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Wow, I just wanted to say thanks a lot for posting this. I'm in a very similar boat. I was always very focused and goal-oriented in my younger days - a bit of a

Wow, I just wanted to say thanks a lot for posting this. I'm in a very similar boat. I was always very focused and goal-oriented in my younger days - a bit of a workaholic but generally enjoyed working hard. A number of changes since the pandemic have left me feeling very similar to you: 1. Like tons of other people, I re-evaluated my relationship with work during the pandemic. To be honest, it wasn't easy. I think a ton of people (especially Americans) tie up their self-worth with their jobs, and during the pandemic I just felt more disconnected from my job. 2. I think a lot of folks have underestimated the psychological changes that happen from being way more isolated these days. I don't mean "shut-in" isolated, I just mean that working remote most days means the number of people I interact with in person has gone way, way down. I'm all for remote work but I won't deny that I greatly miss a lot of the energy from just being around other people. 3. Finally, I've just become really disillusioned with tech over the course of my career, which makes me very sad. I started my career during the dot com boom, and there was so much optimism about the beneficial societal changes that tech and the Internet would bring. I don't feel like all tech is "evil" these days, but I do feel that the world would be better off if all the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) just completely stopped building any new tech. Obviously that's not realistic, but it highlights my feeling that I'm not looking forward to any new tech from these companies, because more tech is going to invariably lead to more isolation, more "doom scrolling", more assaults on our attention. I feel like most big tech companies have just become the equivalent of drug dealers, just trying to hijack our brain's evolutionary attention mechanisms to addict us. "Attention is all you need" is right... Anyway, don't have any advice or anything, just wanted to say I appreciated your post in a "misery loves company" sort-of-way, so thank you.

om154 3y ago
I can relate a lot to this. Thanks for sharing
jassyr 3y ago
Feels like you read my mind. I'm disconnected from career and generally feel disappointed with direction of technology. It's quite difficult finding meaning in life surrounded by careerist.
brabel 3y ago
> I started my career during the dot com boom, and there was so much optimism about the beneficial societal changes that tech and the Internet would bring. I don't feel like all tech is "evil" these days... Wow that's so true... we totally didn't see the social media dystopia we're living in today coming. We imagined a world where everyone has all the world knowledge available at their fingertips would be wonderful. How wrong were we.
- amelius 3y ago
  In the early 90s the internet was great. The problems started with companies and their inherent greed.
  - castalian 3y ago
    No, it was the people. Early internet users demographics was a result of extreme selection. Companies did exist back then.
    - amelius 3y ago
      Companies existed of course, but they provided the building blocks of the internet and were not directly concerned with the processing of our data.
    - bakugo 3y ago
      This is true. The big turning point was the release of the iPhone, a device that allowed people who didn't know what a computer was to access the internet.
      - kian 3y ago
        I'd also call out Eternal September in 1993, when AOL made it easy for anyone with a computer to connect online. This permanently changed the composition of the internet, and paved the way for the social networks that would later come to dominance after the iPhone was released.
      - 3y ago
advael 3y ago
I strongly relate, and think a big part it for me is that most people range from apathetic to hostile to most projects that try to wrest any power from tech companies, despite complaining about the way they've been immiserated by them in the next breath. It's hard enough trying to pry even little bits of freedom or individuality from the grasp of all these moneyed interests without every effort to do something like it getting a bunch of random hate
qorrect 3y ago
Thank you both - I'm feeling the same, and I had tied up so much of my personality and life with software development, I feel pretty lost now. I've had a side project to work on for as long as I can remember, now I'm just not interested in building at all. And honestly, I don't know where to go from here.
- granshaw 3y ago
  Are you in a high cost of living situation that’s hard to get out of? Do you have kids? If NOT, I would start by thinking if there’s ways you could drastically cut down your cost off living, like moving somewhere cheaper or even looking at Southeast Asia etc if that’s your jam That would give you more options on the financial side of things in case you wanted to start over or have a go at something with a long ramp up time
granshaw 3y ago
One question I’ve set out to answer is: what would I do if I were fired tomorrow? Understood that not everyone is in the position to switch to lower paying careers, start over, etc - but if you have some leash, what WOULD you do if you were fired tomorrow? (And I don’t mean short term like take a vacation then find another tech job - mean longer term like what kind of job will you be looking for next, or business to start, etc) Curious to hear your thoughts and anyone else who cares to share
- nktrnk 3y ago
  I’ve been thinking about this too. And it’s also usually used as a counter-argument to people wanting to get out of their jobs. However, here’s what I realized: most people work in “regular” 9-5 jobs. That includes “tech people”, who like to think of themselves as artists, but are not. And it takes like 2 decades to get trained to do a regular job if you take into account k-12 (which trains you to be a 9-5 worker and discourages anything else), uni, and the first few years of professional experience. So is it that surprising that once you get disillusioned with being a 9-5 worker it would take you at the very least few years to figure out how to not be one? What I’m trying to say is it should be expected to not know what you want to do. Because even getting to the point where you could do what 90% of the population does take a tremendous amount of effort. So once you want to do something else, it will take a while to figure out too. And you can totally fail along the way as well.
- j7ake 3y ago
  The ideal answer is: "If I got fired tomorrow, I would be doing mostly the same work as before, but maybe less meetings and admin duties." Careers that fit this answer: artists, writers, musicians, mathematicians, scientists (those who lean more towards theory).
  - t0bia_s 3y ago
    As an freelance artist for 9 years I can say that you have different type of challenges. Founding usefulness in your work means everyday questions about balance between stable income and making actually new, innovative, non-trending things. Free market have unlimited possibilities, but making art for money is not my motivation to do art. Poor artists are real and I slowly understand why. If your passion is creativity, priorities are different, which makes hard to pay your bills, but in same time let you go deeper of meaning. Well... It's difficult to describe it actually.
docmars 3y ago
I resonate with this -- I've noticed a pattern of big tech companies using their power (and prowess) to regulate in the tech space more, limit what users can do, advertise more, force dark patterns on their customers, and make puzzling decisions that rob the excitement they used to bring to the table of the past. They still make great new / updated products in a few areas, but it also seems like they take just as much as they give, these days. Whether it's changes to pricing models (Amazon Prime Video ad-free extra charges), or Google's notorious penchant for killing their own products (or features), or Microsoft's continuous push to get Edge in front of Windows users at almost any cost. Or Apple only offering their high-end MacBooks with Touch Bars, rather than physical function keys before they finally fixed everything with the M1 series almost 4 years later -- 4 years of Touch Bar hell, or else suffer using a low-end laptop that isn't capable of the demanding workflows your job requires along with the fact that you're a power user who needs real function keys and (gasp!) a physical escape key to work efficiently on the go, like me. These companies really seem to be resting on their laurels and toying with customers now, to see how annoying they can be. And what's worse is, we've grown to rely on their products because they happen to build our operating systems and hardware in many cases. Bigger changes to these can have devastating effects and these companies don't seem to understand the responsibility they have to move towards creating a positive, exciting experience for customers while leaving alone the things that work really well. All rather than sowing doubt with a lot of side decisions that make people unhappy ultimately. Death by a thousand cuts, it really starts to erode confidence in any of them, no matter what they release that should be exciting.
wildrhythms 3y ago
My outlook is: if you work in big tech today, whatever you're working on, in its final culmination, is just a means to clutter the internet with ads.
d1m 3y ago
>I don't feel like all tech is "evil" these days, but I do feel that the world would be better off if all the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) just completely stopped building any new tech. Obviously that's not realistic, but it highlights my feeling that I'm not looking forward to any new tech from these companies, because more tech is going to invariably lead to more isolation, more "doom scrolling", more assaults on our attention. I feel like most big tech companies have just become the equivalent of drug dealers, just trying to hijack our brain's evolutionary attention mechanisms to addict us. "Attention is all you need" is right... "Attention is all you need" among above paragraph really hits hard and it's true. I think I feel the same way like all big tech companies should just be stopped from bringing new tech. Indeed, I have just started hating tech now a days. We are just getting more apart and away from everyone day by day with new emerging technology. It is really pathetic to know that tech is influencing new generation totally in negative direction to what we supposed where they should be leading to. I think even the Parents now a days should parent their child more like it used to in olden days rather than showing them children's rhyme on phone or tablet. I have stopped surfing social media, they try to isolate me from the truth and what's actually happening and rather feed content which is biased according to my activities and what I like. This really frightens me.
kitd 3y ago
I do feel that the world would be better off if all the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) just completely stopped building any new tech. I'd restrict that to social media. That and "competitive" journalism are turning society to trash IMHO.
gn4d 3y ago
I am far younger than you, but ditto on all counts. The pandemic crushed everything that I studied and worked for. And it taught me as someone in my early 20s that even though I spent my entire life with my nose to the grindstone, everything could be instantly stripped away by world governments, and friends and coworkers and family members could also suddenly turn on each other like rabid dogs. Honestly, at least be grateful that you had some good years of excitement, it seems. I was young during the 2008 crash, but it affected my family. And now I have no motivation for anything. My peers are similar. Why build something only to have it crushed? A lot of us are just living in the moment. We also saw people with lifelong careers and families of their own have their lives destroyed by various governments in the USA and abroad.
- reureu 3y ago
  > everything could be instantly stripped away by world governments Your comment suggests that the driver of your (and your peers) anhedonia is some lingering threat of some future lockdown by governments? Is that what you're saying? And, is that actually the case or is it just the easiest cause to put your finger on? I understand that period was really rough for so many reasons. But a lot of the angst I see among friends/family/coworkers today isn't from the lockdowns per se, but it's more from having to slow down and consider some heavy, almost-existential questions surrounding their relationships, life, fulfillment, social supports, and purpose. And, at least for me, struggling with how many of the things I thought I knew about myself turned out to not really be true. Lockdowns may have forced me to see and acknowledge these issues, but they were always there.
  - gn4d 3y ago
    It's not angst, it's real. Though I'm young, my work is international. I was separated from my girlfriend, apartment, coworkers, and entire livelihood in a different nation, at a position one could say I spent much of my life up to that point studying and working toward. My colleagues were separated from their families and children. Some lost their homes because they were let go from their jobs as a result. Some older friends of mine divorced because of this. Some lost their businesses that they spent their lives building. One of them committed suicide. This was a guy in his late 50s with two children and a wife, who had been forcibly separated from each other on opposite sides of the world for over a year. Short of wars, there has never been such a brutal and absolute upheaval of population movements for civilian populations. There are a lot of people my age who went through this type of experience, and that is one reason why I think the original poster sees more people with less joie de vivre. I am also saying it is lucky for people who just had lockdowns at home or had their lives confined to one locale or even country, or who at least had some years of "living" their lives before this happened. What I mean by that is people who at least had their 20s and maybe even 30s to build a career, life, and family, on top of their years of studying and schooling. But for those of us just getting our careers started, and for people who had international careers and lives split between countries, there were several years of nightmares along with the knowledge now that, at any moment, all this could instantly happen again. Sure, anyone could get hit by a bus tomorrow. But it was people and governments turning on one another like wolves that was a sharp mask-off moment, especially for those of us in our formative years. That is a different type of crushing, and utterly stultifying, effect. Because it is not a random accident, but rather a cold and calculating opposition by others. All I know is that I spent my life sacrificing short-term rewards as I worked toward long-term payoffs, and as soon as I started to see results, everything went up in flames. Everything. If motivation is squelched for major life projects and milestones, I think it is clear how motivation is also squelched for personal projects or side projects. If you're older, and if your life wasn't split or shattered across the globe, be thankful is all I can say. But for me and others in my age bracket and positions, there was this natural, sharp turn toward instant gratification, which I wholly support and understand. This is of course anecdotal, and I am not implying that it is a universal sentiment, but just offering an example to answer the original question/statement of people "working on nothing". It is because we have nothing to "work toward".

om154 3y ago

I can relate a lot to this. Thanks for sharing

jassyr 3y ago

Feels like you read my mind. I'm disconnected from career and generally feel disappointed with direction of technology. It's quite difficult finding meaning in life surrounded by careerist.

brabel 3y ago

> I started my career during the dot com boom, and there was so much optimism about the beneficial societal changes that tech and the Internet would bring. I don't feel like all tech is "evil" these days... Wow that's so true... we totally didn't see the social media dystopia we're living in today coming. We imagined a world where everyone has all the world knowledge available at their fingertips would be wonderful. How wrong were we.

amelius 3y ago
In the early 90s the internet was great. The problems started with companies and their inherent greed.
- castalian 3y ago
  No, it was the people. Early internet users demographics was a result of extreme selection. Companies did exist back then.
  - amelius 3y ago
    Companies existed of course, but they provided the building blocks of the internet and were not directly concerned with the processing of our data.
  - bakugo 3y ago
    This is true. The big turning point was the release of the iPhone, a device that allowed people who didn't know what a computer was to access the internet.
    - kian 3y ago
      I'd also call out Eternal September in 1993, when AOL made it easy for anyone with a computer to connect online. This permanently changed the composition of the internet, and paved the way for the social networks that would later come to dominance after the iPhone was released.
    - 3y ago

advael 3y ago

I strongly relate, and think a big part it for me is that most people range from apathetic to hostile to most projects that try to wrest any power from tech companies, despite complaining about the way they've been immiserated by them in the next breath. It's hard enough trying to pry even little bits of freedom or individuality from the grasp of all these moneyed interests without every effort to do something like it getting a bunch of random hate

qorrect 3y ago

Thank you both - I'm feeling the same, and I had tied up so much of my personality and life with software development, I feel pretty lost now. I've had a side project to work on for as long as I can remember, now I'm just not interested in building at all. And honestly, I don't know where to go from here.

granshaw 3y ago
Are you in a high cost of living situation that’s hard to get out of? Do you have kids? If NOT, I would start by thinking if there’s ways you could drastically cut down your cost off living, like moving somewhere cheaper or even looking at Southeast Asia etc if that’s your jam That would give you more options on the financial side of things in case you wanted to start over or have a go at something with a long ramp up time

granshaw 3y ago

One question I’ve set out to answer is: what would I do if I were fired tomorrow? Understood that not everyone is in the position to switch to lower paying careers, start over, etc - but if you have some leash, what WOULD you do if you were fired tomorrow? (And I don’t mean short term like take a vacation then find another tech job - mean longer term like what kind of job will you be looking for next, or business to start, etc) Curious to hear your thoughts and anyone else who cares to share

nktrnk 3y ago
I’ve been thinking about this too. And it’s also usually used as a counter-argument to people wanting to get out of their jobs. However, here’s what I realized: most people work in “regular” 9-5 jobs. That includes “tech people”, who like to think of themselves as artists, but are not. And it takes like 2 decades to get trained to do a regular job if you take into account k-12 (which trains you to be a 9-5 worker and discourages anything else), uni, and the first few years of professional experience. So is it that surprising that once you get disillusioned with being a 9-5 worker it would take you at the very least few years to figure out how to not be one? What I’m trying to say is it should be expected to not know what you want to do. Because even getting to the point where you could do what 90% of the population does take a tremendous amount of effort. So once you want to do something else, it will take a while to figure out too. And you can totally fail along the way as well.
j7ake 3y ago
The ideal answer is: "If I got fired tomorrow, I would be doing mostly the same work as before, but maybe less meetings and admin duties." Careers that fit this answer: artists, writers, musicians, mathematicians, scientists (those who lean more towards theory).
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  As an freelance artist for 9 years I can say that you have different type of challenges. Founding usefulness in your work means everyday questions about balance between stable income and making actually new, innovative, non-trending things. Free market have unlimited possibilities, but making art for money is not my motivation to do art. Poor artists are real and I slowly understand why. If your passion is creativity, priorities are different, which makes hard to pay your bills, but in same time let you go deeper of meaning. Well... It's difficult to describe it actually.

docmars 3y ago

I resonate with this -- I've noticed a pattern of big tech companies using their power (and prowess) to regulate in the tech space more, limit what users can do, advertise more, force dark patterns on their customers, and make puzzling decisions that rob the excitement they used to bring to the table of the past. They still make great new / updated products in a few areas, but it also seems like they take just as much as they give, these days. Whether it's changes to pricing models (Amazon Prime Video ad-free extra charges), or Google's notorious penchant for killing their own products (or features), or Microsoft's continuous push to get Edge in front of Windows users at almost any cost. Or Apple only offering their high-end MacBooks with Touch Bars, rather than physical function keys before they finally fixed everything with the M1 series almost 4 years later -- 4 years of Touch Bar hell, or else suffer using a low-end laptop that isn't capable of the demanding workflows your job requires along with the fact that you're a power user who needs real function keys and (gasp!) a physical escape key to work efficiently on the go, like me. These companies really seem to be resting on their laurels and toying with customers now, to see how annoying they can be. And what's worse is, we've grown to rely on their products because they happen to build our operating systems and hardware in many cases. Bigger changes to these can have devastating effects and these companies don't seem to understand the responsibility they have to move towards creating a positive, exciting experience for customers while leaving alone the things that work really well. All rather than sowing doubt with a lot of side decisions that make people unhappy ultimately. Death by a thousand cuts, it really starts to erode confidence in any of them, no matter what they release that should be exciting.

wildrhythms 3y ago

My outlook is: if you work in big tech today, whatever you're working on, in its final culmination, is just a means to clutter the internet with ads.

d1m 3y ago

>I don't feel like all tech is "evil" these days, but I do feel that the world would be better off if all the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) just completely stopped building any new tech. Obviously that's not realistic, but it highlights my feeling that I'm not looking forward to any new tech from these companies, because more tech is going to invariably lead to more isolation, more "doom scrolling", more assaults on our attention. I feel like most big tech companies have just become the equivalent of drug dealers, just trying to hijack our brain's evolutionary attention mechanisms to addict us. "Attention is all you need" is right... "Attention is all you need" among above paragraph really hits hard and it's true. I think I feel the same way like all big tech companies should just be stopped from bringing new tech. Indeed, I have just started hating tech now a days. We are just getting more apart and away from everyone day by day with new emerging technology. It is really pathetic to know that tech is influencing new generation totally in negative direction to what we supposed where they should be leading to. I think even the Parents now a days should parent their child more like it used to in olden days rather than showing them children's rhyme on phone or tablet. I have stopped surfing social media, they try to isolate me from the truth and what's actually happening and rather feed content which is biased according to my activities and what I like. This really frightens me.

kitd 3y ago

I do feel that the world would be better off if all the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) just completely stopped building any new tech. I'd restrict that to social media. That and "competitive" journalism are turning society to trash IMHO.

gn4d 3y ago

I am far younger than you, but ditto on all counts. The pandemic crushed everything that I studied and worked for. And it taught me as someone in my early 20s that even though I spent my entire life with my nose to the grindstone, everything could be instantly stripped away by world governments, and friends and coworkers and family members could also suddenly turn on each other like rabid dogs. Honestly, at least be grateful that you had some good years of excitement, it seems. I was young during the 2008 crash, but it affected my family. And now I have no motivation for anything. My peers are similar. Why build something only to have it crushed? A lot of us are just living in the moment. We also saw people with lifelong careers and families of their own have their lives destroyed by various governments in the USA and abroad.

reureu 3y ago
> everything could be instantly stripped away by world governments Your comment suggests that the driver of your (and your peers) anhedonia is some lingering threat of some future lockdown by governments? Is that what you're saying? And, is that actually the case or is it just the easiest cause to put your finger on? I understand that period was really rough for so many reasons. But a lot of the angst I see among friends/family/coworkers today isn't from the lockdowns per se, but it's more from having to slow down and consider some heavy, almost-existential questions surrounding their relationships, life, fulfillment, social supports, and purpose. And, at least for me, struggling with how many of the things I thought I knew about myself turned out to not really be true. Lockdowns may have forced me to see and acknowledge these issues, but they were always there.
- gn4d 3y ago
  It's not angst, it's real. Though I'm young, my work is international. I was separated from my girlfriend, apartment, coworkers, and entire livelihood in a different nation, at a position one could say I spent much of my life up to that point studying and working toward. My colleagues were separated from their families and children. Some lost their homes because they were let go from their jobs as a result. Some older friends of mine divorced because of this. Some lost their businesses that they spent their lives building. One of them committed suicide. This was a guy in his late 50s with two children and a wife, who had been forcibly separated from each other on opposite sides of the world for over a year. Short of wars, there has never been such a brutal and absolute upheaval of population movements for civilian populations. There are a lot of people my age who went through this type of experience, and that is one reason why I think the original poster sees more people with less joie de vivre. I am also saying it is lucky for people who just had lockdowns at home or had their lives confined to one locale or even country, or who at least had some years of "living" their lives before this happened. What I mean by that is people who at least had their 20s and maybe even 30s to build a career, life, and family, on top of their years of studying and schooling. But for those of us just getting our careers started, and for people who had international careers and lives split between countries, there were several years of nightmares along with the knowledge now that, at any moment, all this could instantly happen again. Sure, anyone could get hit by a bus tomorrow. But it was people and governments turning on one another like wolves that was a sharp mask-off moment, especially for those of us in our formative years. That is a different type of crushing, and utterly stultifying, effect. Because it is not a random accident, but rather a cold and calculating opposition by others. All I know is that I spent my life sacrificing short-term rewards as I worked toward long-term payoffs, and as soon as I started to see results, everything went up in flames. Everything. If motivation is squelched for major life projects and milestones, I think it is clear how motivation is also squelched for personal projects or side projects. If you're older, and if your life wasn't split or shattered across the globe, be thankful is all I can say. But for me and others in my age bracket and positions, there was this natural, sharp turn toward instant gratification, which I wholly support and understand. This is of course anecdotal, and I am not implying that it is a universal sentiment, but just offering an example to answer the original question/statement of people "working on nothing". It is because we have nothing to "work toward".