Galaxycow

Tech, travel, creative, and juicy interesting bits of flesh.

Everything Sucks Here

·

,

It’s the day after Christmas 2023 and I’m trying to wind down for the year. I’ve been reflecting on 2023 and all of its glory and horror. My morning reading started with this fine article:

It’s All Bullshit

While I don’t work at Google (and never aspire to), I identified with many things in this article. It seems that over the past 20 years we’ve really lost something… a lot of things, actually. I’m not able to pinpoint what all of them are, but I guess I could sum it up as innocence.

There was a time when I ran a BBS that it was exciting to communicate with people all over the world. We would write to each other and marvel over how quickly they could respond. We were young and innocent, musing over our lives and the world around us. We spent time making jokes (memes have carried that yoke well, I suppose). It seemed like we were excited to just be communicating and amazed at the technology. IRC (Internet Relay Chat, the old school version of today’s Discord) and MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) were prolific amongst the BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems). Technology was fun and not life-critical like it is today.

I’m not sure what happened. But getting back to the article… it’s really no fun to work in tech anymore. Something has doused the fire. Maybe it’s corporate junkies making millions off of the workers, maybe it’s the shareholders who demand directions they don’t understand… maybe it’s Wall Street’s obsession with growth at any cost, I don’t know. I’ve experienced the bullshit mentioned in this article first hand for so, so many years at so, so many places. I would love to find a new job, but fact is there’s nothing out there that doesn’t suffer from this exact same bullshit in tech.

I told my wife this morning that we should just let me quit tech and open a restaurant. Let her and the kids work there. I can run her IT operations and maybe open a gaming-focused net cafe next to it. Maybe I can just make money on the side with some consulting gigs, but nothing high stakes where our lives depend on it.

If only I had an answer for health insurance.

Dammit, America.

¶¶¶¶¶

/ / / /

¶¶¶¶¶

¶¶¶¶¶

2 responses to “Everything Sucks Here”

  1. Ahzio Avatar
    Ahzio

    The restaurant will just run into the same (yet different) problems. And you’ll be working longer hours. “You are the corporation.” Or should I say “We the Corporation hold these truths to be self-evident.” The only way out of this situation (including climate change, which it’s probably too late anyway) is a complete wide-sweeping culture change for not just America, but the world. It’s not necessary to “own” a middle class lifestyle and it’s not eve sustainable for the long run with the resources we have left. Good luck.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. vermyndax Avatar
      vermyndax

      I’m not opposed to hard work. But I am opposed to meaningless hard work. The hard work in tech today is largely meaningless.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a comment