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Personal Memoirs of a Silicon Valley Tech Whore: Part 1

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Re: Personal Memoirs of a Silicon Valley Tech Whore: Part 1

#3

Post by Grimm1 »

I read this and I'm always so sad someone has had an entirely different and clearly much much worse time in tech than my own. I read through and I can only relate in a little way and in very specific cases to what was written.

I always take a moment afterwards to reflect on why I have potentially avoided what seems like such a common and sad story in tech. We as an industry need to do better, and I'm not sure what that looks like.

Re: Personal Memoirs of a Silicon Valley Tech Whore: Part 1

#5

Post by bluefirebrand »

I think this person is very harsh in their judgement of people who went into programming as a career choice rather than out of some starry eyed passion for computing.

I was absolutely one of those "dead eyed zombies" in my CS classes in university. And I loved computers and computing!

What I was lacking was energy from working two part time jobs while attending classes. What I was struggling with wasn't a lack of passion for programming, it was a lack of passion for anything, because my teenaged years had ground it out of me.

Depression is a bitch.

Re: Personal Memoirs of a Silicon Valley Tech Whore: Part 1

#8

Post by temp0826 »

That’s a lot of anger and resentment. I think this resonated a bit for one of my jobs (that I did stay way too long at). Despite my endless complaining about that job, I stuck around. I can’t think of a real reason why, I don’t know if I was scared or complacent or what. There are a lot of good memories with friends (stuck in the same trap) there.

Don’t be afraid to change things. You’re the hero of your own life’s story.

Re: Personal Memoirs of a Silicon Valley Tech Whore: Part 1

#9

Post by darth_avocado »

I think what a lot of engineers that come fresh out of college need to understand one thing: Not every day in your career is going to be constantly fulfilling. Sure there's gonna be days, weeks or even months worth of really cool stuff you'd work on, but majority of your career is going to be spent on mindless, completely soul sucking work while also dealing with other aspects of working with other human beings. Let's just put it this way, cool problems that need solving are rare. And 99% of the solution for those cool problems are gonna be not so cool.

Not everyone gets to build a rocket to Mars, even if you work at SpaceX. Some sucker is gonna have to write a shitty internal facing utility that everyone hates and no one uses, because that's part of the larger "cool" endeavor of sending people to Mars.

Re: Personal Memoirs of a Silicon Valley Tech Whore: Part 1

#10

Post by ghaff »

legerdemain wrote: post #7

> no sonny boy, you were a worker bee at some > gray security software company that peddled > software no one wanted or even used This whole silly essay is just an exercise in the gonzo writing style, but is otherwise completely unnecessary.

I do believe that people can have bad luck with companies, managers, projects. I also believe that some people find their chosen field just isn't for them and should probably get out (if they can) whatever bronze handcuffs they have. Especially if they're younger and have other viable options. (Or if it's mostly a big company sort of issue they have, explore other alternatives.)
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