Why do you say that? I think there's a lot of things that are really great about tech industry and there's some things that aren't so great. What's been your experience?
And pretending to be just as eager and passionate as a CS grad who knows how to reverse a binary tree on a whiteboard but has no idea how to humanely extract actionable requirements from non-technical stakeholders.
Change jobs; you are not a wage slave. I come to work at 8 AM and leave at 4 PM on the dot every day no matter the situation. I can care less about the company I work for because it isn't my prerogative to care, but instead, I am paid to build what they tell me to build, and we exchange my abilities for currency. In no way am I willing to give up my dignity or health in any way in exchange for currency.
It sounds like your job sucks more than your field. And I'm not saying that to discredit your point of view. I know. I've been there. My last job was pretty bad and it left me wondering whether I hated the job, or the field. I ended up at a far better job in the same field (not without it's drawbacks, of course) and it turned out to definitely be the job all along.
This isn't my experience with just a single job. This is my experience in the perspective of a sysadmin/SRE/devops "track". Maybe it's different for programmers, but the overall spirit of my post happens at most of the places I've worked at.
Ah sorry. That does sounds relaxing, even in jest.
I'm trying to get out of for-profit tech and into the non-profit space to do data/FOIA/investigative work. It's still "tech work" at the end of the day, but without the deep dread of making rich dudes richer.
I've been in therapy for the last six months, figuring that it a more constructive way of coping with being a middle-aged man than getting a mistress or a motorcycle.
You know what I learned yesterday? I learned that I've been autistic my whole damn life, and never got properly diagnosed.
I got into tech because when everybody around me told I was a selfish, misanthropic asshole, I believed them. When the adults around me told me by getting into tech I wouldn't have to deal with people, I believed them, too.
My entire adult life is built on one half-truth and one outright lie.
The lie is that getting into tech would let me avoid dealing with people. I think everybody here knows that that is arrant bullshit.
The half-truth is that while I do often come across as selfish and misanthropic, it's possible that these qualities can be attributed in part to having grown up with an undiagnosed autistic spectrum disorder.
I've spent my entire life faking it, burning myself out to pass for neurotypical while also pretending to be passionate about building yet another government web application with ETL and batch processing. If you were me, you might wish for the Butlerian Jihad too.
Oh, and I work for Accenture. Work there long enough and you'll start thinking that maybe the Wobblies[1] have the right idea.
