i don't know what to do with myself
If it wasn't clear that my mind has hit some pivot point, it's time for me to rant about work.
This weekend i started thinking seriously about what i would do if i went back to work. So i started looking through job ads. And i wanted to throw up. The whole tech industry is so repulsive to me. There aren't "good companies" and "bad companies", there's just more useless fucking shit that i hate.
Basically you can boil programming jobs down to one of four categories.
Category number one, super-hip tech startup that's actually a startup. That means there are less than 50 employees and the pay is low or sometimes non-existent because you are supposed to getting in from the ground floor, but also people code on couches and in bed and at coffee shops. People are young and dumb and more concerned about trying to be fashionable or novel than actually building anything good. If you watched the show Silicon Valley, it's exactly like this - Pied Piper before they land Series A financing.
Category number two, super-hip tech startup that's not actually a startup. This includes all the former startups from the moment they get financing. Now there are 50+ employees and everyone is getting paid well, but the people management is a total clusterfuck and everyone is working on stupid busywork projects that only exist to impress venture capitalists but they don't actually do anything. This is Pier Piper after they land Series A financing in the show Silicon Valley.
Category number three, super-hip tech company that maybe once was a startup but now it's a boring enterprise company that pretends to be a startup. 1000+ employees. Even better pay. There is tons of paperwork and bureaucracy, but they dress it up in pretentious language like "oh we're doing ceremonies" or "we're inviting feedback from the flat hierarchy". Armies of developers do completely useless work that primarily exists so managers and principal engineers can put it on their applications for promotion. This is Hooli from the show Silicon Valley.
Category number four, boring enterprise company with an IT department. This company usually isn't a tech company, it's actually an insurance company, or a bank, or some place that manufactures real-world products, and it has a department that exists to maintain its internal software infrastructure. These places usually pay less money than tech companies because their real investment isn't the human capital, it's the actual product they sell, and it's a crapshoot whether you will land in a team that's massively underfunded and stuck using stone age technology, or a team that's a successful skunkworks operation doing some objectively interesting stuff that is still worthless on your résumé because it's all bespoke code and not easily transferable knowledge.
I suppose there is a fifth category which is a startup version of a boring enterprise company - some kind of privately-owned tech company with no venture capital funding that operates in an extremely tight vertical that nobody has ever heard of, but they still make a bit of money because they're the only ones doing it. This is a unicorn company that has mostly been put out of business by category number fours who sell "offshore development services" or "solutions consulting" to the verticals, slapping together poorly-engineered and even more poorly-maintained systems that came out of some corrupt tender process designed specifically to take advantage of the lack of tech savvy that most non-tech companies have at their purchasing-decision level.
Which is all to say that there are literally no good companies in my industry. The entire tech industry from top to bottom is a massive scam that bleeds money from venture capitalists and gives way too much of it to self-important blowhards who think they are "disrupting" the world, and the remainder back to a bunch of obnoxiously wealthy gamblers who invested in it in the first place. Or, in the other case, you are operating inside of a massive enterprise who almost certainly is also doing something ethically objectionable as their main product category, and you're just pushing around paper to support that flow of business. Being a tech worker is like the ultimate white collar job of wank. I fucking hate it. I hate it, i hate it, i hate it.
And i've been saying this for literally 20 years. And for 20 years i keep burning out, quitting my job, traveling around for a while, then going back to the same fucking job that i hate, because i happen to be very good at it.
I'm not good at anything else. Not good enough to actually have it be something that could sponsor a work visa elsewhere.
And that's when it all comes back to my lifelong dream to work in places where i don't have citizenship, or even legal residence.
Looking through the list of jobs that i qualify for in Canada... Lordy, there are dozens. And a large amount of them are still remote too, so i could do my job from anywhere in Canada - or, perhaps, anywhere in the Americas with a decent internet connection. But just looking at the position descriptions, the "about us" section of the companies... They all make me want to shoot myself in the head. It's the worst. It's the fucking worst. The tech industry is a massive vortex of pretentious cringe.
So i look at jobs elsewhere. Hey, Taiwan, why not? And i don't get the same level of disgust. I mean, yes, the job descriptions are the same, the "about us" is the same. But i open up a Google Maps of the office, and i can see where there might be a nearby mountain to climb, and i switch to Street View and there's a little noodle shop nearby... And i think... Well, if i have to go back to this utter shitfest of career, the least i can do is do it in a place where the rest of my life won't reinforce the shittiness of it.
I don't want to move back to Canada. I don't want to move back to a country that is so epically suburbanized, to a place with such a dominant car culture, to a place where apartment rentals are prohibitively expensive, to a place that is rapidly adopting the same vapid and toxic culture war nonsense that is hobbling any meaningful development in the United States. I don't want to live somewhere where it's freezing cold for half the year. I don't want to solve that problem by trying to find a mythical 6 month rental in Canada and then flying down to somewhere warmer for the winter. I don't want to be surrounded by fucking tech bros and yuppies.
Just recently there was an article in the paper pointing out that many Canadian cities have a higher percentage of tech workers than even famous American "tech" cities like Seattle and San Francisco. The point was that Canada is a great place to be a tech worker. But they got the conclusion exactly wrong - Canadian cities are a terrible place to be if you're NOT a tech worker! Tech workers completely fuck the urban landscape, if they are anywhere near a significant minority. They are epic agents of gentrification, and it's all to do with the hyper-inflated salaries they receive (but do not deserve). I do not want to be a part of that. I can't be a part of that.
But, what then? Live in the middle of fucking nowhere? With no good food? With no public transport? Like a fucking neanderthal? That's even worse. I've just spent the last 9 months traveling mostly through rural areas, and although they're often very pretty to look at, lordy i am dying for some real goddamn food.
So. There's Europe. I mean, there's always Europe, right? My spiritual home that Brexit locked me out of. But if i think about Europe, sure the urban landscape is better than North America, and in Berlin specifically the nightclubs are a huge, massive draw for me. I miss good music and dancing so much. So, so much. But. Nightclubs are just two days a week out of five days of misery in the office. And while the urban landscape is better for those five days than it would be in North America, it's still much worse than it was when i lived in China, or than it presumably is in Taiwan.
And i go back to that idea of looking for work in Taiwan. Which is difficult, because i can't travel there right now as a tourist due to COVID. And once again i would become beholden to my employer for sponsoring me. And there's that East Asian trash work/life balance, and in Taiwan specifically a much lower pay scale. But the lifestyle is cheaper. I think i would be able to find an affordable place to stay. I think i would be able to eat well, and cheaply, and not feel like a gentrifier. And in Taipei, i might even get a tiny bit of nightclub action. Even if i hate everything about my job, which i certainly will, at least it would be the key to something slightly less depressing in my daily life.
I mean, i think it would.
The only other thing i am thinking of, which i was already thinking of 5 years ago but decided against doing it, was applying to study global affairs or international relations at National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung. The university is in a beautiful spot in my favorite town in Taiwan. The topics would be stuff i care about and am interested in. But... how to get in? Like apparently all masters degrees, you need to have references to get in. I wouldn't even know the slightest thing about who to ask or what to ask them to put in there. References feel so antiquated and clique-y. But i suppose that's exactly what that sort of course of study is all about. Who does political science? People with connections, i suppose.
And what then? Career change at 45? I suppose plenty of people have done it. Although, i am quite sure that any job to do with politics or public policy would depress me just as quickly as software development does.
Because, you know, work sucks. Work is the absolute worst. It's impossible to ever enjoy anything you are forced to do, the whole structure is set up for you to fail.
So, in summary, fuck the tech industry, fuck borders and fuck work. Did i get everything? Sigh.
This weekend i started thinking seriously about what i would do if i went back to work. So i started looking through job ads. And i wanted to throw up. The whole tech industry is so repulsive to me. There aren't "good companies" and "bad companies", there's just more useless fucking shit that i hate.
Basically you can boil programming jobs down to one of four categories.
Category number one, super-hip tech startup that's actually a startup. That means there are less than 50 employees and the pay is low or sometimes non-existent because you are supposed to getting in from the ground floor, but also people code on couches and in bed and at coffee shops. People are young and dumb and more concerned about trying to be fashionable or novel than actually building anything good. If you watched the show Silicon Valley, it's exactly like this - Pied Piper before they land Series A financing.
Category number two, super-hip tech startup that's not actually a startup. This includes all the former startups from the moment they get financing. Now there are 50+ employees and everyone is getting paid well, but the people management is a total clusterfuck and everyone is working on stupid busywork projects that only exist to impress venture capitalists but they don't actually do anything. This is Pier Piper after they land Series A financing in the show Silicon Valley.
Category number three, super-hip tech company that maybe once was a startup but now it's a boring enterprise company that pretends to be a startup. 1000+ employees. Even better pay. There is tons of paperwork and bureaucracy, but they dress it up in pretentious language like "oh we're doing ceremonies" or "we're inviting feedback from the flat hierarchy". Armies of developers do completely useless work that primarily exists so managers and principal engineers can put it on their applications for promotion. This is Hooli from the show Silicon Valley.
Category number four, boring enterprise company with an IT department. This company usually isn't a tech company, it's actually an insurance company, or a bank, or some place that manufactures real-world products, and it has a department that exists to maintain its internal software infrastructure. These places usually pay less money than tech companies because their real investment isn't the human capital, it's the actual product they sell, and it's a crapshoot whether you will land in a team that's massively underfunded and stuck using stone age technology, or a team that's a successful skunkworks operation doing some objectively interesting stuff that is still worthless on your résumé because it's all bespoke code and not easily transferable knowledge.
I suppose there is a fifth category which is a startup version of a boring enterprise company - some kind of privately-owned tech company with no venture capital funding that operates in an extremely tight vertical that nobody has ever heard of, but they still make a bit of money because they're the only ones doing it. This is a unicorn company that has mostly been put out of business by category number fours who sell "offshore development services" or "solutions consulting" to the verticals, slapping together poorly-engineered and even more poorly-maintained systems that came out of some corrupt tender process designed specifically to take advantage of the lack of tech savvy that most non-tech companies have at their purchasing-decision level.
Which is all to say that there are literally no good companies in my industry. The entire tech industry from top to bottom is a massive scam that bleeds money from venture capitalists and gives way too much of it to self-important blowhards who think they are "disrupting" the world, and the remainder back to a bunch of obnoxiously wealthy gamblers who invested in it in the first place. Or, in the other case, you are operating inside of a massive enterprise who almost certainly is also doing something ethically objectionable as their main product category, and you're just pushing around paper to support that flow of business. Being a tech worker is like the ultimate white collar job of wank. I fucking hate it. I hate it, i hate it, i hate it.
And i've been saying this for literally 20 years. And for 20 years i keep burning out, quitting my job, traveling around for a while, then going back to the same fucking job that i hate, because i happen to be very good at it.
I'm not good at anything else. Not good enough to actually have it be something that could sponsor a work visa elsewhere.
And that's when it all comes back to my lifelong dream to work in places where i don't have citizenship, or even legal residence.
Looking through the list of jobs that i qualify for in Canada... Lordy, there are dozens. And a large amount of them are still remote too, so i could do my job from anywhere in Canada - or, perhaps, anywhere in the Americas with a decent internet connection. But just looking at the position descriptions, the "about us" section of the companies... They all make me want to shoot myself in the head. It's the worst. It's the fucking worst. The tech industry is a massive vortex of pretentious cringe.
So i look at jobs elsewhere. Hey, Taiwan, why not? And i don't get the same level of disgust. I mean, yes, the job descriptions are the same, the "about us" is the same. But i open up a Google Maps of the office, and i can see where there might be a nearby mountain to climb, and i switch to Street View and there's a little noodle shop nearby... And i think... Well, if i have to go back to this utter shitfest of career, the least i can do is do it in a place where the rest of my life won't reinforce the shittiness of it.
I don't want to move back to Canada. I don't want to move back to a country that is so epically suburbanized, to a place with such a dominant car culture, to a place where apartment rentals are prohibitively expensive, to a place that is rapidly adopting the same vapid and toxic culture war nonsense that is hobbling any meaningful development in the United States. I don't want to live somewhere where it's freezing cold for half the year. I don't want to solve that problem by trying to find a mythical 6 month rental in Canada and then flying down to somewhere warmer for the winter. I don't want to be surrounded by fucking tech bros and yuppies.
Just recently there was an article in the paper pointing out that many Canadian cities have a higher percentage of tech workers than even famous American "tech" cities like Seattle and San Francisco. The point was that Canada is a great place to be a tech worker. But they got the conclusion exactly wrong - Canadian cities are a terrible place to be if you're NOT a tech worker! Tech workers completely fuck the urban landscape, if they are anywhere near a significant minority. They are epic agents of gentrification, and it's all to do with the hyper-inflated salaries they receive (but do not deserve). I do not want to be a part of that. I can't be a part of that.
But, what then? Live in the middle of fucking nowhere? With no good food? With no public transport? Like a fucking neanderthal? That's even worse. I've just spent the last 9 months traveling mostly through rural areas, and although they're often very pretty to look at, lordy i am dying for some real goddamn food.
So. There's Europe. I mean, there's always Europe, right? My spiritual home that Brexit locked me out of. But if i think about Europe, sure the urban landscape is better than North America, and in Berlin specifically the nightclubs are a huge, massive draw for me. I miss good music and dancing so much. So, so much. But. Nightclubs are just two days a week out of five days of misery in the office. And while the urban landscape is better for those five days than it would be in North America, it's still much worse than it was when i lived in China, or than it presumably is in Taiwan.
And i go back to that idea of looking for work in Taiwan. Which is difficult, because i can't travel there right now as a tourist due to COVID. And once again i would become beholden to my employer for sponsoring me. And there's that East Asian trash work/life balance, and in Taiwan specifically a much lower pay scale. But the lifestyle is cheaper. I think i would be able to find an affordable place to stay. I think i would be able to eat well, and cheaply, and not feel like a gentrifier. And in Taipei, i might even get a tiny bit of nightclub action. Even if i hate everything about my job, which i certainly will, at least it would be the key to something slightly less depressing in my daily life.
I mean, i think it would.
The only other thing i am thinking of, which i was already thinking of 5 years ago but decided against doing it, was applying to study global affairs or international relations at National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung. The university is in a beautiful spot in my favorite town in Taiwan. The topics would be stuff i care about and am interested in. But... how to get in? Like apparently all masters degrees, you need to have references to get in. I wouldn't even know the slightest thing about who to ask or what to ask them to put in there. References feel so antiquated and clique-y. But i suppose that's exactly what that sort of course of study is all about. Who does political science? People with connections, i suppose.
And what then? Career change at 45? I suppose plenty of people have done it. Although, i am quite sure that any job to do with politics or public policy would depress me just as quickly as software development does.
Because, you know, work sucks. Work is the absolute worst. It's impossible to ever enjoy anything you are forced to do, the whole structure is set up for you to fail.
So, in summary, fuck the tech industry, fuck borders and fuck work. Did i get everything? Sigh.