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This dropped off the front page in the time I read it, I assume because of the controversial gate that favors upvotes to comments (which I am making worse by re

This dropped off the front page in the time I read it, I assume because of the controversial gate that favors upvotes to comments (which I am making worse by replying to others). It is a shame, because this really resonated with me. I've been working in tech for over 20 years now in various roles, and this is the least I have cared about it. I used to want to get better, and was constantly excited about learning new things just for the sake of it. Now I daydream about being homeless. I look around at all the meaningless crap I have accumulated, and feel shame that I didn't use that money to retire early. I am surprised that remote work didn't get a bigger mention in the article. In a few weeks I will have been working from home for 12 years, and I believe it is the cause of most of most of my angst. At first, the convivence was such a relief, but it has become a trap. The effort of the commute, forcing me to go out every day and talk to human beings face to face, even just little things like making sure I was showered and dressed every day, they all felt like a burden at the time but they were good for me and I didn't realize it. Not to mention that it makes my house feel like work, and I now I hate it here. I will say as an anecdote counter to the AI examples given in the article. I have a young co-worker who is very excited about AI and is using it way more effectively than I am. Talking to him gives me hope for the future, the kids will be alright. But to the point of the article: I have many friends my age that are making less than half of what I do working objectively harder jobs for way longer hours, but they all seem so much happier than I am.

DeluluDon 2mo ago
I used to daydream about homelessness until I did it for 6 years. You're surrounded by threats and your limbic system is in overdrive, deindividuation kicks in and takes a year of being rehoused before you're back to being the same person. Those daydreams generally stop after taking a hike or twenty over the weekends.
- gboss 2mo ago
  I'm really impressed you got out of that! Thanks for sharing, the best thing to help homeless people must be prevent them from being homeless in the first place.
  - Loughla 2mo ago
    I was homeless for a year. My experience is that the best way to help homeless people is in giving them housing while mandating extensive drug/alcohol counseling and/or extremely invasive mental health treatments. There are some people who have just fallen on bad times (I was that), but a WIDE majority of the people I was around that year needed extreme help. When I say extreme, I mean borderline removing their agency to make decisions for themselves. It's not popular, but the reality is that many don't want help ----- but only because they don't understand they're making terrible decisions due to chemical imbalances or chemical dependencies. It's never popular, but it's the truth. It's also super, super hard because these people are already at risk of being taken advantage of, and I'm literally talking about letting someone else take control of their lives. It would require an insane amount of oversight, audits, and checks and balances. I don't know of anywhere equipped for this
    - DeluluDon 2mo ago
      [dead]
- dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
  This is more than a fair response, and I apologize for using the term, because I really daydream about going on an extended backpacking trip with money in the bank, or living in a van and traveling around. Which is significantly different than the normal definition of homelessness.
  - wnolens 2mo ago
    I did what you dream of. It's fun for 3-6 months. But it's only fun - not an existential cure. That could only be found in friends/loved ones.
cheschire 2mo ago
I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to. Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this thing that made their lives worth living or whatever. When it first happened I thought it was a weird interpersonal conflict situation. Maybe I had broached it wrong. But it kept happening! So many people were so upset when megacorp said they had to return or find other employment. But I’m an extrovert and working from home was suffocating.
- ajkjk 2mo ago
  Same. HN comments would (maybe still do) accuse you of astroturfing if you said you preferred an office. Not that much stock should be put in strangers accusing you, but, it was telling how ignorant it was.
  - mh- 2mo ago
    I believe "LLMs are useful"* is the current zeitgeist's version of "Working from the office has upsides", in terms of attracting astroturfing accusations over expressing an opinion held by many. * simplifying, of course.
    - titanomachy 2mo ago
      [flagged]
    - ajkjk 2mo ago
      I agree, somewhat, but that is a much more evidence-backed stance---they're obviously useful in a sense; the debate is over what worldview / posture one ought to adopt as a result of that. Whereas the RTO stuff was a debate between an entirely emotionally-motivated argument, "I don't want to work in an office therefore I must deny that anyone wants to in order to prevent the idea from getting airtime", versus the obvious reality that there are a range of stances on the subject.
throwaway_7274 2mo ago
It’s funny, people are so different! I’d always taken it as an axiomatic Truth of the world that money doesn’t buy happiness. When I finally caved and took a high-paying job, I was shocked (shocked I tell you!) to find that it made my life a lot easier. So much breathing room :) This isn’t a disagreement or a hook into some discourse or anything. I don’t have a point. Just thoughts
- elmer2 2mo ago
  "that money doesn’t buy happines" I think people get this meaning wrong all the time. The love of money doesn't buy happiness. Having money can definitely make your life easier, and you can spend it on things that make you happy.
  - throwaway_7274 2mo ago
    Yeah absolutely. And obviously I’m overplaying my naïveté and idealism for effect here, a little bit, but I was still surprised how much it really did improve my quality of life. I don’t even buy a lot of things, really, I still don’t own a car and hope I never will. But now I just don’t feel quite so wracked with guilt over getting a haircut or getting the organic raspberries or whatever. There are so many little waste-of-time tasks that I don’t have to waste as much time on. I dunno. It’s funny. “Selling out” is real easy. It makes everything real easy. I do wonder if this is the first step down the path to “I am a prisoner to my Stuff. Where did my life go” Just thinkin out loud into the internet
    - don_esteban 2mo ago
      There are two thresholds. Below the lower threshold, you have to worry too much about money to just get by. Unfortunately, too many people live below this threshold. Even in rich countries. Below this level, it is difficult to be truly happy, as your life is filled too much with money worry. Above the upper threshold, all you basic and not so basic needs are covered and more money does not buy you much in terms of happiness. Of course, these thresholds are very individual. The lower your thresholds are, the freer you are. Both marketing and general enshittification from late stage capitalism are trying to push both of these thresholds up. On the other hand, the society should strive to get most/almost all people above the lower threshold. Both by pushing the expenses of basic needs down (education/health care/public transport), and by creating environment for easier earning (good economic environment for entrepreneurship, antitrust regulation, minimal wages, unions, social assistance). Well, at least most countries see it that way. US has a slightly different take ...
lazyasciiart 2mo ago
> Now I daydream about being homeless. Literally the world’s easiest ambition to achieve.
THX1137 2mo ago
> forcing me to go out every day and talk to human beings face to face, even just little things like making sure I was showered and dressed every day This part is strange to me. I've worked from home for about 10 years and I've never once had an issue with twice-daily showering, meeting people face-to-face, going out for coffee, going outdoors, going to the gym, etc. The fact I can just go sit in a park, on a hiking trail, or whatever and work there is a genuine "killer app" for me. I'm surprised at people who tell me that they are isolated by home work when there are so many opportunities for social and natural connection everywhere...
- hollowturtle 2mo ago
  I mean in which lucky place of the planet you live in? I dunno u but where I live it's 40 degree celsius out there and all over europe. I'm a remote worker and most time of the year going outside is just not possibile, over heat or too cold or raining like it never did before(climate change you know)
  - THX1137 2mo ago
    In Canada - and it does get cold here, and hot here. You can't work outside every single day, but you also do not have to stay at home or indoors every single day. I lean toward being outdoors for as much as possible of the year. There's no perfection about it. There is a lot of research that spending time in nature, even if the nature is not ideal (bare trees, winter, bad weather, too hot), has measurable impacts on human cognition, memory, and similar mental benefits. It's not even correlated with mood improvements: even if you return indoors more miserable than you left due to the weather, you still measurably mentally benefit from spending time in nature. Find some shade and don't stress it Europal! (I hate climate change too.)
  - dom96 2mo ago
    Not the person you're replying to, but this is genuinely the killer feature of the UK. Yes, we get heat waves and more of them now, but it's much better than mainland Europe. Especially if you stay away from London (which I would recommend).
dalyons 2mo ago
i dont really understand, if you hate working from home now (and it sounds like you have for a long time) why dont you switch to an in person role? there are certainly plenty of those.
- dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
  Because I have got very used to using my own toilet whenever I need to.
  - dalyons 2mo ago
    Ok so this isn’t really a serious conversation?
pzo 2mo ago
I worked around similar problem just working from coworking space and/or traveling. For cowork you don’t often have to commute as much (more options around), can arrive late, don’t have to dress to nice. For some you can still change your homebase at least for few months temporarily. But you can still have physical coworkers (even if you don’t work with them), have chitchat not relate to work, go to lunch together. You can also have routine and separate your professional life from personal one.
- dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
  The company I work for has an amazing office with free food and beer that is a 30 minute commute in heavy traffic. The allure of sleeping in keeps me home.
iamflimflam1 2mo ago
I've now been in tech for 30+ years in various roles up to quite senior levels. It is hard to keep caring about something where you see repeated patterns of behaviour and failure. Getting closer to retirement has been a very interesting experience. Turning 50 was very stressful for me. A deep feeling of - I've only got so many rolls of the dice left. Am I in a secure position financially? I've mostly been involved in startups and small companies and wondered if I'd made terrible mistakes in my career. Why wasn't I set for life when so many others had "made it"? Not everyone is going to get lucky and retire early - it's not a given that this will happen. I have friends who have run successful startups and are now free to do whatever they want. And I had opportunities to join them at the beginning - I would also now be very wealthy. Equally, I have other friends just like me who have also run and joined startups and completely failed. I absolutely love the flexibility working from home gives me - but I have a strong group of people around me to meet for coffee and live in a central location in a good city so I'm not isolated at all. But I can really relate to people who don't have that and don't have support around them. AI is unlocking all sorts of exciting things - there are projects that I've long had on the back burner that are now unlocked. It is going to radically reshape our industry. This reshaping is tough. What made me good at my job may not necessarily be useful. Deep focussed work delivering highly technical work - maybe that's not needed now. I'm not sure I want to work until I'm very old. I've got my financial plan that puts me on a trajectory of being able to retire in a couple of years compfortably. It's worth modelling this. Knowing your position is a real help. Just being able to look at something and say "I'm going to be ok - I can stop in X years if needed". Or even - "I can stop now and it wouldn't be a disaster". And if the modelling says - you need X more years - at least you know.
mancerayder 2mo ago
I and my cohorts are forced back in the office four days a week. It's a miserable grind. Routine includes alarm, after a poor night of sleep, getting ready, commuting in, loud, bright offices where while you enjoy the convivial nature of joking and commiserating with colleagues, it's so distracting and noisy and visually distracting that you can't be productive technically. Next you go home at 6, 630, sleepy, go to the gym or do your shopping, home, sleep, rinse repeat. Suddenly six months has gone by. Then a year. I cannot sympathize with the work from home complainers. You folks are like people who came across a lot of money, retired early and are depressed due to boredom. If WFH is misery, is it possible it's the town you live in that's causing the misery?
- dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
  I remember feeling exactly the same way. When I got offered a work from home job in august of 2014 it felt like a magic portal into a dream life I always wanted, and it was for the first 6 years. Maybe it is my town, maybe it's me. But I just don't think it's healthy to wake up, walk down the stairs and sit in front of a computer for 8-15 hours every day, rinse and repeat. Maybe things would be different if I had the discipline to consistently shower, cook, exercise, go outside, spend time with friends, pursue my hobbies, and maintain my household.
  - nlarew 2mo ago
    > I just don't think it's healthy to wake up, walk down the stairs and sit in front of a computer for 8-15 hours every day, rinse and repeat Yes obviously?!? Nothing about work from home makes you sit on your ass all day. You're projecting your lack of discipline about the things that make life worthwhile (feeling good physically, bettering yourself mentally, enjoying the world around you, and sharing it with others) onto a working model.
    - dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
      Yes.
  - 2mo ago
rubicon33 2mo ago
I'm right there with you. Been in tech for close to 20 years, mostly in SWE roles but last few years of been hybrid SWE/Management. Check my bookcase and you'll find ~60 thick books all about programming languages and frameworks. I've learned something like 9 languages at a professional level, and I've worked up and down the stack all the way from bare metal firmware, to mobile, to web, and server. AI has gutted my passion for software development. It seems people in this industy can be loosely bucketed as follows: * Went into software because you love writing code to solve problems, where the actual design and writing of said code is as important as the outcome. * Went into software purely for the outcome, love building things, don't care how it gets built. At the end of the day I'm a craftsman. I became passionate ~20 years ago about the design and architecture of software, and it fueled a beautiful career. Now, what? I've spent the last year just throwing prompts at claude and seeing how well it does. Despite having built more in the last year than would have ever been possible before, I feel empty. The outcomes work, they work well, but I didn't write the code. I explained some high level directives to claude, maybe jumped in here or there with a technical angle to fix something when claude got stock... but by and large... the skills I've built over the last 20 years don't really apply anymore. Yea, I'm not honestly not sure what is going to happen. Your comment about dreaming to be homeless really resonated with me. I either need to find a joy in this AI coding, or I don't know what will happen with me. My Mom once said something to me as a kid that resonated deeply, even then. Human beings' most valuable skill is adaptation. If you cannot adapt, you will die. As long as I can enjoy this fight, this life, this grind, this mystery... then I will make it my priority to adapt and to reframe my thoughts such that joy is possible again. It doesn't have to be the end if I don't want it to be. The world will always change, it's on me to change with it.
Schlagbohrer 2mo ago
You should absolutely sell / give away your possessions and travel the world with just a traveler's backpack and a medium suitcase. It is fun as heck. Bring a laptop with some hobby projects to do on "down days" or "recovery days" when you just chill in your hotel or hotel's neighborhood. Bring a couple good paperback books or an e-reader. A little bit of money can last a long time when you are in cheap parts of the world. You will eventually get tired of it, homesick, want to settle down somewhere, but it is a tremendously good brain refresher.
johnnyanmac 2mo ago
> Talking to him gives me hope for the future, the kids will be alright. Not if current leadership has any say in it (and they do). I'm never really one who thinks "this generation is screwed" in the same way people go "kids these days". But I still use such sentiment. Because the generations before us did the exact opposite of leaving a seed for a tree they will never sit under. They are in fact trying to burn the forest down and kids will inherit the fire. The kids will adjust, once the adults strop strangling them. Which at this point will probably need nature to work its course.

DeluluDon 2mo ago

I used to daydream about homelessness until I did it for 6 years. You're surrounded by threats and your limbic system is in overdrive, deindividuation kicks in and takes a year of being rehoused before you're back to being the same person. Those daydreams generally stop after taking a hike or twenty over the weekends.

gboss 2mo ago
I'm really impressed you got out of that! Thanks for sharing, the best thing to help homeless people must be prevent them from being homeless in the first place.
- Loughla 2mo ago
  I was homeless for a year. My experience is that the best way to help homeless people is in giving them housing while mandating extensive drug/alcohol counseling and/or extremely invasive mental health treatments. There are some people who have just fallen on bad times (I was that), but a WIDE majority of the people I was around that year needed extreme help. When I say extreme, I mean borderline removing their agency to make decisions for themselves. It's not popular, but the reality is that many don't want help ----- but only because they don't understand they're making terrible decisions due to chemical imbalances or chemical dependencies. It's never popular, but it's the truth. It's also super, super hard because these people are already at risk of being taken advantage of, and I'm literally talking about letting someone else take control of their lives. It would require an insane amount of oversight, audits, and checks and balances. I don't know of anywhere equipped for this
  - DeluluDon 2mo ago
    [dead]
dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
This is more than a fair response, and I apologize for using the term, because I really daydream about going on an extended backpacking trip with money in the bank, or living in a van and traveling around. Which is significantly different than the normal definition of homelessness.
- wnolens 2mo ago
  I did what you dream of. It's fun for 3-6 months. But it's only fun - not an existential cure. That could only be found in friends/loved ones.

cheschire 2mo ago

I did the remote thing before Covid and rejected it for many of the same reasons. Then Covid happened and so many people got to experience it and loved it. But I still hated it while I was forced to. Every time I told anyone that I personally didn’t like working from home, and was excited about the return to office that would inevitably come, I got SHOUTED at. Absolutely flayed for not being 110% in support of this thing that made their lives worth living or whatever. When it first happened I thought it was a weird interpersonal conflict situation. Maybe I had broached it wrong. But it kept happening! So many people were so upset when megacorp said they had to return or find other employment. But I’m an extrovert and working from home was suffocating.

ajkjk 2mo ago
Same. HN comments would (maybe still do) accuse you of astroturfing if you said you preferred an office. Not that much stock should be put in strangers accusing you, but, it was telling how ignorant it was.
- mh- 2mo ago
  I believe "LLMs are useful"* is the current zeitgeist's version of "Working from the office has upsides", in terms of attracting astroturfing accusations over expressing an opinion held by many. * simplifying, of course.
  - titanomachy 2mo ago
    [flagged]
  - ajkjk 2mo ago
    I agree, somewhat, but that is a much more evidence-backed stance---they're obviously useful in a sense; the debate is over what worldview / posture one ought to adopt as a result of that. Whereas the RTO stuff was a debate between an entirely emotionally-motivated argument, "I don't want to work in an office therefore I must deny that anyone wants to in order to prevent the idea from getting airtime", versus the obvious reality that there are a range of stances on the subject.

throwaway_7274 2mo ago

It’s funny, people are so different! I’d always taken it as an axiomatic Truth of the world that money doesn’t buy happiness. When I finally caved and took a high-paying job, I was shocked (shocked I tell you!) to find that it made my life a lot easier. So much breathing room :) This isn’t a disagreement or a hook into some discourse or anything. I don’t have a point. Just thoughts

elmer2 2mo ago
"that money doesn’t buy happines" I think people get this meaning wrong all the time. The love of money doesn't buy happiness. Having money can definitely make your life easier, and you can spend it on things that make you happy.
- throwaway_7274 2mo ago
  Yeah absolutely. And obviously I’m overplaying my naïveté and idealism for effect here, a little bit, but I was still surprised how much it really did improve my quality of life. I don’t even buy a lot of things, really, I still don’t own a car and hope I never will. But now I just don’t feel quite so wracked with guilt over getting a haircut or getting the organic raspberries or whatever. There are so many little waste-of-time tasks that I don’t have to waste as much time on. I dunno. It’s funny. “Selling out” is real easy. It makes everything real easy. I do wonder if this is the first step down the path to “I am a prisoner to my Stuff. Where did my life go” Just thinkin out loud into the internet
  - don_esteban 2mo ago
    There are two thresholds. Below the lower threshold, you have to worry too much about money to just get by. Unfortunately, too many people live below this threshold. Even in rich countries. Below this level, it is difficult to be truly happy, as your life is filled too much with money worry. Above the upper threshold, all you basic and not so basic needs are covered and more money does not buy you much in terms of happiness. Of course, these thresholds are very individual. The lower your thresholds are, the freer you are. Both marketing and general enshittification from late stage capitalism are trying to push both of these thresholds up. On the other hand, the society should strive to get most/almost all people above the lower threshold. Both by pushing the expenses of basic needs down (education/health care/public transport), and by creating environment for easier earning (good economic environment for entrepreneurship, antitrust regulation, minimal wages, unions, social assistance). Well, at least most countries see it that way. US has a slightly different take ...

lazyasciiart 2mo ago

> Now I daydream about being homeless. Literally the world’s easiest ambition to achieve.

THX1137 2mo ago

> forcing me to go out every day and talk to human beings face to face, even just little things like making sure I was showered and dressed every day This part is strange to me. I've worked from home for about 10 years and I've never once had an issue with twice-daily showering, meeting people face-to-face, going out for coffee, going outdoors, going to the gym, etc. The fact I can just go sit in a park, on a hiking trail, or whatever and work there is a genuine "killer app" for me. I'm surprised at people who tell me that they are isolated by home work when there are so many opportunities for social and natural connection everywhere...

hollowturtle 2mo ago
I mean in which lucky place of the planet you live in? I dunno u but where I live it's 40 degree celsius out there and all over europe. I'm a remote worker and most time of the year going outside is just not possibile, over heat or too cold or raining like it never did before(climate change you know)
- THX1137 2mo ago
  In Canada - and it does get cold here, and hot here. You can't work outside every single day, but you also do not have to stay at home or indoors every single day. I lean toward being outdoors for as much as possible of the year. There's no perfection about it. There is a lot of research that spending time in nature, even if the nature is not ideal (bare trees, winter, bad weather, too hot), has measurable impacts on human cognition, memory, and similar mental benefits. It's not even correlated with mood improvements: even if you return indoors more miserable than you left due to the weather, you still measurably mentally benefit from spending time in nature. Find some shade and don't stress it Europal! (I hate climate change too.)
- dom96 2mo ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but this is genuinely the killer feature of the UK. Yes, we get heat waves and more of them now, but it's much better than mainland Europe. Especially if you stay away from London (which I would recommend).

dalyons 2mo ago

i dont really understand, if you hate working from home now (and it sounds like you have for a long time) why dont you switch to an in person role? there are certainly plenty of those.

dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
Because I have got very used to using my own toilet whenever I need to.
- dalyons 2mo ago
  Ok so this isn’t really a serious conversation?

pzo 2mo ago

I worked around similar problem just working from coworking space and/or traveling. For cowork you don’t often have to commute as much (more options around), can arrive late, don’t have to dress to nice. For some you can still change your homebase at least for few months temporarily. But you can still have physical coworkers (even if you don’t work with them), have chitchat not relate to work, go to lunch together. You can also have routine and separate your professional life from personal one.

dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
The company I work for has an amazing office with free food and beer that is a 30 minute commute in heavy traffic. The allure of sleeping in keeps me home.

iamflimflam1 2mo ago

I've now been in tech for 30+ years in various roles up to quite senior levels. It is hard to keep caring about something where you see repeated patterns of behaviour and failure. Getting closer to retirement has been a very interesting experience. Turning 50 was very stressful for me. A deep feeling of - I've only got so many rolls of the dice left. Am I in a secure position financially? I've mostly been involved in startups and small companies and wondered if I'd made terrible mistakes in my career. Why wasn't I set for life when so many others had "made it"? Not everyone is going to get lucky and retire early - it's not a given that this will happen. I have friends who have run successful startups and are now free to do whatever they want. And I had opportunities to join them at the beginning - I would also now be very wealthy. Equally, I have other friends just like me who have also run and joined startups and completely failed. I absolutely love the flexibility working from home gives me - but I have a strong group of people around me to meet for coffee and live in a central location in a good city so I'm not isolated at all. But I can really relate to people who don't have that and don't have support around them. AI is unlocking all sorts of exciting things - there are projects that I've long had on the back burner that are now unlocked. It is going to radically reshape our industry. This reshaping is tough. What made me good at my job may not necessarily be useful. Deep focussed work delivering highly technical work - maybe that's not needed now. I'm not sure I want to work until I'm very old. I've got my financial plan that puts me on a trajectory of being able to retire in a couple of years compfortably. It's worth modelling this. Knowing your position is a real help. Just being able to look at something and say "I'm going to be ok - I can stop in X years if needed". Or even - "I can stop now and it wouldn't be a disaster". And if the modelling says - you need X more years - at least you know.

mancerayder 2mo ago

I and my cohorts are forced back in the office four days a week. It's a miserable grind. Routine includes alarm, after a poor night of sleep, getting ready, commuting in, loud, bright offices where while you enjoy the convivial nature of joking and commiserating with colleagues, it's so distracting and noisy and visually distracting that you can't be productive technically. Next you go home at 6, 630, sleepy, go to the gym or do your shopping, home, sleep, rinse repeat. Suddenly six months has gone by. Then a year. I cannot sympathize with the work from home complainers. You folks are like people who came across a lot of money, retired early and are depressed due to boredom. If WFH is misery, is it possible it's the town you live in that's causing the misery?

dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
I remember feeling exactly the same way. When I got offered a work from home job in august of 2014 it felt like a magic portal into a dream life I always wanted, and it was for the first 6 years. Maybe it is my town, maybe it's me. But I just don't think it's healthy to wake up, walk down the stairs and sit in front of a computer for 8-15 hours every day, rinse and repeat. Maybe things would be different if I had the discipline to consistently shower, cook, exercise, go outside, spend time with friends, pursue my hobbies, and maintain my household.
- nlarew 2mo ago
  > I just don't think it's healthy to wake up, walk down the stairs and sit in front of a computer for 8-15 hours every day, rinse and repeat Yes obviously?!? Nothing about work from home makes you sit on your ass all day. You're projecting your lack of discipline about the things that make life worthwhile (feeling good physically, bettering yourself mentally, enjoying the world around you, and sharing it with others) onto a working model.
  - dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
    Yes.
- 2mo ago

rubicon33 2mo ago

I'm right there with you. Been in tech for close to 20 years, mostly in SWE roles but last few years of been hybrid SWE/Management. Check my bookcase and you'll find ~60 thick books all about programming languages and frameworks. I've learned something like 9 languages at a professional level, and I've worked up and down the stack all the way from bare metal firmware, to mobile, to web, and server. AI has gutted my passion for software development. It seems people in this industy can be loosely bucketed as follows: * Went into software because you love writing code to solve problems, where the actual design and writing of said code is as important as the outcome. * Went into software purely for the outcome, love building things, don't care how it gets built. At the end of the day I'm a craftsman. I became passionate ~20 years ago about the design and architecture of software, and it fueled a beautiful career. Now, what? I've spent the last year just throwing prompts at claude and seeing how well it does. Despite having built more in the last year than would have ever been possible before, I feel empty. The outcomes work, they work well, but I didn't write the code. I explained some high level directives to claude, maybe jumped in here or there with a technical angle to fix something when claude got stock... but by and large... the skills I've built over the last 20 years don't really apply anymore. Yea, I'm not honestly not sure what is going to happen. Your comment about dreaming to be homeless really resonated with me. I either need to find a joy in this AI coding, or I don't know what will happen with me. My Mom once said something to me as a kid that resonated deeply, even then. Human beings' most valuable skill is adaptation. If you cannot adapt, you will die. As long as I can enjoy this fight, this life, this grind, this mystery... then I will make it my priority to adapt and to reframe my thoughts such that joy is possible again. It doesn't have to be the end if I don't want it to be. The world will always change, it's on me to change with it.

Schlagbohrer 2mo ago

You should absolutely sell / give away your possessions and travel the world with just a traveler's backpack and a medium suitcase. It is fun as heck. Bring a laptop with some hobby projects to do on "down days" or "recovery days" when you just chill in your hotel or hotel's neighborhood. Bring a couple good paperback books or an e-reader. A little bit of money can last a long time when you are in cheap parts of the world. You will eventually get tired of it, homesick, want to settle down somewhere, but it is a tremendously good brain refresher.

johnnyanmac 2mo ago

> Talking to him gives me hope for the future, the kids will be alright. Not if current leadership has any say in it (and they do). I'm never really one who thinks "this generation is screwed" in the same way people go "kids these days". But I still use such sentiment. Because the generations before us did the exact opposite of leaving a seed for a tree they will never sit under. They are in fact trying to burn the forest down and kids will inherit the fire. The kids will adjust, once the adults strop strangling them. Which at this point will probably need nature to work its course.