Ask HN: Are there any fulfilling careers in tech anymore?
Everything seems dull and pointless. Is it just me?
Nope, I remember seeing a comment a while back and I had to save because it resonated with me so much: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32713325
I’m sure there’s something, somewhere out there, I could find fulfilling and reignite my giving a shit, but it’s far out of my reach. Of course, the problem is there’s realistically no where else to go. I even lost interest in tech and computers as a hobby, I’m not sure why, but that ended probably a few years ago when I decided to abandon my last project.
Most tech jobs today are highly commercial and not about making life better. Even if you manage to find something that is somewhat relevant to the real world, like green energy research, chances are it might be something highly technical, abstract, and difficult to relate back to the final product.
For everything else, you'll likely just work on the arms race to the bottom -- whether it be an arms race to fight for attention in the narcisstic space of social media, improving database read times at Google, making some new AI to replace millions of humans, wasting people's time with more advertising, or making poor people buy more stuff they don't need.
In my opinion, if you want to have something truly fulfilling, you'll have to first ask yourself how you can actually make the world better, and then strike out on your own to do it. 95% of modern tech jobs are just a weight on society's back, dragging us down.
As someone lucky enough to have found a programming job in an organization that is dedicated to something I believe in, I can confirm this perspective. The big picture mission helps keep me motivated, but my day-to-day is pretty abstracted from that mission.
My advice to OP would be to try to diversify your sources of fulfillment. That may be unsatisfying advice - I know that there was a time in my life that I would have rejected it - but from where I stand now, it is the most reliable path to overall happiness.
I doubt this is true. Lots of amazing math has been done since the 70s. I guess your sentiment comes from the fact that what we learn in school/university is necessarily old math, as the newer stuff is just too advanced. Also, from the old stuff it's easy to pick out the important parts, making it look like it was better.
I forgot who said this (possibly Knuth?), but it rings true to me: "When I was young, I thought every step of progress takes out one more thing that could be discovered. Now I know it just opens several more new avenues."
I did feel like writing an upbeat comment about going to work for organisations where technology is a tools for solving fulfilling problems, and while I do believe that it the current best solution, I do still see the problem.
Last night I watched a video where the Altair 8800 appeared and it occurred to me that there's almost no way for a small team to do anything as impactful today. Part of the reason the retro scene is some alive might be that it's to some extend more enjoyable to work on. While it would probably have been stressful enough to be in the industry in the 70s and 80s, there was just so much more room to do interesting stuff. Today most of us are just contributing a small part to a larger project and that's just less satisfying that being involved in all aspect of a project.
After I came back to tech, I guess I have a renewed perspective or something. The big shift for me is that I'm more internally motivated than most people seem to be. The business I work for will have its ups and downs, but I'm able to be self-actualized by doing good work for good work's sake.
And I'm blessed to be in a role that, I think, is a really good fit for my skills and experience. I still have entrepreneurial fantasies from time to time, but I very, very much enjoy the work that I'm doing and am very grateful for that peace of mind.
My coworkers are able to depend upon me while I enjoy providing levity, coaching, and a fantastic work environment.
My family is provided for and my children have me nearby while I am working remotely. I am making amazing money by pushing plastic down in a particular sequence.
In the event anything is ever dull I bring a good attitude, shining disposition, and an effort to reframe the situation into favor of those who surround me.
It's not perfect, and neither am I, but I find it helps me to focus on the people.
We can make nice things, but we can't keep them that way.
Understanding the impact of your work is not always easy, but it is a necessity to feel like you are performing meaningful work.
What helps me is talking to customers and understand how our product makes their life better and what my role is in building the product.
Whether you are picking fruit, flipping burgers or building tech, you are a little cog in a system that hopefully produces a net positive to humanity.
The thing is that the first two of those were always commodity jobs. "Building tech" was a specialization that until recently was not commoditized. And there are still niches where that's not true.
This hasn't only happened in software, of course. Look at medicine. It would be gut-wrenching to have spent a lifetime gaining specialized deep knowledge in healing people only to realize it's treated more and more like complicated burger-flipping now. And under constant threat of lawsuits, unlike most burger-flippers.
If we compare today to the Industrial Revolution, this seems like a cycle - eventually the organized labour backlash occurs, some of the excess value from automation gets passed to the workers in the form of shorter hours and higher pay. The environmental harms are recognized and the externalities are regulated by the government.
Since I've been in the industry I've often thought of myself as a Luddite - someone who opposes the constant race to the bottom that technology is driving. The original Luddites were skilled artisans who protested cheap, low quality cloth woven by machines. They knew that unskilled, automated work not only produced worse goods, but it was bad for the souls of the workers. To quote Ursula LeGuin in The Dispossessed:
> A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.
For me what's had a huge negative effect on software development as a job, turning it from more of a creative endeavor to something more like micro-managed factory work, is Scrum, and to some extent the entire Agile framwork. It makes sense, since that's were those things originated.
My personal strategy is to just work for the most morally acceptable for-profit business I can find. Then I do what's necessary to keep that job, but I don't invest myself in it. I don't care about it. I just spend as little time at that job as I can and get fulfillment with all the other hours of my life that aren't spent working.
Probably, depends on what you think is "fulfilling." A career in tech is about using tech to solve problems. I don't see a lack of those. If anything, we have more than ever! You need to adopt the mindset that problems are opportunities.
Notice something here: it's not the tech that makes your job fulfilling, it's the problems you're solving.
Then you could consider joining a startup (a real one. small team, tech focused). You could also consider taking on new challenges - new lang, new role (devops/fe/be/pm/arch).
Be prepared for a salary cut.
Seems every engineer I meet these days is learning Unity and is working on a game (myself included :D ).
Don't think there's much income potential there.. but it is fun for sure!
I see the rest of the executives in the office on and off, some more than others, some very much less.
And for those that are fulfilled from technical challenges, I think you basically have to go to a larger company that is running into scale problems.
That said, we work to support the lifestyle we want, or I would argue that truly life aligned people just work enough for what they really need.
Plus, you get to know so many other ways of being a software developer; it’s refreshing.
Well have an unpaid job instead!