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- Hacker News
- I'm with you, tech should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. I've been spending a lot of time recently thinking about using tech for good, to do things we couldn't do without it but without being sticky, or gamified, or enshitified.
That's why I built https://kilta.io/. The wolves have spent the last ~25 years splitting people up, convincing them to optimise themselves as personal products, and in so doing undermining real world communities. Kilta has absolutely zero revenue model, its built to be unmontizeable.
But its really hard to build alternatives to the status quo, as you need to break through all the noise, through the slick marketing campaigns, through the millions in venture funding trying to convince you to create "content" for them to make money from. And anything that is trying to heal the hole these products have created actually needs people to use it to give it value.
by 8by3 - one thing that helped is taking a little break and find a new passion. i made some 3d prints and with raspberry pis built some fun stuff and played around and came back more energised. Having fun or building stuff and not going completely out of the loop will re ignite it for you
- Well what else are you interested in? There is a lot more to life than technology, maybe take a break and learn a new skill or get exposed to something new.by dieselgate
- That's the problem - nothing. I was loving the profession so much that I did it during working hours, and then working on my stuff in the evenings and weekends.by fnoef
- I think our interests change as we age. My kids take up so much time I find myself spending less and less time paying attention to "tech."by gwbas1c
from https://allpoetry.com/All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving...I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.- Have you considered getting laid? Don't knock it til you try it.
- Boris Cherny, the creator and Head of Claude Code at Anthropic who built Claude Code, has stated in recent interviews that he no longer codes. This is a massive step forward and a promotion of sorts for those who can code, who understand the intricacies and are best positioned to direct and manage LLMs and AI agents. Step into it. We're continually developing personally, it's ongoing and inevitable. This is developing professionally with a whole new playing field of possibilities. Start playing around and your passion will lead to a great, new fit for you.by JessieJanie
- Hey man, you are not "pushing yourself out of a job market". You can give AI to different people and get different quality work. Think of AI as a good tool not as a replacement. You are right, a ton of startups and even grown up companies are driving/drinking hype and their stuff is just wrappers of crap under a nice wrapper that falls of the moment you use their stuff.
Honestly, the work is still yours, that's the beauty of it. Your understanding of what AI did with you, the shape it takes, the direction and the alterations you made along the way. That's what make is special stil.
I was where you are and managed to get out, reply back if you want to chat more.
by dkowalski - Same. I was so fascinated by lower-level stuff (chips, assembly, etc.), but when I finally started to dig into it, AI came around and did what would take me forever to do myself in seconds. I thought pivoting from software dev to pentesting would be spark my motivation, but again, AI can do it quicker. I don't find this stuff rewarding anymore.
This made me think about the kinds of things I do find rewarding. OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, etc. are billion dollar companies. But what exactly are they? You cannot touch them. You can't smell them. They're not real in the sense that other things are, such as a painting or a statue. If the global power grid were to go down, the value of these companies would drop to 0. Of course, this is unlikely, but I think the point holds.
Nowadays, I want to build physical things; I do wish I went into a different engineering field.
by 0xmattf - Technology is not life. It might make your life easier or it might connect you to people or experiences that would be hard to achieve without it. But technology is not the end goal. You past interest have brought you here. That doesn't mean it was "wrong" or that you can't find the passion again. But it seems like you need a break and maybe a new passion for a whileby xxwink
- Hey Man,
One fact that people forget is technology, programming became famous because people loved to do it. Apart from solving problem, if people are not interested to solve them via programming, then none of the capital nor modern solutions wouldn't have existed.
What is very important now is, as human race, we need to take a break, retrospect ourselves. 10+ years of programming would have made wired your brain for expertise which none of newbies would never achieve in their life time. That is your biggest strength.
We are in golden age of software engineering where we can stop thinking about software engineering itself but focus on solutioning, business and customer values.
If claude writes code, then why can't we talk to customers and give better solutions which claude can never provide at free will.
As programmers we would have at least smiled once in our journey looking into a customer feedback or testimonial, our code solved it.
Maybe start thinking about how we can be useful to other human beings via technology expertise we possess.
by kathir05 - Brus, a good fraction, possibly the majority, of SWEs like it precisely for its obsessive focus on minute distinctions. Talking to customers is often a punishment. We don't want to be useful so much as right.