I started my IT career in 2011, I have enjoyed it, I have got to do a lot of interesting stuff and meet interesting people, I will treasure those memories forever.
But, starting with crypto turing general computing from being:
"Wow, this machine can run so many apps at the same time!" or "Holy shit, those graphics look epic!" or "Amazing, this computer has really sped up that annoying task!"
To being:
Yo! Look at how many numbers I can generate!
That brought down my enthusiasm severely, but hey, figuring out solutions to problems was still fun.
Then came AI/LLMs.
And with it, a mountain of slop.
Finding help about an issue has gone from googling and reading help articles written by something with an actual brain to mostly being rephrased manuals that only provide working answers to semi standard answers.
Add to that a general push to us AI in anything and everything, no matter how little relevance it holds for the task at hand.
I also remember how AI was sold to the us at first, we were promised to do away with boring paperwork, so we could get on with our actual job.
What did we get? An AI that takes the fun and creative parts, leaving the paperwork for the workers.
We got an AI that we need to expect to be stealing our work and data at every point, giving us shit work back, while being told that we should applaude it and be grateful for it.
And the worst thing, the worst thing is that people seem happy with it. I keep getting requests to buy another Copilot license or asking for another AI service to be added to our tenant, I am sick of it!
We got an AI that somehow has slithered onto the golden throne and can't be questioned.
I am not able to leave the tech market at this time, but I will focus on more tangible hobbies going forward.
This year, I have given myself a project, I will try to build a model railway in a suitcase. That will be a Z-scale tiny world in a suitcase.
I have never done anything remotely like it, but I feel like I need something physical to take my mind off tech.
Sorry for the rant, but I just came off of a high from realizing and putting words to my feelings.
The IT worker pipeline:
help desk > sysadmin > CTO/CISO > goat farmer
Still on help desk and can't seem to get past it. Goat farmer is already appealing but I can't afford it. There are few job opportunities where I live too.
Hey, look on the bright side...
Most people can't even get help desk jobs these days.
I'm devops? Horse shit. Maybe you ain't making 150k right out of college but there are PLENTY of devops jobs.
Its not that no one is getting jobs, its that the market is saturated and getting worse. Tech firms have layed off or off shored hundreds of thousands of workers and with "AI" the number of roles is dropping quickly; especially entry level roles.
Yep. Wages and 160k+ out of school are slowing down and mostly going away. Still plenty of the regular stuff left.
If you know TF, and container deployments you can find a job for 120k all day at the drop off a hat in the states. Send me a resume and I'll ping you to a role we are filling for 140k.
As a senior I found a role for 210 and turned down 3 150-175k offers 3 months ago.
It's harder, it's still not physical labor for slave wages.
There is a right sizing of over hiring as well as everyone scrambling to find what real efficiency AI brings. It's bringing variability.
The irony is that the subfield with active hiring is the one that will ultimately make the very work they are doing redundant.
The magic is gone and the intellectual challenge is fading fast. I saw the writing on the wall and am jumping ship to something decidedly non-tech 🙂
Id take it for minimum wage if there was a job here just to be doing something new and interesting.
Well, I have no intention of hitting CTO/CISO, so no goat farming for me