It makes me sick when I think how I have wasted my life in tech. If I had it to do over again, I would have done almost anything else. Spending most of your life rotting in front of a screen, knowing what you are doing is only helpful to a small group of people who don't care about you and you will never meet or know, ephemeral, and for what? Eventually as you get older, your "passion" for learning new things just for the sake of learning wanes and you start to see tech for it really is, and all new tech starts to look the same. If you're around long enough you'll be burned and screwed by the aggressive personalities the industry attracts.
I got into tech because I wanted to help make the world better, not worse. I can confidentially say after working in the industry for over 20 years, that it doesn't do that. That's not what it is. It's not what it's ever been about.
Almost everyone I know in tech is not happy, and works non-stop, expected to give their all for a company that could fire them tomorrow for no reason. They have been doing this for years. If anything good comes from AI, maybe it will be a release? A release from the hell of being chained to a laptop screen for most of our lives?
I am sad to hear about your exp. and I think I understand where you're coming from but is the same also not true of most other jobs? I think the big advantage of a 'screen job' is less pressure on your body, alot of plumbers for example end up with bad knees and back issues.
Yea, I hate to break it to OP, but for almost every job you can take, when you peel back the onion, all you are doing is making already-rich shareholders even richer. The entire world is structured so that the vast majority of us participate and contribute towards the outsized enrichment of a relative few, while the scraps go to retail investors and (less and less) to workers.
I'm leaving. For many years I believed that working in a generally positive corner of one of the megacorps would enable me to make the world a better place by contributing positively through work and generating a huge amount of income that I could donate to charity.
But the feeling of the entire industry being anti-humanity is growing too strong.
> I got into tech because I wanted to help make the world better, not worse. I can confidentially say after working in the industry for over 20 years, that it doesn't do that. That's not what it is. It's not what it's ever been about.
I can confidently say that it does. Sturgeon's law applies: 90% of everything is crap, but there are pockets of good, and they make all the difference.
What do you think of Price's Law, which suggests that the squareroot of people in most organizations perform half the work (e.g. 3 of 9 ; 10 of 100 ; 50 of 2500)? Put less-specifically, is the majority primarily net-neutral/-negative, productivity-wise?
From my IBEW recollections, this was probably true for our membership.
>there are pockets of good, and they make all the difference
Most-definitely. It took me my first four decades to realize this, but having spent the majority of my adult life blue collar, I certainly empathize with burning out (better than e.g. my lawyer/tech brothers "just lazy"). We cannot all be on good teams, it's statistically impossible, but surely more of oughtta.
> What do you think of Price's Law, which suggests that the squareroot of people in most organizations perform half the work (e.g. 3 of 9 ; 10 of 100 ; 50 of 2500)? Put less-specifically, is the majority primarily net-neutral/-negative, productivity-wise?
The way I think about it is kind of like security: 99.99% of the time security guards are just standing around not doing anything or patrolling. They’re still needed even though they technically don’t do anything because there’s no way to predict when and where a breach will occur.
Likewise with productivity. Sure half the work might be done by a small minority but you can’t grow or sustain a business by trying to predict who those people are, especially as that minority changes over its lifecycle. Nor can you reliably predict which support roles are actually keystone roles without which the productive people are useless.
> 99.99% of the time security guards are just standing around not doing anything or patrolling. They’re still needed even though they technically don’t do anything because there’s no way to predict when and where a breach will occur.
Security guards, like system administrators who keep the lights on and don't directly contribute to revenue, are insurance, something you pay for that you hope you never have to use. Those who don't see the value are taking risk management seriously.
I spent a couple years apprenticing in Texas data centers (electrician)...
>99.99% of the time [we were] just standing around not doing anything
So much time I voluntarily spent sorting parts / carts, in preparation for the few hours each week we were actually needed — most just dove into their phones, idly — and even I wouldn't have considered myself in that over-productive squareroot. Everything was dual-feed power, so most of the year was spent unrushed.
But those few times of year where managed-risk pushed its limits... were certainly all hands on deck experiences.
This perception is more a result of humans' powerful negativity bias. Negative news and views get orders of magnitude more engagement and propagation than positive ones.
When someone uses the Internet to do something positive, like learn something or make something or contact an old friend, they typically don't say a thing. Nobody talks about this. Everyone talks about all the negative uses. They capture our attention better.
This bias is something that's probably been selected for through humanity's evolutionary history. There's a saying: "if you mistake a bush for a lion, you're fine, but if you mistake a lion for a bush you're dead." You are the descendent of paranoid people who made the first mistake, not the second. Being hypervigilant about dangers is going to be adaptive on average in most environments.
As a 42-year old who has been at this 20 years or so... and who got into tech back in the early 2000s for the love of computer science, I keep thinking to myself... maybe I could become a:
* Physical therapist (5+ years of training)
* Nurse (5+ years of training)
* Pharmacist (Out of the picture at this point)
* Plumber (5+ years of training (to actually get to a point
* where I would be pulling in good money))
* Electrician (same)
* Carpenter (same)
Or... continue to languish here. It really sucks right now. I've been doing 9x9x6 for the past several months because my company fired most of the US staff and are left with a skeleton contingent picking up the pieces, and of course now everything is on fire and everything is an emergency. Lunch meetings, 7AM, 9PM, weekend meetings aren't even blinked at in terms of being abnormal.
I can't stand AI and what it has "done" for society.
The best time to search for a new job is when you have one. Takes a lot of the stress out of search itself, though it sounds like your current job may be able to make it up.
There's a lot of companies out there. Many of them are doing useful things. I've worked in security for a long time; not as a "security expert" but for a company doing that. While I'd rather live in a world where we didn't need security companies, and it sucks that it's a problem, it's also something I know is actually contributing to the world, even if that contribution is solving problems that shouldn't exist. There are other companies doing useful things.
It may take a while to find something better but it'll take less time if you're looking than if you aren't.
I'm happy I moved away from advertising/other tech shit I don't agree with and found a position at a company whose work I respect.
I really enjoy mentoring the younger engineers. And because all tech basically looks the same to me at this point (I.E. it's very rare I encounter a new pattern after 15 years of startups, personal projects, and big cos, and freelance) I spend a ton less time focused on learning and more time focused on creating opportunities for others.
I'm also really thankful to have a mostly remote work style, opportunities to volunteer through work (and other events like game nights, happy hours), and a product people know and like.
It is of course not all roses and sweet teas. Promotions are scarce, the stock's volatile, sometimes people can suck to work with, and the organization can be hard to work in due to complexity and coordination challenges. But that's okay, can't have it all I suppose.
If I felt like you do... I'd... do something else I think, or look for a new gig. (Easier said than done I know). Hope you find some peace friend
Small idea: Have you looked outside of the Tech industry towards other areas where companies need tech workers?
A ton of money? Easy to forget about that if you don't have to worry about where next month's rent is coming from.
> I can confidentially say after working in the industry for over 20 years, that it doesn't do that.
I can confidently say that it has made the world better. You've just forgotten about all the things that sucked. Remember how we used to have to get taxis?
I remember that taxi drivers used to make a semblance of an income back in the day, but working in the gig economy now is essentially modern day digital serfdom. I had a buddy who got into Uber driving before the pandemic, got involved in some of the Uber social media communities in our area, and wound up knowing so many people who committed suicide because they were given auto loans by Uber to buy a car they'd never be able to pay back on Uber rides.
Not everyone benefits from this tech-driven world.
Do you remember calling dispatch and never having a car show up? Do you remember credit card machines that mysteriously started working? Do you remember the last minute fees just as you were getting out of the car? Do you remember the regulatory capture that led to the taxi cab medallion system in NYC, where the medallions would cost up to $1,000,000?
Do you know that it's the existence of taxi laws that make it largely illegal for, after a concert or other large event lets out, it's illegal for Uber to just have a line of cars and for people to line up and just get into the next available car? So instead the parking lot right after is this ridiculous madhouse of everyone waiting around for "their" car.
Taxis did themselves in. Somehow, they've still not managed to catch up. Just a month ago I was in Vegas and got ripped off by a taxi. Took Uber/Lyft the rest of my time there.
I do. Getting a taxi wasn’t bad. I could call a number and have them show up at a given time. And taxi drivers could make a living and weren’t abused by companies like Uber.
I wouldn’t use that as an example of how tech has made the world better.
>Eventually as you get older, your "passion" for learning new things just for the sake of learning wanes
Crucially, you're not really even learning anything that matters. You're just learning new UIs, a new query language, a new framework, etc, and all are equally meaningless; they aren't applicable to other parts of your life, and aren't necessarily even applicable to your job a few years from now.
I left IBEW almost one decade ago; my former local's contract is only +10% since then... in one of the nation's secondary tech capitals!
After a decade I shuttered my own electrical contracting shop because I realized I didn't want to become large enough for full-time employees, but also didn't want to be 100% responsible for problem solving 24/7 (in addition to sales, billing/collection).
If I had to start over Apprenticeship Year One, I couldn't afford to anywhere in America... unless perhaps I were still young and/or lived with parents at under-market rates. In my three decades working, now feels like the worst time to be Bottom 80th%ile™.
My blue collar job will soon be carpentry and fixing up a cheap house. That way I can stop paying exorbitant amounts for rent slavery, and I don’t have to burn out 40 hours a week in tech to make rent.
It’s not gonna be fun for my joints, but breaking my back on my own house will probably the most useful skill I will learn in my life than clicking my life away sat at a keyboard. After two decades, doing hard work that’s hidden behind a screen, and the only impact is a virtual number incremented once a month, I wish to do something — anything — that leaves a mark on the physical world.
So the answer is no. You probably saved up enough for said cheap house and future living expenses from your tech job.
Right now, in Canada, the average rent is like 70% of the average income. If you enter the workforce today, in a myriad of professions, it's looking like there is zero chance of ever owning a home if you're not at least 2 standard deviations above average.
Thankfully, I do not live in Canada nor in USA, and I do not wish to live anywhere expensive. I just have very modest requirements and acceptance that I will not be able to afford anything better than a fixer-upper.
I have been saving from less than a year of work; I previously ran through 10 years of savings taking a long break after burnout. The type of burnout that turns you off completely from a career path, to the point that carrying bricks sounds more fun.
I feel you. After working in tech for 19 years, going on 20. I am utterly sick of it, too.
Sadly, I struck out badly in the startup lottery. So I'm broke and can't afford to move to a farm or something like that. Wish I could do things differently now.
I remember when I complained to my ex wife about work. She just said “welcome to the rest of the us”. Most jobs suck but in tech we at least make good money.
noname123 on March 27, 2016 | parent | context | un‑favorite | on: My year in startup hell
>It's brilliant, I'd never want to work for a corporate company! We have regular parties, play table tennis daily, beers on Friday. It just makes work so much more enjoyable.
When you leave or a bunch of your friends who used to go to happy hour together leave "for better opportunities," you'll realize that most people who are your work drinking buddies didn't really know you or felt or thought deeply about your personal experiences. (It's not that they're bad people, it's just what happens when people are put in an artificial social environment where people slap high-fives after work rec dogeball and shout out witty one-liners).
Also when you realize after 5 or 6 years of working, and the startup mantra of "changing the world," your other friends whom you laughed at before, toiling away in their fields have started coming on their own. You have only pushed bits for marketing, spam, online shopping, on-demand on-gig economy for people like yourself to get a stick of gum delivered in an hour. You can try to justify how you are promoted from junior all the way to lead to technical product manager, or how you led your team to switch from Rails to Node, SQL to Cassandra, Java to Scala. But you'll begin to see the thin-veneer of how little management cares about tech and how most of it is a pep-rally, a race to the bottom for those at the top of the Ponzi scheme to enrich themselves.
You look at other people in other fields or in other area's of tech. At work cafeteria IKEA lunch table (after a lengthy morning standup where there was yet another pissing match about React vs. Angular), People shoot the breeze about AlphaGo or that Tay twitter bot, and someone else shoot another witty one-liner comeback, everyone laughs, one person groans - in between the silence after the reactions settle in, it dawns slowly on your mind that we've all become spectators in the real information technology revolution.
That what you are toiling away when you go back to your desk after this lunch conversation is just another Twitter stream, another HN comment, Instagram heart, albeit decorated in syntax highlighting to the "AWS/Google Cloud/Azure Twitterverse."
That is just the same as the well-dressed girl or guy sitting in the next row over in the open-office environment, whom you never talk to but to make yourself feel better, secretly put down in your mind because what they do "is so much BS, social media customer engagement"; but they are the same, and you're all the same...
You call your friends up from college and hear their stories at the precarious precipice of 28-30. How many hours they stayed up at the hospital during a rotation, and a critical debate they had with their attending whether to admit a patient; or how many e-mails they had to sent to get their 15 minute film considered at 50 different film festivals; or staying on after getting finally their PhD, to work for free to do the technology transfer to industry the physics research they worked on in their group; and always, the one-liner remark, "tech has it so much better, you guys make so much money!"
Of course, the response begets a begrudging smile or another sequitur to equalize the conversation; but come work Monday, the habit to don on the noise canceling headphones, the cursory checks on social media to keep abreast fantasy football leagues/stock portfolio's, the internal monologue of the recalculation how much your employee stock options are going to be worth/vest, have all become instinctive rituals to not let the existential dread set in.
There are very, very few jobs that can finance a comfortable middle class life in the United States that aren't largely pointless on a "changing the world"/"helping people"-type scale. Doctors are the only ones that come to mind.
We software devs get a fun job that pays enough that we don't have to worry about money at all. If you want to feel like you're making the world a better place, take the 50% paycut and go into the nonprofit sector. They need software devs, too.
> Almost everyone I know in tech is not happy, and works non-stop, expected to give their all for a company that could fire them tomorrow for no reason. They have been doing this for years. If anything good comes from AI, maybe it will be a release? A release from the hell of being chained to a laptop screen for most of our lives?
And how many are libertarians, waxing poetic like billionaires about capitalism and business, and/or hate the idea of unions?
And now our power is waning and the chance of making things better for ourselves is disappearing. Software engineers are a special kind of dumb.
I got into tech because I wanted to help make the world better, not worse. I can confidentially say after working in the industry for over 20 years, that it doesn't do that. That's not what it is. It's not what it's ever been about.
Almost everyone I know in tech is not happy, and works non-stop, expected to give their all for a company that could fire them tomorrow for no reason. They have been doing this for years. If anything good comes from AI, maybe it will be a release? A release from the hell of being chained to a laptop screen for most of our lives?