular hours and I save my energy for me.

I've never got a raise or a promotion, except by changing jobs. I got a bonus once. I've also been let go with 0 days notice the day before my birthday, without so much as a thank you. Companies treat you as an expendable cog, and that's what I give them in exchange. It's fair.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#694

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

Please help to undo the disillusioning? :)

This is actually a very good time in your life. You can learn a lot about yourself and the world. The problem is not that you've got disillusioned: you're not disillusioned enough. What if that happy state you want to re-create was an illusion too?

You want to get the motivation back and get rid of the demotivation you've accumulated through the years. But what if motivation is an illusion? Doesn't it strike you as odd that instead of doing something we often try to create a motivation that would then make us do what we wanted to do in the first place? What if we could skip that extra step and just do the original thing? :) (And this doesn't mean to substitute positive motivation with negative or something like that. Just no motivation at all.) Similarly, what if instead of suffering from the bad feelings you could just let these feelings be without being driven by them?

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#695

Post by saltyfever »

OOPMan wrote: post #542
jacobolus wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Working the land, being close to home, running a family business, belonging to a small town of people you all known, having the social safety net of many people that are close to you and your family, being an independent contributor in the town's economy, etc. etc. This is how things were a few hundred years ago. Let’s not overglamorize rural poverty. This life came with 20–40% infant mortality and a very high rate…

Thanks for this. I find articles like this on HN tend to be full of rosy-eyed nostalgia. It's rather annoying.

>There were corrupt officials, plagues, bad people.

How is this rosy-eyed?

I think many people today use the idea that even though some things are miserable today it ok, because they've been miserable always. It's a sad, self-defeating coping mechanism, a lame justification for how things are.

It's possible for some things to have been better in the past, much like some other things may be better in the present. Progress like regress is unilateral.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#696

Post by Gravityloss »

eloff wrote: post #606
fuball63 wrote: post #596

This is just my personal approach to being disillusioned with tech, but I think about it a lot so I thought I'd share. I think one of the most dangerous cliches we are taught when we are young is "do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life". It sets up the expectation that your passion and your job should be tightly coupled, and if they aren't, there's something flawed with you. Having a job where you…

Job progression up the ladder is mostly inferior to lateral progression to a new company. That's partly why people stay such a short time in a role. You'll get no loyalty, humanity, or recognition from the company. Give them the minimum to keep them happy and keep your job and focus the rest of your energy on something that will benefit you.

Have you worked in HR or management where these career paths are created?

Why doesn't it make sense to keep really good employees? If you know they are really good? Why does it make more sense to let that person go and pay some "maybe good" person up front much more?

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#697

Post by jaybeeayyy »

The title should read "extremely disillusioned with capitalism" because, well...this is it. That's how it goes. Of course your investors tore your company's carcass to shreds. Yeah everyone is overworked and pretending to enjoy slaving away in golden handcuffs. That's the system.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#698

Post by burntoutfire »

darreld wrote: post #646
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.

This thread has really triggered something in me. I am 63 and recently retired from a gov job, which I hated for years. I just thought I hated my management, which I did. I did recognize symptoms the last couple years (sometimes I was physically unable to work while staring at the screen). My plan was to take a couple months off and then take a contract position doing development. I have been unable to even look earn…

I burn out and quit on a regular basis, it takes me about 6 months to forget how awful it was and start looking for another contract again... I guess I have short memory.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#699

Post by jacobolus »

Thorentis wrote: post #585
jholman wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@Theorentis said "a few hundred years ago", not "up until WWII". I mean, @Theorentis is correct, in a way, about what's good about less-industrialized societies. Though it was more true of medieval serfs and classical societies than it was of "a few hundred years ago". But also @jacobulus is correct about the down-sides. And when you say "pre-WWII", that makes me think of 1850-1950, which I suggest is, overall, liter…

I did indeed have medieval serfs and particular feudal society in mind in my comment, and meant 500-600 years ago by "a few". I probbaly should have said "several". The feudal system is often given a bad wrap, but after reading "The Servile State" (a critique of modern capitalism) I actually think we have much to learn from it that we have lost.

The feudal system (summary: rule by gangs of heavily armed thugs who force their local peasants to work by threatening to kill them otherwise, and take whatever liberties with them they like, including theft, kidnapping, rape, murder, ...) is given a “bad rap” because is was and is horrendously exploitative, leading to very bad outcomes for nearly everyone.

It persisted because there was not sufficient economic surplus or a sufficiently broad distribution of economic/social power to break the control of the armed thugs running things, except sometimes by other groups of armed thugs.

Re: Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

#700

Post by saltyfever »

VladimirGolovin wrote: post #493
throwaway0214 wrote: post #346

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.…

There is an obscure Russian book on creativity and talent, “On the nature of Talent / The boy who could fly” by Igor Akimov and Victor Klimenko (1988), that explores the concept of “energy potential”-- the thing that you call “mojo”. It resonated with me 20 years ago, and it resonates now, after a re-reading. Here are some quotes from that book. Please excuse my rough translation: When the creator is larger than the…

Sounds like an interesting book. Not sure if I agree with the first point though. If the task is smaller than the creator no potential is being explored, no boundary being tested, no growth attained. It is going to feel like an unsatisfying chore.
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