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The value proposition, honestly, has fallen off a cliff.

If "they" can dangle things you really want (money, better lifestyle, interesting work) in front of you, then there is reason to get excited.

Right now? Oh hell no.

Entire tech industry is in the mode of getting rid of people, lowering standards, lowering pay checks, the work is boring and tedious.

It is reasonable to simply not have any motivation to work on or do anything if there is legitimately no "line of site" to improving your situation.

Or working on terms which you can resonate with.

The idea of going into an office shudder to work for people like WebMD on ... creating search engine spam content in the age of AI? oh hell no.

There have been times in my career where I was intrinsically ultra motivated and willing to overlook a lot of the toxic overhead that comes with corporate jobs.

Now?

I am really not enthusiastic or excited at all. The stuff that is showing up is all a step down, less pay, less interesting work, boring companies. I can't even get myself interested.

I know that when something that excites me comes along I can get motivated again, but after exhausting myself the last few years chasing carrots dangling on sticks I just dont want to do it anymore.

I dont know what it will take for corporate // work to motivate me again. I am not seeing it out there.

Sooner or later, "That" opportunity always shows up and I can renegage. Lately, no.



Funny that you mentioned WebMD - they just released this cringe video to let people return to the office: https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kxqnx/dont-mess-with-us-web...


When I first saw this I thought it was a skit from The Onion. I fear we have reached some dystopian state of post-irony.


Learn to live on a ~50-75% of your salary is what I’ve been telling people. The good times for American engineers are gone


I don't know, I think it's a wave. Market will bounce back. But yeah, always try to live humbly and keep a hefty savings buffer. This won't be the last bump.

Maybe in 20 years if/when AI assisted coding gets good. But even then I question if it will take every domain out. Webdev, hell yes. Distributed, maybe (but doubtful). Embedded/HFT/anything performance critical? Doubtful. And they sure aren't going to completely automate out anything mission/safety critical.




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