Sibling, you have two choices:
- Write an extremely useful piece of software and be doomed to open source maintainership in a world consumed by AI and corporations
- Continue in web app hell, for twice the work and none of the renown, until you hate technology and desire the isolation of a cabin deep in the woods.
At least for now, 2 still pays the bills. Which is probably the reason any of us do this bullshit anyway. Otherwise we’d all be creating stuff we can actually be proud of.
Not that I’m not proud of any of the projects I’ve worked on. Some of them have been a true net good for some segment of society or other and in every case we’ve aimed at making the user experience as great as possible. Some have later enshittified, but that was after I’d left those jobs. I just think most of the tech stacks have been boring as hell and not a single product has been truly innovative. It’s all been boring B2B stuff aimed at making our customers’ employees lives easier and automating the boring stuff so they can focus on what they actually like doing (which incidentally is the stuff that makes their bosses money, so everyone’s happy when you can spend 5% of your day doing routine “paperwork” instead of 15% or even 20%)
It does pay the bills, and not that what you did isn’t great work, but we get into this to burst boundaries, explore limitations, and just fuck about in general. Its just such a wonder how the things most of us have to do in technology sucks the passion from it.
I graduated software engineering and started my career 18 years ago. Full of hopes and dreams, thinking I was going to do great things.
That was not the case.
I’ve come to hate my field of work after spending so many years working for employers that didn’t give two shits about me, using technology and services developed by morally bankrupt corporations.
Now I just want it all to end. I’m thinking of making a major career switch, but I can’t find anything that pays well enough to afford both a roof over my head and food on the table and the occasional trip.
I’m in exactly tha same boat, but with 16 years of exp. I’ve considered investing into aviation school, but realistically it takes a couple of years and then a few more before you start earning well.
oh god. what can i do to help???
Should’ve learned rust. You could be writing crypto now!