[mxuribe]

I was originally going to be a mechanical engineer...but the early time of the digital age put its (more immediacy-driven or maybe dopamine-driven?) hooks into my brain...and, so I finished my university major in the realm of computers. I can NOT complain, as i have made a great life for my family through my career...But now, as i am in my late 40s/early 50s...i wonder if maybe instead I should have had either a non-tech career or maybe only a slightly tech-adjacent (but not exactly tech hardcode) career, and then simply focused on computer stuff only as a hobby/pursuit/interest instead?

I know that i am not alone in this feeling...as i have heard others my age - and who were orignally not going to "go into tech as a career" - cite similar feelings. Maybe its burnout, or maybe i feel that too much intelligence in tech is wasted on getting silly clicks and things (as the famous saying goes about this age's greatest engineers, etc.)...or maybe a combination of many factors (not excluding age). Anyway, yeah, others have such a feeling about *working* with computers. ;-)

[at_a_remove]

I would like to hear of this saying about this age's greatest engineers. I have never heard it, but I have often thought of the tremendous amounts of brainpower wasted on the silly and ephemeral in IT.

[mxuribe]

Apologies it's not specifically engineers...it refers to "great minds", and is attributed Jeff Hammerbacher: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/747678-the-best-minds-of-my...)

[at_a_remove]

Ah. I have a similar, if longer, itch about the tech brain drain, where we have taken people who might have been scientists, or physicians, or non-computing engineers and we have them doing any number of, at the space of five years or so things which are wasteful. We have brilliant people reporting to the mediocre and attempting to appease the foolish.