Ask HN: Had enough – a need for a new beginning
I'm in my late forties and have wasted over 20 years of my life developing services and solutions in the advertising and web industry that enable companies to sell as much as possible. During this time, I was always expected to deliver more performance for less money. Maximizing profits for entrepreneurs who have no qualms - their sole goal (with exceptions proving the rule) is to accumulate as much money as possible, to the point where they no longer know what to do with it. I didn't really have a choice because in the heavily contested agency business you have to be thankful to find any clients at all. With my work, I have contributed to advancing surveillance capitalism, developing software that serves almost exclusively to promote sales and spreading worthless content. All results that exacerbate rather than alleviate humanity's problems. Lately, I've been trying to sell AI (specifically LLMs) that don't really work well in any application and waste enormous amounts of energy - and in most cases, classical, algorithmic approaches would be significantly more efficient.
I've had enough. I want to do something in my life that truly benefits humanity. Something that helps people live better and more sustainably. Something that helps save our planet. And something that contributes to my children having a better future than currently seems likely.
I'm very good with computers, have experience in system administration (primarily Linux) and can program. I'm also a good writer and able to communicate very well in English and German. I would also like to continue working with computers and the internet, but on projects that have real value, meaning, and dignity. And all of this should also bring in enough money so that I can provide my family with a decent standard of living, without us having to turn every penny over twice. And that seems to me a pretty hopeless endeavor. Or does anyone here know of any project or company that aligns with my values?
Anyone else share my experiences or feelings?
> I want to do something in my life that truly benefits humanity.
Please rethink your goals and how you will have impact. Unless you run a non-profit, people are in the business to make money. Let me tell you that I had the reverse experience earlier in my adulthood. I described a bit in a thread recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41598911
In my late teens and early 20s, I rejected big corps. I rejected standard job search and interview practices because people seemed fake. I wanted to stay away from making products that can do bad things (very broad!). I stayed away from business-y courses and topics because people with money seemed greedy. Fortunately, I found a workplace that satisfied my beliefs. I made an intern's salary in the area as a full time employee. Salary increase was almost non-existent. Work was very chill. I lived paycheque to paycheque and never travelled, but being poor was ok being in my 20s.
The last straw came when the company was sold. The early employees had a windfall. Some folks, who were in their 40s, retired or became an angel investor. Some kept their job and bought "adult toys" (Example: Classic cars). I got $0 because I had no stock. I turned 30. I had no money to replace even my personal computer and bought old parts to keep my computer going. That's my wake-up call.
I began to network and learned the reality of the industry. I learned to interview for jobs. I learned that a degree wasn't as valuable as my parents said in the 1980s. The company I ended with had some controversies, but there were a lot of smart folks who were eager to learn. There was no lacking of recruiters reaching out when and after working there. Start saving money in my 30s still wasn't too late!
If I had a sizable trust fund and just needed something to occupy my mind during the day, the non-evil-corp would be perfect.
> I want to do something in my life that truly benefits humanity.
> Something that helps save our planet.
I would advise you to rethink setting such big goals and start really small. It looks like you're burned out working for an finance oriented industry that does not have such goals in mind, and trying to compensate that with a swing in completely different direction. Jump the whole scale so to say. And that might be an impossible task. As an engineer I would decompose such a big goal in to smaller steps and try to move towards the goal.
If Elon with all his billions barely can make a dent in saving a planet, you should expect less from yourself. Just do your part whichever small it is.
This might be unrelated but I read an article from the founder who found value in the organization called Tugboat Institute. Which promotes sustainable growth of the business. Not sure it's 100% of what you looking for but worth exploring.
I've bounced in and out of advertising tech, and I can tell you that this isn't unique to that business space. No matter what space you land in, try to establish yourself as someone who is self-driven and can define and tackle your own problems. And then find problems that you want to fix.
I'm back in the ad space at the moment (any port in a storm), and the project I'm working on addresses one of our viewers' and customers' biggest pain points. When it's ready for launch I'll p-hack the numbers to show that it's a win for the company too. And then I can sit back and know that I've actually made things better for people.
Since you know the ads surveillance Borg so well you are uniquely positioned to understand how to solve the problems it has created for everyone. Spend a lot of time thinking about why your past work doesn't sit right with you and the conditions that caused you to be paid to do it. Then consider what could be changed that would make these conditions slightly better. That will help you find other groups whose work you value or come up with your own ideas to pursue.
There are extremely obvious problems in energy and biotech that everyone wants solved but they are harder to break into with your background. However it's probably not truly that hard to contribute in a software capacity if your horizon is a few years.
Advertizing is pretty much evil. Selling things to maximise profits only is a net loss for humanity. I feel differently about technology though. Technology can feed us, keep us warm and let us share information and culture. Maybe just get out of advertizing and do anything where you make valuable and useful things? So many options really. It doesn't matter if the bosses make more than you as long as the things the company does are decent.
Oh I love technology, don't get me wrong here. As I wrote: I still want to work with computers, software development, the web etc. The thing is, I don't want to feed (surveillance) capitalism anymore. But finding companies with decent leaders and half way decent pay, preferably those which aren't listed at stock markets and don't exist to simply increase shareholder value at any cost, has become increasingly difficult.
I worked a lot on advertising/marketing related software. And had very similar feelings.
Only until I've resolved my main personal psy issues.
Since then I don't care. Job is just a mean to an end. As long as I don't do anything illegal - i'm fine. If I don't like it - I change it to something I like more.
I don't give a single duck how others make money or how much they make. Also I know that there are as many assholes hiding behind noble "missiona" as there are among entrepreneurs just trying to make good money.
I work as long as it is valuable for me and my goals.
Of course people are motivated by money but there is are difference on how you can achieve that goal. And in advertising it is mostly on the backs of the most naïve users.
In contrast there are people that really improve software and products for everyone and there are countless examples of that.
that is a kinda childish view
It's like saying that advertising bad, other cool things - good.
Don't you know that if not because of advertising - we wouldn't had Google, amazon and thousands of other great products and companies?
I disagree that this view is childish at all. Advertising itself often has no value, it is about the products and services it might support.
And it is a broad field and evaluation of its worth is subjective. I think sponsoring events is a more constructive form of advertising than tracking users wants and pushing popups onto them. These are distinct spheres that can both be titled as advertising but are still very different and not equal.
Still, if advertising stopped existing, very little would change. It is often just a pivot that competitors need to engage.
Your choice to not care, but that is neither very wise nor a particularly "adult" perspective, although the latter is of course nothing you should strive for.
Sorry, I'm not gonna comment your nonsensical and naive perspective.
Yes, advertising is not something that directly helps cure cancer.
But it is nothing but ignorant to downplay important role it plays in the economy.
Many people use knives to kill, others make food with them. Yet knives are not even neutral - it is a major and valuable invention of a mankind.
It only plays a role for product discovery, which is almost trivial in todays information infrastructure.
It remains a bottle for attention but the amplitude of advertising is almost irrelevant. If we had less advertising tomorrow, no pop-ups, no billboards, no flyers and so on, very little would directly change and consumption would barely be affected.
And as I hinted at, there are of course different levels of advertising. If it consumes private information of its targets, it becomes a net loss for society and economy.
More or less the reality that OP doesn't want to be part of anymore and I believe it is for good reason and I wish him luck. That doesn't mean I don't like our advertising department or believe it is superfluous.
Sounds like you've been unfortunate and have spent all your time with financially driven people. A bunch of that might from from working in advertising. I can assure you that there are founders and companies that are ethical and moral, though they may be rare. My point being that you might want to focus on changing the type of people you work with as much as the topic and market segment. Certainly you will find a higher percentage of people motivated to do good for the world in the nonprofit sector, for example.
I recently took a very hard turn from coding to building things: PCBs, MCUs, CAD, CNC, PnP. All of the acronyms.
Lower case engineering means that we can shift from building SaaS apps that won't exist in three years to prototyping solutions to real problems. To me, this is the place to start.
That indeed sounds like a hard turn, and an interesting one. Did you have any prior experience in creating hardware? Because otherwise I could not possibly imagine that this was possbile without a major (costly and/or time consuming) educational update.
Short answer is that I'm a competent autodidact living in a time where it's easy to research anything with YouTube, ChatGPT and paid mentorship in a remarkably compressed amount of time.
In fairness, my father was an engineer and my grandfather was an inventor; 35+ years developing software and being in proximity to electronics and people building stuff is certainly part of my story. However, aside from the whole mental health / needing to chart a new path thing, the main thing that motivated me was watching inspiring creators on YouTube (Wintergatan, Stuff Made Here, Hacksmith etc) and realizing that a lot of the gap between me being the audience vs being a maker myself was fear of starting. I kind of had to give myself permission to change how I saw myself.
I am reasonably smart and I have a pretty decent work ethic, but the main thing I have going for me is stubborn determination and patience.
If you remember one thing from this, it's that learning without a specific end goal is pointless or even harmful. It's like going to a hardware store and buying every tool just in case. Instead, you need to identify a project that you feel passionate enough to finish. Then you do what engineers do: recursively break down big tasks into smaller tasks, and then go down whatever rabbit holes are required until you are finished. I recommend not setting (or telling anyone about) delivery dates.
Two resources that I highly recommend:
1. I had no idea that CAD - I highly recommend you skip right to Fusion, which is free for casual use - would be such a huge part of my life a year ago... but now I think that it's hilarious that this wasn't obvious from the start. I learned by following along with this video, step by step. It's 90 minutes long and it will take you about a week to complete. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK60ROb2RKI
2. Too few people talk about how incredible ChatGPT is for circuit design and engineering. It is just as impactful as its ability to write code. However, when you hit a wall on what you can Google or watch, I highly recommend John Teel's Hardware Academy. It's an engineering mentorship platform, and the people there are excellent. You can get feedback on PCB design, manufacturing questions, suppliers. There's video courses, too. https://thehardwareacademy.com/
Thank you for this resourceful answer. Hardware might not be my ultimate goal, but some of your thoughts and conclusions are quite universal. I agree that ChatGPT is a valuable tool in certain areas. Education is one of them, as long as people don't solely rely on this platform and keep on questioning and verifying information via primary sources. It certainly has accelerated software development in my company as well, to a degree.
Right on. I hope that your journey is an empowering one.
I'm amused to see that someone disliked my initial reply enough to click the button. I guess you really can't make everyone happy.
One thing I would say as a parting thought is that even if hardware in particular is not your goal, engineering skills and an engineering mindset is something that is applicable to art, health, irregation, you name it.
Also: learning CAD has been one of the most profound communication skills wins for me. Even if your goal is not explicitly building stuff, being able to express a design in quantative terms is something that has a surprising amount of everyday applicability. One of the things Fusion is really good at is rendering, for example. It might not be my go-to tool for laying out my living room, but it has definitely replaced napkins and whiteboards simply because it has trained me to consider things unfinished until there are dimensions attached. That's a subtle but powerful upgrade.
You Sir, are a mindful and friendly human being. Your thoughts are very welcome, and I cherish discussions like these. I will look into your suggestions, especially taking a closer look at Fusion, and if it's just for personal gain of knowledge.
Maybe, do something like https://www.village.one/ does?
take a deep breath. go for a walk. exercise. look at the clouds and wonder why they make the shapes they do. start conversations with people you don't know. clean up trash from the street. send a letter to a friend. record the sounds of birds. draw a picture or make a comic book about how you feel and mail it to yourself. dig a hole and then look at the dirt with a macro lens. try to get really good at making noodles. volunteer at a school, teach programming to kids. make a robot that draws a picture and mail it to your mom. get a job at the library. make friends with a crow. set a long term, 1000 year vision for your life. smile at your heart and be kind to yourself. pour yourself a cup of tea, smoke some hash. get good at making pickles. champion biodiversity. fill in the cracks with gold. wave to strangers in a heartfelt way. forgive yourself because you are good enough.
That from OpenAI, psychiatrist GPT? I do NOT like PICKLES! Go away!
realize you're still caught in the hamster wheel of capitalism and all you did is moot
Feelings are a strong motivator for actions, and learning/experiencing which of those activities lead to a more positive emotional/mental state is the first step to enable healthier decision making, even to escape the wheel if still necessary. It's hard to realize their value while only mentally executing them in a state where the wheel is the dominant outlook.
I would also like to continue working with computers and the internet
That ain't changing anything. Good luck.
Good luck to you, too. :-)
Bible. Open random page, the verse that you spot first is your answer.
Try this once a week.
> 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.
This didn't help.
Patience. One per each week.
"how bout going from one scam to this scam?"
What you fill your inside you will find it outside.