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I've found out even seasoned (but more often junior) devs and other folks have trouble accepting that their job is just another cog in some corporate machine wh

by jajko 2y ago

I've found out even seasoned (but more often junior) devs and other folks have trouble accepting that their job is just another cog in some corporate machine where their added value or morality of job is often sorta grey area, without clarity even on the shade of it. It can be banking, it can be ad business, or any other morally questionable endeavors, its the same story. Don't blame them per se, they don't know better and life would look suddenly pretty bleak with cold hard look in the mirror. Maybe the only clear failure IMHO is to not have something much more important defining who you are to yourself, your self-worth to say. Because then this becomes rather unimportant aspect of your existence and the need for elaborate invention of new convenient truths is much lower.

JohnMakin 2y ago
> I've found out even seasoned (but more often junior) devs and other folks have trouble accepting that their job is just another cog in some corporate machine where their added value or morality of job is often sorta grey area, without clarity even on the shade of it. This was/is very difficult for me. I am about a decade into my career and 15 years into when I first started seriously messing around with tech - in those days, ~2010, tech was seen as the future to the planet and that message very much was pitched all around silicon valley and trickled into my coursework. The massive disillusionment I felt right out of school was a really hard hit and caused a bit of depression. I wasn't changing the world, I wasn't even doing anything remotely useful for a company that also wasn't doing anything remotely useful and I think that's been the case for most of my career, outside of the occasional instances where I do consulting (which I find rewarding actually). But such is life, outside of tech as well. I take pride now in my work, not whatever I think I am contributing to society. If my work is doing something ultimately pointless or supporting something that is morally or ethically gray, I take pride in ignoring that (because I have no control over it) and doing it as best as I can and that has helped a lot. Some may judge me harshly for that, but I don't care, it is really one of the only sane ways to cope - rather than conjuring insane justifications for why things are the way they are (which suck).

by jajko 2y ago

JohnMakin 2y ago

> I've found out even seasoned (but more often junior) devs and other folks have trouble accepting that their job is just another cog in some corporate machine where their added value or morality of job is often sorta grey area, without clarity even on the shade of it. This was/is very difficult for me. I am about a decade into my career and 15 years into when I first started seriously messing around with tech - in those days, ~2010, tech was seen as the future to the planet and that message very much was pitched all around silicon valley and trickled into my coursework. The massive disillusionment I felt right out of school was a really hard hit and caused a bit of depression. I wasn't changing the world, I wasn't even doing anything remotely useful for a company that also wasn't doing anything remotely useful and I think that's been the case for most of my career, outside of the occasional instances where I do consulting (which I find rewarding actually). But such is life, outside of tech as well. I take pride now in my work, not whatever I think I am contributing to society. If my work is doing something ultimately pointless or supporting something that is morally or ethically gray, I take pride in ignoring that (because I have no control over it) and doing it as best as I can and that has helped a lot. Some may judge me harshly for that, but I don't care, it is really one of the only sane ways to cope - rather than conjuring insane justifications for why things are the way they are (which suck).