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I feel very similar. My job skills are very conducive to my current employer and I want to be challenged, yet I'm not overly motivated to chase every new technology; I have become content. I'm also am seriously thinking of retiring early, like in the next 3 to 8 years, and cannot decide if I want reinvent myself again in my future homeland or call it a day.
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Yes, I'm kind of at the place right now. I've been doing this for over 30 years and even though the work is awesome at times, the day in day out monotony of trying to figure out code written by someone else is getting to me. That's why I've taken up video creation as a hobby. I think what happens is the we get starved of the creativity part due to poor management and/or long maintenance periods. I'm at that point now. I've created other projects on my own to keep up my knowledge base and for fun, but it's missing the thrill of having someone else use it. I hope that one day soon, I'll get placed on another project and the thrill returns.  
When you are dead, you won't even know that you are dead. It's a pain only felt by others.
Same thing when you are stupid.
modified 19-Nov-21 21:01pm.
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I know exactly what you mean man. Stuff like tech debt has become a dirty phase. We dare not mention it, but it's there. And yet through it all, what else would we really rather do you know? What you really want to be in a place where you didn't get to use your mind?
Video editing and creation can be fun by the way. I don't know about you, but I got into this because I had a school buddy make a video game called Invasion of the Pac-Man Planet as a kid. The creativity lures you in with its s*xiness. But then you end up becoming the report creator. Gotta have reports. Reports, reports, reports! And pie charts.
Jeremy Falcon
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Donathan.Hutchings wrote: That's why I've taken up video creation as a hobby.
I've actually begun considering taking up inventing for a hobby or woodworking perhaps (a hand-crafted solid-oak dresser fetches over $800).
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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Quote: When you are dead, you won't even know that you are dead. It's a pain only felt by others.
Same thing when you are stupid.
How can you be so sure? You've never been dead before, have you? You can't be sure you won't know you're dead and you can't be 100% sure you'll be missed!
Also, stupid people do feel the pain themselves. They might not realize it's from their stupidity, but they do feel it!
I guess I am at least partially jaded with the tech. Instead of coding I'm commenting on peoples' signatures on CP.
Yeah, most of the tech world is crap. And I think that at least partially it's crap because it's driven by profit, not by passion. People will come up with all sorts of ideas to present them as new technologies only hoping to get a pile of money out of it. It has nothing, or very little, to do with the desire to help people.
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The bane of my tech life at the moment (has been for a few years now) is "agile". Yeah, you use JIRA and have a meeting every morning, sure you're agile. We have a fixed go-live, no retros (don't have the time, see previous point), no demos (see previous), no definition of done (so anything almost-done is good enough), testing is a separate task (agile only applies to development, things don't have to be tested to be considered working), product owners that don't really care, project managers instead of scrum masters, no transparency, all effort spent on making waterfall look like agile rather than using agile to leverage any benefits they think it may bring.
Still...we just try and do our best to make sure our code is good quality despite the "agile framework" mangled around us.
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You're describing an issue with management, not with Agile.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Which is why I put "agile" in quotes, and my parenthetic comments made this pretty clear too. Thanks for taking time to point out the obvious though 
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"You're welcome?" 
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Jeremy Falcon
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"agile"
as a practitioner (willing or not) is that considered an oxymoron, irony, or both?
OTOH: when you work for yourself "agile," as per the proper definition, becomes a way of life (100% without meetings ....)
Sin tack
the any key okay
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Everything in agile is badly named.
"Agile" - great, you mean we get the work done only quicker? Ok guys we're going agile! Here's the go-live date, don't write any code until it's all documented first, we don't have time to test things and we'll let technical debt build up because we will put no insentiveves in place to get things "done". Wow, I love this agile stuff...better quality faster and all we need to do is have a 5 minute meeting in the morning!
"Velocity" - great, that must be an absolute metric of performance. Right, how can we increase velocity? Let's forget about quality and working software being the measure of success, I want velocity to be the measure of success because more velocity means more better, right?
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That's a great example of what I'm talking about. In my experience few people actually do Agile. We just have a stand-up. And use the new shiny buzzword called Agile to sound smart. Boom... buzz buzz buzz word. Yay, we're smart now, let's go home.
I do have to agree though that has more to do with management than the methodology itself. Although, having a bit of experience in that myself, I can safely say sometimes a manager isn't given the time to implement something correctly in this now now now world we live in. And so the cycle continues.
Jeremy Falcon
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I think it's great, while the young ones are stuck in their mobile phone world I prefer getting into the real world - there's still some beautiful sights out there that are far better in real life than on a 4" screen in your hand - and if there's no young jerks out there spoiling it all the better.
Sure I still use tech for work, and it helps fill some evenings (seeing as TV has 100% gone to sh*t except of course when good sports are on) but any chance to leave tech behind for a while is always worth taking. Still haven't turned on my mobile data back on since coming back from a weekend away some while ago. (Coz when I'm roaming, the data isn't invited along - even if it's just across the road for a coffee.)
Sin tack
the any key okay
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Some of the brightest coworkers I've met have also realized this. Tech is our future, but too much of it can be destructive. We're still people and not machines. So a healthy balance must be found. Totally agree with most TV programming by the way. Maybe we're just getting old, but still I have to wonder what programming will be like a 1,000 years from now. Maybe we'll just skip the whole TV process and start giving people lethargy shots directly. So we can expedite the process of doing nothing.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: still I have to wonder what programming will be like a 1,000 years from now
It'll all be done by AI and tech will be implanted in everyone so you can never escape.
Of course the cheapskates on free microsoft implants will spend 58 minutes of every hour frozen in place while updates are installed and 'telemetry' is sucked out of them as adverts are played
Sin tack
the any key okay
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Oh by that I meant TV programming. I suspect it'll be something like 99% ads and 1% content.
Jeremy Falcon
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I have a TV-device but no antenna / internet plugged in. I just see a good film with my wife when we have time for it (actually not so often).
I don't even have data in my smart phone. I am still using an iPhone 4S (it was my old corporate cell at previous job and I was allowed to take it when leaving). Additional apps reduced to offline Navigator, a better calendar, whatsapp (I don't really like it, but is the only way to keep in touch with many of my friends at my birth place) and a couple of things more...
(I have even been target of some jokes like "your phone had to be in museum", "being without data is like living in prehistory" and things like that)
I hate too crowded places when doing vacations and I don't understand the people who is just running to reach a place, makes a selfie and then start running again to take the next selfie in other place... Where did the pleasure for a "stroll?" (slow walk, just chilling and having a look around you) go? People is stressed even in spare time... take a deep breath and chill out, man...
And I am younger than many would tell reading my rant... I suppose I am "old fashioned" in this topic
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Well said.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: You don't really see that type of passion in most industries.
Actually, I do. I know doctors and nurses that are incredibly passionate about their work. I play poker with guys that run their own construction companies, write editorials for news journals, work for drug companies, etc., and they all love their work. I know a lawyer that is passionate about their work in legal representation for women. They are all involved in "creating", whether it's a deck, an informative article, better medicine, better human conditions.
Jeremy Falcon wrote: As a whole, we're changing the planet.
With little ethics applied to those changes.
Jeremy Falcon wrote: So has anyone else found themselves jaded for a period while the industry finds itself, yet to only realize that as people we are right where we are meant to be?
Yes, but then again, the industry is always finding itself, and whatever flash in the pan it finds itself in at the moment is often not one that I'm eager to partake in. That was the case when I was in my 20's, and is so in my 50's now as well. Actually, tech has itself made the flash-in-the-pan effect worse.
I don't know if I would go so far as to say we are right where we are meant to be. Literally where am I sitting right now (cubicle, insurance company) there are people around me that are doing what they are doing for the paycheck and nothing more. It's frustrating to be mostly surrounded by people that have passion only for the paycheck.
Personally, having gone through a soul searching process a few years back, I came to various conclusions that work for me:
- I'm better off if I ignore the industry, do what I'm passionate about doing, and look at the industry for "has it done anything useful that I can take advantage of?"
- balance that with the reality that sometimes I have to do something I have no passion for because, yes, I need the paycheck too.
- balance that with recognizing that the tech is irrelevant, and what I have passion for and what makes life worthwhile is the interactions with the people. Real interactions, not IM's, emails, Slack chats, etc. Interacting with tech ultimately is a rather hollow experience.
- balance my enthusiasm for hollow tech by writing articles to touch people's lives. Thank goodness for tech so that I can do that!
And the whole thing is balanced by doing non-tech things, from learning to play the lyre to hanging out in coffee houses for interesting random encounters with people to having a spiritual life that involves going to study groups and reading together with my gf.
Marc
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Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Marc Clifton wrote: Actually, I do. I know doctors and nurses that are incredibly passionate about their work. I play poker with guys that run their own construction companies, write editorials for news journals, work for drug companies, etc., and they all love their work. I know a lawyer that is passionate about their work in legal representation for women. They are all involved in "creating", whether it's a deck, an informative article, better medicine, better human conditions.
Marc, why are you trying to ruin my points with reason and logic? 
Marc Clifton wrote: Yes, but then again, the industry is always finding itself, and whatever flash in the pan it finds itself in at the moment is often not one that I'm eager to partake in. That was the case when I was in my 20's, and is so in my 50's now as well. Actually, tech has itself made the flash-in-the-pan effect worse.
I went through that same phase. I'm still going through it. Current industry in any field has done more to dehumanize us than anything I can think of. People aren't aware of their instincts or senses anymore. It's like we're turning into machines that barely think under the illusion we think because we are in our heads. Which isn't always really thinking. Not to sound doom and gloom, but something should be done to change this. We're still humans - for now.
Marc Clifton wrote: I don't know if I would go so far as to say we are right where we are meant to be. Literally where am I sitting right now (cubicle, insurance company) there are people around me that are doing what they are doing for the paycheck and nothing more. It's frustrating to be mostly surrounded by people that have passion only for the paycheck.
But we are man. We're always where we are meant to be. Every choice we've made in life put us exactly where we are. And our choices dictate exactly where we are meant to be. Once that's accepted it's pretty liberating actually. Because we can always choose something else.
Marc Clifton wrote: Personally, having gone through a soul searching process a few years back
That's part of the wisdom that comes with introspection and aging and seeing and experiencing more of life I believe. Glad you did it man.
Marc Clifton wrote: I'm better off if I ignore the industry, do what I'm passionate about doing, and look at the industry for "has it done anything useful that I can take advantage of?"balance that with the reality that sometimes I have to do something I have no passion for because, yes, I need the paycheck too.balance that with recognizing that the tech is irrelevant, and what I have passion for and what makes life worthwhile is the interactions with the people. Real interactions, not IM's, emails, Slack chats, etc. Interacting with tech ultimately is a rather hollow experience.balance my enthusiasm for hollow tech by writing articles to touch people's lives. Thank goodness for tech so that I can do that!
I totally agree with what you've found out. For this reason I do not nor will I ever really like FB, etc. The key to remember is that we as a people still have control over where tech is headed. And so while I absolutely agree with you 100% on this, I'd like to think we can still have some influence on the direction of tech to ensure humanity stays in the picture of technology. And hey, CP is glad you're all about number 4.
You're right on the money though. I worked in the hospice industry. When people are on their deathbeds, the only regrets people have are not doing what they really wanted to do and if they had poor relationships. It's all about connections man. It's why we're here on this planet. Real ones. It's smart that you've realized that. I just submit we can still do something about it before we turn into robots completely.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Current industry in any field has done more to dehumanize us than anything I can think of.
It isn't industry. It is the prevailing beliefs of the people. They think that technology is our only salvation, so they bow to that god. If you can change their beliefs, you will change the world. But one of the major beliefs you must contend with is that things can't be changed! 
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That Your Belly-Button Signature Ties
To Viviparous Mama.
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David O'Neil wrote: It isn't industry. It is the prevailing beliefs of the people.
Oddly enough I just got done reading this very sentiment in another post. Which I agree. I reckon it's more apparent in technology to people in technology, but that doesn't mean it's exclusive to technology.
David O'Neil wrote: But one of the major beliefs you must contend with is that things can't be changed!
Tru dat.
Jeremy Falcon
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