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Ask HN: How do you cope mentally through all the hype

1 points by __jambo ↗ HN
I feel like tech suffers more than most fields in terms of hype, probably because of the money. Lately it is AI and chatgpt, which tbh seems to me more legit hype than other things like maybe OOP or whatever. Anyway. I guess you just gotta ignore most of it, because there's no way to keep up and remain sane or productive.

12 comments

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PaulHoule
God it’s the anti-OOP hype and functional programming hype that drives me up the wall.
__jambo
Yeah, lol, the OOP thing is a bit dated. Maybe I should have said blockchain.
bckr
Focus on what interests you and build. Keep your radar on for relevant developments and inspiring things but by no means pressure yourself to stay on top of everything. In fact, focus on a smaller and smaller niche that interests you deeply.

That’s what I do anyway

the_only_law
> Focus on what interests you and build.

I did this for some years and now I’m having the worst job hunt I’ve ever had to deal with. I’m not totally out of the loop as far as the hype goes, I’m on HN too much for that, but I wasted the past couple years learning “interesting” things instead of whatever the trend for languages/frameworks/tools were.

bckr
What's missing here is networking, getting connected with people who are interested in the things you're interested in. There's also an aspect of calculating whether there's a path to doing what you're interested in full time and getting paid.

My original comment was about not getting swept up in / overwhelmed by hype. Discussing employment was out of the original scope, at least by my intentions.

the_only_law
Fair enough, I just figured there’s not much point to worry about hype unless for employment reasons.
jollyllama
I cultivate a feeling of jadedness and superiority with respect to the hype zombies.
the_only_law
With any luck I’m leaving. I’m done with this shit and everything about the industry.
__jambo
are you becoming a farmer or a carpenter.
the_only_law
Hah, well that’s the problem of course. Finding what to do next.

I’ve actually been planning on leaving since around 2019, but was absolutely lost trying to “min-max” things. My most recent plan was to go back to school this year, but then I got laid off and had a number of emergencies so I’ve just lost a ton of money and can’t afford it right now. If I can manage to find one more decent software job I can probably resume the plans in the next year or two. Of course the time costs are more frightening than the monetary costs, but the way I see it the only other options are status quo, or something I’d hate even more.

__jambo
Good luck!

Maybe you can sell "how to leave tech and become a carpenter" videos once chatgpt takes all the jobs. You can probably just use chatgpt to generate the videos, but probably not cut the wood.