yadoomerta

I feel this so much. It seems like the whole tech industry is just sick. Nobody is making anything worthwhile. Its just all ad-tech or scummy subscription plans, or other new and exciting ways to "extract" the "value" out of the world. And anything I make myself is such a minor drop in the bucket that there's no way to meaningfully contribute to anything through software.

same -_-

Of all the comments in the thread, this one feels the most true to me. If you don't mind me asking, what did you end up doing?

That's where I'm at right now :(

So many years of putting out a garbage product nobody wants gets to you

And then nothing else seems better

What sort of job did you switch to? My problem right now is that I am pretty convinced I'm burned out, but nothing seems better. Objectively the job is fine if a little pointless, and if I can't appreciate that one .. y'know?

i sympathize a lot with all of the symptoms. in my experience, as someone who used to work pretty hard, once you're past the cusp of 'it's all pointless' it makes it really really hard to bother.

Like you're not getting anything out of it. You don't care if the work is done or not. Nobody else seems to care. And even thinking about it makes you feel ill and horrible. Difficult situation to grind hard work out of

Yeah I agree that "save the world" is always almost garbage.

Doesn't that suck though? Is it too much to ask to have the majority of my life spent doing something worthwhile?

<3

I struggle to think of one way that the average american is better since 2010. Most of the "hard problems" being solved by tech companies are ways to increase shareholder value, find new and more invasive ways to advertise.

Building cool and useful things is idealistic! Making things people can enjoy and sharing them with the world is wonderful and something not found in a lot of companies.

I think the zealotry is being protectionist trying to keep things fun and useful and not tainted by the need to extract a profit

np. & I was very glad to see your post too

It makes me sad how many people seem (wilfully?) deluded about what companies are doing. Gotta be a great time to solve interesting problems and make good money as long as you don't care what "problems" are being solved.

Might be a happier life getting over it and just having work be work and not anything meaningful.

About to see a therapist about this stuff as soon as I can figure out how insurance works :p let me know if you have any insights. Until then just vibing & dreaming of starting a combination boardgame cafe / local low-power radio station / art studio / event space / mixed-use residential house

I know I should get this view, it seems a much healthier way to live. I just find it so overwhelmingly sad how much time and effort in the world is wasted on things like marketing. And it's gotten to the point at my job where it's a struggle to get the will to do anything knowing that at the end of the day it really doesn't matter.

Several of my friends just got jobs at Google/Amazon/Microsoft recently and it's such a weird feeling being both very happy for them, knowing they're making the right choice, knowing I should be too, and this feeling of despair like I'm losing them forever to some horrible pit.

& yeah feel that too. I've been idly working on my fun cute little website for a while now but it's hard to be motivated when at best it might amuse a few people for a few minutes. Still net positive but eeeeeh code enough at work already :p

I agree, modern medicine is great. (Notsomuch insurance at least in America)

Other than that though, I find it very hard to point to anything heading in the right direction. Nobody is trying to "massively improve the quality of life of billions of people" they're trying to sell their specific product or be middlemen or "disrupt" things that were regulated for good reason.

I struggle to think of anything non-medical that has dramatically improved 2010-present. Certainly many things have gotten worse (house prices, inflation, no wage increases, politics, wars ...)

Thank you for saying this.

I've been feeling this same way recently. Used to love checking here, seeing people's projects, finding the new trends and ideas. And I don't think hn has changed but more my perspective on the software industry (and the world?).

I literally cannot think of the last time software has changed and made my life better. And there are endless examples of it making the world worse.

All the issues caused by beloved industry giant AirBnB breaking regulations and ruining local neighborhoods. Software being the thing that caused the worst plane crash in years. Endless privacy violations from essentially every company. I've had to deal with Google's support recently and that was AI hell.

Even products I consider good are only getting worse. I still have a decades old Photoshop because you could actually buy it back then and the new features really arent worth it.

Software seems to be just a very efficient tool for the shareholders of the world to "capture value" and to find new and innovative ways to make our lives worse and more expensive.

These days I mostly read out of habit and because there's always something happening (unlike the discords/forums im in which are nicer but less poppin') and really compared to other places its still nice

But the right-wing anti-woke crowd and the optimistic "tech will save the world" types are hard to stomach for me.

I've been dreaming of quitting the industry altogether, though there are a lot of benefits for staying. Maybe find one of the incredibly rare places that actually have a vision for the world (non-profit?). Even where I work at an accessibility company that ostensibly is making the world better it really feels more like spinning wheels and corporate power plays more than any real desire to do anything good. Because honestly, if the customer went for a competitors product that would be fine?

Anyways sorry for the rambling. Things seem bleak and hopeless and regardless of whether things will ultimately get better (maybe? im not convinced) they will certainly get worse for the foreseeable future. I don't want to be part of the group making it worse and tech companies pretty much are. Yada yada captialism

Certainly worse things to do than read hackernews tho :p