
Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help - throwaway839246
https://gist.github.com/mGBUfLn9/7cadffcf7c3c23b7376350165a67735f
======
xiaolingxiao
I have also experience close to burnout and recovered multiple times, in the
process I have lost very precious relationships, and entire years were spent
in darkness. I also have friends who have been in tech for close to ten years,
and are close to burning out though they would never admit to such. This is
the nature of the beast, all things that appear glamorous on the outside (
Hollywood, Finance, Tech, many nonprofits) is very rotten on the inside.

You can't change the past, but you can recalibrate your expectations and
medidate on what went wrong. Here are some thoughts, and I will be very harsh:

1\. Your co-workers may be amazing, but they were never your friends. You ran
a business and rented their years to help them build a nest egg, of which you
would claim the majority share had it hatched. Alas, the business failed and
thus, you no longer add value to each other's lives. Move on.

2\. There's what you love, and there's what you do. It's best to keep some
distance: because no one cares about what you love. VCs are vultures and this
is well known, but they are also reflecting the reality of the market. In the
market you're just a vendor. Think about all the food stands that you have
walked past in your life, within each stand is an immigrant family who slave
away for decades hoping for a better life. Have you ever thought about them
and gave them time/money for their suffering? No, you only cared them inso far
as they can cook for you. This is how others saw you.

3\. Big companies, and indeed most big institutions is made by a silent
majority of the defeated. Many have experienced what you have said and have
long made their peace. They found joy elsewhere, and found distance between
themselves and their work.

4\. Find self worth and self-love outside of your role in the machine, there's
the product you produce to trade time for money, and then there's you. They
are different things. Imagine Instagram influencers who post pictures of
themselves but feel depressed when they don't get enough likes. This is you
right now, you're looking for external validation from how big your integer is
in some database. You have to look elsewhere.

~~~
dgudkov
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 there are
other sources of joy in life. I can't help but think that Americans miss so
much in life because of their obsession with work, money, and social status.
Hence such posts on HN.

~~~
christophilus
I’m in the US and my experience is the same as yours. Maybe 50% of my friends
are coworkers and former coworkers. I have almost always stayed at companies
longer than I otherwise would because I loved my coworkers.

Burnout for me is caused by too much bureaucracy, too many meetings, and
incompatible programming philosophies. Only twice in my long career have I
left a job due to an insufferable coworker.

~~~
sanderjd
> _incompatible programming philosophies_

This really hits home for me. I'm at my most miserable when working with
people who value doing things fast more than doing them well. I suspect those
people are also at their most miserable when working with me. I see them as
creating work that I'll have to do eventually to clean up their mess, and I
suspect they see me as an insufferable gatekeeper.

~~~
ratww
Do you enjoy cleaning up their mess? If so, is it not the perfect environment,
where everyone is doing something they do best and enjoy?

Or do you dislike cleaning it up? In this case, why do you do it? Noblesse
Oblige?

Asking because I love refactoring. I also love pushing features fast. But I
absolutely dread having to do "perfect code" in the first try. I keep trying
to push this idea (inspired by Mythical-Man-Month) here in HN that a perfect
team would have people "working fast and breaking things" with people working
behind them that love refactoring everything cleaning it up.

~~~
sanderjd
> _Do you enjoy cleaning up their mess?_

Of course not. I may enjoy cleaning up my own messes, but not one that someone
else has foisted upon me. The problem with teams like this is that the fast-
movers are long gone by the time the impact of their expediency is being felt.
They benefit from the accolades of a launch while shirking the responsibility
of operating a product.

> _In this case, why do you do it?_

Because the product sucks and needs to be improved, but it is an unimprovable
mess because everything was done expediently instead of well, some of which
needs to be fixed in order to move forward. A lot of the hard work at this
point is in figuring out the best pragmatic balance of what to fix vs. what to
leave alone. A little forethought could have saved a lot of post-facto toil.

I do like iteration, doing things in small iterative chunks. But that is not
the same as putting out a huge mess and hoping someone comes along who enjoys
cleaning it up.

~~~
freedomben
> _The problem with teams like this is that the fast-movers are long gone by
> the time the impact of their expediency is being felt. They benefit from the
> accolades of a launch while shirking the responsibility of operating a
> product._

Yes, :100: :100:

I have seen this happen so many times. It's a vicious cycle of horribleness.
The same people always seem to get the new development also because they were
"so successful with the last launch" and the people maintaining it are
perceived as slow and ineffectual because it takes so long to iterate
(ironically because of the person who looks like a rock star).

I feel very lucky in my career that I don't have to put up with this anymore.
If I could go back in time I would just tell myself to quit and find a more
compatible company instead of suffering for years under a self-destructive
system that punishes people like me. Since breaking free from that and
starting my own projects, I've been very successful.

I don't mean to imply that I always write perfect code, or even great code,
because surely I don't. I do expect some things to be throwaway that end up
staying around. But doing something correct rather than fast in general is a
much better long term strategy. Vary as necessary (but only when necessary).

------
fuball63
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 feel creative, productive, and generally fulfilled is a
great thing, but if you don't have it, that's fine too. Work the job as best
you can, get whatever good parts you can strip from it (learning,
socialization, coffee), and spend the other 8-10 hours a day doing things you
actually like to do, tech or otherwise.

I try to walk the line of not leaving my friends and teammates out to dry, but
also never "laying my body on the tracks" for the corporation. Your friends
will return the favor; the company won't.

This definitely won't help you climb the ladder, and it won't garner you fame
or fortune from your employment, but you'll be left with an identity and a
soul that isn't controlled by profits. I've found it to be worth it, despite
the prevailing culture.

~~~
eloff
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.

~~~
tug0fwar
If you are inclined to give your minimum at something you spend time on
everyday, it essentially means you shouldn't have started it in the first
place.

Unless you are forced to do work you don't enjoy (work is what brings food to
the table etc.), you should obviously find better work. Also, even if you are
stuck, try to get out of it as soon as possible.

Choosing to do work you don't care about is simply bad decision making due to
lack of understanding. In the long run it may even reduce the quality of your
life.

~~~
eloff
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.

~~~
bsanr2
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 that kind of
stake, if you're there just for your labor, it's unreasonable to be asked for
more than what was initially agreed upon, and it's also unreasonable for that
initial offer to have included some kind of expectation of open-ended practice
when compensation was defined and finite.

~~~
eloff
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.

------
gfodor
Most of your problems sound like they stemmed from VC. Similar story. It's a
good, and hard, lesson. Two things one should not touch when it comes to
building healthy companies in 2020: crypto and equity sales to VC. They're
going to become fossils soon anyhow [1].

Read Rework by Basecamp. Read The Beginning of Infinity by Deutch. Read the
Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Hamming. Watch some Bret Victor talks.
Ignore the negative memes about tech. They're all wrong, the rules get re-
written every 10 years, and that is going to decrease in duration, not
increase. You might be the person needed to re-write them.

Release your code. Teach. Share.

If you can, bootstrap. Give more than you take. Don't hire or work with
assholes. Grow slowly. Don't over-lever yourself. Make something people not
just want, but love. Know thyself. Don't outsource your thinking, build the
thing only you can build.

If you are not working on the most important problem in your field, why not?

Most importantly, know that the future is bright and that our best days are
not only ahead of us, but always will be.

[1] [https://alexdanco.com/2020/02/07/debt-is-
coming/](https://alexdanco.com/2020/02/07/debt-is-coming/)

~~~
throwaway839246
_> Most importantly, know that the future is bright and that our best days are
not only ahead of us, but always will be._

I've read (and watched) everything on your list of recommendations. Perhaps I
should reread Deutch's chapter on optimism, but I don't have the same
conviction that you do. Where does your conviction come from?

~~~
gfodor
That we're in the middle of an exponentially growing creation of new
knowledge, and that (echoing Deutsch) all problems are soluble. Now, there are
exceptions to this, for example, a sudden existential crisis. But I prefer to
be an optimist in those scenarios, given humanity's demonstrated ability to
achieve great things. There's a lot of negativity in the press about the
global response to COVID-19, but I take a contrarian view and expect
historians to look back at the heroic deeds of healthcare workers and
researchers to overcome this crisis as unprecedented in scale and speed. It
has exposed cracks in our institutions, surely, but I see it has a
crystalizing moment to remind us all how much we can achieve.

------
tomhoward
My startup experience isn't quite the same as this, but it shares some
aspects, and I've had some similar feelings in my lowest moments in the
aftermath.

It's now almost six years since I walked away from my startup, and I left
feeling some combination of exhaustion, shame, resentment, anger and sadness.

As time passed, and the fog has gradually lifted on the state I sometimes
think of as "startup drunkenness", I've often cringed as I've thought back and
wondered "ugh, what was I thinking?"

My main focus since then has been self-healing, personal development work.

Out of necessity, when conventional approaches like talk therapy didn't offer
much relief or insight, I've ended up seeking and adopting some unconventional
approaches to personal growth.

It's turned out to have been the most worthwhile thing I've done in my life.

I've been able to go deep in uncovering and resolving the issues in myself,
that date back to well before my startup life, but that very much affected how
things played out in my startup and in other aspects of my life.

Just as the writer of this piece has come to question the entire technology
industry, my own journey has enabled me to see that whilst many of my problems
originated within myself and my past experiences, many were just as much a
case of being in a dysfunctional environment, and indeed a dysfunctional
world.

But it's taken a lot of work to know how to tell the difference, and what to
do about it.

My life now is pretty good, and has been on a steady improvement path for at
least 5 years. All the key indicators in my life –
relationship/family/friendships, health and career – are going well and
getting better, though it's an ongoing effort to keep things improving, and of
course external factors like the current crisis throw up complications none of
us can avoid.

When I've written here about this topic in the past, people often reply asking
for details about on the kinds of healing and development techniques I've
used.

What I've said then and I'll say again here is that people are welcome to
contact me and I'll be happy to share info with them directly.

But I also wonder if it's time to get more serious with a discussion about how
we can build healthier companies.

As I've become healthier and more confident, I once again have the hunger to
build companies, and am full of ideas on how to build them in such a way that
they are great places to work and positive in their external impact.

But I'm just one person, with one perspective.

I'd love to hear from others who want to be part of an ongoing discussion
about how we can build the kinds of companies and organisations we all wish
existed.

Anyone is welcome to contact me about any of the above; email address is in my
profile.

~~~
seneca
Meta response, but why do people write like this? I see this all over linked-
in. Dramatic phrasing "But I'm just one person", coupled with the linebreak
per line of text.

~~~
Voxoff
I see it as the emergence of post modernism in popular culture. People don't
feel comfortable claiming knowledge of some 'truth' \- relativism is too
ingrained. You could say it derives from kindness and a desire not to impose
nor offend; or (if you're Pascal Bruckner etc) an underconfidence in
ourselves, our enlightenment.

Obviously, I'm extrapolating like crazy. But start to notice the 'my truth'
qualifications - everyone does it now.

Just my perspective hehe

------
remir
I'm bored of tech, apps, gadgets and all, despite the _coollness_ factor. I
was fascinated by technology when I was growing up, but I feel like the
world's pressing needs and problems are not addressed because there's no "good
money" to be made by solving them, which is absurd.

I wish beauty, wisdom and optimization would be better valued so we could find
pleasure in designing things and cities with beautiful architectures with
minimal negative impact on the environment. I wish we could redefine our
position in the world as member of an ecosystem we should care for, instead of
being merely consumers and "eyeballs" for advertisers.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
You might enjoy the _Software Disenchantment_ post we discussed 4 months ago,
which was about the state of the software industry (rather than about personal
burnout).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21929709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21929709)

------
theanine
I wrote nearly this exact message in my mood journal today. I haven't had it
quite as bad as the author, but I'm extremely, and it feels like permanently,
burned out of working for a business/corporation. I fundamentally hate it. I
walked out of my first corporate job after a month and now that I'm on my
second, all I can think about is walking out. I hate it. I hate it so much.
Every single day feels like I'm ruining my life and disappointing every
teacher, family member, and friend I've ever had. On the way to work I
fantasize about getting in a car accident. Like the author, I can't think
about intellectual things anymore - I was in a grocery store this weekend
trying to decide between a $3.99 and $4.98 item and I couldn't figure out
which was the lower number.

I've been thinking about quitting and going to work at a grocery store for a
while. It's not going to pay well but it'll pay more than being dead if you
know what I mean.

~~~
firecall
I've been there, and am still recovering from burn out and a nervous
breakdown.

Corporates can be hell for me.

I used to just want to drive my car into a tree on the way to work.

I was so dead inside. Just nothing going on.

I'm working from home now. But i'm still burnt out and recovering. I have no
creativity. Things that should be straightforward seem pointless and
repetitive.

When I sit down at my computer I'm filled with a deep existential sadness and
find it very hard to do any work at all.

I got nothing, man. Nothing - full burn out.

Chewed up by the system and spat out.

~~~
tallgiraffe
This whole thread, and your comment in particular, resonates. At the very
least, knowing this might be the unspoken norm, rather than a personal
challenge, that alone helps a ton.

~~~
astrea
Yeah I will say that this thread has been very validating as I haven't found
anyone in my peer group who (at least admits to) feeling the same. What's the
cure here? Obviously we could all use some therapy and/or meditation, but then
what? To me it seems like we'd still be stuck in the same trap, just with
better coping mechanisms.

------
deanCommie
> Then I worked for a tech giant, and then for a high-growth unicorn. It
> shocked me how dilbertesque they both were. Full of politicians, and burnt
> out engineers in golden handcuffs who can't wait to get out, and meaningless
> business speak, and checked out employees who pretend they're "excited"
> about everything all the time. The young, wide-eyed engineers seem
> hopelessly naive to me now.

I don't know this person. I wasn't there. I don't know which tech giant.

Certainly there are plenty of stories of large multinationals with
dilbertesque politics, and checked out zombies.

But something tells me that this author's experience was only because he was
comparing it to the glory days of his own startup where everyone was intensely
invested and engaged.

The truth is there is a middle ground: employment. You are engaged insofar as
you receive a paycheck, and you want to do good work to continue getting that
paycheck. But you also care enough to do a good job because you're human, and
because you want a raise or a promotion, or even a cookie from your peers that
says "go you". You probably also like the specific job more than you would
other ones.

The loudest stories rise to the top of HN, but I think most professional
industry is just this. That doesn't mean it's unhealthy. Politics has purpose.

And when you yourself are cynical, everyone else's excitement rings hollow and
you think they are pretending and are actually checked out..

~~~
opportune
Also, depending on the place, a lot of the dilbertesque politics and process
are just having a safe/more conservative culture. Getting buy in, satisfying
stakeholders, making sure the safe happy protocol is followed - it's so you
don't end up in a situation where a junior engineer is tasked with fixing
production while you bleed $5k/minute and someone gets fired for it. Instead
you blame the process and fix it methodically. That's arguably a lot better
than cowbody devops.

At a startup, especially as a founder, you're encouraged to be a hero and give
it your all partly because your incentives are really well aligned - if you
succeed you could make $100mm or (a lot) more. As an employee, maybe you get
fired or promoted, maybe your stock gains like 1% in value because of
something you do or prevented... Some people are more checked out than others,
but I agree, you're just an employee and it would be foolish to really put
your heart and soul into your day job for most people

~~~
Aeolun
That is true to some extend for the employees’ motives, but the reality is
that most just clearly don’t care beyond their paycheck or resume building.

Even the leadership doesn’t want to do what is best for the company/product,
but what is best for themselves. It’ll be dressed up nicely of course, but
that doesn’t change the reality of the thing.

> Instead you blame the process and fix it methodically.

You blame the process, but are unwilling to really change it, so you just keep
repeating the same kind of fixes ad nauseam.

------
zackbloom
I think the fundamental flaw is trying to be 'successful'. Playing that game
invariably requires you to pretend to be what you think the market wants.

I would suggest you think about building something you want that you find fun.
If you're a scuba diver, build a dive computer. If you're a woodworker make a
tool for making the best use of a board. The most important thing is you
absolutely don't plan on making it a world-changing multi-billion dollar
anything. Make it, even sell it if you want, and enjoy the ride.

~~~
polskibus
For most people it's not about trying to be successful. It's about not having
to be stressed out daily about basic needs like home, health, transport, kids
upbringing etc. Unfortunately it all costs a lot of money these days, which
makes you take a compromise for the sake of security for you and your closest
relatives.

~~~
draugadrotten
> It's about not having to be stressed out daily about basic needs like home,
> health, transport, kids upbringing etc.

That is a problem that is better solved with politics than with technology.
There is enough in the world that if we shared more, most people would not
have to worry about these things. (I say most, solving for "all" is more
difficult)

But let's be honest. Work isn't always going to be _fun_. Not having to stress
about things is not going to make Dilbert-style corporations enjoyable. Just
keep smiling and be happy you are not plowing the ground with an Ox.

~~~
badpun
> There is enough in the world that if we shared more, most people would not
> have to worry about these things. (I say most, solving for "all" is more
> difficult)

This is the state we are in now already - most people, as long as they have
jobs, don't have to worry about these things.

------
gaze
People will say you're burned out, and they're not wrong... but this doesn't
address the substance of the issue. To be an engineer or a scientist today
means tolerating a lot of the things you've mentioned. I would amend your list
to engineers that had a passion for EE and value human life (who doesn't?) but
took a job at Raytheon. The things you identify are valid issues. If you're
worn so thin you can't ignore them, it has the effect of ruining your entire
relationship with the art. The thing to remember is that this is not the
fundamental nature of science or engineering, but the nature of practicing
these things today under the framework in which we live. From there, maybe you
can find places where you can practice your art which are less prone to these
issues. You may have to compromise on career stability or pay. People are
rarely paid well to do fun, low stress things. Maybe the best thing to do is
stay out of tech professionally, and slowly ease back into programming as a
hobby by working on small projects. I'm not sure. All I know is that with
burnout it's somewhat challenging to untoast toast, but you will recover
eventually. It's just always a bit slower than one would hope, but it does
happen.

Another angle perhaps is working on clarifying to yourself the ways in which
you got hurt, so programming may feel less painful. I found that learning
about politics and history-- specifically the history of engineering-- really
helped me sort out my feelings. It also gives a sense of clarity of where the
rotten parts come from and maybe how to avoid them.

~~~
throwaway839246
Thanks for the advice. This all sounds right.

 _> I found that learning about politics and history-- specifically the
history of engineering-- really helped me sort out my feelings._

Is there any specific reading you'd recommend?

~~~
gaze
David Graeber's Bullshit jobs might be an alright place to start. I also just
enjoy indulging in the history of places like Tektronix in the 1960s by
reading oscilloscope repair manuals... learning about Bell Labs, the Rad lab.
It's nice to read about healthy engineering cultures to believe such a thing
is possible.

~~~
garagemc2
ha Bullshit jobs is a great place to start.

------
throwaway0214
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. It's also easy to
recover. These times are great.

2\. As you get older, mojo will become more cyclical. When you're in the
troughs it will be difficult to focus your energy on a problem if you're not
that vested with it. When you work on projects that fail, this will be
extremely draining. At this stage, you will need to build "refresh" mechanisms
into your schedule. It will help to work on non-tech yet creative passions on
the side that have easy to reach end-states. I personally had this
successfully going for over a decade.

3\. Sometimes instead of being cyclical, your mojo will just totally flat-
line. Sometimes it was too many death-march projects, sometimes it's personal
health related, dealing with aging family members, or the stress of being a
parent. If you haven't built in a refresh cycle that works for you yet, it's
going to be very difficult to get your mojo flowing again. At this point more
drastic measures are necessary. One piece of advice I heard was "take a break
until you get really bored again."

After joining a project a few years ago that caused me to sacrifice my
"refresh cycle", I found myself quickly in #3 as well. I wish I had better
advice, but I'm planning to take some extended time off from the grind.
[Advice to younger devs: this lifestyle requires active maintenance on your
part to sustain and you won't know about this until it's too late. Save up and
plan for a mid-career break.] I'm planning on working on some fun projects to
expose me to new technology stacks and try to see what problems I can get
excited about again and do some self-investments to open up alternative career
paths. [I've always considered "retiring" into education at some point but
maybe I'll play with a few different self-employment ideas first.]

~~~
VladimirGolovin
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 task, he is OK -- he has no need to
exercise his willpower or to spur himself.

When the creator is equal to the task (e.g. the shape of the chair he is
designing causes him discomfort but he cannot figure out why exactly), the
willpower wakes up and stands behind his back, expecting an assignment. If the
creator has enough energy, the willpower just states, “here’s the task, no
need to rush -- we’ll solve it, no need to worry”. But if the creator has low
energy, the willpower rolls up the sleeves in order to gather up missing
energy.

When the creator is smaller than the task, he’d better step aside, or the task
will crush him.

If the creator’s energy is depleted, peace of mind is a godsend to him.

The ability to solve problems (the structure of the creator's soul) is not
affected by any external conditions, nor by time. That’s why no matter how
hard life tries to crush the creator, he cannot be crushed. To uplift him,
there’s no need to pump him up with energy externally. All he needs to do is
to muster up just a bit of strength to lift his eyelids -- and notice the
task. Seeing the task is his salvation. Squash the smallest task -- swat! and
it’s gone. No problem that the task was small: a journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step. The subsequent task will be easier for him --
because he’s already moving, he has some momentum. And so his energy level
begins to rise.

But if he wastes his energy potential, he loses himself. No protection: he is
vulnerable all around, and even if nobody is intending to hurt him, he sees
malicious intentions in every word, gesture or action, however well-
intentioned.

Our energy capacity increases in only two cases: 1\. When our energy is
expended during creative labor. 2\. When our energy is expended during
physical exercise, resulting in pleasant tiredness.

Means of increasing our energy potential: 1\. Positive emotions. 2\. Motion /
movement. 3\. Solving problems.

~~~
saltyfever
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.

------
taurath
Is technology the reason to wake in the morning, or is it curiosity that
drives you?

Technology is a great place to find something new and interesting. And hey,
there's lots of money to be made, and hopefully you've done well already. But
curiosity can be for anything. Step away from technology. Find people doing
things you don't understand, but look interesting. Try planting something.
Read about history, archeology, psychology, philosophy. Visit museums.
Technology and your relationship with it is like staying too long with someone
you were in love with. Only over time can you rekindle the friendship, but for
now your post is screaming out that you need space.

------
starbugs
Take a break.

If necessary, a long break.

What you write sounds alarmingly familiar to me. It's probably not as simple
as just calling it "burnout", but that may be one component of what you're
going through.

I also learned the hard way that it's important to look after myself. And it
took way too long when looking back today.

You seem to have invested way too much of yourself into this and maybe you
have lost track of what's really important in life.

Take a break.

Feel free to contact me if you wanna talk.

~~~
justatdotin
I once took 15 years off, partly cos I was uninspired by the dominant
environment, and came back enjoying it all once again.

------
MattGaiser
Many of us engineers fancy ourselves as artisans who get to avoid working that
2nd job to pay for our art.

But the reality is that we pay the bill inside the companies we work for. Our
art has to meet certain deadlines and specifications decided by others. We
have to spend time in meetings about nothingness. Whether we get funded still
comes down to dollars for value, with the exception that instead of the grants
artists get, we call it salary.

Very little in life can be extracted from the fact that we must provide value
to others and often on their terms, even if that value is doing little but
filling up their meeting so they look very in charge.

I solve this by having a good book on my phone for when I am in meetings and
ensuring that there are always many things I am doing beyond my job. There is
plenty of opportunity for the purely fun "let's build something cool" type of
engineering outside of work that can still contribute to your career.

------
bjt2n3904
You may enjoy listening to Jonathan Coulton's Solid State. It's a magnificent
album about someone similarly disillusioned with tech.

The album is uploaded on YouTube, but this was the teaser that he uploaded
before the album release.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvVNxqosZ7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvVNxqosZ7s)

~~~
MR4D
Wow.

A bit depressing (and I don't even work in tech anymore!), but I think he
nailed it - it's the rat race. It applies to anyone right now who feels stuck
in a job with no meaning.

~~~
bjt2n3904
The whole album addresses this topic, it's very Pink Floyd-ian in the story
that it tells through a nearly continuous track. "Pictures of Cats" is one of
my favorites, an elegy for the 24/7 cycle of bad news and the toll it takes on
us. Definitely worth a listen.

~~~
MR4D
Thanks for the PF comparison - I'll go spend some more time with it. Back in
the day I listed to Dark Side of the Moon until I wore out the record.

------
blueridge
Many of us work with people whom we have never met in person, building
products that are not real, to fill the needs of strangers whose jobs should
unquestionably not exist. Furthermore, sometimes it feels impossible to do
creative work on the side, as every input and output that is part of the
process becomes a commodity to be tracked and sold. The Machine has not
stopped. And it won't.

I think we are all sprinting towards an ambiguous neurological disaster. The
more you think about the signs and symptoms, the harder it becomes to envision
a future scenario, a future Self, where you stay in tech and do not burn out
intellectually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

The longer I work online, the more I understand how a digitally mediated life
insulates us from the human experience. The question we all have to meditate
on is whether the lifestyle benefits of working in tech, working remotely,
outweigh the longterm negative effects on the psyche and the soul.

------
nitwit005
The complaints are human behavior rather than technology, or the culture
around it. There are places that are better than others, but you're going to
encounter self interest and "dilbertesque" behavior everywhere.

Personally, I view learning to deal with work is an emotional skill you have
to develop. Even if you get a job doing math all day in a research position,
you need to be ready for the usual academic politics problems.

~~~
ethanwillis
Technology itself is what breeds these environments though. Humans haven't
changed much, what has changed is our environment.

You actually kind of hint at it in your own writing. The behavior is
everywhere.

~~~
nitwit005
There are more people in large organizations now, but the problems of greedy
financiers and goofy bureaucratic behaviors go back thousands of years. I'm
sure there is some subset of Dilbert comics that ancient Chinese officials
would have found funny.

------
JackPoach
I hope this isn't controversial, but it's perfectly fine to dislike technology
and even avoid it. There are technophiles and there are technophobes. Those
who are attracted to technology and those who aren't. Some of us would like to
live in London or New York, others want country life. Some of us love surfing
and beaches, others climb the mountains.

There are PLENTY of things to dislike about the tech industry. More
importantly, there are plenty of things to dislike about YOURSELF inside the
tech bubble. So there isn't the right answer what you should or shouldn't do.
Listen to yourself and that's your starting point.

I can share my personal experience. Generally speaking, I am a technophobe. I
prefer old things that are hard to break. I understand that my dislike for the
technology comes from the fact that I become too dependent on it (in multiple
ways, including financially). I absolutely HATE this feeling. If you change
the focus from 'technology' to 'yourself', you'll probably start understanding
what exactly you dislike so much.

Then simply change it.

------
ddevault
There's a lot of good advice and insights in this thread. You have good reason
for feeling this way, and all of the paths people have suggested - ways to
move on and stay in tech; how to leave tech entirely; how to make it a hobby
instead of a job; or some other middle ground - are valid ways to address this
problem.

But, I may suggest an additional option: do something about it. Build a
business that eschews VC culture, or become a VC who doesn't fit in among
their blood-sucking peers. Run for office, and use those resources to address
these problems. Teach other how to avoid these mistakes. You may have found
your big problem to solve - put that engineering intellect towards
deliberately, systematically solving the problems which burned you. That
problem-solving attitude you learned for writing programs can be applied to
other problems, too.

This is the most difficult solution to your feelings, and no one would fault
you for taking any of the other paths suggested in this thread. But, if you're
up for it, you could make a real impact and I think you would find it very
rewarding.

~~~
throwaway839246
Thank you, I will consider it. I wonder what subset of these problems can be
solved, and what subset is a fixed property of the human experience. I don't
know yet. This is a massive problem, and a business is likely not the right
vehicle to solve it. Political office might be, but everyone (myself included)
seems disillusioned with that too. I'll think about it.

~~~
ddevault
There are no fixed properties of the human experience. This mortal coil is
whatever we make of it.

------
throwaway123874
I think the only answer here is to stop clinging onto this 'life' you have.

The optimism you're seeking comes from looking forward to today, right now.
Right here, right now. Everything is the present moment. If you do not find
yourself in the present moment - this could be due to the weight of money,
weight of the future, weight of obligations - then abandon it all.

You don't need anything. Just reclaim the time that is yours. If you have
enough runway for a year, that's all you need. Think about it. Would you
rather have 20 more years of this 'hint of dissatisfaction', or just one year
of bliss? If not bliss, at least closer to what once was, where we all come
from. Just people trying to have fun and not think of larger consequences. I
would get off of anti-depressants, too.

~~~
throwaway839246
I did throw everything away. I walked away from ~$10M, so this isn't the
problem.

To live in the present moment one has to unsee the cant. That's the difficult
part. How to keep the mind from focusing on all the bullshit that it can't
unsee. The burnout, the disillusionment, the politics, the faded friendships.
That's what's hard.

~~~
mboperator
I can relate to a lot of the things you've stated. I won't get into the
specifics but I understand your experience of working at a tech giant.

In my case, I decided to try to "play the game" for a while. After a few
years, I realized clout, money, and the things it afforded were ultimately
meaningless to me.

Things like mentoring young engineers, hobbies, and organizing local student
hackathons definitely took the edge off. But ultimately so much of it, even
the things for the community, was ego-driven. Trying to make the world a
better place, a lot of the time, is ultimately ego-driven.

I tried many things but only found lasting peace in turning to God. Jesus died
for your sins and I can testify that having faith in Him has lead me to a new,
more meaningful life.

Life isn't necessarily easier, but every day is imbued with tremendous
meaning.

You're clearly thoughtful, probably competent, and without a doubt, the Lord
has a plan for your life. You just have to take the first step and accept Him
as your savior.

My emails are always open. Good luck, I am praying that you coming out of this
season stronger than before.

~~~
throwaway839246
Something I've always wondered about that maybe you could help me with. What
does it mean to say that "Jesus died for our sins"?

~~~
mboperator
Happy to help man --

We were all born spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1-3)

When we're dead spiritually, we're disconnected from the presence of God
because of our sins.

Jesus' sacrifice made it possible to be brought back to spiritual life. By
believing in Him, He wipes our sins clean. This is what it means to be saved
:) (John 3:16)

------
__throwawy1234
I think you haven't even hit bottom yet. Reality is much, much worse. There
are notable exceptions, but the overwhelming odds are that every single
relationship in your life-- your wife, family, friends, etc-- are just as
dishonest and transactional. Think about it. If you really screw up badly,
your wife will leave you, your friends won't return your calls and will refer
to you only in hushed tones clucking about "what a shame it is". Their support
of you isn't some inherent validation of You as a being, it's in support of
you as you exist in society and in the larger world.

We have spent years, even decades, cultivating and grooming our own prisons.
In the end, everything we cherish and value will be destroyed. It is 100%
certain and there is no way around it. It's such a bleak thing to consider,
yet at the same time it is an absolute truth.

After wrestling with these facts for years, I have come to understand the Zen
koan about cherishing every moment drinking tea from a glass because to the
master, the glass is already broken. Control of the larger world and the
people within it are an illusion. In many respects, you are already dead and
forgotten. The only thing you can do is admire the stunning beauty and sheer
improbability of it all, and to be as kind as possible to those who deserve
it, and to many who do not deserve it.

~~~
_bxg1
I don't know what happened to you to make you so cynical, and I honestly pity
you for it, but I think this is the exact opposite of what someone in the OP's
position needs to hear. It's well and good that you've found a zen way of
looking at things despite how bleak you seem to find the whole world, but not
everyone can manage such a radical mindset shift and don't need to have their
faith in humanity eagerly torched.

~~~
__throwawy1234
Honestly, it's not cynicism, although it used to be until I really thought
things through. It's just the truth. I have a great life, I have truly been
blessed, and I am very thankful. But to me the glass is already broken. Things
may come, things may go, the only thing I control is me, and I am at peace.

~~~
_bxg1
Again, that's a very healthy mindset to take no matter what the human
condition is, but you don't have to take a scorched-earth perspective on life
to adopt such a frame of mind. And for most people, who haven't developed such
a frame of mind, that scorched-earth perspective can be really destructive.

Additionally, the part about relationships goes further than simple nihilism.
Plenty of relationships are real and go further than transactions. Not all of
them, but many of them. Again, I don't know who hurt you to make you take such
a perspective, but your perspective is deeply skewed.

~~~
__throwawy1234
You seem eager to tell people how to think and to judge the properness of
others' outlooks on life. Your concern is noted, have a great day.

------
cyborgx7
As long as the primary motivator remains profit, rather than increasing the
averages person Quality of life, technology will be used to replace people to
their detriment, rather than to their advantage.

I'm sorry I have no good reason for you why you shouldn't be depressed. I'm
afraid, depression might be the appropriate reaction to the state of things.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_I 'm afraid, depression might be the appropriate reaction to the state of
things._

The trouble with modern work is it's so intangible, there is no physical
product at the end, no machine restored to working order, no field ploughed,
just a pile of bits shifted around.

I keep saying it here, I think for most of us we would be better off dropping
the side projects and instead doing something with our hands. It might be
baking bread, playing with Lego, woodwork, DIY, anything away from the
keyboard.

~~~
cyborgx7
Alienation from the product of your labor existed before digitalization as
well.

~~~
Insanity
If I'm not mistaken it was Marx who said that people would be alienated from
their product as they could not own the product created by their labor.

So yeah, well before 'digitalization' but after industrialization I suppose.
Hence we'd have to go back in time quite a bit (at least in Europe) to be pre-
industrialized to not be distant from the product of labor.

~~~
cyborgx7
Marx was not a Luddite.

------
gtycomb
It is here in HN that I first heard Pablo Neruda's "No culpes a nadie". Even
though a fan of Neruda I somehow had missed this. Perhaps this speaks to you
something too:

    
    
            ## Don't Blame Anyone
    
     Never complain about anyone, nor anything,
     because basically you have done
     what you wanted in your life.
    
     Accept the difficulty of improving yourself
     and the courage to start changing yourself.
     The triumph of the true man emerges from
     the ashes of his mistake.
    
     Never complain about your loneliness or your
     luck, face it with courage and accept it.
     In one way or another it is the outcome of
     your acts and the thought that you always
     have to win.
    
     Don't be embittered by your own failure or
     blame it on another, accept yourself now or
     you'll keep making excuses for yourself like a child.
     Remember that any time is
     a good time to begin and that nobody
     is so horrible that they should give up.
    
     Don't forget that the cause of your present
     is your past, as well as the cause of your
     future will be your present.
    
     Learn from the bold, the strong,
     those who don't accept situations, who
     will live in spite of everything. Think less in
     your problems and more in your work and
     your problems, without eliminating them, will die.
    
     Learn how to grow from the pain and to be
     greater than the greatest of those
     obstacles. Look at yourself in the mirror
     and you will be free and strong and you will stop
     being a puppet of circumstances because you
     yourself are your own destiny.
     
     Arise and look at the sun in the mornings
     and breathe the light of the dawn.
     You are part of the force of your life;
     now wake up, fight, get going, be decisive
     and you will triumph in life. Never think about
     luck because luck is
     the pretext of losers.

~~~
cambalache
That is not a Neruda poem. It is apocryphal. Pablo,ever the communist, would
have never written such a piece of libertarian crap.I am surprised that such a
fan of Neruda as you claim to be did not notice that.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
Not surprised to see such a salty reply from a Neruda fan.

~~~
cambalache
I am not a particular fan of Neruda (I prefer Vallejo,Ramos Sucre or Machado),
so save your snarky comment.

------
grawprog
I've got a bit of perspective on this outside the technology area.

When I was young, I loved being outside, camping, hiking, being in the forest,
learning about plants and animals, foraging for berries and stuff. I ended up
going to school for biology and ecosystems mangement. I worked on a few
scientific studies, the stuff I actually liked, then ended up helping manage a
long term research and education project. Suddenly, we were dealing more with
money, government organizations other biologists. We ended up getting sucked
into a bunch of politics, had our grant money and data held hostage by the
government, dealt with shady corporations who didnt give a fuck. I watched
lots of money get wasted on nothing on other projects simply to make companies
look good while real problems went unaddressed and ignored.

Came to learn of the chain off command, the biologists that officially must
sign off on work who do nothing but collect money for signing their name on a
paper and tend to be in the pockets of mining companies, logging companies,
the gas oil industries and again give no fucks outside getting that sweet pay
cheque for writing their name on a paper. We were threatened with loss of
funding after finding an endangered species on an active mine site and
deciding to share the data publicly.

I just generally came to realize, that all the science and saving the world
I'd wanted to do, didn't really matter to the people who funded this work or
to governments in general and I became fairly jaded to it all. I seen renowned
biologists steal grant money from volunteer organizations and shit like that.
Hell I even met David Suzuki, turns out he's like any other celebrity, as soon
as the camera's off the caring stops.

Reality just ended up being so different and souless compared do everything
I'd learned in school. I just don't have any motivation to continue with it.
Since then i've gone on to do other things, and I've found them a lot more
fulfilling than that thing I thought I wanted to do and enjoyed as a child.

~~~
blobbers
Why do you have to make baseless accusations against David Suzuki?

------
ajavascriptdude
this does seem like burnout but there is something else at play here.

something which i have felt quite a lot is that in the 90s a lot of
programming was creative and fun. it was to challenge authority.

it created things like winamp.. it really whips the llama's ass. when is the
last time you heard of a recent startup with a title like that?

nowadays everyone around me is working on startups or talking to investors
where they are simply falling in line.

the good old hacker spirit and the sheer disdain for authority and a great
sense of wonder has gone. i see young kids, interns studying like crazy to get
into faang, which drives me crazy.

in the 90s we didn't have that... there was only cool software like winamp...
that too for free.. tell me a software as cool as that since ;)

~~~
lazyjones
In the 90's, programming was not as cumbersome (today it's building on top a
bunch of volatile APIs that are obsolete every few years) and more rewarding
(fewer people, projects, so more fame for everyone).

There's also much more public knowledge about much easier ways to make money
these days. Why slave away in a dilbertesque environment when you can just
stream your gaming sessions on Twitch or so... So of course those who find a
normal tech job hard and exhausting will be discouraged at some point.

------
cpcallen
Lots of great comments here and on the gist. My 2¢:

I graduated CS in 2000, and from 2007-2010 worked at Google. Towards the end
of that time I was struggling hard to get anything done; even just dragging
myself into the office was difficult. I began to believe I really was an
imposter: good at programming contests, interviewed well, but incapable of
actually accomplishing anything. That spring I quit, and spent the summer
volunteered at a dance camp, where I worked 12h a day doing mostly manual
labour. I had never been happier or more hard-working; the only thing that
could dent my productivity in the slightest was if the kitchen ran low on
grub.

I seriously doubted I would ever go back to working with software again. I had
no desire to do it whatsoever; indeed, I had lost confidence in my ability to
hack any kind of actual job.

For the next seven years I did a lot of dancing, traded my skills as a
photographer for passes & expenses attend events I wanted to go to,
volunteered doing manual labour and A/V work in the summers, and eventually
started teaching dancing locally. The latter at least brought in a little
income, though not nearly enough.

During those years I did (checks spreadsheet) a mere 18 hours of coding spread
over a dozen days - mostly writing small tools to automate my photo editing
workflow.

Then, in 2016, a good friend of mine proposed to more or less create a job for
me, working on what might be described as a modern rewrite of LambadMOO. It
was my dream job, offered to me on a plate, but I wasn't sure I dare take it.
Fortunately he didn't take no for an answer, started back in 2017 and three
years later I am doing better than I have in a long, long time.

Sure: I'm still a lazy bugger (here I am on HN instead of coding!) and there
are days when I don't get much done. And I'm more like a 1x programmer. But I
love this project, have worked harder on it than anything else I've ever had
as a job, and am so grateful to have been reminded how much I enjoy
programming (at least when I am working on something that I care about).

Because of the economic situation my contract is likely to end in the autumn.
I am genuinely doubtful about finding something else as fun and motivating as
this has been—but I no longer worry that no tech work will ever interest me
again, or that I'm no longer capable of feeding myself with my technical
skills.

------
daxfohl
As someone who took three years off once to backpack, came back, and who is
disillusioned again, I guess my one piece of advice is to not have kids while
you're working in tech.

If you do, you immediately get used to the income, and then you get addicted.
Not in a "high" sense, but you start expecting the best things for your kids.
And then you're stuck for the next 20 years.

I'd say spend the first five years with kids in a lower-income role (assuming
that's where you are now). Get used to that. Then if you're tempted by tech
career again you can try it out and jump back out if you want.

------
aazaa
> Has anyone been through this who managed to recover their optimism and
> creative spirit? Please help me. What can I do?

Have you tried helping someone? If not, find someone who needs help, then help
them.

This seems to be a good way to hack past the kind of burnout you're talking
about.

It's best if the thing a person needs help with is something you like to do
(or once liked to do). It won't even seem like you're helping them, but you
will be. Even better if the person needs help with something you've wanted to
learn how to do but never could manage fit in.

A magical thing happens when you help someone. You forget about yourself.
Maybe for only a little while, but that can really help reset what's not
working in life.

There are so many ways to help people. You can help them online,
pseudonymously if you prefer. You can help them publicly. You can volunteer to
do something for an organization that has things that need to be done.

Kids need a lot of help. The elderly need a lot of help. Recently unemployed
people need a lot of help. There are organization serving all of them, and
they can all use your help.

It sounds like you have skills and experience that could help a lot of people.
You may have already helped someone just by sharing your own experience that
happens to overlap with someone else's.

~~~
dchyrdvh
"A magical thing happens when you help someone. You forget about yourself." \-
that's a remarkable statement, actually.

------
miki123211
People in this thread are complaining about how bad work is, but I believe
school is even worse.

With work, you're at least not a "slave". You're (mostly) allowed to quit if
it gets really bad, and you're ultimately responsible for where you work, what
industry etc. With school (I'm thinking from primary to high-school here), you
have no right to decide on anything. If you're learning things that don't
interest you in the slightest, have to spend most of your time doing
pointless, boring work and are surrounded by people you either don't like or
actively hate... well... deal with it. Your age isn't yet greater than <insert
magical number here>, so you're not allowed to decide for yourself. There's
nothing you can do, especially if your parents aren't willing to listen. As
long as there's no violence/abuse, the state won't step in, and all attempts
at rebellion will be promptly squashed. Even if your parents do listen and let
you go to school somewhere else, it's usually not that different. The
curriculum is standardized, so you still learn the same boring stuff, and if
you are somehow out of the norm (this matters for teenagers a lot), you will
be, no matter where you go. I'm a blind person who has lived through this in
secondary. I've known a lot of people in similar situations, blind people,
LGBT people, people from different racial/ethnic backgrounds etc. There have
even been cases where that kind of situation let to suicide.

~~~
kabacha
School is for kids, it's not the same thing at all. Kids need development
guidance even if it's relatively forceful.

Also most modern schools offer a lot of options.

------
thorwasdfasdf
You can't let work be your whole life or it's going to eat you up. Everyone
should read how things are done at Joel's company. Joel spolsky knows how to
create a responsible work environment that is sustainable that won't burn out
engineers. Here is his key advice: 20 hours of your work week you spend on
your SE studies + medition/rest/yoga + administrative stuff + meetings. the
other 20 hours is on coding. If you're doing more than 40 hours per week, your
not sustainable, and you need to do something to change that. Working at a
start up is no excuse, not enough runway is no excuse. The only time you
should be working more than 40 hours a week is if you own the freakin company
or at least 30% of it.

~~~
PascLeRasc
This seems like great advice if you're your own manager. The other 99% of us
would be fired for following his advice unfortunately.

~~~
thorwasdfasdf
Not if everyone follows the advice.

------
friendlybus
What do you want out of work, friends and stability or risk and glory?

Work is an inherently ego driven, protection from death task by stacking more
human and capital cost onto the problem of death. You can find friends in
that, but it's not a stable social relationship.

You're not burnt out, in the sense that you got burned. You seem to be
handling that fine (write down your conflicts though!), it seems more like you
ran out of fuel for the fire. The sparks are still being created but there's
nothing to burn.

Get into the 'why' behind art, the symbols, the inspirations for techniques,
it's a great indicator where other souls found fuel to burn. Find another part
of your life that gives you enough fuel input to start a new fire. Snap a
branch off your culture's hierarchy or history and use it as a second stick to
your own stick and start a brush fire. If you're single find something your
lovers want burnt off.

I think you're starting again with real skills and experience this time. If
you're the kind of guy that needs to be burning, all the comments about the
cycles of business, numbers, money and all that are not going to work for you.

~~~
throwaway839246
_> If you're the kind of guy that needs to be burning, all the comments about
the cycles of business, numbers, money and all that are not going to work for
you._

No, they are not.

As to the rest of your post, I get your metaphors, but the path from
understanding the metaphors to understanding how to turn that understanding
into action is longer than you might think.

Could you give specific examples from your own life or from the lives of
others? What does it mean to write down your conflicts? Is it writing down
what all the subpersonalities want that's usually conflicting? And what do I
then do with it? What does it mean to snap a branch off your culture's
hierarchy or history? Become an activist? What does it mean to burn off what
my lovers want burnt off? So far I've only burnt off what my lovers wanted me
to keep, which is why they're not lovers anymore.

I appreciate your advice, but I need more specific guidance for it to work.
Would you be willing to take the time to write that here? Also, could you tell
a little bit of your own story? Who are you? What is your life like? (I'm not
just asking out of curiosity; in this case it's important to know for the
advice to work)

------
m0ther
Are you disillusioned with technology, or with the business of technology?

In my experience, the term "business" is short for "the business of
exploitation". Exploitation is ugly, and I've had experiences that can be
compared to yours.

Our occupation (if you're doing it right - and few are) is masochistic in
nature. You suffer to grow, and you grow to suffer (sometimes quite a bit
more) for greater pursuits next time. It's the definition of type 2+ fun
([https://www.tetongravity.com/story/adventure/the-three-
and-a...](https://www.tetongravity.com/story/adventure/the-three-and-a-half-
types-of-fun-explained)). If you did the type of things I do, it would be easy
to see our primary job as the application of self-discipline to mitigate
emotional and existential pain caused by consistently pushing your limits
(past your fatigue plateau); and the creation of new solutions are side
effects of the mental blender you are capable of holding yourself in for 8+
hours a day. If you've had family members beg you to quit jobs "for your
health", you probably know what I'm talking about.

Knowing (as I do now) how the business works can change the context behind the
work. Context can be the difference between being a hero, and being exploited.
I like being a hero; I don't like being a victim. I will happily sacrifice of
myself to make something that users will love, or something that will change
the way things are done; I don't want to bleed to make some dickhead rich.

If you have the money to coast for a while, perhaps it's time to think about
building a non-profit. A non-profit would be less likely to attract those
looking to exploit. Boil what you want to do down to chunks that you can
complete yourself, and make sure it's something you're willing to bleed for.

------
kabacha
Because pop-technology is void of any sort of spirit, culture or enthusiasm.
It's all buzzwords, sale pitches and wheel reinventing put in a new wrapper
and walled gardens.

What restored faith in technology for me personally is libre software hacker
movement. It's just so fun to enjoy technology without all of that fake
sillicon valley culture.

It's fun to _own_ technology and understand it and be able to hack it and
experience it with like minded individuals.

If you're burned out try to find job in libre software, it won't pay as much
but as far as spiritual rewards - it's the most you can get from this medium.

~~~
shp0ngle
Interesting is that I got the opposite experience.

As all the libre stuff I have been working on started to be used and
contributed to by the very forces it tried to destroy.

Why is it so great to work on free software when it ends up being used to sell
more AWS subscriptions and by some Facebook library to sell more ads

I realized libre movement is a mirage.... you cannot change the capitalist
forces by writing a bunch of software

Linux ended up powering Android, which is more closed than Windows ever was.
Hurray I guess

~~~
throwaway092835
permissive licenses allowed turning a social movement into unpaid labor for
FAANGs.

Instead of providing libre computing all the way to the end users, many
developers are writing unpaid applications and libraries that will be locked
down into some devices or SaaS.

> I realized libre movement is a mirage....

No, the mirage is to think that we either fix the whole world in two decades
or the fight is lost.

> you cannot change the capitalist forces by writing a bunch of software

Every single bit counts and makes a shift.

~~~
shp0ngle
> No, the mirage is to think that we either fix the whole world in two decades
> or the fight is lost.

Two decades? The "year of Linux desktop" meme is older than that. GNU was
created 1984. It's 34 years old now.

Software in 1984 was wildly different than now. But while free software is now
more available than back then, it's not really much help to the world at
large, is it.

------
pdimitar
I think a lot of this is linked to your gatekeepers' power dynamics. We start
off thinking that through effort and talent alone we can change the world.
Maybe we could but we bumped right into the gatekeepers -- the middle
managers, the disconnected-from-reality CEOs, the people who only warm their
seats without ever actually helping the company -- and the resistance from
them is so strong that we eventually give up.

That's fine. I am not into religion but I quite like the Buddhist concept that
there exist battles you can never win by fighting and the only way you can win
is to never fight them in the first place.

Go and find your happiness elsewhere. That is very okay.

As for how to get back to technology, well, following HN is a pretty good way
to get inspired for ideas. Just do them without the idea that you'll make
money and you could find happiness practising technology again.

------
zw123456
Looks like you are getting a lot of advice. Meh, I will throw my 3 cents
in....

Buy a guitar, or whatever musical instrument interests you.

Play music, where no one can hear you if possible

Get a sketch book and a set of sketch pencils.

Draw things you see, birds trees... don't show them to anyone, do it for you.
or paint set. take an art class.

Buy a trail bicycle and go for a ride on a trail in the wilderness.

You get the idea. . .

~~~
ozten
They already have Knot theory, which is probably the coolest hobby I've heard
of all week.

------
lkrubner
Everyone who reads Hacker News should also consider if there is a political
component to this. The guidelines for Hacker News encourage us to keep
politics out of the comments, and most of the time that is an advantage, but
there are cases where politics might be a contributing factor that needs to be
considered. I see some comments here that say "This is such a USA experience,
it is different in my country." Well, why is that? If it's true that there is
something in the USA that contributes to burnout, would it be useful to
consider the political situation in the country? Surely there are cases where
the macro circumstances impact people's personal lives?

------
helen___keller
I feel like every engineer, at some point in their life, learns that
engineering is a discipline devoted to producing value, typically business
value, not one devoted to building cool shit. All else is just dealing with
the implications of that.

------
DanielBMarkham
That was good. Thank you.

Ever go swimming in a pond? It's not like a swimming pool. In a swimming pool,
the water is clear, the bottom is sound, humans are the only creatures there,
and you can be somewhat assured of your safety. In a pond, you can't see very
far in the water, the bottom is mucky and soft, there are all sorts of other
creatures, and something bad may very well happen to you.

A swimming pool is not a natural system. It takes lots of work and diligence
to keep it running, and even then, bad things happen. Fortunately, a swimming
pool is a system with a mostly finite set of parameters to change and a
similarly-small set of outcomes to manage.

Technology, startups, and BigCorps are natural systems. They're like the pond;
they evolved over time without any one person managing any of it.

It took me a long time to realize that many things in life were like that pond
when I was thinking most of the world was like a swimming pool. There's
nothing wrong with diving into various ecosystems that have emerged out of
human complexity. In fact, you can find pleasures there you can find nowhere
else. But there are significant differences that nobody tells you about. These
systems are emergent, they have tons of variables you might never encounter or
understand, and they change based on the actions of thousands, perhaps
millions of people, all of whom are not aware that they are, in effect,
managing the system. (Even if they knew, no one person has the mental ability
to manage all of that.)

I said all of that to say this: natural systems do not have your best
interests in mind. You form a startup? Ok, there's a preexisting set of
"ramps" you are supposed to get on: bootstrap, niche, unicorn, etc. People who
see you in the startup world see you as being on one of those ramps. That is
how they process your existence. Same goes for BigCorps: the rule there is to
get along, not make waves, and have people think of you as energetic,
competent, and friendly.

These are not necessarily bad systems, but you have to keep in mind everyday
you interact with them that it is ultimately you who are responsible for your
emotional and personal safety, not the system (No matter what they might say
to you)

So yes, be disillusioned. It sounds like you've earned it. Then reflect,
learn, heal, and engage differently. You've been through a tough experience. I
wish you the best. If you're half as smart as you sound, you've got this.

------
codenamepod
It happens to everyone. Maybe because you are loosing confidence in
yourselves, you should start writing books, diaries or articles. That's how I
started [https://gauravtiwari.org](https://gauravtiwari.org). I was down with
expectations, bored with studies and had no good friends. My blog kept me feel
a little when readers started pouring in. After a couple of years, it went to
be come a professional homepage for me and nowadays I showcase my portfolios
with it

------
cosmodisk
"I lost many friends". No,you did not.Those weren't your friends. Not sure if
various feelings mentioned in the post are targeted correctly. Yes, there's
lots of politics,bs,and coolaid drinking in a lot of companies,but that's the
nature of what we humans are. There are a lot of very rewarding and
interesting jobs out there that don't have all that bs attached to them,just
don't be shy to look a bit further.

------
lubesGordi
Dude, you just got to get the fuck out of Silicon Valley. Tech in general has
been raided by finance douches. You need to find a medium sized, profitable
company somewhere not in california, new york, or florida, and go work there.
You can mentor people and enjoy your life outside work and generally explore
tech as you please.

~~~
aguyfromnb
> _Tech in general has been raided by finance douches._

My observation is that many "old-school" tech people weren't replaced by
finance people, but _became_ them. Silicon Valley today is Wall Street of the
80s. VC Twitter is a meme. The common folk are waking up to this, thankfully.

------
jackcosgrove
I have experienced all of the negative emotions the OP experienced, although
his seem to be more acute.

Some things which have helped me are to stop thinking about succeeding or
advancing in life. Those goals are so high up most people don't even get
close. OP got very close by being funded, and it sounds like the whole
experience was a let-down over and above the business failure. It sounds like
the OP has let go of those dreams, which is necessary especially once you know
the dark side of those dreams.

Most people are just trying to survive. They have little control over their
lives, and that relieves some of the self-blame when things go badly. It is
okay to not be in control, to need help, to lose. That's where most people
are. You have friends and allies.

Now that you know how the system works, would you feel better about yourself
had you succeeded? Would you feel guilty?

I think OP is being too hard on himself, and he should look back on that
experience with pride. "I was good enough that they gave me a shot." You could
have been a contender. You actually landed a punch.

~~~
throwaway839246
_> Now that you know how the system works, would you feel better about
yourself had you succeeded? Would you feel guilty?_

I think about that sometimes. Had I been one of the young optimistic CEOs
running around talking about how to improve the world completely unaware of
the tech underbelly, what would my life be like? If I had a button in front of
me that would teleport me into that life, would I press it? I'm honestly not
sure, but I'm leaning towards no. I want to learn how to integrate all this
and learn to operate knowing what I know. I don't think I'd choose staying
hopelessly naive for another thirty years. (Then again, I don't think they'd
press the button to teleport into my life either.)

~~~
HAPMCEZ
well based on that belief I think you might have your answers to why you went
through this experience. you clearly value discovering both sides of things
and you say you want to integrate that. The positive take I have on that is
you want to integrate all of that information positive and negative into
something stronger and more real. that's ultimately more creative and future
looking then the CEO kiddies who just ride the wave of success.

not to pep talk at all but possibly you could be setting yourself up for
something great in future. jobs had a pretty terrible time getting fired by
the Soda executive.

the thinking of it this way and I'm just brainstorming here perhaps any
resistance you have to moving forward with this new perspective could be
related to the fact that you're comfortable with how you now see yourself. no
longer the hundred percent optimist doing something positive for the world.
it's a more compromised position. you're more embracing the shadow side as
well. I can understand why that would be hard but depending on your path it
might be useful and could be your destiny.

~~~
throwaway839246
A lot (most?) of the responses in this thread are "learn to leave work at
work, fuck greedy capitalism, enjoy your family and hobbies". And most of
_those_ responses sound to me like they come from people with a lot of
unresolved resentment and cynicism. I know that I can't do that.

But my god, the integration is hard. No one really prepares you for it. The
old role models don't work because they're unwittingly or deliberately blind
to this. (For example, I've never heard pg talk about this, even though
ycombinator is practically a factory that inputs idealistic people and outputs
people with experiences like mine) Biographies cover this quite superficially;
you basically never hear from the person in their darkest hour.

I'm _sure_ many people have gone through this, but to me it really feels like
uncharted waters.

~~~
badpun
> For example, I've never heard pg talk about this

I remember him writing somewhere that he does not have another startup in him
- that, at best, he can now do the YC. It's kind of a hint that doing a
startup sucks.

BTW you may want to try reading Jacob Fisker's "Early retirement extreme".
He's an ex-astrophysicist who became disillusioned with the way modern society
is organized and wrote what is essentially a philosophy book about how one can
live differently.

~~~
HAPMCEZ
Re pg saying that, that's sort of different to what OP is saying. It's not
just a general "startups suck" or "it's hard". It's a specific critique of the
structural abusiveness of the industry which pg is actually a part of
propagating these days.

------
freetonik
I've been thinking about why so many software developers feel this way, and
among other things tried to explicitly distinguish[1] between three
activities:

1\. Programming

2\. Coding

3\. Software engineering

I had defined them as follows:

1\. Programming is solving explicit problems in a verifiable manner.

2\. Coding is expressing a programming solution in a formal language.

3\. Software engineering is building a product for the real world.

I believe most of us here (and the OP) have this kind of relationship with the
three, best case scenario:

1\. Love programming.

2\. Enjoy coding.

3\. Tolerate software engineering.

Burnout, depression and disillusionment rarely come from 1 (pure, strict math
world), might occasionally come from 2 ("bad" languages, "messy" frameworks,
etc), but generally comes from 3 (business, politics, communication, value,
finance).

Perhaps, it's a good idea to pinpoint the intrinsic "passion" (whatever you
wanna call it) and differentiate it with accidental complexity of the real
world.

(edit: formatting)

\---

1\. [https://rakhim.org/2019/11/coding-vs-dot-programming-vs-
dot-...](https://rakhim.org/2019/11/coding-vs-dot-programming-vs-dot-software-
engineering/)

------
daenz
Sometimes I feel this way when I have unaddressed issues in my life. And I
don't necessarily mean emotional/psych things; Sometimes it is as simple as
having a messy room/harddrive, or some things that have sat on the backburner
for far too long. Take a step back and see if you have any of those things,
then address them deliberately, and see if you feel better.

------
whateveracct
Tech has one truly good aspect: Lots of cash to go around. Extract as much
shmoney as you can from corporations until you can be financial independent of
them and peace out middle fingers in the air.

------
CalRobert
It sounds like the person is disillusioned with people and the industry more
than the tech itself.

And yeah, jobs suck (even the good ones), but I think a bigger problem is the
lack of friends and other social supports to make it OK that your job sucks.

The author writes they poured "every ounce of energy" in to their company.
They were putting time in to the company instead of their human relationships,
and unfortunately it bit them.

I've posted this once or twice before, but I always come back to this
remarkably insightful comment by HN user dexwiz a while back.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20470085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20470085)
""" The Screen and the Job have displaced almost everything else is our lives.
Loneliness is just a primary symptom.

The Screen, whether it’s TV, computer, or phone, has supplanted almost all
social interactions. This manifests itself in things like SitComs on TV (just
a bunch of friends or family hanging out) or Social Media on phones. It’s very
easy to fill the social needs of right now with a Screen. But under even a
minuscule amount of self reflection these are revealed as hollow substitutes
for real human interaction.

The Job has completely taken over as a driving force in evaluating choices.
The average person has to consider all options in the light of both the
current employer and the specter of tomorrow’s. Moving across the country for
a high paying job? Great! Moving to be closer to friends? That’s a career
killer.

No wonder we are lonely. We make choices in the short term that optimize
happiness, often at the expense of our relationships. Ghosting is not just for
dates now. Then turn around and make choices in the long term that optimize
employability at the expense of all else.

"""

------
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?

------
eliteinternaut
I am in the same boat. 6 months ago, I quit my job because the management and
engineering team I worked with were extremely difficult to work with. I had
poured my heart out in the company. Grew the team from 1 to 6 developers.
Worked extreme long hours because I enjoyed building the product. I knew I
didn't want to code after that. I enrolled in an online business management
program. Joined a two people company as an intern two weeks ago. I am finally
getting excited about building something new from scratch and I am learning
quite a lot at the same time. Take a break and spend time doing the things you
love. You are extremely smart and aware about the problems you face. Learn
that thing you always wanted to learn. You might get disinterested and may
want to quit it but it's very important to keep at it. If you join a team, I
would advise you to join a small team with less or no politics.

------
rb808
I think building modern software is not programming any more. Now is about
putting together libraries and open source plumbing, doing a bit of
customization then testing, testing, monitoring, then figuring out why things
aren't working.

I remember writing a lot more simple stuff. Whole applications with maybe a
handful of libraries. It was great.

~~~
cellularmitosis
Spot on. This is why MIT moved away from feeding undergrads SICP: it was a sad
realization that the reality of modern software development was less about
building/understanding a world from first-principles, and more about finding
yourself in a sea of libraries/frameworks and having to do enough "basic
science" on them to discover how to make them do what you want (reliably).

------
ninjakeyboard
There is burnout, then there is just being "done." If you're out of software
and happy, then great. I think we reach a point where the draw of money +
realization that software is horrible kind of collide and end up shaking you,
making you realize life is short and limited and that there must be something
more meaningful. Is that a bad thing? Only if you don't do something about it.
you have an incredible opportunity to do good somewhere somehow. You'll need
to fix your "charged emotional responses" and "reactivity" by learning to be
with em instead of running and grasping, but there-after, you are freed of the
animal-instinct burden. It' s a hard path to find and harder still to walk,
but it's there. No words can capture it or give it, no thinking will show you
the way out.

------
ohSai3as
I would recommend hacking. Not cracking, mind you, but tinkering. Focusing not
on building a product, but on toying for just a few hours with something you
find cool, and have fun with it.

This is what made it for me when I started being disillusioned with my work (I
became a developer thinking the internet would bring direct democracy like
printing brought democracy, and instead it brought mass surveillance and
complotism).

I play with the decentralized web (dat), with raspberry pi, with system
programming, with whatever new (to me) I feel like. And just like that, I'm
happy again and enjoying my craft again. I just want out of "the industry" and
can't wait to have saved enough to be able to do that (gladly, this is a work
line where we're lucky enough to be able to retire early, if we're good with
simple life).

------
foxfired
There are employees that work for the money. They are not your friends outside
of work. They would rather get a promotion or a slightly better paying job
than dream of starting their own company. They are not passionate about the
project, and will not answer emails or call after hours. They are always the
first to leave for lunch, and the first to clock out for the day.

They are suckers. Wait til they realize that they wasted their time building
someone else's wealth instead of their own.

That's the sales pitch. That's what I believed when I joined the world of
technology. And I felt sorry for them. I have the impression that you felt
that at some point. No one else has your passion. I was lucky that reality
quickly came to slap me on the face.

I co-founded a company with 4 other people and we were living the life. We
were featured in techcrunch, investors lined up to throw money at us, we had a
celebrity hanging with us. The paparazzi were never too far. But then, we
worked together.

I realized I couldn't work with the CEO. Every other word he used was Hunger,
passion, success, haters. I dropped those words from my vocabulary. He
believed what I believe to the extreme. It was unpleasant to see it with my
own eyes.

When our finances met reality, the clashes begun. I paid our office rent for a
little while until I saw that it was in vain. Rather than go through my
savings, I asked everyone to get a job until we can weather this downturn. Two
people did. The other two threw my own words back at me. I lacked the passion
and hunger for being in a start up. I stopped paying rent.

Long story short, it's been 2 years since the landlord changed the locks in
the office and the CTO, who was secretly living there, has been kicked out. He
has been homeless ever since. He has all the talent in the world, but he would
not get a job and sit next to those suckers again.

Completely buying into the startup story does more harm then good. The first
thing to remember is that when you have your own company, you'll have to hire
employees. And no one can have the "passion" of the founders. The second
thing, is that thinking that employees are suckers, gives you mentality of
superiority. You feel above others, and end up being an unpleasant person to
work with.

There is nothing wrong with being an employee who gets paid to solve a
problem. In fact, it's the most important thing in a company. An employee that
solves problems then disappears until the next day.

------
mlazos
This makes me wish I posted a few years ago when I first started at a FAANG. I
was fresh out of college and worked on an email product which was in an area I
was interested but quickly learned how enterprise software is actually made.
There is one interesting part which is the core and that’s the MVP. Working in
this stage is exciting and fun to make and then there are years and years of
slog smoothing out the edges and making it ready for production, which left me
similarly disillusioned especially when my view of the real world fresh out of
college was that every product that exists is interesting and perfect. Long
story short, I worked on that boring project for two-ish years and saw the
horrible political environment begin to deteriorate my once-ok team. I say
once-ok because I convinced myself during that time that I liked my work
because by all measures of society, I was successful, and having no knowledge
of other teams I didn’t think there was an alternative. This was all I ever
knew and thought every team in tech is like this. Which for the most part is
actually true. Despite what Google and other big tech companies’ flashy
recruiting and marketing, something like 99% of the engineers in those
companies are doing boring shit to keep the money flowing . I also went
through the exact same thought process where I thought my spirit had been
drained and I could never get the excitement back because of this realization.
I also often wondered if I had been permanently changed because of the
experience and thought I would never feel creative again. However I made a big
decision and took the leap to join a new team and couldn’t have landed in an
environment that is more the polar opposite. And that is what gave me my
spirit back. You need to find a product in a FAANG, or startup that you
actually are passionate about and get to grow your own team and that will give
you your passion back. Find a position which is an exact match for your skills
and do not settle at all. If a position is not perfect do not even consider it
and ask as many probing questions as you need and contact current members of
the team to check for inconsistencies. Good luck and I hope you can find
another project that brings you passion.

~~~
badpun
> This makes me wish I posted a few years ago when I first started at a FAANG.
> I was fresh out of college and worked on an email product which was in an
> area I was interested but quickly learned how enterprise software is
> actually made.

A FAANG email product is not enterprise software. I suspect that what you've
seen in your product was, compared to typical enterprise software, a pinnacle
of human achievement. Get a job in a bank and you'll see.

------
lcall
Possibly related prior discussions, some of which include some comments of
mine at my site where I try to discuss life perspective etc etc. Note that
this is an attempt at collecting useful comments that could relate, _NOT_ at
an insinuation that the OP is lazy, a procrastinator, or other. But some
comments were good, like finding balance, direction, etc.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22919697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22919697)
("ask hn: how do i overcome mental laziness?")

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22124489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22124489)
("Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time (bbc.com")

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22096571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22096571)
("Ask HN: I don't want to be a worker any more I want to be a professional")

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20930439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20930439)
("how do you keep your programming motivation up?")

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18903886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18903886)
"Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to keep working on a project? "

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19777976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19777976)
"ask hn: how do you stay disciplined in the long run?"

(And I have, actually, put a lot at my web site (linked in my profile;
hopefully skimmable for the parts that one finds helpful) that I think are
relevant. Edit: like, for finding a family-like community almost wherever you
go, search this page for "no one has to be alone":
[http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581716.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581716.html)
.)

For what it may be worth.

------
slx26
I've seen this again and again: good, honest people trying to do their best in
their day to day... but unavoidably, whenever we reach a larger scale
scenario, everything breaks. And it's not technology. It's people. You can
live happy with a few friends, or many friends, as long as you stay in your
small world. Even working on complicated things. But when you start trying to
scale up and translate the magic to the big world, it becomes too much,
because it's impossible. It's so messy and complex and there are so many parts
out of your control, that you can't attempt to _care_ and not end up hurt, to
do things _right_ , because no one has such power in a world this complex. The
business landscape around technology is terrible... but that's just like any
other large-scale landscape. Tech might scale well. What never scales nicely
is adding more and more people to ambitious projects. We don't scale well.

So... Do not attempt to align your ambitions with money or the big world. Try
to find a job where you can directly see the benefits of your work, and where
you only need to think about "the people physically in front of you". Your
curiosity is still there, it's only overshadowed by all the other problems you
had to face. But they are separate things. It might take a while to see them
separately again, but it's possible. You just need to identify this and stop
pushing yourself in the directions where they overlap.

------
mbubb
You have been though trauma - whether or not it was self inflicted or your
fault or anyone else's fault is nto the issue here at the moment. You are
still in the midst of it (gathered from your writing) and it will pass
(hopefully).

Look around and see if there is something you can do that involves service to
your community (however you define that). For me volunteering as an EMT on
weekends has helped me a lot.

Finding something where you feel like what you are doing is meaningful - even
if in a very local small way - gets you grounded.

Good luck!

------
wayoutthere
My response to this was to just recognize "I will have no control over
outcomes unless I start playing corporate politics". I stopped reading up on
the newest frameworks and started understanding finance and org behavior. Then
I went and got an MBA.

Ultimately engineering is an entry-level job. Yes there are more senior
engineering roles, but they all involve progressively more political
involvement the higher you go. Turns out technology organizations are
basically like every other hierarchy in human history.

------
ohiovr
To address the writer I say to you that splendid and amazing technical
achievments do not really lead to long term satisfaction unless they coinside
well with a well defined long term buisness objective. I am an entrepenur also
but I'm a small time life style technologist. I have a small means and I'm
happy with it. It gives me freedom most of all. Think of all those big shot
names that people were celebrating great valuations.If I only made one penny
in my life its more than they have netted this whole time and probably ever
will. Softbank is the poster child for stupid businesses. An app that will
help you walk your dog. They billed a quarter billion for it. So if you lost
people a billion say they are lucky because so and so would have lost you two!

The point is you are young and learning what failure tastes like. Its ok to be
happy. Its ok to do all your internet browsing on a commodore 64. There are
people crazy enough to do that.

Technology, science, and learning is good for its own sake only if it doesn't
dominate your life. Don't make that stuff the ends in life. Remember
technology are tools they are means. Archamedes made his best discovery just
taking a bath.

Take a break and enjoy life. Maybe watch a movie
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuiUXOTE4M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuiUXOTE4M)

------
throwawaycorona
Accept the world for what is vs. what you want it to be.

As child you revolted against reality by escaping into sci-fi. No judgement
here.

I find that sci-fi, especially good sci-fi is more digestible form of
philosophy.

As you aged and achieved comfort and "success" the world has revealed to be
unfair. You always knew it to be the case but now you see it. The lies. The
callous nature. The straight up self surviving people that seem to be self-
satisfied without even a hint of guilt you get for accidentally swapping a
fly.

You have guilt for not being as happy as you should be given how lucky you are
despite all the things that didn't quite work out the way you wanted them to.
And yet, wake up every day you must. Do something. You have companionship, yet
another privilege you can feel guilty for not appreciating it enough.

So how to fix this? Stop expecting the world to be something it is not. Stop
hoping for humanity. This is not a sad thought, but once you accept reality.
Then and only then can you figure "okay, now what". What problems do I want to
solve, which people do I want to help.

You realize you can't help everyone. So focus. Appreciate the gratitude you
get by serving others. Could be family or your community, but big nameless
though important causes won't feed your soul.

Check out some stuff on The Myth of Sisyphus. This may help you in your
journey. What we fear to enslave us is the thing that may actual free us. The
obligations of life provides the purpose that freedom never give.

------
la6471
From the Gita
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita))
to help you :

Karmanye vadhika raste, Ma phaleshu kadachana Ma karma phala he tur bhuh, ma
te sangotsva karmanye

You have a right to “Karma” (actions) but never to any Fruits thereof. You
should never be motivated by the results of your actions, nor should there be
any attachment in not doing your prescribed activities.

------
dblank9
There's a lot to dislike about business. Money complicates any relationship.
On top of that, big business attracts big sharks that only care about money.
But why be surprised? That's their job!

In short, it's no wonder that things go wrong in the startup world. Heck, most
startups fail and as the old adage goes, "...failure permits no alibis". If
you fail more often than not you WILL be crucified, especially by the people
who's money you've lost. Imagine you're a general and you have just lost a
battle. Do you expect your superiors to like you afterwards? Or your soldiers?

What IS a wonder is that we get anything good done at all, and we DO. Look at
all the amazing products you use every day. It's insanely hard to pull this
off, it requires one to have thick skin along with passion and optimism, all
rolled up into a neat package. In short, you've got to have both.

But I'm curious as to what's wrong with "technology"? Technology is just
something humans do, it's a form of crafting. We make stuff for fun and to
make our lives easier. There are businesses built around said that complicate
things on a human level, but without that infrastructure civilization is not
possible.

------
KozmoNau7
It was business and politics that ruined technology for you, not technology
itself. There's a reason why people warn you against turning your hobby into a
career.

On the surface, it seems like a perfect idea to make a living by doing what
you love, but it ceases to be fun. You won't be able to do only what you love
and what your whims and desires guide you to do, instead you have to do all
the things you don't really like, whatever is desired by others willing to
pay. Your most marketable skill in tech may be something you don't really
enjoy doing.

I was the "computer kid" growing up and in school, so obviously that
influenced my choice of education and career. I used to tinker endlessly with
new devices, Linux distros (did Linux From Scratch installs, all that), and
programming, but I just don't really care to do that anymore. I've hopped off
the gadget bandwagon and only ever upgrade when something eventually breaks.
It is no longer a fun hobby for me to upgrade my PCs endlessly or to tinker
with new features and perusing changelogs to check for them. Tech feels too
much like work now.

Instead, I've picked up on some old creative hobbies, like miniature painting
and crafts, something analog and tactile. I tinker with paint mixes and
techniques, work on my artistic side.

I know 3D printing is becoming very big in that space too, but I am
consciously trying to avoid it. It is tempting though, and luckily pretty far
removed from where my career has taken me.

Burnout is something that just happens, in your case it was due to business
nonsense and politics, which is what usually happens. Do what makes you have,
not what used to make you happy.

------
doppel
I can't know where you're working or worked, but please don't think that this
is every tech job in every company. There are plenty of smaller businesses
doing great work where you get to have your say, good colleagues and some (at
least) moderately interesting problems to work with.

My last 3 jobs (over 10 years) have all been with companies in the size of
30-50 people, with 20-50% being product/engineering, working on a SaaS
product. My jobs have been nothing remotely like the Silicon Valley TV-series,
so I'm quite surprised and appalled when people say how spot on (even if it's
a mocking caricature) the show is. And your description of Dilbertesque
politics fall very much in that same category.

Will smaller companies have the Big Engineering Problems that FAANG companies
have? Of course not. But there's a huge middle ground in lots of different
sectors. I'm working for a company that makes a platform for childcare
centers, and we have a ton of challenges and opportunities - not what I'd
expected 10 years ago. But the work is rewarding, even if I don't get to have
a lot of challenges revolving super hard algorithms, huge data sets or
whatever else might be all the rage. Most of our challenges is scaling on a
budget, nurturing expertise in different areas in a 10-person team,
translating feature requests between customer lingo to something we can
implement, and many more similar not-wild-and-crazy tasks.

I do feel lucky, but I also do not feel like I was lucky and somehow found
three magical unicorn companies to work for. And there's plenty of things that
could be better, and I could make more money working at bigger companies but
in my mind it's not worth the trade-off.

~~~
ehnto
I have always worked with smaller companies as a rule, somewhere between 5-30
people usually. I don't live in the valley, so the startup game isn't even on
my radar, and the companies are already making money solving problems so all
the VC infused "Change the World" attitude isn't required. I don't have to
care about IPOs, stock options or whatever.

There are still so many interesting problems to solve at smaller companies,
often really niche problems that have no or little prior art meaning you get
to really break ground. You are also tailoring software to work on problem
sets of an entirely different domain to software. In FAANG style companies
you're writing software that solves software problems, which is a layer of
abstraction too far for me personally.

Being smaller companies they're often involved in the community as well.
Software is so often ephemeral and disconnected, there have been years of my
career where I never spoke to anyone who actually used my work. I'm not sure
the client always tested it either, so it could feel like I was writing
software for no-one. It is nice to be connected to the real world and
users/clients more directly.

------
StandardFuture
Why is the title of this "disillusioned with technology" and not
"disillusioned with the tech culture"? This is a very sketchily edited title
(although not surprised as it is complaining about VC behavior and this
website is owned by a VC firm).

Technology has well proven its worth. There is more money than ever in it. The
problem is that anything that has a bunch of money it _will absolutely_
attract the worst of people. That is your VCs, and your corporate politicians,
etc. as the writer is complaining about.

These people literally provide almost no value to anyone else but themselves.
They are parasites on our society. They subconsciously know it and thus they
require the style of culture they drive and thrive in.

But, any cultural problems in tech can be blamed on no one else except the
people who honestly enjoy creating and engineering. Why? Because it is our
fault for not getting more aggressive and smarter in taking back the culture.
There are now more PhDs and programmers than there ever has been in the
history of humanity. There is no excuse any longer to allow this.

And also, can we quit with the bullshit of just calling all complaints about
the industry a type of "burnout"?

------
rconti
I can't contribute a lot; I'm not a programmer, and I've never started a
company. Though I've always loved tech, I guess I was never that idealistic
about anything. I've ridden the IPO bandwagon, done the acquisition thing,
done the bigcorp thing. I've been "in the industry" for 25 years and I guess
I've burned out a few times, but usually it was about the company I worked for
and team I worked on at the time.

It doesn't sound like the poster's complaints are anything tech-specific, just
that (s)he chose to deploy their optimism in the general direction of the tech
industry, and can't deal with the fact that the industry just doesn't work in
an altogether idealistic, altruistic manner. I question whether their
subsequent employment is truly "better" in those regards, or if their
standards are merely lower/more cynical.

I don't know how to say "don't have expectations that high" in a way that's
any more useful than telling a depressed person to "stop being depressed", but
while I can see WHY they've burned out, I just can't come up with a
"solution".

------
peterwwillis
You're an artist trying to find artistic and personal fulfillment in somebody
else's art factory. That will never work.

You can try to make a living making your own art, and hustle and struggle the
way artists do. Or you can work in a monotonous factory churning out someone
else's art. The latter is easier, but it requires putting up with more
bullshit. The former is harder, but you feel good about it. That's life.

------
djhaskin987
1\. Insist on work life balance, a40 hour work week, and stick to it.
Employers very much do exist which want this just as much as you do. 2\.
Ensure you get plenty of unstructured time (play time) and also rest every
day. 3\. Realize that your employment does not define who you are. 4\. Not all
employers are awful. Seek out employers from publicly traded, midsize
companies with profit motive (no government jobs/insurance companies, but no
startups either). I find these jobs to be the "funnest", though I am currently
a cog in the machine if a large company. They are fun because there's no time
for politics, but there's no huge rush either, just get your job done and do
it well. If you cannot switch, do whatever you need to do to stay sane in your
current environment. Take care of you. 5\. Exercise creativity -- a few
minutes of "fun" programming a day -- and it will get fun again. 6\. See a
therapist. "Burnout" generally is accompanied anxiety and/or depression. It is
certainly helping me.

Burnout can be temporary. But it requires work to overcome it.

------
ismyrnow
This isn’t how life as a software engineer has to be. I work for a small
software company, which hasn’t taken any investment money, and is experiencing
slow growth. The entire company is remote, and I love my coworkers, who I see
daily, but only see in person a few times a year. I make enough money to live
very comfortably with my family.

A lot has to do with your perspective on life. If work is life and it is what
you get your value from, you’re bound to be disappointed if you work for
someone else.

I can’t finish up this comment without mentioning that I’m a Christian, and I
find value not solely in the work I do (what if I get injured and can’t work)
or in my family (they’re human and far from perfect), but in being loved by
God. Most people are gonna call that stupidity or the result of brainwashing
or naïveté, but it’s a comfort few people have when the world turns upside
down due to global pandemic and recession. I’m not here to argue religion with
anyone, just to say that a Godless life can be a hopeless one.

------
JPLeRouzic
Perhaps you need to find a new domain where you could apply your skills. Why
not inventing computer models of diseases for the drug research. The FDA has
already accepted a model in place of an expensive clinical trial.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modelling_biological_systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modelling_biological_systems)

------
_bxg1
I think what you're disillusioned with is capitalism.

Try building something you could never make money off of. Something useless,
but fun. Try divorcing technology from the vultures and the dilberts.

Here are some technologists doing useless, joyful things:

[https://twitter.com/MatthewRayfield](https://twitter.com/MatthewRayfield)

[https://twitter.com/Foone](https://twitter.com/Foone)

[https://twitter.com/_naam](https://twitter.com/_naam)

Best of luck.

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
> _Then I worked for a tech giant, and then for a high-growth unicorn. It
> shocked me how dilbertesque they both were. Full of politicians, and burnt
> out engineers in golden handcuffs who can 't wait to get out_

Sorry this surprises you, OP. It's called "work" (I'm not intending to be
condescending). People pay you to do something and you do it, having entered
unto that mutual agreement. Nobody promised you it would be efficient or fair
(yet it's much more efficient and much more fair than it was say 50 years
ago).

It's not just you. It's many people. Being paid a lot to do very little seems
to have some bizarre side-effects to people's psyche.

For anyone reading this, take charge of your personal life. Find people and
invest your time, and causes and invest your money.

So many people lament the inequality in the world but do nothing of their own
will to change it. Are we all so paralyzed we can't make personal decisions
and instead cry out why our government isn't doing more?

------
olegious
"I do a lot of sports now and hang out with my non-techy friends and my wife.
I cook a lot."

This implies that you didn't do these things before. Which implies that you
were overworked, didn't take care of yourself and naturally you burnt out. I
don't think it is an issue with tech, it is an issue with you prioritizing
work over everything else.

------
eeZah7Ux
> I was drawn to programming, science, technology and science fiction ever
> since I was a little kid. I can't say it's because I wanted to make the
> world a better place.

One of the main sources of burnout if feeling that your work is meaningless
and only benefits the company owners.

Even if we are unaware of it.

The advice of doing things you love as personal projects might not be enough.

------
mbalex99
I wish I got to know you and your experience a bit better. But perhaps you
didn't work on things that were ambitious enough? Some causes where technology
need coders like us are so daunting and scary that it can be good for our
personal motivation. Yes, I mean for you to seek out some fear and trembling.
For me, if the project is too definite, too attainable, it feels like there is
little exploration.

It's natural for us to go towards jobs and projects that feel secure. However
security can often bring about boredom and bitterness if you let it take over
you everyday.

I'd disagree with the statement that those people weren't your friends.
Friends come and go (family too!), live and enjoy great people in the moment.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying fleeting moments with people. If they
become friends for long time; great. If not, it was fun while it lasted. Not
everything has to evaluated for long-term ROI.

------
gorbachev
A thought occurred to me while reading this and the responses.

I had pretty severe burnout - who knew, working two jobs and studying full
time isn't very smart - when I was very young in my career. In hindsight that
was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was even better that
it happened early in my career when I didn't have dependents to care about or
much of a career really.

Because of that I learned, unfortunately the hard way, that work is work and
that's not your life. It took me a while, but I forced myself to stop
worrying, thinking and in any way engage with work once the workday is done. I
haven't taken work home in years.

Burnouts suck, the really bad ones are dangerous, too, because you lose your
sense of reality, but, honestly, if people went through it once when it's
relatively safe and you can rely on help to get through it, like I did, the
rest of your life could/would be much better.

------
beshrkayali
Lots of comments, not sure if anyone said this already.

If you're disillusioned because of the current Orwellian state the world is in
(everything tracking you, hard locked in into ecosystems, etc...) Please know
that this is not technology, technology has always been and will always be
great. It's the business model that fucked us.

~~~
aclissold
Is it the business model, or the people apathetic to its problems?

~~~
beshrkayali
Business model for sure. Primarily the people who couldn't find a way to make
money other than selling their users (at best), and of course the users
themselves who knew and still normalized it.

------
toohotatopic
Count the I-s in your text. Why would you want to program for yourself if you
are already happy and mentally engaged otherwise? You will want to build
something once you find a problem that you can solve for somebody else.

Or think of a product that you want all by yourself that is not available
right now. Use programming to make it real.

------
downerending
I'm kind of there, too, though I was never as successful are you (I infer).

As far as sleeping well at night, unless you were a sadistic bastard to your
employees, I think all else is (or should be) easily forgiven.

If you behaved monstrously to anyone (and I've been on the receiving end of a
couple of those deals), you might apologize. Don't expect that it will be
received well, but that's really all you can do.

Beyond that, I think you've mostly just discovered the nature of our reality.
The Buddhists call it suffering, or just the inherent broken-ness or
insufficiency of the world. Ecclesiastes knew it as well, along with many
Western philosophers who followed.

What's to be done? Not much. Try to enjoy your life, which is almost over
anyway. Try to have good time with your wife and whatever friends or people
may be around. Eat, drink, and be merry, as you can. Godspeed.

------
namelosw
I believe this kind of disillusion could not only simply explained by burnout.
It's more like the Blue pill vs Red pill thing. Once you learned, you cannot
unlearn. Blue pilled people are totally okay with these things, while some Red
pilled people cannot get rid of their cynical views, and the feeling of
defeating.

I work for a tech consultancy, apart from programming stuff, I also need to
propose technical solutions to the clients, presenting slides with buzz word
technologies which are actually very mediocre for me. Everybody else seems to
be excited by those technologies. I can bear with it but sometimes I have same
feeling as OP. If I own a startup doing similar business I would directly
choose totally different sets of novel technologies that are much smaller,
faster, outperform those solutions in almost every dimension.

Technologies are usually overlooked or being witch-hunted for tens of years.
What we usually do today, there were a small bunch of people already knew them
quite well more than half a century ago. That might mean now, you can already
do what people usually do tens of years later, but too few people would agree
with you. Just like John Barkus have to face "FORTRAN is extremely
inefficient" bullshit for quite a while. After FORTRAN got rid of the
inefficient reputation, he was interested in functional programming back in
the day, while functional programming was even being witch-hunted till this
day.

Imagine you have been thrown back to 1995, and a part of your job is to
declare the "Blub Programming Language™"'s novelty over other languages to
everybody (that would be a real job since there were so much marketing on the
"Blub Programming Language™" back in the day), while there are even no basic
things like parametric polymorphism and higher-order functions such as map and
filter. Everybody was in hype, and completely ignore your cynical view on
"Blub Programming Language™", despite the fact that those novel concepts are:
very useful / straight forward to learn / already well established in the
1960s.

------
mirimir
OK, so I've had no experience with startups. About the closest I came was
flirting with biotech in the 80s. But for sure I've had my share of abject
failure, anxt, depression, and all that.

Until my 30s, it was all about doing what interested me. In a word, having
fun. I didn't care at all about money, and didn't need much, given my
lifestyle in college and grad school. I also didn't care much about
relationships, mostly because I was so incompetent about them.

I did go through a phase of seeing how much money I could make. At least, as a
consultant. Probably because I was so incompetent building businesses.

But somewhere in the midst of that, I fully got that it's all a game, and that
stuff means whatever we say it does. In some Landmark course about managing
yourself as if you were a business. And then it became fun again.

------
jdshaffer
I work in academia and get mild burnout twice a year (after the semester
ends). I have actually found Churchill's advice on overcoming burnout quite
helpful -- in short, find several real (physical) hobbies like painting or
gardening.

Here are some excellent quotes from Churchill's small book "Painting as a
Pasttime":

Painting as a Pastime by Winston Churchill

The tired part of the mind can be rested and strengthen, not merely by rest,
but by using other parts.

It is no use saying to the tired 'mental muscles' – if one: such an expression
– 'I will give you a good rest,' 'I will go for a long walk,' or 'I will lie
down and think of nothing.' The mind keeps busy just the same. If it has been
weighing and measuring, it goes on weighing and measuring. If it has been
worrying, it goes on worrying. It is only when new cells are called into
activity, when new stars become the lords of ascendant, that relief, repose,
refreshment are afforded.

To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three
hobbies, and they must all be real.

The need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a diversion
of effort, is essential.

The most common form of diversion is reading.

'What shall I do with all my books?' was the question; and the answer, 'Read
them,' sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at any rate handle
them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where
they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to
another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set
them back on their shelves with your own hands.

Since change is an essential element in diversion of all kinds, it is
naturally more restful and refreshing to read in a different language from
that in which one's ordinary daily work is done. To have a second language at
your disposal, even if you only know it enough to read it with pleasure, is a
sensible advantage.

To restore psychic equilibrium we should call into use those parts of the mind
which direct both eye and hand. Many men have found great advantage in
practicing a handicraft for pleasure.

But best of all and easiest to procure are sketching and painting in all their
forms.

We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content
ourselves with a joyride in the paint-box.

------
cryptica
The description about the contrast between an easy, soul-less corporate
environment and the insanely difficult startup environment where you get torn
apart by vultures resonates very strongly with me.

I think anyone who has worked for a good mix of startups and corporations will
understand the extreme difference. And yes, being around a bunch of highly
optimistic people inside corporations is depressing.

And it's depressing that people get paid more to do useless bureaucratic
things while in a corporation than adding real value whilst in a startup.

I blame Federal reserve banks and fiat money for this. That's why I work in
cryptocurrency space now. Cryptocurrency allows you to get profit from
systemic inefficiencies just like corporations but you get that nice
efficiency, value-creation feeling of a startup.

~~~
cryptica
That said, a lot of cryptocurrency projects do nothing at all and add 0 or
even negative value. It doesn't really affect value of the token though. To me
this is the ultimate proof that we have entered into a post-productivity era.

Why other people don't seem to notice this is beyond me.

------
ACow_Adonis
I don't know how well this will go down in HN, but here's my take/secret:

Corporations and business aren't programming/tech/ science. Startups aren't
tech. University and academics isn't science. Faculties aren't science. Peer
review isn't science. Venture capitalists aren't tech. Silicon valley isn't
tech/ science. "The web" isn't tech.

Let's try another analogy: modern art and art dealerships and art galleries
aren't art. Art is taking a photo you like, or painting something you want to
paint or building something you want to build. Working at it because you want
it and you think it will be beautiful or purposeful: once you're trying to
make business and money and find out what's popular and build reputation and
sell you tend to stop doing art and start doing something else.

So to bring it back to tech and science.

Science is just the process of systematically trying to use experimentation,
empiricism and reasoning to find out what you don't know. That's it! The rest
is some combination of empty shells, dressing and propaganda.

Flashing LEDs isn't tech.

Tech is just tools used for some purpose, be it practical or enjoyment.
Nothing more. A hammer is tech. A rock is tech. A string can be tech.

I program in R and python and get paid for it these days. But I try to not
bring it home, because it's not tech, and it's not science and it's not
programming. When I'm programming I'm usually in emacs and lisp. I do
photography to produce things I think are beautiful. I cook to provide tasty
and healthy and enjoyable experiences for my family (and a scientific mindset
can be quite helpful there). I apply science just continuously in life. And I
hack together things in tech because I enjoy it and to make my life easier:
why just this weekend I made our living room into a video conference centre
for our corona virus quarantine: my phone is the webcam and streams wirelessly
to the computer, my computer streams wireless display to my TV, my TV routes
sound back out through the AV unit, and the room is lit with customisable hue
lighting. All done for a few bucks of software and it'll never sell a unit and
I don't care, because money and selling isn't tech.

------
throwaway191918
Many here will attempt to give you a justification or rationale to your
predicament. I've discovered, through my own experience, that this way of
coping is predominate in technology (when a problem reveals itself, find a
solution). Sometimes this is the right way to approach it. For example, If you
know the end you are seeking, finding a means and sticking with that way of
being will eventually get you closer to that end. But if you don't know the
end, you revert back to the means with which you are most familiar: attempting
to solve it rationally. I've found this approach to be unfruitful. This sort
of thinking is something I dwell in quite a bit. I'm happy to be a sounding-
board for you if you want.

~~~
throwaway839246
If not identify a problem then find a solution, then what?

~~~
throwaway191918
Exactly. If you label it as a "problem", you will continue seeking and
believing that, if only you had the right knowledge, you'd be able to have a
"solution". Or. if you had an answer that was at least convincing enough to
yourself, then that's sufficient. Unfortunately, I don't believe it's that
simple. You can dismiss this as a problem, find a valid solution, and move
along. Or you can become familiar with what it is like to be with this unease
and let it speak for itself. I'm not saying this will work for you, but I want
to make present the falsity that pure rationality will be able to solve
problems like these.

------
poulsbohemian
I worked in tech for 23 years, as an employee, freelancer, consultant, and
business owner. I did development, devops, testing, management, sales... and
after working my way through burnout several times and seeing the industry
change in ways I don't like, I walked away to a new career. While not perfect
and nowhere near as intellectually stimulating, it sure beats what I
experienced in tech from an emotional and mental standpoint. So while "find
your passion" is a little trite, there is something to be said for "find
something that doesn't drain you every day, that pays your bills, that you
might even enjoy, that enables you to live how you wish."

------
loup-vaillant
You may be disillusioned with technology, but to me, it seems that what
disillusioned you was capitalism.

The problems you described are not technological, they're political. The
Vulture Capitalists can be dishonest because they don't pay for their lies.
The soulless corporations waste their time with political squabbles and poorly
managed project because they capture enough profit to afford such
inefficiencies. Burnout is not a problem because we still have a lot of
younger and hopeful people to replace the burnt out ashes.

I personally see only two solutions: get out of the system, or change the
system. Perhaps both. Note that the second one requires collective action.

------
machinehermit
Everyone has different talents. Without those bloodthirsty vultures we would
have a hard time allocating capital to the right projects.

My experience with straddling a bunch of different worlds is that people in
technology are often just impossible to satisfy. Mad because the ping pong
table doesn't have exactly the brand of ping pong balls they wanted.

IMO it comes down to that the time in front of a screen to become a great
programmer is not exactly great for mental health.

You have to use the great problem solving skills you have to solve this
problem for your own brain though and stop blaming the external world. There
is nothing more that could be done to make you happy.

------
jerome-jh
The software engineer is the worker of the 21st century. In many organizations
he/she is at the bottom of the pyramid. Some organizations like to insist on
that point. Take it or leave it.

[Edit] try replacing software engineer with teacher, nurse.

------
chukye
That's just how life is, how business is. people are driven by motivation (a
lot of times by money) you didn't lose any friends, if they are with you when
you have something and now they're gone, they never were your friends.

I like to code, I do this since I have 13 (I have 30 now), I didn't start this
to make money, I do this because I like it and I would do this even if I were
not paid for

I worked with a lot of good people, but they are just coworkers, not my
friends. you must figure out the difference and find your purpose. Maybe tech
is not for you and that's ok if you are happy doing non-tech stuff you should
focus on that.

------
RangerScience
Yo! I'm with some people building a community that I think could really
resonate with what you're looking for out of your future. It's sort of but not
really an incubator of people, and one of our number (who themselves has a
hell of a story) is explicitly looking to upend the VC model for basically all
of those reasons. Another is the only _liked_ advertiser on Reddit. I'm taking
our toy sort-of-but-not-really chat bot and turning it human augmentation for
domestic abuse clinicians. It's the first time in my career (~10yrs) that I've
been excited about morning "standups".

Email me or some such :)

------
tarsinge
It makes me think that maybe what’s so toxic nowadays is the expectation that
the job is glamorous and exciting. For me the reality is still the same as
90’s dad’s enterprise software company, but with a big shiny layer of
marketing.

------
NotUsingLinux
I call this phenomenon: the meaning crisis and yes we should do something
about it :
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=54l8_ewcOlY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=54l8_ewcOlY)

------
drumhead
Whne you accept VC money they will expect, demand results, they dont care
about the consequences to you or your staff, they want a return on their
money. Your're making a deal with the devil, but in return what are you really
expecting or what do you want? A great company delivering great products or
immense wealth? The impression I get is that everyone or at least the vast
majority want Bill Gates level money, they want to be as rich as Zuckerberg.
They want their own space program like Bezos. Deliver a great product in your
own time, at a smaller scale and be happy with a reasonable profit.

------
johndoe42377
This is actually quite common situation and it seems that the major cause is
that tech is now saturated with "normies" (liberal arts college dropouts, SJW
schizoids, etc) instead of math or biology majors like it used to be at the
times of Bell labs or Xerox PARC or early Google.

Abstract bullshit, misapplication of statistical methods is another cause. We
are drowning in the sea of screaming narcissistic virtue-signaling bullshit.

So, go back to concrete mathematics, grounded in reality modeling, lightweight
high level prototyping languages and functional programming. This, like
universal principles, will never fail you.

~~~
gozzoo
> math or biology

Biology?! I'm not even sure if math is in place here. I would put instead 'CS
and engineering'.

People who do things that never existed before are rarely these who are good
at math. These people are called engineers. They have different skillset and
background and very different attitude towards solving problems.

Don't get me wrong, being computer engineer myself I have huge respect for
both biology and math. I took a biology class recently and I do read math
books.

> go back to concrete mathematics

I would say: go back to making things aka engineering

You get back the joy of building things by building things. Something that
worked for me when I was in similar situation was working on some Arduiono
projects. It's not only programming, you are making sometehing in the physical
world as well. The projects are usually simple and small, you don't get burned
out. The actual programming is pretty simple - you don't need design patterns,
some havy framework or functional programming to make few LEDs blink or a
mottor to spin back and forth.

~~~
sradman
Building things involves problem solving. The life sciences often involve
problem solving without producing an artifact. I think it is the challenge of
solving hard problems that unites both pursuits.

------
Impossible
I've been feeling burnout, although not to the same extent as OP, for many of
the same reasons. The main difference is I never stopped loving programming or
the creative aspects of making things. Ideally I'd like to be a full time
hobbyist programmer, but that seems out of reach financially. If you want to
get back into making stuff I suggest doing zero pressure hobby projects
focused on whatever you enjoy about the process of making (not around a
mission, or users and definitely not around money) and don't actually worry
about finishing. Just focus on the act of making stuff happen

------
aetherspawn
This kind-of explains how I felt when I was working in software. After we
launched a successful product, I lost all motivation to continue open source
for some time and eventually I lost my interest in the tech we were working
with as well. Still to this day, my commits went down from >1k/yr to less than
10.

What helped me was changing to a different industry. I went into electric
vehicles and now I write drive by wire firmware. It was really interesting to
find that certain industries NEED help from those that know how to write and
scale software, because they are traditionally led my the dinosauric.

------
zelphirkalt
As there is not really an educational background given, I'd suggest learning a
new programming language or starting with SICP or other cool programming
books, which have the potential to give the reader and eager learner many
"Aha!" moments and insights. That should make programming interesting again.
There is always more to learn about code and programming.

Or alternatively, do something else, until you get an interesting idea or need
a tool for what you actually want to deal with and code it up. This can
reinforce both, programming and the actual activity, that one wanted to do.

------
senderista
Why do you need to express creativity only through technology? You can make
many beautiful and useful things that have nothing to do with software. Two
examples that I've enjoyed are woodworking and welding.

------
throwaway191918
Many here will attempt to give you a justification or rationale to your
predicament. It's the way of coping with problems that technology teaches you
(when a problem reveals itself, find a solution). Sometimes this is the right
way to approach it. If you know the end you are seeking, finding a means
towards it works. But if you are trying to determine the end, unthinkingly
continuing down the same means is not going to satisfy your unease. This sort
of thinking is something I dwell in quite a lot. I'm happy to be a sounding-
board for you if you want.

------
IAmNotAFix
Three years in and my conclusion so far is that work is nothing more than a
mean to earn a living, and my free time is the time I can actually
read/program about interesting stuff. The pragmatic attitude is therefore to
stop caring much about work and especially not give it more time than
expected.

Lots of jobs for developers but very hard to find a job that is actually
inspiring at all. I just stop struggling to find a sense to it and stopped
giving a fuck. It's relatively big money for relatively easy work, we
shouldn't be complaining in a first place.

------
jupp0r
Think of an interesting non-software related domain that you enjoy and then
use software to solve a problem in it. 10 years ago I scraped a run logger app
backend for my running statistics and did data analysis on my GPS tracks that
helped my training (things that Strava is doing today).

Don't make it into a product or publish it or do anything else that creates
pressure on you. Just do it to solve your own problems. Be ok with the vast
majority of those projects never being completed. The deal is to learn
something and enjoy the pure act of creating something.

------
tanilama
This seems like a textbook burn-out case.

What you need is detachment.

Real world is ... what it is. Good intention is not enough for good things to
happen. Our system seems to be programmed in a way, that it can go worse it
will, until it hits the brake.

So relax, the world is what it is. What needs to be changed is our perception.
Plus, tech should define a person, it can be part of identity, but don't let
it take hold of it. After all, technologies are just manmade tools, they are
fancier but no different than knives and sticks. Why let a tool define what
you are and what you should be?

------
gear54rus
You're disillusioned not with tech but with greedy political idiots who ru(i)n
it. Fundamentally it's all simple with tech. You calculate things and apply
your logic and experience and then you get a working system if you've done it
correctly. No exceptions.

It's when you deal with self-interest and greed of business-people that are
just there to bleed you dry you encounter problems.

My advice would be to limit your exposure to all things business in tech and
just sit in the corner doing what you can do best: writing programs. Then it
becomes fun again.

------
brainpool
Your disillusion really resonates with my experience, and likely many others.
The thing is, if you had succeeded in all you wanted, you would still be
asking the same questions by now.

There are times for disillusion in everyone’s life.

Look at it as an opportunity. A moment in the now - where you are not only
open to, but also craving, for a new direction or a different mindset on the
direction to move forward.

I strongly believe in correct forward.

That means valuing your previous experiences, valuing feedback from others in
the present, and striving for better in the future.

I would say you are two thirds there buddy!

------
pnathan
I love hacking on code, it's why I got into it. The Official side of it all
can be a real bummer. I can always measure my burnout levels of Official work
by how much I start hacking at home. I make a fairly distinct separation
between work and home, always have. Even though I have worked late and
passionately at times. :) I always enjoy the new file, the fresh project
smell, the beauty of code.

There's something deeply joyous about the potential of an empty file and where
you can take it. If I lost that joy, that would be very grievous.

------
agumonkey
That's a thing that's not related to tech IMO.

You can hear a lot of young talented and passionated going deep and hard into
what they love. But it seems that successful or not, there are some bits that
are important in a normal life that intense personal pursuit wont provibe.
Stability, belonging to a group come to mind. Even though in many jobs
colleagues come and go, when you have a stable job with people you get to
know, it's a plus.

I also wonder if it's not partly a personality trait. Or at least a temporary
space into ones life.

------
cbmcgee
Have you thought about looking for a job with a tech related non-profit? I
joined one a few years ago after spending my entire career in the traditional
for-profit tech space and I have been amazed at the difference between the two
worlds. Most of the negative aspects of the VC driven tech world that you talk
about don't really exist in the non-profit space. It's not all sunshine and
roses, but might be a great way for you to get back to what you used to love
as well as contribute to something meaningful.

~~~
throwaway839246
Would you mind saying which nonprofit you joined? (or maybe throw out a couple
of names of other non-profits, just as examples of what's possible)

~~~
cbmcgee
I have interacted with some of the orgs in the list below. I'm fairly certain
that they are all 501.3c orgs but hopefully this will give you an idea. I've
tried to think of orgs that are mainly tech focused. Hope this helps.

Volunteer Match Give Lively UPchieve WeVote Learning Equality

~~~
danenania
I was one of Give Lively's first employees a few years back. _Great_ people
and culture there.

------
everyone
OP is simply 'disillusioned' with corporations and business. And
'disillusioned' is the wrong word; he has simply learned 1st hand what they
are like [a load of bullshit].

------
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.

------
gozzoo
You get back the joy of building things by building things. Something that
worked for me when I was in similar situation was working on some Arduiono
projects. It's not only programming, you are making something in the physical
world as well. The projects are usually simple and small, you don't get burned
out. The actual programming is pretty simple - you don't need design patterns,
some heavy framework or functional programming to make few LEDs blink or a
motor to spin back and forth.

------
advertising
It’s a bit of a paradox when you try something audacious like a startup.

I raised money, had 6 full-time employees and went hard and a year in realized
it wasn’t going to work. It sucked, the stress, the grind, the failure.

That experience has left me in the same state where you realize If you can get
a startup off the ground that you can actually do anything you really want to
go after.

But the flip side is you also now how have a taste for how bad it can go (if
it failed) and now I find I can’t take a step towards anything without that
fear.

------
dchyrdvh
I think burnout is about reducing the perceived world to a shallow mental
model, getting locked in it voluntarily and getting depressed as a result. But
it's a 3 wall prison cell: it works so long as the prisoner doesn't bother to
look around to notice the missing wall.

My approach is to find curiously unexplainable things. The moment our mind
spots a glitch in the matrix, an odd difference between the well known mental
model and observations, it becomes excited and tries to fix the model.

------
throwaway848483
You've got to restore the suspension of disbelief which resulted from your
burnout.

If you have enough money to take some time off, do so.

The world is a shitty place ; The world doesn't care about what you can offer
; The world doesn't care for you ; The world doesn't even care for itself ;
The world just doesn't care

The world won't be fine but that's not your fault.

The alternatives are either cynicism or escapism.

Protect yourself from toxic environment, grow inward, enjoy the beauty in life
that you can find.

------
goatherders
100x "your coworkers are not your friends." Especially if you are the boss.
That doesnt preclude you from being friendly. But that doesnt make you
friends.

------
formercoder
You need to think about the motivations behind all of the parties you’re
interacting with. Why did those investors give you money? Because they, and
possible their LPs (their bosses effectively) wanted to make more money with
their money. That’s it. That’s their whole job. Had you known this, you
wouldn’t have been surprised when they acted how they did in order to return
any capital possible once it was clear they were not making a return.

~~~
microtherion
I was somewhat concerned when OP mentioned having lost "friends" over their
failed company. This can either mean they got their friends to invest money
(which is risky precisely because those usually would not be professional
investors), or they considered their professional investors "friends".

------
rory_h_r
Bill Watterson, of Calvin and Hobbes fame, gave advice that I've found helpful
over the years, "To create your own life's meaning is not easy but it's still
allowed and I think you'll be happier for the trouble."

[https://zenpencils.com/comic/128-bill-watterson-a-
cartoonist...](https://zenpencils.com/comic/128-bill-watterson-a-cartoonists-
advice/)

------
taneq
> Many of the investors turned out to be bloodthirsty vultures

> I lost many friends

> This is just the reality of what happens to people when extreme stress ends
> in failure

> So the worst case scenario is that you get eaten by vultures and lose
> friends. And the best case scenario is that you're in a soulless machine
> that turns everyone into an automaton

You're not disillusioned with technology. You're disillusioned with humanity
(as you probably ought to be.)

------
danans
> But eventually I started exercising, went on anti-depressants, and started
> therapy. Then I got a job that has nothing to do with technology. Slowly my
> happiness returned, and with it my ability to focus. I do a lot of sports
> now and hang out with my non-techy friends and my wife. I cook a lot.

Sounds like the issue had less to so with technology and more to do with lack
of work-life balance and unaddressed clinical depression.

~~~
lgeorget
Depression caused by a burn-out, caused by a very sh*tty professional
situation. I don't think it's unique to the tech sector but the tech industry
_is_ harsh on people.

------
hurrdurr2
I work in semiconductor manufacturing and I'm in the same boat as OP.

I'm not enjoying the work anymore...working from home has helped somewhat with
the burnout but the social isolation is getting to me too. At least I don't
have to see my coworkers and boss who have stopped caring a long time ago.

Not sure what I am going to do if I just outright quit. My wife is supportive
but I can't just sit at home doing hobbies.

------
lasky
I think the biggest problem is all the enthusiasm / money / speculation around
every piece of “tech” being the next “big thing”

I’m wondering this for you and myself:

could you be happy and fulfilled letting go of the “tech” dream, and instead
focus simply on solving problems for people we care about with people we care
about?

Maybe some solutions use software maybe some use rope. Who cares with what..
are the people better off?

------
jv22222
Are you disillusioned with technology? Or maybe is it the VC growth model that
you are disillusioned with?

I made a short deck about it a while back, might be of interest:

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1oynXnYdZQGincUQUj4g2...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1oynXnYdZQGincUQUj4g27AHAXwu83nnBJrNBPpxrji0/edit?usp=sharing)

------
sahoo
There are 2 things you can do.

1) quit this ecosystem completely, go to countryside grow fruits, raise
animals in farm.

2) Find a software job where you are a billable resource, aka consulting. You
do this for x$/h. If you are good no one will bat an eye. You don't have to
deal with investor, upper management. Every month you put y hours for x*y $ no
bullshit. If you smell bullshit you walk out.

------
kotharia
My solution to this is to keep my programming as a "hobby", to only do it for
love without regard for money - and have an unrelated day job to fund my
living expenses. This is also what Derek Sivers recommends
[https://sivers.org/balance](https://sivers.org/balance)

------
opan
On mobile I couldn't get whole lines to wrap at my screen edge, couldn't
figure out a way to view the raw txt instead of that weird web page. Opened
termux, installed w3m, opened the url there, and then was able to view whole
lines without repeatedly scrolling left and right. Maybe this will help
someone else as well.

------
ummonk
Leaving aside the organizational bullshit issues, a big frustration with IC
work is that to be productive at it I have to essentially shut-off my brain
during the rest of my life, as I simply don't have the mental energy to do
deeply technical things outside of work while being productive at coding for
work.

------
mcnamaratw
My most recent solution: At work, I work.

After work ... I bought an iPad and started making little songs using
Garageband. I have total creative control, and tinkering away with music is
fun for me.

Another generation used to build model railroads in their basements. I don't
get it, but they had total creative control.

------
FpUser
I'd say keep doing what you do and seem to like now. The rest may come back.
One day you might think of an interesting idea would want to try it and then
before you know you'll be already doing things to make that idea come to life.
Just do not try to force things upon yourself.

------
nikofeyn
> I can't say it's because I wanted to make the world a better place.

i see you saying this, but i don't think you believe this. the way you ended
your essay sounds like you do want to make the world a better place through
technology.

i am myself burnt out on technology, and i have come to a realization on
something that's been burning a while. the simple fact of the matter is that
society cannot be helped with technology. just get over that dream. this is
all very clear in today's global health crisis. quite nearly all the problems
are emphatically not technological in nature and cannot be solved with more
technology.

it sounds like to me that you are actually happy but aren't happy with how or
why you're happy. maybe that is something to work on? i'm not that old, but as
i have aged, i see now that life is a blip. this drive to make a so-called
mark is a fool's errand. just enjoy life locally and quit trying to have a
global effect. so be happy that you've found some happiness.

i say "so what?" you can't read science fiction. why is that a mark of
demerit? read dramas. read thrillers. read westerns. read comedies. there's a
_ton_ of material out there that has nothing to do with science. despite
science's progress, it still cannot answer or even come close to exploring
areas of life that we experience.

stop caring about products. think about things in emotive terms. if you like
programming and creating and mathematics, maybe get into creative coding? use
your technical ability to search for new expression. maybe use programming to
explore your knot theory excursion. maybe volunteer your time to help people
or communities who need technology help (i think one can help society on a
very _local_ level with a certain amount of technology).

i don't understand why you want to force a path. if a path is closed, it's
closed. it doesn't make sense to be happy on your path with tons of other
paths out there but to stand in front of the closed path asking "why?". move
on and explore.

in dealing with depression and anxiety, the most powerful thought is to
understand that you can't change the world. it makes no sense to try and
change it, as you'll bury a deeper hole. all the drugs and therapy are meant
to be catalyst to a realization that you can't bend the world as if you're
gravity and that you must learn to ride the wave in a healthy way and make
small adjustments to go where you want to go.

~~~
throwaway839246
_> i don't understand why you want to force a path_

This isn't the right metaphor. I'm not trying to force a path; I have a very
strong internal sense of a general direction I need to go. But there is no
path in that direction. So I'm trying to forge one.

As for why that direction, I don't know of course. But if I were to speculate
it's because I have a strong intuition that that's where my personal growth
is.

~~~
nikofeyn
what is that direction?

------
oaiey
Well, why getting yourself burned in a startup? Take a reasonable sized
company with a traditional business you like but do not love and work there as
an employee, best in a country where employee rights mean something.

Being a corporate black matter developer is actually quite good.

------
cheez
The mistake you've made is worrying about what has been lost as opposed to
what could come. 7 billion people and counting, keep going man.

Always assume money brings out the worst. Always assume your relationships
will change. Life becomes easier.

------
azhu
Both at the beginning and in the end the answer is always simple: hope. Not
all people. There are good ones, even in technology. There are coworkers with
whom your shared emotional experience was authentic. There will be more.

------
known
Protect yourself from

    
    
       Machiavellianism (manipulate/deceive others)  
       Psychopathy (lack of remorse/empathy) 
       Sadism (pleasure in suffering of others)  
       Narcissism (egotism/self-obsession)

------
brenden2
Try moving to a new city. I had a similar experience and moved from SF to NYC.
NYC is less of a techie bubble than SF. You didn't mention where you live, but
I just assumed it's somewhere in the Bay area.

------
olivierva
You're disappointed with the Silicon Valley bubble, not technology perse

------
majormajor
You aren't disillusioned with technology, you're disillusioned with people.

That's not an excuse for the way people behave, but it's a useful thing to
keep in mind when trying to think about how to _change_ the problems. They're
behavioral, social, and organizational problems, not technical ones.

Meaningful change can only come through those avenues, then, like politics. Of
course, that's an ugly field on its own... if you prefer to keep a tech lens
on it, you can try to design products to push society in certain directions,
but you could also work towards that without doing any sort of technological
work at all.

These sorts of things are the strongest sorts of anti-libertarian arguments I
know of. The "market" necessarily devolves to the people who are willing to
push the boundaries the most, because it's near-impossible to know all the bad
actors exhaustively in advance, and because so many people are willing to
compromise - at least somewhat - in their pursuit of personal security.

------
mauritzio
I would recommend looking and producing _Art_. Software-perls or paintings,
poems whatever you like and admire. The more artist you are the more you
suffer from applied art, it is not your fault :-)

------
maelito
Working on commons as a developer for France's state startups incubator as a
freelance, without the burden of the internal HR, was a blessing for me after
my private startup experience.

------
fizixer
Talk about the worst miswording of an essay title, and/or mischaracterization
of the situation.

> Extremely disillusioned with non-tech folks dominating and causing misery in
> every aspect of technological pursuits

FTFY

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
actualization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization) can guide you

------
_pmf_
The soulless corporation is far from exclusive to what you call "tech". "Tech"
is when they also put up a foosball table and paint the walls in bright
colors.

------
Tade0
Having worked for clients from SV, Japan and a few European countries,
including my own, I would guess that it's not tech in general, but SV and VC
culture that's the reason here.

Case in point: no other crowd is so accepting of using drugs or other
substances to increase work performance.

Yes, there is coffee as the most common of such means, but funnily enough I
had to ditch it cold turkey to keep up with these people, because improving my
sleep quality instead was more effective.

Bottom line is SV offers more reward, but puts more pressure so it's not for
everyone - especially not for me who loves his job, but certainly isn't
married to it.

------
nickstinemates
Been there. Still slightly am. It's tough. Expand your hobbies and invest in
them as you have tech. See where it ends up. It(s) kind-of work(ed/ing) for
me.

------
prvc
>For a long time I couldn't focus on any remotely intellectual pursuit. I even
thought I permanently damaged my brain.

He didn't appear to mention the presumed cause of this. Stress?

As to the rest of the contents, it's a mistake to assume that two experiences
given labels of "high-point" and "low point" having a common feature implies
that all other experiences of the same species (presumed to be on some
spectrum that they bookend) also share that feature. Maybe were he to have
worked for a smaller scale established company, he would have found his
experience to be less unpleasant.

------
kyuudou
Take a week off, step away from the keyboard, find some humans, animals, get a
hobby or go back to the one you had. Watch that Naval Ravikant Joe Rogan
podcast.

------
bravoetch
Maybe look at bonding more with your community and worry less about tech /
work / business. Family and community are where you find joy in life.

------
tambourine_man
He's not disillusioned with tech it seems, but with the business of tech.

Hyped startups and humongous companies. It's not surprising.

Fortunately, there are other choices.

------
mattlondon
The solution for me in the past has been a religious approach to work-life
balance: LEAVE THE OFFICE AT 5 PM. Every day.

Sure have some leeway for the real genuine emergencies, but fixing a random
bug or "finishing this off" is not worth hanging around after 5 for.

I did this and went from feeling burnt out, drained, and ultimately crushed at
the end of each day, to leaving the office "hungry" and looking forward to
coming back in tomorrow to continue fixing that bug or finishing off that
thing or whatever with just enough energy remaining to get me through to 5pm
again. Life is too short to "dedicate" yourself to a job.

TL:Dr - just _do_ your job, don't _be_ your job.

~~~
AndrewThrowaway
I always keep in mind this story from 101 Zen Tales:

\---

Muddy Road

Tanzan and Ekido were once travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain
was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable
to cross the intersection.

"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her
over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple.
Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't do near females," he
told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did
you do that?"

"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

\---

Don't carry your work all the way to your temple!

------
fxtentacle
FYI there's some good advice on the gist, too.

------
the-carsian
No one has mentioned Finite and Infinite Games.

------
starpilot
I am leader of a group, Freedom Club, that seeks to address this. Please
message me if you're interested in FC.

------
fit2rule
Work with humans. Help them in some way.

------
hvasilev
The issue is that even the venture capitalists and the the managers have own
oppressors and there is no external solution to the issue that this person is
facing.

I remember one time a manager explaining to me how incredibly aggressive and
unrealistic targets the CEO sets for them and that is why we were getting the
push. The reason is that the CEO is a result-based position and is receiving
unrealistic pressure from the board of directors. On the other hand the
members of the board of directors are trying to keep the company afloat and
avoid this being their next-in-a-row investment failure so that they can
officially be classified as "serial loser". In this world you are either
oppressed by someone else or by pure reality. The Hollywood image of a 1920s
oppressive capitalist smoking cigars all day and thinking of who's life he
should destroy in the name of profit is laughable nonsense. That is just not
how the world works.

I generally agree with this person's premises, but I reject his conclusion. He
basically got the slap that he deserved, since there was a huge disconnect
between his model of reality and actual reality. I know because I used to be
this person and am currently recovering from what this person is experiencing.
The solution can only come from within and as far as I can tell it involves
finding inner peace and at the same time adopting a highly disagreeable
personality traits.

------
tikiman163
This isn't going to be a popular response, but I read your entire article and
I have the following advice.

First, what toy wrote tells me you started your business because you consider
yourself to be highly intelligent and capable and you believed that you should
be in charge. What you've said about how your business failed and how few
people still want anything to do with you afterwards tells me you were not
prepared, you do not understand how to run a business and you lack even a
minimal competency when it comes to leadership. I do not want you to think I
am being harsh and unfeeling, I am being critical because it's what you need
to know if you ever intended to work in the tech industry again.

Almost everyone wants to be in charge and believes they could succeed in such
a role given the chance. Of those who attempt to start their own businesses
only about 10% have what it takes to merely stay in business. Fewer than 3% of
business leaders have sufficient ability in the field they already work in to
create a genuinely profitable business, and less than 0.3% have what it takes
to found an industry disrupting company.

Investors will always behave the way you described because they're basically
playing roulette and they've bet on a bunch of things in the hope that 10% of
their investments will pay off because they know the statistics I just told
you. Your friends abandoned you however, because as a boss you make them
promises and promising things to your friends which you probably cannot
deliver always damages the relationship.

Finally, it's time for my advice. One, you need to remove your ego and
emotions from your work as this will always eventually damage working
relationships and burn you out. Two, work is always a marathon, never a
sprint. A lot of startup guys will tell you that you have to work 70 hour
weeks, but this is not maintainable and will just result in failure later on
as opposed to delayed sustainable success. Third, if it wasn't clear from my
initial statements, you are not well suited to being high level management and
changing that about yourself would likely take so long as to waste the rest of
your career in pursuit of a highly stressful goal that is unlikely ever to
feel worth the effort. I suggest you take an engineering position or stick to
no higher than mid-level project management at an established company. Finding
somewhere relaxing where you can limit your work hours to 40 or less per week
is the only real chance you have at reversing the burnout, but only if you can
remove your ego and emotions from your past and future professional work. I
strongly recommend mindfulness meditation to help with getting past your
former business failings and MO e forward into a career that you can find
fulfilling.

------
tvanbeek
Do not listen to anonymous people online but talk to a professional like a
coach or psychologist.

------
RIMR
You're not disillusioned with technology. You seem to have a great deal of
interest and faith in technology.

You seem disillusioned with Capitalism.

The unfortunate truth is that Venture Capitalists run the entire tech
industry, and they simply do not care about technology for technology's sake.
They care about making money, for money's sake. No matter how innovative and
impressive your technology may be, they are only measuring it in dollars.

If you are forced into a decision where you have to make your technology worse
to make your bottom line better, you will be expected to make your technology
worse ASAP. If you don't do it, the capitalists will take their money and go
home.

You should look into some more altruistic tech projects. I have friends that
work at a digital accessibility company that is funded almost entirely by
donations. They seem to be in the unique situation of being funded for making
software that works best for the users, not for making software that earns the
most for their investors, as their investors expect no returns on their
donations.

But as long as you're working in the commercial tech sector, you're going to
have to deal with VCs who don't care one bit about the tech you're producing,
only that it maximizes their returns.

------
sbussard
Study leadership. Surprisingly technology lacks good leadership, and thus
creates toxicity.

------
dandare
And I am extremely disillusioned with websites that require horizontal
scrolling on mobile

------
masteranza
It sounds like the author might have been better off turning into science than
technology.

------
bcrosby95
> I lost many friends.

They weren't ever your friends. People at work rarely transcend beyond co-
workers and into actual friendship. If all you do together is work and around-
work activities, they probably aren't your friends. You're effectively people
locked in a cage together that happen to get along.

If you get together on days you don't work together then they might actually
be your friend. If they've met your non-work friends they might be your
friend. If they attend your birthday party where they don't work with 95% of
people there they might be your friend.

If you don't invite them to those things you don't actually consider them a
friend. If you hold any power over someone (e.g. CTO-employee relationships)
and they do this stuff they still might not be your friend. But if they don't
do any of this stuff they definitely, 100% are not your friend.

Also, one of the best ways to fuck up a friendship is to hire them. You need
to be sure you can properly separate business and friendship if you ever do
this.

~~~
euske
I feel that Americans tend to use the term "friend" a lot more casually than,
say, the Japanese. In Japan, your boss is never your friend. Neither is your
teachers, colleagues, parents or siblings. A "friend" in Japan is somewhat
closer to a soulmate, and not surprisingly we don't have many (for some
people, not at all).

~~~
mrits
What happens when your best friend starts working at the same place or even
becomes your boss?

~~~
ayakura
Then you're still friends. Depending on your performance and how both of you
treat each other, that friendship may become affected but as long as you still
treat each other as friends and hang out, that friendship will continue.

Of course, that was just my anecdotal experience.

------
JSavageOne
> Then I worked for a tech giant, and then for a high-growth unicorn. It
> shocked me how dilbertesque they both were. Full of politicians, and burnt
> out engineers in golden handcuffs who can't wait to get out, and meaningless
> business speak, and checked out employees who pretend they're "excited"
> about everything all the time.

I left my big city office job to work remotely (after a 2.5 year "sabbatical"
traveling the world) precisely because I couldn't stand that sh __anymore.
Remote work isn 't a panacea and does have its cons, but no way in hell I'd
trade it back for any office job.

In terms of finding one's "spark", I can relate. I used to be pretty starry-
eyed too, majoring in math (because I enjoyed it, not for job opportunities or
money), and working on a bunch of different kinds of projects for fun. As I've
gotten older and had to succumb to the working world, I've also gotten more
and more disillusioned over the years. I've felt my creativity and passion
diminish.

I'd say part of it is from getting older, part of it is just a byproduct of
our capitalist system that forces everyone to rent themselves out for money to
rich people who want to make more money and become cogs in the "dilbertesque"
machine exactly as you described. As bad as it is, it wouldn't be half as bad
in my opinion if we could at least talk about it honestly, but sadly this can
get you fired.

I don't have the solution, but I'd say to start by being less hard on yourself
because most of those burnt out engineers are in the same position as you,
they just didn't have the conviction or courage to follow through and leave.
Accept that one's job is purely impersonal and just for money and co-workers
are just business relationships, and don't expect more than that or you'll
inevitably bound for disappointment.

Clarify what your goals are. Do you want to make money? Improve society? Work
on intellectually challenging problems? Be happy? Those are all very different
goals with different solutions.

And thanks for writing this post. The enormous reception is proof that you're
not alone here, that a lot more of us feel the same way as you than you think.
It's a sad reflection of our system, but short of a revolution all we can do
is do the best we can. FIRE (financial independence) is the only true freedom
of time.

~~~
throwaway839246
> Clarify what your goals are. Do you want to make money? Improve society?
> Work on intellectually challenging problems? Be happy?

Thank you, that is excellent advice.

------
ur-whale
Not entirely sure how anything OP describes has anything specific to do with
tech.

------
at_a_remove
Having read this a second time, I suspect that "technology" here is
represented by "web framework launch Silicon valley velocity board IPO tickets
vulture-capitalist 'go big or go home' standup burnrate" and little else.

Not all technology is like that. Technology happens without the constant churn
of frameworks popping in and out of vogue, without a dependency being drug
into the Google Graveyard on little notice, without scrum and story points.
Technology happens without a single investor around. Technology happens
outside of California ... it even can occur in the flyover states.

First, go make something with your hands. Or learn to. Makerspaces are shut
most likely and of course Techshop folding was a drag but ... make something
other than a sandcastle of bits that will be washed away when the moon of
fashion drags a wave of fickle adherence over your hard work. Smash it or give
it away. Now do it again, and again. You will like your third version.

Make something for yourself, that no investor will ever see. You will not make
a dime out of it. Go ahead and program something to automate a personal itch.
Maybe you just want to see what movies are around within fifty miles and
_then_ you won't to pick a theater; try prying that data out of some feeds and
re-organizing it. Write something that alerts you on Wednesday when a new moon
is going to be on a Friday or Saturday night so you can go to look at the
stars somewhere far from the city. Do it without unit tests or deployment or
CI/CD or a single git command.

Look for a problem where you work with the data, not with the UX or
presentation or reaching for Bootstrap. Something where the web is not
involved.

I can tell you what the lesson here is but you should do these things and
figure out why it all feels so different and what you didn't like about ...
before.

------
HugoDaniel
The author needs to try BSD

~~~
bartol
Care to explain?

------
eevilspock
@mGBUfLn9, you point your finger in every directions but your own. There is
one sentence where you pretend to do so, but you ever so quickly declare
yourself not guilty.

"I lost many friends." That was entirely your choice. On a daily and hourly
basis you chose striking it rich or satisfying your vainglory over people and
relationships. You could have chosen to do this software as a side project, or
via slow bootstrap, sans the shark investors. You didn't.

"But I can sleep at night fine. So I eventually decided it's mostly nobody's
fault," then "hang out with my non-techy friends and my wife". Clearly you
haven't put two and two together.

Let me guess: Your startup's business model was based on selling advertising,
selling data on its users, and/or exploiting people in the "gig economy". Yet
it's only your investors that you call "bloodthirsty vultures".

You blame everyone but yourself for becoming "soulless". Your very use of this
word reveals a great lack of soul. You misuse it to describe working like a
machine, an automaton. The nurse who is working like a machine to save lives
at great risk to her own has the most wonderful, beautiful soul. What makes
you soulless is that you're only thinking about yourself and "new products"
(ways to make money) without any hint of a conscience troubled by the
decisions made and actions taken in pursuit of those profits, and what that
says about who you are. Or maybe the depression was a conscience trying hard
to speak out, but it got snuffed by drugs rather than getting heard.

You can't "see past the cynicism" when you are the cynicism.

Spend less time figuring how much you can get and more time one what you can
give. Ditch your transactional mindset. Give for giving's sake. Use your
talents to make the world better, fuck the profits. Chose the more moral job
over the more profitable one. The people you'll work with in those jobs will
have lots of soul and it will rub off on you.

\---

[I know this post will not be well received here on Hacker News, the techie
Twitter. It's like walking into a church in the middle of Sunday service and
to rail against organized religion and the hypocrisy of the worshipers.]

[https://gist.github.com/mGBUfLn9/7cadffcf7c3c23b7376350165a6...](https://gist.github.com/mGBUfLn9/7cadffcf7c3c23b7376350165a67735f#gistcomment-3290380)

------
sumfoni
I'm not sure if its the internet which allows us to think more/faster and more
global but i do have the general thought that a ton of things we do as humans
is not worth while doing.

I would love to start today stopping capitalism and inventing a new system
which optimizes for life stability, good food, travel, piece, sustainability
and time with others.

Instead we optimize for revenue, growth and because everyone thinks they can
do it better, they have the business idea, everyone likes to earn money.

Whats my conclusion? I try to optimze my work by making sure i control certain
aspects, do what i think i enjoy and is more or less useful. But my goal is to
stop working with 50 or so.

Funny enough, your story is strange though, you probably did not create your
startup because you thought you would change the world, did you? Or did you do
it because you thought its life fullfilling, it earns you respect and money?

------
baq
go watch some tv.

get properly angry at the amount of bullshit and disinformation that thing
spews out regardless of stated or implied affiliation.

compare with herds of people who don't trust science but can't stop themselves
from telling everyone about their favorite kind of youtube shaman.

realize some people have it worse. nothing to be happy about except that it
could be worse for you and it isn't.

figure out a way to fix democracy and reconcile free speech with the internet.
or help humanity go to mars or fix climate catastrophe.

wield data and algorithms against forces of evil. with luck you won't think of
yourself as a cog.

or take up gardening. freshly picked strawberries are my favorite.

------
JoeyPardella
This is exactly how I feel, almost every word of it.

------
false_kermit
My experience is limited, but what you're listing above to me sounds an awful
lot like some fundamental issues with capitalism and not fundamental issues
with technology. I can't speak to the rise and fall of your company, but I can
speak with some confidence on your experience at a Tech Giant(tm) and a
unicorn startup, having some experience with both and certainly many friends
who work at both types of company.

Any Tech Giant office is going to be an absolutely miserable working
environment. I had one interview with a larger company and I was struck by how
openly bored my interviewers were. Obviously, YMMV and some places may be
better than others. But having enough friends, even newly minted college
graduates with a "six figs or bust", burn out after 6 months in a development
role, it was enough to pretty much convince me to avoid them forever.

Furthermore, the "unicorn" startup is going to be extremely similar to a tech
giant but with more desperation. You're joining a team of people who, in all
likelihood, have very little attachment to the product and have read a few HN
articles about how this is going to be the next big thing. Plus you have the
young, fratty egos in play. A lot of these places are going to cover up the
fact that it actually sucks to work there with "hey free keg at lunch!! haha
don't have more than four ;)"

This might be too hot of a take for HN, but there is, in fact, NO job that you
can work at and be valued as a person. You're appreciated for whatever value
you bring into the company, but don't fool yourself into thinking that there
is anything but a monetary string tying you together. You're not looking at
anything wrong, you don't need an attitude shift, the system is broken from
the ground up and we're forced to be participants, otherwise we won't make
rent.

Find something you don't mind doing; I'd recommend looking at smaller
companies with leaders who worked a long time at larger companies. In all
likelihood, these companies were founded after the leaders experienced
something similar to what you did. But it is your birthright as an American
(citizen at least) to be perpetually unfulfilled.

------
simonebrunozzi
> I got into knot theory.

Didn't know there was such a thing.

------
goindeep
Look at Maidsafe and SAFE Network :)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23050160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23050160)

------
expialidocious
Oh the sweet ennui of the priviledged technical manager class. I hear the
world's smallest violin playing, My heart pumps purple piss for you.

------
shrimp_emoji
I anticipated this was in the vein of, "It's all horrible, fundamentally
antiquated shit that barely works and is preserved by inertial debt and
captive markets of hegemonic corporations," not about the ennui of alienation
in the bowels of Moloch[0]. xD

0: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

------
treestumpquiet
Change the problem, keep yourself.

------
firecall
Oh my god - I can 100% relate!

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
>So the worst case scenario is that you get eaten by vultures and lose
friends. And the best case scenario is that you're in a soulless machine that
turns everyone into an automaton.

If you're going for the gold, yes, that's what you may have to deal with.

If you're content working for yourself and not selling out to venture
capitalists, life can be pretty sweet.

------
rgrs
Do whatever keeps you happy

------
graycat
A view of _technology_ :

Watch an old movie and notice the many improvements in economic productivity,
standard of living, quality of life.

E.g.: To get salt, had to travel to the local village. For this had to saddle
up or harness a horse or two. Now can get the salt delivered or eat in a
restaurant or drive to the village on a smooth road in a car with HVAC.

Car tires used to wear out in about 15,000 miles and were so vulnerable to
rupture that had to carry a spare and know where the bumper jack was and how
to change a tire. Now can get 75,000 miles from a set of tires.

Ever mess with a carburetor and ignition breaker points? Now have electronic
engine controls with fuel injection. So, less maintenance, better fuel
economy, fewer oil changes, longer engine life.

It goes on this way for cars and transportation more generally.

See how houses were built: Saws, hammers, and plaster. Now have electric saws,
studs, beams, and panels already cut to size, and wall board. E.g., I had some
wood to cut, with a saw got halfway through the first cut, then rushed out and
got a circle saw, zip, zoom, cut all the pieces and they look really nice.
Needed to drill some 1" holes; set aside the brace and bit in an old tool
chest, got an electric drill, and done, really well, really nice clean holes,
zip, zoom. Got the 1" spade bit on-line!

It goes on this way with hand tools, kitchen tools, yard tools, auto
maintenance tools, etc. MUCH easier. E.g., kitchen tools can be awash in
stainless steel; used to have to use expensive silver or rusty iron.

I do a single serving pizza I make myself: The ingredients for one pizza cost
right at 40 cents with the flour at 9 cents. Fantastic agricultural
productivity, along with the associated supply chain.

Tech has contributed to all of those.

I go to Google several times a day and to Amazon at least once a week. So,
lots of use of tech.

Shopping, buying on-line, the shipping, tracking, paying -- lots of tech
there, too.

Software? It can be a lot of fun! So, write some code, try it, get back
errors, fix the errors, for that maybe put in some statements to trace the
execution, and finally get it to run as desired. From then on, it won't _wear
out_! And with that software often can just click on an icon or type in a
short command and get the intended work done automatically! Boom!

A huge, biggie: Get rid of the typewriters! Beyond that, since I'm in math,
get TeX for typing the math!!! Finally with TeX, the typing is no longer more
work than the math, even math research! It took a LOT of transistors,
processors, and computing just to get rid of the typewriters and get us to
TeX.

Then get some astounding wonders, some of the most astounding astronomy yet:
[https://www.universetoday.com/145935/supermassive-black-
hole...](https://www.universetoday.com/145935/supermassive-black-hole-orbits-
an-even-more-massive-black-hole-crashing-through-its-accretion-disk-
every-12-years/#more-145935)

[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2020-080&fbcl...](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2020-080&fbclid=IwAR2MTTay3H5hxWWjwGFeL5PrdojNdKAI70HqSgFdzOBNlPP1UcjLRWQimFg)

A LOT of tech there!

Now that we know when the next big flash will come, we can have the telescopes
looking and have the gravitational wave detectors expecting -- a prediction is
for a big signal!

For work in an organization, it's long been with a lot of _goal subordination_
, suck up to those above, piss on those below, and try to sabotage the people
down the hall. But now with tech there are some advantages:

Clean, indoor work, no heavy lifting.

Safer work, e.g., won't get finger cut off in a saw or have a load of bricks
fall on your head. Won't inhale or ingest stuff that will injure or kill you.

Won't get thrown off a horse or kicked by a mule.

Maybe will get a better tech job.

Maybe will find a good startup opportunity and get rich, as rich as
Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Morgan, Ford, etc., heavily just from
typing with fingers.

For my laptop, my incremental backups are at 11 GB -- time to do another full
backup! I just got two new SATA hard disk drives, 7200 RPM, 6 Gbps data
transfer rate, 4 TB per drive (no use of _shingled_ recording)!! IIRC, $65
each! Amazing!!!

Just got in the USPS mail, ~$10, the Rostropovich performance of the Dvořák
cello concerto, B minor, with the Berlin Philharmonic and von Karajan: I lost
my first copy in my recent move so wanted a replacement. Fast, easy search,
ordering on-line! It's playing now: I've paid a LOT of attention to
_classical_ music and this performance is a good candidate for the most
careful, passionate, and lyrical music and performance, art, "communication,
interpretation of human experience, emotion", ever. Could never dream of such.

Net, a lot of good in tech!

~~~
madengr
I have his CD of Bach cello suites. Have you tried Idagio?

~~~
graycat
For that music, I like Maurice Gendron and Pierre Fornier.

Thanks for Idagio -- first I've heard of it -- I made a note!

------
burlesona
Sounds like several bad work experiences in a row, but all with companies on a
specific spectrum: hot startup -> unicorn -> megacorp. That's a particular
flavor of company, and kind of a rough treadmill to walk on.

There are a lot of small to mid-size tech companies that actually make money,
though maybe not unholy mountains of it, where work-life balance is great and
people just want to make something customers love. There are also many
agencies that fit that bill.

This risks sounding too simplistic, but in life I've found that work tends to
fall into three categories:

1\. People who want to get as rich as they possibly can. 2\. People who want
to make a living and enjoy life. 3\. People who want work to be their passion.

I've learned to avoid #1 and #3.

Re: #1, Many of the best ways to get as rich as possible involve screwing
other people over. The people who play that game and enjoy it end up being
pretty cutthroat, because that's kind of the point. If that's not you (and
it's not me), then it's not fun to be part of.

Re: #3, vocational "passion" is just hard. Sometimes this is because the dream
is so big -- end world hunger, or something. Sometimes the dream is so popular
-- become a world-famous artist, etc. This is where you'll find the dreamers
and the starving artists. The people who thrive here sort of live in their own
world where the more mundane concerns of life don't matter to them, otherwise
they'd burn out and give up.

A lot of people think they need their work to be either about Riches or
Passion (or worst of all, both), and so they go down those paths and find
stress, exhaustion, and misery instead of happiness.

Meanwhile, in boring old Path #2, you have a whole lot of people who work from
9-5 and then go home. They think their job is kind of interesting, but they
don't think they're "changing the world," and that's okay. The happiest folks
here tend to be craftspersons who know how to make some kind of thing, and
whatever it is, they make nice ones.

As for me, I spent years that I look back on now as a sad waste of time
hunting for #1 and #3, before one day having basically no choice but to take a
"kinda okay" job so I could buy groceries. I was badly burned out, and I
decided I needed a break, that I'd take six months and just "work a stupid
job" to recover and pay off my credit cards after my experiment in running my
own business fizzled out. And after six months I realized I was the happiest
I'd ever been.

Life is kind of weird. It's not glamorous or sexy to just work a regular job
and go home at 5pm. But it can be the foundation of a really happy, satisfying
life.

I don't know if that will help you or not, but, I hope some part of that is
useful to you. Many people have been where you are now. It'll get better.

Good luck!

------
unabst
It's the people. Driven to do bad out of fear.

Tech is capitalism at its best and worst, with the best being bad for a lot of
people. Self imposed hardship and self sacrifice is the name of the pursuit.
Everyone is a chaser. You then have VCs and angels and business partners with
immense leverage over these struggles, often struggling themselves.

This brings out the bad in a lot of people. Cheating, backstabbing, and a
general lack of integrity. Pervasive, regardless of status or level.

I didn't understand this at all, but it turns out much of it is driven from
fear, as most actions inevitably are. And it gets worse with rising stakes, so
its worse at higher levels.

Integrity is expensive. Kindness is expensive. Empathy is expensive. And
competence is rare.

So good meaning, goodhearted, friendly people fail to sustain their good
nature when shit hits the fan. And shit is always hitting the fan. People will
act good until they cannot afford to. Or think they can't. Until they're
scared. And that's the saddest part. They think they have to cheat. They then
witness others do it, and think its just the way. Not me we tell ourselves,
but sooner or later, the ultimatum presents itself: be good or survive. And
we've seen the fallen. Chances are we've been a victim of one. Or work for
one. Or deal with one. Or sit next to one. And the one thing they're good at
is survival. No wonder there are so damn many of them.

Then what is the answer?

Don't trust anyone. Ergo, integrity is the luxury most often enjoyed alone.

But.

If you enjoy your own company, then that's a start. If you have an incredible
product or service, then that's a start. If you don't need anyone's help, then
that's a start. And if you have a warm home you can return to, then that's a
start.

The one thing that will make your life easier is obvious.

Kick ass.

Just be so good, and run with it, or don't bother. That should be the motto of
every entrepreneur. Or any endeavor, for that matter.

You're jumping into a snake pit. That's a given. Bring a flamethrower, or
don't bother.

Every kick ass startup kicks ass.

If your ass is being kicked, you're doing it wrong, and you're wrong. You'd be
right to get out as soon as possible.

------
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.

------
qmmmur
Answer is simple to me. You conflate creative actions with making products.
Capitalism got you.

------
scoutt
I read it as 'extremely disillusioned with _business /capitalism_ side of
technology'.

I think is normal and everyone sooner or later crash into it. Then one becomes
like a drug dealer: I sell it but I don't use it (technology, of course).

------
aaaaarghZombies
Sounds like a bad case of capitalism. Doing skilled work you're proud of, with
people you love and respect is one of the most rewarding things you can do.
Doing it to make line go up is what prostitution is to enthusiastically
consenting sex with people you love and respect.

It's not a suprise your playing a lot of sports. Depending on the sport you
can momentarily tick those boxes. But your not left with anything afterwards.

Find something that needs doing in the world, find people who feel the same
way. Try science fiction as a practice.

------
geophile
I went through a similar progression. A couple of observations:

1) Part of what you experience is just gaining wisdom with age. You see how
things really work, and you get disillusioned. The thrill of early
experiences, does diminish over time. And that's not just software. The thrill
of your first bicycle ride, is not reproducible. The sense of freedom you had,
after that, riding around unsupervised -- that goes away too, obviously.

2) The word "tech" has changed radically over the years. I joined my first
"high tech startup" in 1988. We really were doing technology that was just
barely feasible at the time. The entire company was seven people -- founder,
biz/ops guy, VP of engineering, four engineers. That was FUN. Figuring out how
to solve these problems, seeing the parts come to life, seeing the whole thing
come together, seeing it work for users as planned. In an environment like
that, you really feel like you are doing something special, that you are lucky
to be there, and you just want to spend all of your time on it. The fact that
it might actually be worth serious money someday -- even better.

This incredibly exciting sense of being in a tech startup spread. Large
companies would entice you by saying, this group is just like a startup within
Megacorp. And I never understood how that fooled anyone. In that situation,
you aren't scratching your itch, you are scratching Megacorp's itch, and
that's a lot less exciting. There aren't seven of you. Outside your group,
there are 700 or 7,000 or 70,000. Maybe you get a little bonus, or equity, but
you don't own a chunk of the company YOU started.

However, Megacorp and similar companies definitely saw the advantage of
getting their employees to commit to their work in the manner of startup
employees, and so you get places like Google that gradually switch the
incentive. First you want to be there all the time (back when Google was a
startup). Then they make it enticing to be there all the time (campus,
massages, gourmet dining, on-campus laundry and exercise, etc.). And finally,
it's just expected. Being available and productive (or at least seeming to be)
24/7 is just the way things are at Megacorp these days.

And then finally, the last piece of it goes away: the interesting tech. "Tech"
companies are no longer solving barely solvable, new problems. They are doing
more of the same, implementing dull and possibly harmful goals for the sake of
Megacorp. Megacorp is no more a tech company than it is an electricity
company. It uses both to meet its goals, and you are merely someone familiar
with either bits or electrons, using them in well-worn ways for the sole
purpose of enriching Megacorp.

This is both a great pop song, and the lyrics really capture the
disillusionment that sets in, although in a very different environment:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1-EPTAFE0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1-EPTAFE0o)

------
kyleee
Text of the gist since it's a bear to read on mobile:

"I was drawn to programming, science, technology and science fiction ever
since I was a little kid. I can't say it's because I wanted to make the world
a better place. Not really. I was simply drawn to it because I was drawn to
it. Writing programs was fun. Figuring out how nature works was fascinating.
Science fiction felt like a grand adventure.

Then I started a software company and poured every ounce of energy into it. It
failed. That hurt, but that part is ok. I made a lot of mistakes and learned
from them. This experience made me much, much better. I'm satisfied with that.

What's not ok is _how_ things ended. Many of the investors turned out to be
bloodthirsty vultures who tore the carcass to pieces. Had we IPO'ed, these
same people would have stood there with giant smiles telling everyone how
they'd always known we were special and how they'd supported us all along.

I lost many friends. Throughout the whole thing I was lucky to meet many
brilliant, creative, talented people. Together, we worked _so_ hard. Now we
don't talk.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how I contributed to these failed
relationships. I learned a lot from that too. It wasn't my finest hour, but I
can sleep at night fine. So I eventually decided it's mostly nobody's fault.
This is just the reality of what happens to people when extreme stress ends in
failure.

Then I worked for a tech giant, and then for a high-growth unicorn. It shocked
me how dilbertesque they both were. Full of politicians, and burnt out
engineers in golden handcuffs who can't wait to get out, and meaningless
business speak, and checked out employees who pretend they're "excited" about
everything all the time. The young, wide-eyed engineers seem hopelessly naive
to me now.

So the worst case scenario is that you get eaten by vultures and lose friends.
And the best case scenario is that you're in a soulless machine that turns
everyone into an automaton. I know that's not the whole picture. It's not even
most of the picture. But that's the part I can't unsee.

For a long time I couldn't focus on any remotely intellectual pursuit. I even
thought I permanently damaged my brain. But eventually I started exercising,
went on anti-depressants, and started therapy. Then I got a job that has
nothing to do with technology. Slowly my happiness returned, and with it my
ability to focus. I do a lot of sports now and hang out with my non-techy
friends and my wife. I cook a lot. I got into knot theory. I find it
fascinating and can do it for hours. I'm surprisingly not bad at it. So I know
I still have my faculties.

But I still can't program, can't write, can't think of new products, can't
read science fiction. I'm mostly happy, but there is always a hint of
dissatisfaction underneath. I miss the creative, optimistic person I once was.
I want to see past the cynicism. I want to write programs and make things. I
want to work with a ragtag team again to bring something to life that didn't
exist before. I want to learn how to see past the bullshit and be creative
again. But I can't get myself to do it. I hear the call and I know there's
still a spark. But when I take even the smallest step everything turns bleak
and mundane. It's like the magic has been bled out of me and I don't know how
to summon it back.

Has anyone been through this who managed to recover their optimism and
creative spirit? Please help me. What can I do?"

------
lucideer
Well aware of the irony of posting this comment on YCombinator's HackerNews,
but... sounds very much like the title of this should really be "Extremely
disillusioned with capitalism. Please help"

There's very little in the content of the gist that's specific to software or
technology. This isn't sectoral it's just about for-profit businesses.

------
battery_cowboy
I'm having similar issues, and i think i found a way out: stop playing their
game. Don't make enterprise software. Don't write unit tests. Don't accept
pull requests. Simply write software for yourself and have fun doing it.
Forget refactoring code into modules, just fucking code. Don't worry about
deployment with k8s, just copy the Python script to your production folder and
run it. Fuck all that shit about git branch naming conventions, or how you're
supposed to use an object factory, just do whatever you want in the moment,
bit by bit, until your software works most of the time then _use it_. Forget
configuration, just hard code values for now. Don't worry about documentation,
just do it.

Your expectations, and the expectations of others, are your enemy here.

At least, that's what got me out it. I'm still disillusioned with the world
but it's manageable if I can realize I'm making a difference to my son and
wife every day, and that's what counts for me.

~~~
unclebucknasty
This is a great point, laced with justified indignation.

As a graybeard, I've seen multiple generations of "how to do software" and the
most recent are the least fun. A lot of this is driven by the agile approach.
It's tailor-made for dev burnout: from the endless tight cycles that force
people into an infinite loop of productivity with scant satisfaction that
comes with "completion", to all of the tools and philosophies designed to
juice that endless loop to be successful/workable. CI/CD, Git, TDD, etc. These
all _impose_ on the developer's creativity, independence, and enjoyment. They
turn devs into cogs--assembly line workers who must not stop the line at any
cost.

One example: back in the day there was a nightly build, not a continuous one.
And, you checked out a file, worked on it, and checked it back in. If someone
else needed it they had to wait. That obviously had its limitations and it
seems laughable by today's standards. But, it was reflective of a _human_ pace
that considered devs as people vs. optimizable assets. That is, it was
workable because the expectations on devs weren't insane. But, now we commit
and merge. Think of how much less fun it is to spend your time resolving merge
conflicts.

More to the point, the approach itself implies a chaotic pace wherein code
that meets the standards of a certain box must be produced at all times. Devs
must bear the cost of resolving any conflicts (literally) that arise from this
chaotic pace.

Likewise, with CI/CD. And don't get me started on the monkey-work that is TDD.
You might argue that it improves code quality. But, it's hard to make the case
that it improves job satisfaction. If you move more work from the creative,
problem-solving bucket into the busy-work bucket, the result will _not_ be
personal fulfillment.

Does agile increase productivity for companies? Sure. But, it comes at a high
cost that's mostly paid by devs.

~~~
throwaway839246
I'd add open office plans to this. It's awful. You never quite get to focus,
you don't build the rapport with your team, you don't get to customize your
physical environment. Development really became a white collar version of the
assembly line.

~~~
gmtx725
This is something I see people railing against all the time here. I'm young
and new to the industry so I've never experienced anything other than open-
plan offices. So maybe I just don't know what I'm missing out on but the idea
of private offices/cubicles is really unappealing to me. I really like
collaboration spaces, being able to see people's faces, being social, bouncing
ideas off each other, pair programming etc. If I really need to put my head
down and do some quiet work I can put some headphones on or move my laptop to
a booth or quiet space. So I really don't see what the problem with open-plan
is but I'm open to being convinced I'm wrong.

I have similar views on wfh, fwiw. Like 1-2 days a week is fine for me but
full time remote is far too isolating IMO.

~~~
jwalton
Back when I had a cubicle, I had a second chair and a white board in my cube,
and people would come for a visit when they wanted to talk about something,
and we'd draw on the whiteboard, and we were social and bouncing ideas off
each other. Now, I'm in an open floor plan office, and when the guy who sits
literally next to me wants to talk to me, he sends me something over slack. I
think people don't want to disturb each other in an open floor plan office, so
they rely on these IM tools more? I don't know, but I know it's way, way less
social now than it was when I had my cube.

~~~
gmtx725
But what about the serendipitous things, like the unplanned conversations that
lead to fruitful ideas, or the guy you're not directly speaking to overhearing
your conversation and solving your problem for you? It seems to me you would
lose all of that in an environment where you have to deliberately make the
effort to enter someone else's closed space to talk to them.

~~~
asdff
Those still happen in common spaces, having an office or a cubicle won't
eliminate those. The difference is, with your own space you can do deep work
on your own terms. No longer is your train of thought constantly interrupted,
and if someone does have a question or wants to meet or just hang out and
shoot the shit, they can shoot you an email for a good time where you can
devote them your full attention. Academia doesn't have this problem of
isolation of ideas, and every professor there is has an office. Communicating
to your colleagues is a company culture issue, not a physical space issue.

Fresh out of undergrad, open office layouts feel familiar to the long hours
spent sitting at big tables in library basements, so I can see why some people
like it initially. After a few years, you will be pining for four walls and a
door to get anything done.

~~~
gmtx725
Fair enough, it obviously works for you. But on just a couple of points:

> The difference is, with your own space you can do deep work on your own
> terms. No longer is your train of thought constantly interrupted

What's wrong with headphones for deep work? Or appreciate not everyone has
these, but where I work atm we have small 'quiet zone' booths where you can
take your laptop if you really want to focus deeply.

As for being interrupted, again maybe it's just a company culture thing. Where
I work people are generally pretty respectful if they see you with headphones
on intensely focused on something, they'll probably just ping you a message on
slack asking when's good to talk. But equally if people have headphones off,
open body language- everyone feels happy to strike up conversation and there
are no barriers in the way of collaboration.

------
PeterStuer
Sounds like you are not disillusioned with technology but with capitalism.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
Interesting way to post the question, if we are truly "done" with tech.

I'd say a LiveJournal entry might be more apropos. :)

TL;DR: Maybe tech isn't your gig. It's important to find what is.

First, my heart goes out to you. It really does stink to be where you are.

I'd say it's a matter of expectations. The "conventional wisdom" is "Don't
have expectations, and you won't be disappointed."

Sounds good. I have yet to meet anyone that truly meets that bar.

We all have expectations. It's human nature.

The deal is how we _react_ to those expectations.

I get my expectations trounced on a regular basis. That which does not kill
me, makes me stronger.

Except for Dilbert's corollary: _" That which does not kill me, leaves me weak
and exhausted."_

When you signed up for a tech career, _why_ did you sign up for it? What did
you expect?

In the 1980s, there was an explosion of doctors and lawyers. Medical schools
were so crowded that people had to study abroad.

The reason was that a doctor could look forward to a six-figure salary (and a
six-figure insurance bill); right out of the starting gate. Lawyers...maybe
not as much, but LA Law was a popular show, back then, so everyone thought it
was the best career move ever.

That resulted in a _ton_ of mediocre doctors and lawyers. They didn't _love_
what they did.

My father was a Harvard-graduate lawyer. Top of his class. Silver Star war
hero (planted in Arlington). He could have written his own checks.

But he hated it, and joined the CIA, instead (which he later quit in disgust).
I think he felt that he should have learned a different career, all his life.
He was never happy, and that broke my heart.

SO HERE'S WHERE I MAKE IT ALL ABOUT ME:

It also taught me that it's _really important_ to be happy with my vocation.

So here I am...refactoring myself to be happy.

I was a manager for a significant part of my career. I was very good at it.

And hated it. Being good at something is _not_ the same as being happy doing
it.

I _love_ tech. My worst nightmare is to feel the way you do (talking to the
poster). Nothing gives me more joy than to craft a superb application, and
know that it is as close to perfect as God will allow.

That means that I have to be careful who I let have any control over my work.
The current tech scene is absolutely _nuts_ about money and prestige. People
are more than willing to peddle cow flops, if they can buy a Tesla with the
proceeds.

Others use money as a leash and a lash, to tie us down and force us to do
their bidding.

People like me are nothing but transient resources to be used up and
discarded.

So I have enough set aside to be...OK (not rolling in dough); even after this
current kerfuffle. It allows me to be picky about what I do, and who I let
have control of my work.

I'm really _really_ into quality software. You might say that I'm obsessed. To
me, it's a craft.

Think of me as the old Swiss guy, making cuckoo clocks in his garage. There's
not much of a market for cuckoo clocks, but my clocks are gonna be the best
clocks you can get. I won't let anyone force me to use crappy pine, when
walnut is what works best, and I won't mass-produce them.

But I'm a happy little old clock maker, and if anyone wants _really good_
cuckoo clocks, they know where to go. They just have to work with me, and not
expect me to be hog-tied by bling.

I sincerely wish you the best, and hope you get your groove back.

------
dilandau
Interesting venue to post this on. But as it's the afternoon in the US
workday, it's a fair chance that many responses will come from US tech workers
who are slacking off or taking a break from their job and were enticed in by
the headline.

Given the culture of HN comments I reckon you'll get grooming tips and
pointless anecdotes, condescending advice, or unhelpful peptalks.

What I'll say is that you probably are disillusioned with it because you saw
how illusory most of it is. The best stuff is always produced by very small,
tightly-knit teams, in an environment where creativity is allowed to flourish.
In a monoculture like tech giant / unicorn startup, you're living in the
Silicon Valley series bro and that's all there is to it.

There are lots of engineers out here on the internet doing fun things. We just
don't spam github shit or write fancy landing pages to shamelessly promote
ourselves. Join us.

~~~
BrandonM
Your third and even fourth paragraphs are pretty interesting. It's a shame
that they come after the speculation and jabs in the first two paragraphs.

~~~
Aeolun
Looking at the comments, it certainly seems like he’s got all bases covered
though.

------
asdkjh345fd
I spent 17 years going through that. I can't say I recovered my optimism, but
I stopped being cynical and am now realistic (which people tend to think is
pessimistic), but without it being negative. Get off the drugs, move into the
country and eat a lot of peaches. Technology will never be enjoyable again,
and that's a good thing. Grow your own food, make your own tools, build your
own furniture. Use your intelligence to make your life better instead of
helping greedy people try to shove more ads in front of people.

~~~
GoToRO
And skip the middle man and build your own software product. Then there will
be more sane software companies to work for.

------
2019-nCoV
Let this be another lesson in sheltering your children too much. The real
world is full of psychopaths and sycophants who can smell that naivety a mile
away. The only way to fully internalise this is by being burnt. Again and
again. Slowly one learns to see the telltale signs of self-interest and look
past the smiles and colourful verbiage.

> Has anyone been through this who managed to recover their optimism and
> creative spirit? Please help me. What can I do?

If you've come from a baseline of over-optimism your outlook sounds healthier
now. Many look to start a family and coast through the next 30 years once they
become disillusioned with their career.

------
voodootrucker
Sounds more like disillusionment with our quasi-free-market. In reality it's
nothing but strongmen and subterfuge, and I fear America will ultimately lose
whatever competitive edge it had left due to this.

------
ignasl
I am not sure what's wrong with you and why you are happy but unhappy?! but if
I would have to guess - it's most likely antidepressants/therapy. There is new
"you" but you miss old "you". Brain chemistry is no joke and if you don't
absolutely absolutely need medication don't do it. Ask good doctors for
second, third and fourth opinions if needed.

~~~
Impossible
If anything OP was worse off before they started treatment. Changing or
getting off meds could be a valid choice but all the changes seem to have lead
OP to a generally better life

------
dnprock
I'm running through similar thoughts with this article. I graduated from
college in 2006. My job survived the 2008 crisis. I rode out and built a
stable life. I started a startup in 2011. Our product did not make it. I've
been working on freelance and consulting gigs since then for small and big
companies. My independent career taught me to be resilient: always saving,
don't overspend. Your company does not have your backs. You need to take care
of yourself and your family.

I notice I become less optimistic over the years. I got comfy with my
successful gigs. To counter those trends, my important lesson is: keep
learning. I got started as a C#/Java/C++ programmer. Over the years, I learned
Rails, nodejs, React. I adapt to the new gigs. Heck, I even created a
cryptocurrency. :)

Now, we're hit by a pandemic. My gig comes to an end. But I'm ready for the
next thing. It's pretty exciting. Check out my new project built on redwoodjs.
:)

[https://github.com/vidalab/vida](https://github.com/vidalab/vida)

PS: I'm available for work if you need Rails, nodejs, React. :)

