Wow, I just wanted to say thanks a lot for posting this. I'm in a very similar boat. I was always very focused and goal-oriented in my younger days - a bit of a workaholic but generally enjoyed working hard. A number of changes since the pandemic have left me feeling very similar to you:
1. Like tons of other people, I re-evaluated my relationship with work during the pandemic. To be honest, it wasn't easy. I think a ton of people (especially Americans) tie up their self-worth with their jobs, and during the pandemic I just felt more disconnected from my job.
2. I think a lot of folks have underestimated the psychological changes that happen from being way more isolated these days. I don't mean "shut-in" isolated, I just mean that working remote most days means the number of people I interact with in person has gone way, way down. I'm all for remote work but I won't deny that I greatly miss a lot of the energy from just being around other people.
3. Finally, I've just become really disillusioned with tech over the course of my career, which makes me very sad. I started my career during the dot com boom, and there was so much optimism about the beneficial societal changes that tech and the Internet would bring. I don't feel like all tech is "evil" these days, but I do feel that the world would be better off if all the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) just completely stopped building any new tech. Obviously that's not realistic, but it highlights my feeling that I'm not looking forward to any new tech from these companies, because more tech is going to invariably lead to more isolation, more "doom scrolling", more assaults on our attention. I feel like most big tech companies have just become the equivalent of drug dealers, just trying to hijack our brain's evolutionary attention mechanisms to addict us. "Attention is all you need" is right...
Anyway, don't have any advice or anything, just wanted to say I appreciated your post in a "misery loves company" sort-of-way, so thank you.
Wow that's so true... we totally didn't see the social media dystopia we're living in today coming. We imagined a world where everyone has all the world knowledge available at their fingertips would be wonderful. How wrong were we.
On average, yes it's easy to get stuck in a rut with low quality content, toxic social media, attention-stealing recommendations, etc. but with just a reasonable amount of effort it can be avoided in favor of the good stuff. Just like a traveler can get stuck at tourist traps or with just a few more moments of planning find a local treasure; and how if you're at a buffet you could get locked into the mac & cheese or go find the hibachi station in the back. It would be nice if getting lost wasn't a thing, but it's not terribly onerous to navigate the scenic route.
But we are surrounded by people not doing that, and not even through any fault of their own for the most part. They are wired into an endless machine that trades dopamine hits for their money. Children are wired in before they even have a chance to resist.
The Extremely Online crowd’s influence is waning.
Twitter is widely mocked as a cesspool of conversation. Facebook is seen as antiquated. Instagram and TikTok are the current darlings but they seem to have less of an iron grip than the OG social networks.
The future is probably not another winner-take-all network. We’ve tried enough of those. The future is probably smaller networks where users self-select into them based on affiliations, much like web forums.
You mean Discord (interest, hobbies) and family chat channels on various platforms?
Weird, I've seen social media and "online communities" move into the publicly accepted sphere more and more. 10 years ago you'd be looked at funny by certain people if you said you had a social media or reddit account, and nowadays it's just sorta expected
I used to feel like I wanted to "Save Them From Themselves" but I no longer care. As long as I and my family are not zombies, I could care less that the rest of these people we're surrounded by are lobotomizing themselves. As long as they aren't in my way they can do what they want. They'll be voluntarily stepping into their own Matrix Pods in 20 years and I won't be.
I used to feel the way that you do, but in a social democracy "I don't care what those idiot zombies do" has it's limits, because everyone gets an equal vote.
Also, you say that "As long as I and my family are not zombies", but every single one of my friends and family with kids age 10 and up are genuinely pretty terrified about the potential impact of social media on their kids: "I feel so lucky I didn't have to deal with this when I was growing up" is a common refrain I hear. And yes, all these parents try to teach their kids about the pitfalls of social media, but they know they can't just can it, so it's a huge, largely negative influence that they feel limited power to fight against.
In the early 90s the internet was great. The problems started with companies and their inherent greed.
No, it was the people. Early internet users demographics was a result of extreme selection. Companies did exist back then.
This is true. The big turning point was the release of the iPhone, a device that allowed people who didn't know what a computer was to access the internet.
Why iphone? We had internet on mobile phones before that point.
But I agree with idea that internet became dumber with more people in.
I'd also call out Eternal September in 1993, when AOL made it easy for anyone with a computer to connect online. This permanently changed the composition of the internet, and paved the way for the social networks that would later come to dominance after the iPhone was released.
Barriers to entry that revolve around level of interest are ok.
Companies existed of course, but they provided the building blocks of the internet and were not directly concerned with the processing of our data.
Nowhere! Social media brought out the true character of people; most (many?) of us are negative species, mix that along with bad people.
Ehh this type of thinking is reductive.
The primary issues are a combination of nature vs nurture. The age of argument, the solution has always been some combination of both.
But when you look at our western society over the past 60 years or so, you see that -fundamentally- the nurture part of the equation is being heavily influenced by capitalistic forces. For example, news used to be once a day, then 3 times a day, now 24/7/365. There isn't more news now than 100 years ago, so how do you feel all that time and how do you keep someone engaged? (If you have been paying attention, you know the answer is selling fear, sex, violence, and other negative emotions are traits of the human species.)
But really, the easiest way to counter this toxic mindset was said best by mister Rodgers: just look for the helpers. Look for the guys running into the fray when everyone else runs away... Those people are just as human as you or me... They are the true character of the human species. For we are a communal species that depends on one another, we always have, we aren't a bad species... We are just letting our man made systems bring out the worst.
If we have to look to find them, are they really the "true" character? I'm sure if we look hard enough we could find a polite polar bear, but is that a "true" polar bear?
main characters =/= dominant characters =/= true characters
I think what we have really underestimated is the amount of people who would get hooked on instant gratification more than this available knowledge (which, turns out, I am also guilty of).
Then came for-profits that agressively monetised every single bad habit one might imagine online and got us where we are today. Knowledge is still at the fingertips, but so many of us are now short-attention-span information-holics and instant gratification addicts.
We imagined brave new world, but became an equivalent of chain smokers trying to break out of their habit in a world where everyone else also smokes.
One question I’ve set out to answer is: what would I do if I were fired tomorrow?
Understood that not everyone is in the position to switch to lower paying careers, start over, etc - but if you have some leash, what WOULD you do if you were fired tomorrow?
(And I don’t mean short term like take a vacation then find another tech job - mean longer term like what kind of job will you be looking for next, or business to start, etc)
Curious to hear your thoughts and anyone else who cares to share
This is such a powerful question (another version of it, what would you do if you wouldn't have to worry about money). Sometime ago I tried to answer it and realised that I don't know. It sparked anxiety, meaning I've been doing something for such a long time 15+ years now without knowing what really my end goal is and why I am doing that.
Whatever its called, zombie or auto/robo mode, the unintentional living, its freaking scary because in most cases if you remove the work identity from a person, there will be a sad shallow shell of a person left.
On a bright side, its never too late. I started actually putting the money to use to create experiences (hiking in Taiwan, diving in Thailand, paragliding in Turkey). Starting to write and build products (finally learning to code for the sake of building something simple and useful instead of setting up kubernetes).
That kind of existence gave me energy, although I do have melancholic nostalgia about former days of building startups and working in a team to get to an exit. It all seem like a war story I will be telling people in my 50s, how I moved countries without knowing anyone, joined a company that got to $50m ARR, grew to 100 people and became profitable ever since.
The work identity we have is a interesting phenomenon, despite feeling happy in life, I do miss ambitious goals and working in a small team of friends and interesting people to reach the highs of professional achievement.
I suppose in the end everything is about the balance.
Thanks for sharing. What are you doing for income now? Are you retired?
The ideal answer is: "If I got fired tomorrow, I would be doing mostly the same work as before, but maybe less meetings and admin duties."
Careers that fit this answer: artists, writers, musicians, mathematicians, scientists (those who lean more towards theory).
As an freelance artist for 9 years I can say that you have different type of challenges.
Founding usefulness in your work means everyday questions about balance between stable income and making actually new, innovative, non-trending things. Free market have unlimited possibilities, but making art for money is not my motivation to do art.
Poor artists are real and I slowly understand why. If your passion is creativity, priorities are different, which makes hard to pay your bills, but in same time let you go deeper of meaning. Well... It's difficult to describe it actually.
I’ve been thinking about this too. And it’s also usually used as a counter-argument to people wanting to get out of their jobs.
However, here’s what I realized: most people work in “regular” 9-5 jobs. That includes “tech people”, who like to think of themselves as artists, but are not. And it takes like 2 decades to get trained to do a regular job if you take into account k-12 (which trains you to be a 9-5 worker and discourages anything else), uni, and the first few years of professional experience.
So is it that surprising that once you get disillusioned with being a 9-5 worker it would take you at the very least few years to figure out how to not be one?
What I’m trying to say is it should be expected to not know what you want to do. Because even getting to the point where you could do what 90% of the population does take a tremendous amount of effort. So once you want to do something else, it will take a while to figure out too. And you can totally fail along the way as well.
I mean, the job I'd be looking for is another tech job?
I do have stuff I want to do in 5,10 years. Maybe even vague ideas of 20 years out. But I lack the funds and the expertise to pull it off. I'm sure many dream of being their own businessman or simply traveling and experiencing the earth without worries of rent. But even for tech workers that is a lifestyle that can't be maintained without some corporate kowtowing (or having a silver spoon).
Thank you both - I'm feeling the same, and I had tied up so much of my personality and life with software development, I feel pretty lost now. I've had a side project to work on for as long as I can remember, now I'm just not interested in building at all. And honestly, I don't know where to go from here.
Are you in a high cost of living situation that’s hard to get out of? Do you have kids?
If NOT, I would start by thinking if there’s ways you could drastically cut down your cost off living, like moving somewhere cheaper or even looking at Southeast Asia etc if that’s your jam
That would give you more options on the financial side of things in case you wanted to start over or have a go at something with a long ramp up time
My outlook is: if you work in big tech today, whatever you're working on, in its final culmination, is just a means to clutter the internet with ads.
I can relate a lot to this. Thanks for sharing
Feels like you read my mind. I'm disconnected from career and generally feel disappointed with direction of technology. It's quite difficult finding meaning in life surrounded by careerist.
I resonate with this -- I've noticed a pattern of big tech companies using their power (and prowess) to regulate in the tech space more, limit what users can do, advertise more, force dark patterns on their customers, and make puzzling decisions that rob the excitement they used to bring to the table of the past.
They still make great new / updated products in a few areas, but it also seems like they take just as much as they give, these days. Whether it's changes to pricing models (Amazon Prime Video ad-free extra charges), or Google's notorious penchant for killing their own products (or features), or Microsoft's continuous push to get Edge in front of Windows users at almost any cost.
Or Apple only offering their high-end MacBooks with Touch Bars, rather than physical function keys before they finally fixed everything with the M1 series almost 4 years later -- 4 years of Touch Bar hell, or else suffer using a low-end laptop that isn't capable of the demanding workflows your job requires along with the fact that you're a power user who needs real function keys and (gasp!) a physical escape key to work efficiently on the go, like me.
These companies really seem to be resting on their laurels and toying with customers now, to see how annoying they can be. And what's worse is, we've grown to rely on their products because they happen to build our operating systems and hardware in many cases. Bigger changes to these can have devastating effects and these companies don't seem to understand the responsibility they have to move towards creating a positive, exciting experience for customers while leaving alone the things that work really well. All rather than sowing doubt with a lot of side decisions that make people unhappy ultimately.
Death by a thousand cuts, it really starts to erode confidence in any of them, no matter what they release that should be exciting.
"Attention is all you need" among above paragraph really hits hard and it's true. I think I feel the same way like all big tech companies should just be stopped from bringing new tech. Indeed, I have just started hating tech now a days. We are just getting more apart and away from everyone day by day with new emerging technology.
It is really pathetic to know that tech is influencing new generation totally in negative direction to what we supposed where they should be leading to. I think even the Parents now a days should parent their child more like it used to in olden days rather than showing them children's rhyme on phone or tablet.
I have stopped surfing social media, they try to isolate me from the truth and what's actually happening and rather feed content which is biased according to my activities and what I like. This really frightens me.
I strongly relate, and think a big part it for me is that most people range from apathetic to hostile to most projects that try to wrest any power from tech companies, despite complaining about the way they've been immiserated by them in the next breath. It's hard enough trying to pry even little bits of freedom or individuality from the grasp of all these moneyed interests without every effort to do something like it getting a bunch of random hate