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The problem runs deeper than that even. Even if you like doing stuff that requires more effort, it's shockingly difficult to find places/people who want to inve

by fijal 12y ago

The problem runs deeper than that even. Even if you like doing stuff that requires more effort, it's shockingly difficult to find places/people who want to invest/hire you to work on such technology. You have essentially a choice between academia (which is, well, sometimes very academic) and large corpos which have their own share of problems and not everyone fits.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
hugs 12y ago
There is another option: work for a salary, live frugally, and stockpile savings. Then later (maybe 5-10 years later), work on the tech you really want to work on that has no obvious & immediate business need. The upside is that because no one invested or hired you to work on it, you own 100% of that work.
- shiven 12y ago
  Also, make sure you are (a). young (< 30yrs) (b). have little to no responsibilities (family, kids) (c). have great healthcare or health insurance and (d). lucky as a little green leprechaun! Yea, if you have met all those conditions, then that approach may work for you.
romaniv 12y ago
And even in big corps, 95% of all IT is usually plumbing and hectically applying band-aids for past issues that should not have been there in the first place. To me, the fact that IT is currently seen as rapidly progressing is laughable. It is rapidly changing, true, but for the most part we're solving old problems with new tools that work only marginally better than the old tools (because, like the article says, the underlying mentality is the same). Very often they change fast enough to keep everyone always "learning" at the expense of the users, so the marginal benefits are cancelled out. (Seriously, I know people who made the same excuse for bad quality for the last decade. "Oh, I'm just learning [over-hyped tool]. Everyone makes mistakes at first." Learning tools is a fake kind of learning. Real advances happen when your conceptual basis is improved, so you get better at doing something with whatever tool. That's real learning. ) --- Also, sometimes we're using new tools that work significantly worse than some old tools.... because at some point conceptual development branched and "our" branch is at the same level of development as another branch was in, say, 60s or 70s. Sometimes I read about old tech and it just blows my mind. "What? They've been doing this three decades ago? How come this is marketed as awesome new thing right now?"

by fijal 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

hugs 12y ago

There is another option: work for a salary, live frugally, and stockpile savings. Then later (maybe 5-10 years later), work on the tech you really want to work on that has no obvious & immediate business need. The upside is that because no one invested or hired you to work on it, you own 100% of that work.

shiven 12y ago
Also, make sure you are (a). young (< 30yrs) (b). have little to no responsibilities (family, kids) (c). have great healthcare or health insurance and (d). lucky as a little green leprechaun! Yea, if you have met all those conditions, then that approach may work for you.

romaniv 12y ago

And even in big corps, 95% of all IT is usually plumbing and hectically applying band-aids for past issues that should not have been there in the first place. To me, the fact that IT is currently seen as rapidly progressing is laughable. It is rapidly changing, true, but for the most part we're solving old problems with new tools that work only marginally better than the old tools (because, like the article says, the underlying mentality is the same). Very often they change fast enough to keep everyone always "learning" at the expense of the users, so the marginal benefits are cancelled out. (Seriously, I know people who made the same excuse for bad quality for the last decade. "Oh, I'm just learning [over-hyped tool]. Everyone makes mistakes at first." Learning tools is a fake kind of learning. Real advances happen when your conceptual basis is improved, so you get better at doing something with whatever tool. That's real learning. ) --- Also, sometimes we're using new tools that work significantly worse than some old tools.... because at some point conceptual development branched and "our" branch is at the same level of development as another branch was in, say, 60s or 70s. Sometimes I read about old tech and it just blows my mind. "What? They've been doing this three decades ago? How come this is marketed as awesome new thing right now?"