<story><title>Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo</title><text>i&amp;#x27;m 31.&lt;p&gt;have Bsc in CS, worked as software eng. for ~7 years.&lt;p&gt;tbh, i&amp;#x27;m completely disillusioned with the industry and people in general. my expectations coming into the industry were based on the hacker ethos from the 80&amp;#x27;s and 90&amp;#x27;s, where a group of passionate and crazy smart people worked on tough and important problems, pulling engineering miracles daily. i&amp;#x27;m talking about netscape and jamie zawinski, xerox and alan kay, l0pht and mudge, valve and gabe newell. legends.&lt;p&gt;entering the industry in the early to mid 2010&amp;#x27;s i found a landscape filled with self serving product managers, conmen (i think they call them executives and MBAs), and a populous of engineers that cared nothing for the tech or the work, and didn&amp;#x27;t need to as there were no real challenges to tackle.&lt;p&gt;perhaps i made bad career choices but what&amp;#x27;s frustrating is that the industry seemed to shift into something else. in other words, the hacker ethos was lost. the culture changed. instead of engineering-centric one it shifted to sales and &amp;quot;growth&amp;quot; and hype. engineers have become relegated to the &amp;quot;peasant&amp;quot; cast, working the fields so that the ceo can sell the company for an inflated sum and move on to the next con (sorry, startup).&lt;p&gt;as i see things, my choices are either to open a company of my own, making what i believe in, or go back to academia where i&amp;#x27;ll have more spare time to pursue my interests. but academia is dying, and dare i say irrelevant. it&amp;#x27;s an outdated concept for a world where i can get &amp;quot;educated&amp;quot; on a subject within a week using the internet, at least enough so i can accomplish what i need. i&amp;#x27;m not going to discover the higgs boson, nor do i want to become an expert in a singular domain. i want to build things.&lt;p&gt;so that takes me back to creating a business around something i believe in. but, it&amp;#x27;ll have to be bootstrapped (vc money is just another boss), so the chances for success are extremely low.&lt;p&gt;what do you think?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>idoby</author><text>Shit, are you me?&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re just being over 30, welcome. Those documentaries you watched on your old CRT TV while growing up were showing you fiction.&lt;p&gt;The tech industry is an ad mill. Academia is about innovation killing fiefdoms. What you need to realize is that for an institution, the first priority is maintaining homeostasis, and that means not letting you do something that might risk resources or upsetting the established order.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a reason why the hackers on TV were called rebels. They founded new institutions because the incumbents wouldn&amp;#x27;t let them play.&lt;p&gt;You want the hacker ethos? Make it yourself, that&amp;#x27;s what it&amp;#x27;s about.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gcheong</author><text>&amp;quot;Those documentaries you watched on your old CRT TV while growing up were showing you fiction.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Ironically perhaps a truer picture of the industry was probably   the fiction series &amp;quot;Halt and Catch Fire&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Career and life advice for a 30yo</title><text>i&amp;#x27;m 31.&lt;p&gt;have Bsc in CS, worked as software eng. for ~7 years.&lt;p&gt;tbh, i&amp;#x27;m completely disillusioned with the industry and people in general. my expectations coming into the industry were based on the hacker ethos from the 80&amp;#x27;s and 90&amp;#x27;s, where a group of passionate and crazy smart people worked on tough and important problems, pulling engineering miracles daily. i&amp;#x27;m talking about netscape and jamie zawinski, xerox and alan kay, l0pht and mudge, valve and gabe newell. legends.&lt;p&gt;entering the industry in the early to mid 2010&amp;#x27;s i found a landscape filled with self serving product managers, conmen (i think they call them executives and MBAs), and a populous of engineers that cared nothing for the tech or the work, and didn&amp;#x27;t need to as there were no real challenges to tackle.&lt;p&gt;perhaps i made bad career choices but what&amp;#x27;s frustrating is that the industry seemed to shift into something else. in other words, the hacker ethos was lost. the culture changed. instead of engineering-centric one it shifted to sales and &amp;quot;growth&amp;quot; and hype. engineers have become relegated to the &amp;quot;peasant&amp;quot; cast, working the fields so that the ceo can sell the company for an inflated sum and move on to the next con (sorry, startup).&lt;p&gt;as i see things, my choices are either to open a company of my own, making what i believe in, or go back to academia where i&amp;#x27;ll have more spare time to pursue my interests. but academia is dying, and dare i say irrelevant. it&amp;#x27;s an outdated concept for a world where i can get &amp;quot;educated&amp;quot; on a subject within a week using the internet, at least enough so i can accomplish what i need. i&amp;#x27;m not going to discover the higgs boson, nor do i want to become an expert in a singular domain. i want to build things.&lt;p&gt;so that takes me back to creating a business around something i believe in. but, it&amp;#x27;ll have to be bootstrapped (vc money is just another boss), so the chances for success are extremely low.&lt;p&gt;what do you think?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>idoby</author><text>Shit, are you me?&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re just being over 30, welcome. Those documentaries you watched on your old CRT TV while growing up were showing you fiction.&lt;p&gt;The tech industry is an ad mill. Academia is about innovation killing fiefdoms. What you need to realize is that for an institution, the first priority is maintaining homeostasis, and that means not letting you do something that might risk resources or upsetting the established order.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a reason why the hackers on TV were called rebels. They founded new institutions because the incumbents wouldn&amp;#x27;t let them play.&lt;p&gt;You want the hacker ethos? Make it yourself, that&amp;#x27;s what it&amp;#x27;s about.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacknews</author><text>lol, metoo&lt;p&gt;To some extent it&amp;#x27;s always been this way, but I think a combination of extreme financialization, globalization, and practices like scrum (which means well, I think, but is often used as a cudgel to &amp;#x27;inspect&amp;#x27; developer performance) have made average developer life even less pleasant in the last decade.</text></comment>