[jethro_tell]

I’m going through this right now, I used to be a carpenter and a farmer.

About 15 years ago, I went into tech to pay for kids in the city.

To some extent most of the jobs I find in tech seem to me to be societal busy work. And the people that make those jobs seem to take themselves a bit too seriously.

I’m considering moving back to trades work instead of finding another infra job.

I’ve had time to get my stuff sorted and looking at journey man level salaries I’m not making too much more in tech any more.

I’m not really sure I want to keep going in tech at this point.

[CSSer]

> To some extent most of the jobs I find in tech seem to me to be societal busy work. And the people that make those jobs seem to take themselves a bit too seriously.

I’m not sure if this is what you’re talking about, but people outside of the technical roles in this industry rarely seem to have the same curiosity and passion developers do. Is it easy to name other industries where this is true? CS is vast and young, and I’ve always found that exciting. The potential for new frontiers, even at lowly engineering applications like ours, made me want to do this work. Yet lots of managers lack even basic curiosity and sometimes make silly, bad decisions as a result. It can be hard to work alongside that.

[jethro_tell]

Not entirely, what I mean is more that a lot of companies, even ‘disrupters’, are really just figuring out how to be a middle man of something that is already happening and taking a cut.

A lot of the products genuinely kinda suck, and it just feels like busy work to me sometimes.

I don’t think most of that comes out of tech, it’s product and business picking these directions and features but it’s pretty disheartening none the less.

[thr0w]

You're spot on, but it's worse the closer you are to "scene" Valley/startup flavor companies, and much better in boring old profitable businesses. Unfortunately the former are more fun to work for (before they drive you insane).

[silverquiet]

I had a period in the early 10's where I worked with a lot of startups and it made me very cynical (though it could be said that that's more or less my default anyway); it was clear to me early on that most of them were just a retread of someone else's big idea (social network site for animators back when MySpace was fading and Facebook was booming is one that comes to mind that I actually encountered, though I tend to abbreviate this sort of thing as "Uber for dog massages" after someone's sarcastic comment I read). The goal seemed to be for founders to live the startup lifestyle by siphoning money from some VC or other. Obviously the money was a big motivater, but I also got the sense that a lot of it was a sort of status game - people wanted to be viewed as the visionary leader and be showered with attention for it, but they just didn't have real breakthroughs to bring to the table.

[jethro_tell]

One thing that I often see when I look at these companies is that we’ve reached a point where we don’t really need everyone to work 40+ per week.

But, the people with money are willing to spend a mint to make sure that the most capable are working 50-60+ and that it looks like we are at full employment.

It’s not any one person, it systemic. But it’s a whole farse where programmers are so efficient that rich people are using them to suck value out of the economy in a way that returns very little value.

On the other hand there’s systems control programming and stuff that interacts with the physical world that returns incredible value, but there really aren’t enough of those jobs for the programmers we have and they don’t rent to pay big tech salaries.

[Yoric]

> To some extent most of the jobs I find in tech seem to me to be societal busy work. And the people that make those jobs seem to take themselves a bit too seriously.

Thanks. You're putting in words something that was bothering me but didn't manage to name.

Yes, lots of busy work at various levels, from switching to the latest framework to redecorating the website because we can, to actually many companies selling nothing meaningful.

And the more vacuous the work is, the more it starts to feel like a cult. You MUST use framework X or pattern Y or clean/agile/... practice du jour, otherwise you're not one of us.

[silverquiet]

I live with physical disability, so my options are a bit limited. In theory a hip replacement might actually resolve that, but I don't know about working a trade with a joint replacement. I'm a competent carpenter, having learned from my father (my brother is one of the best I know, but got out of trades because the pay benefits were poor). I'd probably look at electrical or HVAC myself, but the thought of working summers in South Texas is also pretty daunting. Basically, there's no free lunch ;)

[neilv]

> used to be a carpenter and a farmer

Of course lots of office jobs are busywork by comparison to carpentry and farming.

I'd guess farmers also aren't playing politics, and gaming metrics, for promotions.

Farmers also reap what they sow, to so speak. And don't plan to job hop before the chickens come home to roost, on resume-driven-farming technology choices.

[jethro_tell]

Nope, bushels per acre baby