[scotty79]

> entering the industry in the early to mid 2010's i found a landscape filled with self serving product managers, conmen [...]

> [...] the hacker ethos was lost. the culture changed

I'm 41 so I probably entered the IT industry a decade before you. Nothing changed. It was always like that. And I just strongly suspect it's not just IT. That's basically what 'work' and 'business' is.

Basically start having life outside of work. Work is just a source of money. Switch it every 2 years or so to whoever offers you more and chill. If you accidentally land in places that are not horrible then it's a bonus, but job shouldn't be in your top 3 (or even top 5) sources of satisfaction. Try different sized companies, try different modes of work. Just keep your salary climbing and figure out why life is worth living. And I'm not trying to push kids on you. I don't have any. You could just reach back and look at the stuff you did that made you tick. Try to rediscover and extend it. I'm sure dreams of developing groundbreaking technology in business setting wasn't the only thing that made you interested in technology.

[aka1234]

It's not just IT. I transitioned to a career in IT when I was 35. I've done a _lot_ of things in my time; everything from bouncing in a world-famous downtown district to being a cashier a gas station.

This is all good advice. Find something you're passionate about outside of work. Maybe look for tech-related 501(c)3s, educational programs, or (if you're so inclined politically) social-justice related causes. All of these could use the help of an experienced IT guy/gal.

And (IMO) there's nothing better to recharge the 'ole batteries than to see the look in someone's eyes when something just clicks. Want to find the hacker ethos and culture? Pass it along to the next generation.

[Exmoor]

Yes, the vast majority of software engineers in the 90's were working on really mundane products guided by selling units. I would argue it was significantly worse back then because it was a lot more difficult to engage with peers outside your own company and the tooling people used was significantly more likely to include a lot of proprietary niche products.

[b_t_s]

heck yea. There was no github or stack overflow, or the thousands of online forums and offline meetups we have now. Maybe it was better in silicone valley, but in the rest of he world it was pretty dreadful. My career doesn't go back to the 90s, but even in the mid oughts writing firmware, the only people I could find working on the same tech stack as me were the 4 other devs on my team, and if we had a "stack overflow question" we had to just keep banging our heads against it or ask a manager to call the vendor's sales rep to find us an engineering manager who could arrange a conference all with a dev. And there were delights like knocking on a teammate's door to ask how much longer they'd have FooBar.c locked, because you need to edit it too and version control didn't support 2 devs editing the same file. Sure, foundational projects were easier to find back then, but _lot_ of things were a _lot_ worse back in the "good old days".

[unlivingthing]

> You could just reach back and look at the stuff you did that made you tick. Try to rediscover and extend it. I'm sure dreams of developing groundbreaking technology in business setting wasn't the only thing that made you interested in technology.

This right here is some good advice. Thanks! :)