Is Anyone Else Just Done?

I do feel like it's work. It's not a passion. I have little influence. Just code monkey whatever we have in mind, thank you very much, we don't need anything else from you, here's your slightly above average payday, see you tomorrow

I'm done too after 20 years. I already moved on. First by still doing web and it stuff but for an non-profit. That meant cutting my revenues by 2. I deliberately chose a job in a smaller and cheaper city, so my way of life was not too much affected. As that non-profit could not afford me anymore because of Covid 19, I had time to reflect and recently decided to go further. I'm single without children (nor by choice, nor a problem, just my life as it went). It's easier. But having a spouse keeping his/her job with a regular revenue could also be quite helpful.

My new projet is to built a non-profit and seek funds to buy a large farm or a large piece of land. Preferably fields exploited for a long time through intensive exploitation (not bio, plenty of pesticides etc) e.g. some large place o heavily damaged nature. My goal is to repair the Nature within that property. Make it a natural paradise of biodiversity. The more diverse, the more resilient it becomes. Choose the right species so they'll be fine in 20, 30, 50 years from now with climate change.

This project require a team. I imagine tiny houses spread around so we can all have a private life too. But many things in common. I'd like the place to be a sort of lab, a hack-space where experiment new way of life and working. One part of the economic model will be a camping and a training center. First paying course: how to yourself a ecological tiny-house, thermically passive so no need for heating or AC. People will learn by doing so the end, there will be a new tiny house available on the property.

I still like tech. It'll just be low tech. Free software, Linux etc, so technology is an empowering tool, not a drug you are addicted to. A shop to repair and learn to repair computers, using only second-hand parts. This will be a paying course as well, for anybody interested. I imagine teenagers not that thrilled by their parents' camping idea but happy to learn and repair to build a pc.

This a long adventure. From bare fields to a forest totally bio with species that provide food, ten years. But it requires less and less work as it becomes a self-sustainable ecosystem. We'll take a part for us humans, fruits, making and selling high-quality jam, honey. Some wood but most of it need to rote on the ground. we'll also need to grow vegetables, poultry for meat and eggs, a few pigs leaving freely (well, until we catch one from time to time for meat).

I don't want a closed community. Rather a small starting team, with many people staying a week or a month for intelligent vacation in a beautiful nature and learning DIY stuff for a sustainable world. Maybe the permanent community will extend with visitors willing to join. After some time, some will want to join another project or back to the city. That's good. I think I'll meet more people whom I may befriend by attracting them in this unusual place that I do living in the city. Maybe these new friends will come only a few weekends per year. Fine. That's more cumulated time than what We achieve to spend with my friends in the city (overbusy, children, ...). And we'll have parties around a fire, drinking homemade beer, trekking around or working on some free software. Or building a solar oven to dry fruits.

Nothing ideologically radical, like: - NOT 100% vegetarian or vegan. I like meat and think that our body needs it (my opinion) but we will eat less meat than many, because we eat too much of animal proteins for a good health. Less.carbo-hydrates and more vegetables. No autarcy, we'll buy what we can't grow, sell some to neighbors and locals. - NOT a closed community. A place where many people visit, are accepted by vote if they want to stay and free to move on. Or free to go and come back. - NOT a religious place. People are free to follow any religion and be respected, as long as it doesn't impose rules onto others. My religion is atheism. - Diversity encouraged. All colors, all origins, all sexual orientations, genres. T...

I left technology behind almost completely a year or two ago. What I've realised is that most technology doesn't improve our lives, it complicates it and makes it measurably worse. I still check HN, which is probably the last remaining symptom of my link to the tech world.

The world needs less software and less technology, not more. The further down this rabbit hole we go the worse everything gets. Physical health, mental health, social health and the broader links that bind society together all suffer.

It's all noise and its supposed benefits are, for the most part, an illusion.

There's definitely a role for tech to play in our lives, but a limited, balanced role. We're living in a world saturated with it, overdosing daily.

Give it all up, move on, and in time you will recover. Even if it takes years.

Good luck.

(It's unlikely that I will return to read any replies to this comment.)

I don't understand. You say you're done with and "hating on the industry," but the things you list -- "mock-woke" companies, "frat-boy" companies, changing the world or disrupting companies, rent-seeking behemoths, ad tech companies -- are only a tiny, tiny fraction of the tech industry.

I think you’ll find a lot of sympathy for your criticisms of the industry. Perhaps this has been building for a long time and now it is time for a change for you, but perhaps it’s all being made orders of magnitude worse by timing. COVID, contentious elections, right down to midlife crises can all collude to make life seem more dreary and negative than otherwise they’d appear. If you’re not already, I’d recommend talking to a good counselor or therapist who can help you put things in perspective, and possibly plan your future outside of tech, or not. Good luck!

I feel it. It's only been 8 years for me. I hate my job, mostly for the types of reasons you stated. I try to ignore it because I need the money to support my family.

Quit that soul-sucking craft two decades ago, and although I think about contracting every now and then for some coin, I haven't regretted the decision. Of course, as a massage therapist during Covid, things are pretty ugly right now.

I do not know you. But maybe accept tech is part of the world now, and is not something set aside for us techies. So I think you can fall back to standard wisdoms.

Be the change you want to see in life. And you cannot rush time, so don’t expect your vision to become reality in your life.

I stepped out of tech two years ago. But to be hones I stepped out being “a microsoft employee” while not working for microsoft.

And guess what. I now doing more tech than ever. Unless society collapses - tech skill will keep on earning bread so think twice before leaving your skills behind. Just do it your way an * the rest. :)

I've been in tech and academia for 25+ years combined, with tech being a larger portion of that time frame. On one hand, I understand your stance. On the other hand, I think that you are overreacting and, more importantly, looking at tech through your "custom" lens (i.e., from several specific perspectives). The issues that you have mentioned are, indeed, real, however, so are many other things that are certainly positive. Plus, it seems that you are conflating (mostly Silicon Valley-based) VC-backed startups' culture and other aspects with a much larger and more diverse tech ecosystem. You just need to zoom out from your current viewpoint and look at the bigger picture. Despite all negative effects, tech and science play an overwhelmingly positive role in improving people's lives on this planet. Consider just a couple of the following examples. Drones that enable delivery of medical supplies to remote locations, helping firefighters to improve their situational awareness and enabling safe and accurate maintenance of large infrastructure objects (buildings, bridges, etc.). Robots that replace people in highly physical-intensive and dangerous industrial and other environments. Medical equipment that improves accuracy of diagnostics, improves treatment outcomes and saves lives. Advances in chemistry and relevant technologies as well as materials science and engineering* provide us with much improved and new advanced materials that improve practically every aspect of our lives. Computational drug development, genetic therapies, green energy technologies, automated transportation. The list goes on and on ... So, I encourage you to reconsider your stance and look at tech from a higher vantage point. Best wishes!

*) Currently I'm working on (bootstrapping) a frontier tech startup in this domain, which I'm very passionate about.

Go see a therapist, you have issues. The issue is with you. Not every company out there is bad, some are bad, some are good. They will of course have their challenges, and you can find one to be a member and figure out how to make them better or you can dip out and be on the sideline complaining about how everything sucks. Go see a therapist, if you can afford to take some time off to decompress and find yourself, so so do. Best of luck.

I've been in tech for far longer, I love it. We really live in the future, when I see the advances that have been made and stop and really contrast with 20yrs or even 10yrs ago, I'm very humbled. We can definitely get better, but things ain't as bad as you make it out to be.

I work for a large public tech company that is run by passive-aggressive dickheads who have no clue on how to motivate and retain top talent.

They basically pay you to stay if you are critical.

I've resigned twice, and the result is my salary was doubled to sign another 2 year stay on bonus. Salary is now 4x what it was.

But instead of fixing some really simple issues that would make people happy they are completely clueless.

Either you decide to find what you love, or you continue to trade your soul and happiness for $$$$$

Your call. Choose wisely.

The problem is that we are taught to care too much. And this is a side-effect of a domain that obsesses with optimisation. The higher-ups simply do not understand this. Take sanguy's advice. My own advice would be to quit the profession but continue to use your talents to build something of your own. If you still do not want to do that, take the first exit.

This is why I solely work in government contracting nowadays. Yes, the bureaucracy is awful and yes a majority of the people just sit at their desk to pass time. But the work I pick actually solves problems society has. I don't care about the politics or whatever and I'm not judging whatever policies or solutions I'm engineering but at least it's helping society in automating tasks and making the systems for those policies more resilient. Is it avant-garde tech or AppGoFaNet-abbreviation like pay? No. Often just CRUD, some rule engines and making sure information systems are stitched together. But money wise I'll retire from this before I'm 40-45 and can basically do whatever I want at that point.

Money is freedom. Don't underestimate that. This industry can give you a lot of it in a relatively short time and with the advance of remote working, you don't have to live in high-cost centers to earn high-cost income anymore. Just make sure you're valuable and don't lifestyle-creep your way into being dependent on soul crushing work because the pay is high.

I've been in tech for 15 years and am starting to become cynical. For me, I no longer want to work on what others want me to work on. I want to use my skills to do things that interest me and provides something back to society. Find something that engages you and checks all of your boxes.

I've seen most people fall into one of two categories: 1. Live to work 2. Work to live

A lot of my friends who are in the "work to live" category find joy in their hobbies. I fall along the first, so without hobbies, I put everything into work. If it's not fulfilling, I get bored and want to move onto something new. Do some soul searching and rediscover your passions and interests.

I spent a fairly short period of time in "tech."

At some point I decided that's now how I want to spend my life. I've spent the last year's in manufacturing. Mainly building software/hardware stacks to become more efficient. Understand where they are currently. How they can increase capacity and ideally jobs. Plus work on helping to train workers using 21st century techniques.

Much of it is an uphill battle within the industry or companies.

The ability to be part of something that helps to physically make food/beverage/products is more fulfilling.

Move out of Silicon Valley.

IMO if you aren't world weary, cynical and misanthropic by 40 you are lying to yourself or blissfully ignorant.

I've been there buddy. Things have turned around for me, but I'm living life as if the industry will crash or computers will learn to program themselves. Moved to NV to avoid taxes, only buy what is on sale at Costco, use pay for-what-you-use services (Ting for phone and Metromile for insurance), use Libby App for digital ebooks and audiobooks. I could go on. It's really quite fun to live a frugal lifestyle.

Yeah, so I feel burned but for different reasons. Mainly the amount of thinking required, and where that thinking involves thinking about the code, what was intended by the legacy code, who do I talk to, are they an asshole, should I bother talking to them or just do something to get the job done, what don't I know, do I refactor, or not, etc. etc. None of the stuff you do at work is simple. It's either complicated, or if you are lucky just complex. Making code and UI's simple seem to be low down on priority lists, and a lot of developers like making coding fun at the expense of making it easy to understand. So yeah I'm a bit over it all.

Yeah. I feel a lot like this too. I left my most recent job in May and don’t have plans to return to tech anytime soon. To fill my time and to try to do something actually useful, I decided to start writing about learning more and thinking better.

that's why i work on Free Software. i serve customers to pay the bills, but my focus is on supporting FOSS in whichever way i can. it is probably the only area in tech that genuinly contributes to the advancement of civilization. all other tech will eventually die, only FOSS will survive.

I felt this way about tech a year ago. Everything you said is true, to a degree, but you're only seeing the negatives. Ask yourself why are you only seeing the negatives? Cause there are definitely positives too.

What I found is whenever I can only see the negatives, something is off with me. I'm not taking care of myself. I'm not sleeping enough, I'm not eating right, or something! I found it's really hard to be jaded/bitter when you're active and healthy.

My guess is because you have the energy to tackle all the flaws you see, turning them into opportunities.

If you are recognizing that the "change the world", "disrupt ABC", etc. mission statements are total bullshit then you are doing well.

Look for companies that operate in business sectors that are more agreeable to your ethics. There are tons of companies that need qualified software people to help them with their business. They are just businesses doing a needful service and make profit.

It helps if you are just a little interested in the product but you don't have to buy into their mission statements. Exchange your hours for some high amounts of dollars. For example, if one works at Tesla you could safely ignore the "change the world" mission statement crap and just work there cuz you like cars.

Do you think electricians or plumbers care about the philosophy of whatever business/person uses them?

Its okay if work feels like work. Find passion or interests elsewhere.

You're done with capitalism, not tech. People today confuse the framework with the subject too often.

If anything, technical interviews will probably be the thing that makes me throw in the towel and exit the industry. My #1 goal in life at the moment is get into what I would call an "endgame company" and stay there as long as possible, enjoy the work (I genuinely do), and extract the maximum amount of $$$ while at it, then prepare for something else. Maybe help my wife out with her shop while contracting on the side for giggles and extra pocket change.

But while currently working at a non-tech company that pays poorly compared to many mid to upper tier tech companies, the money is still good - arguably better than anything else I could possibly be doing short of having become a medical doctor or hedge fundie.

I've felt this a few times, but ended up not making the jump to a different field because of my lack of expertise compared to tech, and the pay downgrade that would incur.

Something I've realised is that I will often jump to the conclusion of being 'done with tech', predicated on a fairly narrow band of experience. Whilst I may not get my jollies from the 'cloud' and ever-changing landscape of web technologies, I am still genuinely interested in low-level programming, data structures and Linux (I'm a Windows dev). I use these interests to broaden my days beyond just working in my narrow, specialised scope, creating interest and stimulation which otherwise would not exist. Who knows, maybe that can create a realistic diverse career branch out of where I currently am?