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I was voted most spaced out in my high school yearbook. My creativity and problem solving skills at one point were pretty much off the charts. Got a computer en

I was voted most spaced out in my high school yearbook. My creativity and problem solving skills at one point were pretty much off the charts. Got a computer engineering degree, had a few years working at great companies solving important problems. I have to be honest though, I no longer believe in the startup world. I'm so disillusioned now that I honestly don't know if I can write code anymore. There are so many bad indicators about where all this is going, how it's causing wealth inequality and the destruction of the natural world, that I just don't know if my heart is in any of this anymore. I'm mostly coping now and coming to terms with the fact that I may have to choose tech or my life. All I ever wanted to do was invent stuff, but as far as I can tell, the whole system is rigged so that that can never happen. Without hope, there can't be focus. I don't even know what to call the limbo I'm in. It's not really depression, it's not burnout, it's not even apathy because I care very much. It's more a sense that, the best thing to do rather than invent something is to wait a year for someone else to do it. Or more realistically, for 10 other people to try with 9 of them failing. Soon that will be 100 attempts with 99 failures, going up an order of magnitude with each passing decade. If a true next-gen solution that comes after the internet arrives soon, then it could replace the soul-sucking work-life imbalance that we've all recreated. It could replace late-stage capitalism. But it's looking like tech's going to keep crushing down harder and harder until there is no profit in anything and we're all just running the rat race until we die. How did it come to this? Am I alone in feeling this way? Seriously, I don't really even know what to do to make my next $100 to survive tomorrow. I don't know if I can eat the $#!@ sandwich and work for someone again and lose however many more years of my life. Why can't I just go help somewhere and contribute in positive ways and make a modest income? Why is it so cutthroat and all-or-nothing? Blah. Just blah.

mklarmann 7y ago
I feel you. But I don’t things have to be looked at so narrow. There are hardly any people on this planet that have your opportunity to fix things for the better. There are enough challenges to put your heart into and find fresh energy if you start looking. You just need to fall in love again with something that you really consider worthwhile your time. I am sure there will be something.
- zackmorris 7y ago
  Thanks, ya I tend to do a lot of soul searching this time of year. My social media feed is so saturated with bad news that all I really use now is the sad emoji. Right now when I think of tech, I feel emotions like disappointment, loathing, frustration, jealously, resentment, skepticism, etc etc etc. All negative. You are right about love though, that is very insightful. Even though it seems like tech is this analytical endeavor, I've found that it is really built on passion (love, devotion, etc, the things that got us started making things in the first place). Because when you step back from it, why would someone bang their head against the keyboard day after day in endless frustration, often alone and misunderstood, trying to do even the simplest things but coming up short, unless they saw potential in it. That's the real reason why pretty much every tech job listing is looking for passionate people. It's not about excelling now, it's about survival. Anyway, after 6 months of writer's block, I have finally started seeing some alternatives. When I think about the opposite of the tech world today, I start feeling good emotions again like inspiration, hope and maybe even some love as you put it. Here is a starting point for anyone curious: https://qz.com/933681/start-ups-shouldnt-try-to-be-unicorns-they-should-be-zebras/ https://qz.com/933681/start-ups-shouldnt-try-to-be-unicorns-... https://www.zebrasunite.com https://www.zebrasunite.com The table at the bottom of the second link lists some of the problems with the startup world today and some ways that we might transition from consumerist phantom tech to real tech. Where phantom tech mainly distracts or lowers some prices or makes some people obscenely rich, with jobs that provide time or money but not both, at great cost to society and nature. But real tech is things like distributed alternative energy, robot labor, universal basic income, etc that provide both time and money passively (without human slavery in the developing world) so that people can get back to living freely like we did as recently as the 80s and 90s.
pdfernhout 7y ago
Some ideas I've collected on making better organizations: https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations-Reading-List https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations... You may also find some jobs posted at Idealist of interest (although many may have their own issues as the non-profit world can have its own dysfunctions): https://www.idealist.org/ https://www.idealist.org/ You might like some things written by E.F. Schumacher like "Good Work": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/313764.Good_Work https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/313764.Good_Work Or maybe "Honest Business"? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/582299.Honest_Business https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/582299.Honest_Business Also, "What Color is Your Parachute" is also great. Or maybe stories related to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster Another tip: the more frugal you are, the more flexible you can be about jobs and living arrangements. Frankly, I can find problematical things about pretty much any profession in our modern society -- from sanitation worker through school teacher to medical doctor to shoe clerk. So, yes, it can be a challenge to make peace with that when, without a basic income, you need to exchange your labor for ration units to then exchange for food and shelter. Yet, people need, say, shoes -- so you can help a lot of people by making or selling good shoes to people who really need them. But as you point out, a lot of business and related jobs go far beyond the basics (for good or bad). You can also find lots of post-scarcity thinking on my personal website. Or by many others in many places if you look. So, you are not alone. It seems though that, short of broad social change like, say, Andrew Yang proposes, solutions that work for specific individuals in late-stage capitalism may have to be individually crafted based on on interests, abilities, circumstances, tools, social network, local community, and so on. Anyway, there are some non-startup jobs here in who's hiring for January 2020 (including at PBS): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21936440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21936440

mklarmann 7y ago

I feel you. But I don’t things have to be looked at so narrow. There are hardly any people on this planet that have your opportunity to fix things for the better. There are enough challenges to put your heart into and find fresh energy if you start looking. You just need to fall in love again with something that you really consider worthwhile your time. I am sure there will be something.

zackmorris 7y ago
Thanks, ya I tend to do a lot of soul searching this time of year. My social media feed is so saturated with bad news that all I really use now is the sad emoji. Right now when I think of tech, I feel emotions like disappointment, loathing, frustration, jealously, resentment, skepticism, etc etc etc. All negative. You are right about love though, that is very insightful. Even though it seems like tech is this analytical endeavor, I've found that it is really built on passion (love, devotion, etc, the things that got us started making things in the first place). Because when you step back from it, why would someone bang their head against the keyboard day after day in endless frustration, often alone and misunderstood, trying to do even the simplest things but coming up short, unless they saw potential in it. That's the real reason why pretty much every tech job listing is looking for passionate people. It's not about excelling now, it's about survival. Anyway, after 6 months of writer's block, I have finally started seeing some alternatives. When I think about the opposite of the tech world today, I start feeling good emotions again like inspiration, hope and maybe even some love as you put it. Here is a starting point for anyone curious: https://qz.com/933681/start-ups-shouldnt-try-to-be-unicorns-they-should-be-zebras/ https://qz.com/933681/start-ups-shouldnt-try-to-be-unicorns-... https://www.zebrasunite.com https://www.zebrasunite.com The table at the bottom of the second link lists some of the problems with the startup world today and some ways that we might transition from consumerist phantom tech to real tech. Where phantom tech mainly distracts or lowers some prices or makes some people obscenely rich, with jobs that provide time or money but not both, at great cost to society and nature. But real tech is things like distributed alternative energy, robot labor, universal basic income, etc that provide both time and money passively (without human slavery in the developing world) so that people can get back to living freely like we did as recently as the 80s and 90s.

pdfernhout 7y ago

Some ideas I've collected on making better organizations: https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations-Reading-List https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations... You may also find some jobs posted at Idealist of interest (although many may have their own issues as the non-profit world can have its own dysfunctions): https://www.idealist.org/ https://www.idealist.org/ You might like some things written by E.F. Schumacher like "Good Work": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/313764.Good_Work https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/313764.Good_Work Or maybe "Honest Business"? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/582299.Honest_Business https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/582299.Honest_Business Also, "What Color is Your Parachute" is also great. Or maybe stories related to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster Another tip: the more frugal you are, the more flexible you can be about jobs and living arrangements. Frankly, I can find problematical things about pretty much any profession in our modern society -- from sanitation worker through school teacher to medical doctor to shoe clerk. So, yes, it can be a challenge to make peace with that when, without a basic income, you need to exchange your labor for ration units to then exchange for food and shelter. Yet, people need, say, shoes -- so you can help a lot of people by making or selling good shoes to people who really need them. But as you point out, a lot of business and related jobs go far beyond the basics (for good or bad). You can also find lots of post-scarcity thinking on my personal website. Or by many others in many places if you look. So, you are not alone. It seems though that, short of broad social change like, say, Andrew Yang proposes, solutions that work for specific individuals in late-stage capitalism may have to be individually crafted based on on interests, abilities, circumstances, tools, social network, local community, and so on. Anyway, there are some non-startup jobs here in who's hiring for January 2020 (including at PBS): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21936440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21936440