I’m sure there’s something, somewhere out there, I could find fulfilling and reignite my giving a shit, but it’s far out of my reach. Of course, the problem is there’s realistically no where else to go. I even lost interest in tech and computers as a hobby, I’m not sure why, but that ended probably a few years ago when I decided to abandon my last project.
The vast majority of tech jobs are somewhat pointless and boring. As with everything, there is a law of diminishing returns. The same is true of many academic research fields. The years 1900-1970 were the golden years of mathematics for example and now there's very little to do there.
Most tech jobs today are highly commercial and not about making life better. Even if you manage to find something that is somewhat relevant to the real world, like green energy research, chances are it might be something highly technical, abstract, and difficult to relate back to the final product.
For everything else, you'll likely just work on the arms race to the bottom -- whether it be an arms race to fight for attention in the narcisstic space of social media, improving database read times at Google, making some new AI to replace millions of humans, wasting people's time with more advertising, or making poor people buy more stuff they don't need.
In my opinion, if you want to have something truly fulfilling, you'll have to first ask yourself how you can actually make the world better, and then strike out on your own to do it. 95% of modern tech jobs are just a weight on society's back, dragging us down.
> Even if you manage to find something that is somewhat relevant to the real world, like green energy research, chances are it might be something highly technical, abstract, and difficult to relate back to the final product.
As someone lucky enough to have found a programming job in an organization that is dedicated to something I believe in, I can confirm this perspective. The big picture mission helps keep me motivated, but my day-to-day is pretty abstracted from that mission.
My advice to OP would be to try to diversify your sources of fulfillment. That may be unsatisfying advice - I know that there was a time in my life that I would have rejected it - but from where I stand now, it is the most reliable path to overall happiness.
> The years 1900-1970 were the golden years of mathematics for example and now there's very little to do there.
I doubt this is true. Lots of amazing math has been done since the 70s. I guess your sentiment comes from the fact that what we learn in school/university is necessarily old math, as the newer stuff is just too advanced. Also, from the old stuff it's easy to pick out the important parts, making it look like it was better.
I forgot who said this (possibly Knuth?), but it rings true to me: "When I was young, I thought every step of progress takes out one more thing that could be discovered. Now I know it just opens several more new avenues."
I have a math PhD, and have done research in modern math with several published papers. So, I am speaking from that perspective, not of one of an undergrad.
The issue with tech is that most of the interesting stuff you can do at home anyway, but without the looming threats of deadlines and terrible million dollars mistakes.
I did feel like writing an upbeat comment about going to work for organisations where technology is a tools for solving fulfilling problems, and while I do believe that it the current best solution, I do still see the problem.
Last night I watched a video where the Altair 8800 appeared and it occurred to me that there's almost no way for a small team to do anything as impactful today. Part of the reason the retro scene is some alive might be that it's to some extend more enjoyable to work on. While it would probably have been stressful enough to be in the industry in the 70s and 80s, there was just so much more room to do interesting stuff. Today most of us are just contributing a small part to a larger project and that's just less satisfying that being involved in all aspect of a project.
I felt unfulfilled back in 2009/2010, thought I was burned out, and left tech for a 9-year period (2011-2019) to own and operate a retail sporting goods business (bikes, running shoes, and swim gear). Now THAT was a grind.
After I came back to tech, I guess I have a renewed perspective or something. The big shift for me is that I'm more internally motivated than most people seem to be. The business I work for will have its ups and downs, but I'm able to be self-actualized by doing good work for good work's sake.
And I'm blessed to be in a role that, I think, is a really good fit for my skills and experience. I still have entrepreneurial fantasies from time to time, but I very, very much enjoy the work that I'm doing and am very grateful for that peace of mind.
My coworkers are able to depend upon me while I enjoy providing levity, coaching, and a fantastic work environment.
My family is provided for and my children have me nearby while I am working remotely. I am making amazing money by pushing plastic down in a particular sequence.
In the event anything is ever dull I bring a good attitude, shining disposition, and an effort to reframe the situation into favor of those who surround me.
What has given you feelings of accomplishment or fulfilment in the past? Try not to think about it in terms of job positions or responsibilities but more generally. What aspects or activities have brought you happiness in the past? For me I genuinely get satisfaction from helping others. It can be mundane and boring or stupid but as long as I can actually make a difference in someone else's day I can turn that into satisfaction and fulfillment. Sure, developing a system or project, planning and implementing it can be very rewarding but it's so much work and I can get burnt out easily before I get there. On the other hand, changing the batteries in a user's mouse and giving them advice on how to utilize their 2nd monitor more efficiently while I'm there gives me so much more instant gratification than so many other IT tasks.
It's not perfect, and neither am I, but I find it helps me to focus on the people.
I think it may be that at this stage in the internet's history, we've seen the life cycle of software/platforms play out and it even if you were lucky enough to be part of a wildly popular and successful one that did cool things everyone loves, its only a matter of time before the suits come in and monetize every good piece of it, put in dark patterns, addictive scrolls, forced subscriptions, fees, openly hostile TOS, etc etc. In the early days there was optimism about making people's lives better with great software, but we now know what its only a phase before its turned to crap.
We can make nice things, but we can't keep them that way.
Did you have a background in cybersec beforehand, or just as a software engineer? Cybersecurity interests me, but no background in it (beyond being a senior engineer with a fair amount of cloud experience, and the security stuff you'd be expected to know as one)
I also work in security (appsec) and most of my day is spent programming. In my experience in the security space (10 years at the moment) the qualifications are absurdly disconnected from actual job requirements. At my last place when I was involved in hiring decisions we selected mainly on attitude and coding ability. At my currently location this does not seem to have been the case as most on my team literally can't code. I'd take someone who can code over someone who knows tons of security theory any day.
I didn't -- I actually hit my first cybersecurity company straight out of a math degree. It was a firmware security thing, so I spent a lot of time outside of work learning about linux, device drivers, etc. and programming. That's to say -- diving in is surely possible. I'm now at my second cybersec company in a totally different part of the field.
> Whether you are picking fruit, flipping burgers or building tech
The thing is that the first two of those were always commodity jobs. "Building tech" was a specialization that until recently was not commoditized. And there are still niches where that's not true.
This hasn't only happened in software, of course. Look at medicine. It would be gut-wrenching to have spent a lifetime gaining specialized deep knowledge in healing people only to realize it's treated more and more like complicated burger-flipping now. And under constant threat of lawsuits, unlike most burger-flippers.
Computers have facilitated a second industrial revolution, and we're living in the "children crawling into giant machines, everyone is choking on coal smoke in London" phase. In today's economy it's precariously employed gig workers being exploited. Everyone's mental health is being poisoned by social media. There's a small upper crust of capitalist "factory owners" who are making bank by resisting any attempts by legislators and labour to reign them in.
If we compare today to the Industrial Revolution, this seems like a cycle - eventually the organized labour backlash occurs, some of the excess value from automation gets passed to the workers in the form of shorter hours and higher pay. The environmental harms are recognized and the externalities are regulated by the government.
Since I've been in the industry I've often thought of myself as a Luddite - someone who opposes the constant race to the bottom that technology is driving. The original Luddites were skilled artisans who protested cheap, low quality cloth woven by machines. They knew that unskilled, automated work not only produced worse goods, but it was bad for the souls of the workers. To quote Ursula LeGuin in The Dispossessed:
> A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.
For me what's had a huge negative effect on software development as a job, turning it from more of a creative endeavor to something more like micro-managed factory work, is Scrum, and to some extent the entire Agile framwork. It makes sense, since that's were those things originated.
I stopped working in big ‘tech’ and trying to find my flame back with ‘simple tech’. I operate a small application build for a local baker and hacking around with computers once in a while. But making my money somewhere else.
That depends. If you're willing to put up with bureaucracy, lower compensation, and all sorts of other hassles, you can go into public service or work for a non-profit of some kind that does meaningful work.
My personal strategy is to just work for the most morally acceptable for-profit business I can find. Then I do what's necessary to keep that job, but I don't invest myself in it. I don't care about it. I just spend as little time at that job as I can and get fulfillment with all the other hours of my life that aren't spent working.
Probably, depends on what you think is "fulfilling." A career in tech is about using tech to solve problems. I don't see a lack of those. If anything, we have more than ever! You need to adopt the mindset that problems are opportunities.
Notice something here: it's not the tech that makes your job fulfilling, it's the problems you're solving.
I'm in tech, at a nonprofit and find it fulfilling. Because we're a small place I get to do sysadmin stuff, sales stuff, support stuff, a little programing... a little of everything. It's fun, interesting, and I work with a bunch of smart and dedicated people. And no, the pay doesn't suck.
I teach tech of all kind, mostly Python programming and advanced data skills. I get deep satisfaction in helping learners on their journey. I also enjoy connecting with them as people. Teaching has made a fulfilling career for the last 20 years. Hopefully, I keep doing it for a couple of more decades.
First - people usually point out that it might be depression, so look into that.
Then you could consider joining a startup (a real one. small team, tech focused).
You could also consider taking on new challenges - new lang, new role (devops/fe/be/pm/arch).
My company directly serves my community and I get to work with awesome people. Now if the execs can just get their rear in gear about allowing WFH, it would be perfect. Until then, despite working for a great company, I'm struggling with engagement.
The only executive(the CEO) that is pushing RTO(hybrid) moved to New York. Our office is on the West Coast. Ohhh wait, he's in Australia for 6 months... Whoops, back in New York now everybody! Meanwhile, he's remotely "managing" all of us in the office. Apparently.
I see the rest of the executives in the office on and off, some more than others, some very much less.
Do something in impact tech, which aims for solving the world’s biggest problems. Huge in Sweden right now. Comes naturally with meaning and fulfillment. Unlike a lot of the stuff that e.g. Silicon Valley is mostly visible with atm.
I like working in internal software for my company. Keeps me close to the customer (other devs). The feedback loop is tight so I quickly learn whether my work helped someone else.
Plus, you get to know so many other ways of being a software developer; it’s refreshing.
Other people, in the same situation as you, channel that frustration re-doing stuff, reinventing wheels and creating busywork for poor souls like you and me.
ai automation consulting is kinda fulfilling for me. I get to play with chatGPT daily, and I'm on retainer so it's like having a SaaS just with custom bots for my clients. It's also not as draining as full stack development used to feel. Solutions take a few days to a few weeks then I move on to new projects.
This is actually a dream of mine - to work at a FAANG company and be paid to work on open-source software, I hope it happens :) but I'm not holding my breath though.
Nope, I remember seeing a comment a while back and I had to save because it resonated with me so much: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32713325
I’m sure there’s something, somewhere out there, I could find fulfilling and reignite my giving a shit, but it’s far out of my reach. Of course, the problem is there’s realistically no where else to go. I even lost interest in tech and computers as a hobby, I’m not sure why, but that ended probably a few years ago when I decided to abandon my last project.