Changing Directions

My perspective as someone who’s done some of both.. regardless of working conditions, doing “janitorial” work is rewarding in that it is, um, real work.

What I mean is that it’s really easy to have a multi decade career in tech and look back, realizing that not only is none of the code you worked on still running anywhere, but none of the companies even exist. Frustrating on some level, even if you managed to avoid directly contributing to society’s problems.

Emt can be horrible on many days but saving a life lasts, well a lifetime roughly, more if the person has kids. But shit, even painting a fence is more of a “legacy” than most of the code that most people will write professionally. even more if you’re a land scaper. If someone removes the fence or the tree, there is a decent chance it was done for a better reason than resume-driven development, sketchy m+a to manipulate stock prices, etc.

Janitorial work is not necessarily intellectually stimulating though, knowledge work is not necessarily meaningful. Ideally every life would have some time and space for both, and if that were possible I think society as whole would also benefit.

I write this from the ER after my dad took an ambulance for chest pain (he is fine).

I imagined that the job of the EMTs were difficult. But I also felt the real tangible impact they had in ways that I haven’t in 25 years of being in tech.

No value judgement in profession. But boy can I relate. And so many others my age ~45 (some in tech, not all) that I talk to can as well.

I would have thought that if you are the co-creator of Django, co-owner of a consulting agency, and Treasurer of the Django Foundation, at this stage you would have enough financial flexibility to say no to doing any work you feel is evil, and invest some time into work that you think advances the cause of good.

So it doesn't make sense to me that he would leave the tech industry because of the evil in it. I agree with him completely about the evil being there, it's increasingly horrifying what the tech industry is becoming. But the net is vast and infinite. Surely he can go somewhere the evil isn't involved.

> ... the issues they bring up are oh so real, but the source of the problem lies elsewhere in my humble opinion.

I'll bell the cat - Capitalism is the source of the problem, specifically the strain championed by American companies. It's the root of surveillance tech, and why medical systems can act in ways that result in terrible medical outcomes which deteriorate to emergencies.

Please don't bother to reply whinging about communism. Capitalism may be the best system humans have adopted, but it's far from perfect.

Thanks for your perspective. It’s a very real concern I have — am I trading one kind of burnout for another?

I do think there’s a difference between approaching EMS as a first career, and coming to it later in life (I’m 43) as a second career. I’ve talked to a number of people who’ve done what I’m doing and a higher percentage of them are happy with the decision vs those who started younger.

I’m also not going in with rosy glasses. I’ve been thinking about this for at least seven years, and have had plenty of time to talk to folks at all levels of emergency healthcare, including right here where I’d be working. I think I have a pretty realistic view of what I’m signing up for.

Only time will tell, though. Maybe I’m making a terrible decision; only one way to find out.

Very well put. No need to apologize for tech as a whole, nor is there a need for boosterism.

I can relate to the OP’s disillusionment coming from the halcyon days where “computers” were simply awesome.

Software development is quite unique in that a single person can have a huge impact. If your career doesn’t let you do that, you can do it as side projects or open source. How many other professions let you do that with such low barriers to entry?

I understand why you'd feel disillusioned if you went into the surveillance capitalism part of big tech in the USA. It's probably similar to what a lot of people will feel about the AI industry when it does to the office floor what robotic automation did the factory floor a few decades ago. I'm not sure I'm quite as optimistic about tech as you are, but I completely agree with your point on how tech is more than just silicon valley.

There is the medical tech that you mention, but there is also green energy tech, farming tech and so on. All which are areas that are improving the lives on the planet for a lot of people. Of course many of these industries are kind of hard to break into if you're a "software engineer" and not really used to working with machinery, but it's not like it's impossible and it's certainly an area where your stuff will stick around. Some of the earliest software I build for solar plant data loggers will probably live a lot longer than me.

I do think people should follow what they want to do though. I completely get wanting to try something different and I don't think the authors reasons are any worse than people who burn out because of all the pseudo-management-bullshit in our industry. You don't really see anyone questioning when someone becomes a woodworker because they're fed up with associate agile scrum it business partner managers and little boxes on a board.

People burning out and blaming the world around them is pretty common. Unfortunately, that's just not how it works. As the saying goes, the only constant in all your problems is you. The wisdom behind that is less about finger pointing and more about just figuring out that the way to address what makes you feel bad usually starts with changing or at least acknowledging yourself.

The tech industry is part of our bigger society, which for better or worse is actually not completely horrible compared to essentially all of recorded human history. By most objective standards, we're better off than ever. Most of us get to live long and not worry about starving to death, being eaten by predators, freezing to death, being killed by violence, etc. Actually we're pretty well off and reach average ages unthinkable only a few generations ago. It's been relatively peaceful in most of the world for a while despite some really ugly conflicts, the occasional genocidal maniacs, terrorists, and what not. But the bottom line is that there are many places that haven't been war zones for a relatively long time now that are prospering. Even places that we still think off as relatively poor (e.g. most of Africa).

Technology has contributed to a lot of this progress. It extends our lives, provides better quality of live, wealth, etc. And it enables people to help themselves.

It's easy to forget that most of that progress has happened in an extremely short time span. Alan Turing was only born (1912) a few years before my grand mother (1914). She passed away aged 94. That was this century. Alan Turing lived and died before most of what we currently regard as the tech sector even existed. He helped invent the modern computer but he died long before computers became widespread. Donald Knuth, one of the founders of what is modern computer science still lives and publishes books.

That's an insane amount of progress in just a couple of generations. We live in amazing times. Yes, it's not all good. But honestly if you only focus on the negatives, you are missing the point. It's mostly good despite the negatives.

I get that people burn out. Many middle aged people do. And honestly, I'm not immune to that either. But that too is something that we can deal with better these days. Thanks to a lot of progress in medical and psychological world. And thanks to technology, most of that knowledge is at your finger tips.

You really think the typical patient fits the profile you describe?

Only healthy people, physically and mentally, should be granted healthcare, amirite?

And one of those drunk people may turn out to be the next RDJ, which went to become sober and take his most famous roles and now donates millions to FootPrint coalition, Make-a-wish foundation, among others, or maybe Slash from Gun's n roses which almost died from a drug abuse and is now sober and helps many folks with his S.E.R.P.E.N.T. festival; pretty sure a number of EMTs were part of their lives when they were at their lowest, so yeah, making judgments based on where someone is at at any given time is not the best for society or for any given EMT; heck, I would have loved to help Hemingway once despite being an alcoholic until his bitter end, so no, when you look at life the way you describe is almost looks like you are looking for the burn out; I'm more willing to believe in physical burnout in that profession, is well known being an EMT can make quite a number on your limbs and back.

I don’t think EMT burnout has much to do with the situations you mention, but rather whether the workers are adequately supported by their employers: given the resources to do their job, healthy shift length and scheduling, mental health care, etc. My friends who work in emergency medicine seem mostly burned out by being overworked because the hospitals are perpetually understaffed.

People are products of their environment. What purpose is served by being judgemental and separating people into deserving/non-deserving baskets?

Everybody should have a right to healthcare.

> But a lot of it is showing up to help yet another person ..

It must be an distressing burden to carry that weight of judgement, regardless of what job you do.

I’m chuckling at your advice because I tried those things! Went part-time, wrote, lots of local volunteering. (Didnt try picking up trash; that’s a good one!) Unfortunately, didn’t work for me. In fact, the more I cut back my hours and did other things, the less I wanted to be working the work hours I had left.

I still think it’s great advice, and probably something that’ll help many people! I just reached a point where I needed something more drastic, and I have the financial security to take a big swing.

I worked with someone who left tech to become a nurse, so much respect for him. Loved working with him too.

I wonder how hard to get started these kind of jobs are for an older person. Jobs that presumably require a lot of energy.

I have many relatives that died in war. Specifically WWI, WW2, and Vietnam. The direct stories I’ve been told are insane - my grandfather ran communication wires on the German front line and he experienced great trauma.

Then I read books about these wars, and other wars throughout ancient time, and they casually mention so many killed and raped. People struggling to survive. The Japanese called Guadalcanal the “Island of Death” because so many starved and the cannibalism was rampant.

I’m not suggesting we ignore our problems today or minimize them based on what was common even 50 years ago. But it is very helpful to appreciate what we have now, the luxuries, the safety, the technologies, when our ancestors lived in such abject pain and difficulty.

This feels like a cynical interpretation of Jacob's post.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for someone to want to retire with a feeling that their career was a net positive to society; and it can be very difficult to get that feeling when working in tech. So even if switching to being an EMT means his maximum individual impact is vastly reduced, it's far easier to make the claim that he's doing good.

Glad he linked articles on Facebook's culpability in the genocide of the Rohingya people as well. That should be an absolute, disqualifying reason when considering taking their money.

Very strange to see the level of criticism here aimed at someone choosing to explore other paths. You're not a shortsighted fool for trying to do something else. Especially something that's directly, meaningfully helpful to the people around you.

Sort of. But I've seen what he's seen and worse. The situation isn't solved by changing "careers" or nibbling on the periphery. It requires either changing socioeconomic conditions through effective political organizing over a long timeframe or moving to another country that values community, solidarity, and people as more than just sources of money and labor to be used as tools.