Hey, what’s up. I usually just lurk because I can’t keep myself from getting into stupid discussions and wasting all of my time getting angry, but I feel like you do when it comes to work and I thought I’d share. I’ll be deleting my credentials after responding, because of a lack of discipline on my end, FYI.
So I’m in a type of system administration. Not your run-of-the-mill IT shop, it’s sort of in the direction of devops and provisioning classic on prem environments. There’s also other stuff, some of it challenging because of technical complexity, some of it challenging due to brain dead QA procedures and corporate inflexibility.
I also feel like I ‘did my time in the trenches’ in the past when I worked IT help desk, but having seen the other side, advancing your career into more technical roles will not offer any salvation. It’s the same bland, corporate controlled, big tech dominated horse shit patch and pray dance. You learn a new thing only for it to be superseded or abandoned, or worse, rolled over from a permanently licensed product to a subscription. In this field there is no such thing as perennial knowledge. The only place experience has any hope of sticking are the soft skills. It’s building on quick sand.
That’s why life feels like a treadmill. Even a bigger pay check won’t offer much in the way of contentment. It’s fun for a while but you get used to it. If you can make due with what you’ve got now, more money won’t offer a way out.
If you ask me, which you kind of did by way of this post, modern life fades into meaninglessness easily. There is not much connection between the actions you take and the results unless you perform manual labor or better yet, a craft. That’s why a lot of people in the IT field have hobbies like woodworking. Personally I like motorcycle riding and maintenance. At least when I’m done reassembling a carburetor the result is a running engine.
I guess what I’m saying is, if you have a job that pays the bills, you should be fine not giving a flying fuck about your job, your employer or the efficiency of your coworkers. Do the bare minimum you need to do in order not to get fired. Your job is just a means to an end; you are employed in the service of yourself and your loved ones. If the CEO of your company could generate a quarter point on the NYSE by stabbing your grandma to death, then they will. If you’re anything like me, you define work as anything you do solely for the economic incentive. Treat it as such. Behave like the Homo Economicus every institution expects you to; take what you can, give nothing back. Let go of the idea that work should be fulfilling; our current economic system simply isn’t built for anything but ruthless extraction of value. Anything you do consider fulfilling is almost by definition a cost. That’s okay. Really.
Build the mental fortitude to accept your lot, which considering human history is not actually that bad. We have easy access to high quality food, shelter and leisure time. Slack as hard as you can get away with; read books on company time, work on personal projects, play games or just stare off into the clouds. When you clock out, slam that door behind you and pretend like your employer does not exist. Don’t lose your job or give it up until you have a solid plan to switch into something else, but always remember that a job is by definition something nobody would have done unless there were economic rewards.
I recommend starting with some (e-)books about Stoicism (e-books are easy to hide in a window on your work display); there’s ancient wisdom in there that makes it easier to stop giving a shit about the things that don’t matter, in this case the meaninglessness of what you do for a living. It will help you focus on the things you can control; how you view the world being one of them.
Hey, what’s up. I usually just lurk because I can’t keep myself from getting into stupid discussions and wasting all of my time getting angry, but I feel like you do when it comes to work and I thought I’d share. I’ll be deleting my credentials after responding, because of a lack of discipline on my end, FYI.
So I’m in a type of system administration. Not your run-of-the-mill IT shop, it’s sort of in the direction of devops and provisioning classic on prem environments. There’s also other stuff, some of it challenging because of technical complexity, some of it challenging due to brain dead QA procedures and corporate inflexibility.
I also feel like I ‘did my time in the trenches’ in the past when I worked IT help desk, but having seen the other side, advancing your career into more technical roles will not offer any salvation. It’s the same bland, corporate controlled, big tech dominated horse shit patch and pray dance. You learn a new thing only for it to be superseded or abandoned, or worse, rolled over from a permanently licensed product to a subscription. In this field there is no such thing as perennial knowledge. The only place experience has any hope of sticking are the soft skills. It’s building on quick sand.
That’s why life feels like a treadmill. Even a bigger pay check won’t offer much in the way of contentment. It’s fun for a while but you get used to it. If you can make due with what you’ve got now, more money won’t offer a way out.
If you ask me, which you kind of did by way of this post, modern life fades into meaninglessness easily. There is not much connection between the actions you take and the results unless you perform manual labor or better yet, a craft. That’s why a lot of people in the IT field have hobbies like woodworking. Personally I like motorcycle riding and maintenance. At least when I’m done reassembling a carburetor the result is a running engine.
I guess what I’m saying is, if you have a job that pays the bills, you should be fine not giving a flying fuck about your job, your employer or the efficiency of your coworkers. Do the bare minimum you need to do in order not to get fired. Your job is just a means to an end; you are employed in the service of yourself and your loved ones. If the CEO of your company could generate a quarter point on the NYSE by stabbing your grandma to death, then they will. If you’re anything like me, you define work as anything you do solely for the economic incentive. Treat it as such. Behave like the Homo Economicus every institution expects you to; take what you can, give nothing back. Let go of the idea that work should be fulfilling; our current economic system simply isn’t built for anything but ruthless extraction of value. Anything you do consider fulfilling is almost by definition a cost. That’s okay. Really.
Build the mental fortitude to accept your lot, which considering human history is not actually that bad. We have easy access to high quality food, shelter and leisure time. Slack as hard as you can get away with; read books on company time, work on personal projects, play games or just stare off into the clouds. When you clock out, slam that door behind you and pretend like your employer does not exist. Don’t lose your job or give it up until you have a solid plan to switch into something else, but always remember that a job is by definition something nobody would have done unless there were economic rewards.
I recommend starting with some (e-)books about Stoicism (e-books are easy to hide in a window on your work display); there’s ancient wisdom in there that makes it easier to stop giving a shit about the things that don’t matter, in this case the meaninglessness of what you do for a living. It will help you focus on the things you can control; how you view the world being one of them.