Hacker News Reader

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.

> doing “janitorial” work is rewarding in that it is, um, real work.

> ... 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.

Precisely. I feel the same way. I wrote tonnes of Terraform code years ago at XYZ/ABC Ltd and I often think, "Who knows what that code is doing now. Who cares? Does anyone care?"

I have a few answers for you:

1. Go part-time in the tech field (contract or consult for a few hours per week) and reduce your involvement whilst capitalising on the high income

2. Produce (digital) goods that are closer to the consumer: videos, books, etc. on anything that takes your interest

3. Use your free time to do something like cleaning up your local community of trash

For (2), what I'm doing is getting back into making YouTube videos. Even then, I've fallen into a trap for weeks now. A trap of thinking: "What should the format look like? What amount of work should go into it?" And so on. In the end, I decided to turn on the web cam, record, throw the footage in Canva and do some basic editing and overlays, and publish. Quick, simple and, to get back to your point (or rather to attempt to counter it): I'll have produced something that I can see, through stats, is being observed and having a positive impact on people. That's hopefully going to help too.

For (3), go into your local community, even just your street, or a neighbouring street, and clean it. Take a thick bin bag, a pair of pinchers for picking up trash, and clean up. Do that once or twice a week, and the impact will be massive for you and everyone around you. You'll feel better for it because it's physical and "real".

It's a tough position the OP is in, but I'm getting there my self as well. I can feel it.

Re: the YouTube thing, that’s an interesting point of comparison too. I can well imagine a younger version of myself looking at all “content production” stuff as quite silly and ephemeral, and of course much of it is.

The irony though is that lots of things more or less in this category still have a longer shelf life than software (or effort you put into technology related stuff in general). A 5 minute journal entry about that day still may serve some purpose even years later, but 5 hours/weeks/years spent on an obsolete platform or now irrelevant problem? Probably not. Even setting aside companies and professional work, bitrot gets really frustrating eventually after you realize that practically everything requires so much care and feeding. I don’t customize things like phones, browsers, or IDEs anymore because I fully expect most of the effort is pointless treadmill where most problems actively resist even semipermanent solutions.

Awareness of this kind of stuff helps some, which is why you see enlightened devs being pretty ruthless about pruning dependencies. Some tech ecosystems are obviously better than others too, but once you see the treadmill you never really unsee it

I have hundreds of videos on YouTube, and even the old tech tutorial ones around Terraform and Ansible, which are super dated now, get comments thanking me for my time. It's interesting to see videos from 5+ years ago getting positive engagement and making a difference to someone.

> 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

Actual janitors have their work undone by the time their next shift begins. I don't get the tech nihilism[1]; making software is "real work" - maybe you're too far removed from your actual users to experience their appreciation, or perhaps you hate your users - not judging, I've worked in the enterprise space too. One doesn't need to leave software to make a difference, but if its tech that's burning you out, more power to you.

Expecting permanence is a fools errand, and likely born of hubris. A truly janitorial mindset is knowing your work makes things temporarily a little better, but entropy always wins if not for people like you.

1. I suspect people complaining about "bullshit jobs" have limited imagination, experience, or both.

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.

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.

Going anywhere the evil isn't involved is hard. I'd say that the human nature has the capacity for evil, as much as it has the capacity for good. Anywhere you go with the intent to do good, you have prospects of seeing evil, because you're going to work with humans, and especially their social structures.

Maybe one can get into e.g. pure mathematics. Proving a conjecture usually does not have a direct societal impact, so it's can't be evil. By the same token, it doesn't do anything obviously good.

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.

> ... 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.