Feel irked that my 'skills' were being used for 'crap' I hate today. (consulting, alternatives)

[nineteenseventy3]

*edit, sorry this is more like a rant.. and it's long. I tried to delete but can't. Ignore if this kinda stuff irritates you, lol*

Hi. Well, I done web/internet work, some technical, some graphic design. Stuff like that.

But I started my career in the late 90's, when the internet felt more like a giant experimental playground for geeks and it was sort of untouched by the big corporate hands.. That's the internet I loved, and thrived in.

I really hate the ads. I gotta say. I hate junk mail, I hate advertising shoved in my face. It used to be, TV was where you expect cheap tactics. Web felt pure. After the early 2000's, no more...

When I watch a video, and that little banner pops up I want to scream.

Yet, my job was doing some of that. I had to make mass emails. I had to make irritating banner ads.

I feel.. I know this is stupid, cause.. heck, I'm getting paid right?? But, I had PRINCIPLE.

I couldn't do it anymore. I can't add, or contribute, to the crap "I" hate myself.

Yet, that means, I gotta give up jobs paying $70k a year. And go do--who knows what. Stock shelves or something. I'll probably go down to $12/hour, but.. is it worth it??

To me--yeah. It is.

Luckily I was able to save up. I just put my head down, dealt with it for a few years, saved up enough to live off for a few years, and now I'm out... I'm out of the web field.


Every job I find.. it's like, the utter crap of mankind. Useless companies, only making entertainment or useless products but focusing more on looking good and being fancy and modern and hip, but... to me is just more added junk to the world.

I would hold too much guilt.. Knowing how much I hate it, yet.. I'm doing it.


I long for the web of 1997, when I could watch a video, but there's no ad, there's no annoying commercial saying "video will start in 15 seconds.." while an annoying voice penetrates my speakers and scares me cause I didn't know my volume was on full blast.


I just wanna see that stupid cat. I don't need to see Flo, okay???? I have NEVER in my life purchased something because an AD told me to. The web should be pure, academic, social, and untouched by corporate hands, period.


Grrrrr. Maybe I'm more annoyed because when I was in these meetings and stuff, I was the guy like.. asking "do we NEED to put this on??" and some manager is like.. uh, yeah? That's our revenue.

And I was like, you know, what do I do??? fight it?? Fight the whole basis of the economy in today's world??

Yeah right. Little ol' me. I'm gonna stop internet advertising.


So there goes all my job opportunities. I can't find one single web/internet job where, I feel sense of pride, that this company holds onto the beliefs and values of older, better times. It's rare.

There are a "few", but in today's market, it's almost impossible. Unless I go make the web pages for Grandma's homemade cat sweaters she sells on eBay, and pays me cash $12 an hour, plus free coupons for catfood.

I mean.. has ANYONE felt like me, and left the industry, holding onto pride and ego.. not wanting to "sell out" for a dolla..


I can't do it no more!!! $4000 paychecks were very nice. VERY NICE. But, at what cost. Selling your soul????


To me, THIS is the problem with 'capitalism' just like the movie.


But, I don't want to get all involved or outspoken. I'd rather quietly leave, and find something else.


But, honestly these are my "skills". It's what I know. I don't know how to bake. I suck at customer service. I'm not willing to wear back-braces again.



I think about "just sucking it up, putting my feelings aside" and re-joining again. But, I done some interviews and midway through, feeling like it's all gonna be the same-- I sort of excuse myself from the position.


I'm actually in demand, all the recruiters kept calling me, and I had to block them.

Same shtick.. some banking/insurance/entertainment company needs a web guy.


I take a look at the site-- and realize, it's exactly what I hate about how the web has turned out.

I feel I'm an asset. I'm a value.. but, where???? WHere can I be used?? I tried non profits, but they feel the same to me. Everything feels like a corporation.


To me the web shoulda/coulda been used simply to boost productivity. That's where I used to capitolize on.

for instance, making sites that allow bakers to go on and have a cool little recipe database. But, I didn't want them to have to pay for it??? Or sign up, for 19.95 a month, and have to log in, and have the ads all over facebook, and blah blah.

It should be a bare bones, but useful thing anyone can just use.


I guess I was unrealistic. I wasn't looking at the "money" factor. I was looking at the actual value of use.


Like to be honest, I LOVED napster. I loved aimster. Free mp3s. To me, that was the BEAUTY of the web.

Because guess what?? When I found a free mp3.. I may have then bought the album!!!


Because, I'm not gonna pay for an album to find out I only like 1 song. Then, I didn't get my value...


but, with free mp3s... hey.. this is where it comes down to "Make something I like, and I will dedicate myself to you, and support you, by buying further albums. Make something I don't like, and I will not"


But this is differing ideologies. I'm of the ideology Napster was great, because it put the ball on the artists court to provide GOOD MUSIC. It becomes THE PEOPLE who chose what's good, and what's not.

Maybe some artists like Metallica would lose a few hundred thousand in sales due to napster.


(I love metallica, so this ain't a knock on them..but...) but.. maybe it was that by their new albums they just weren't as good, that was the whole era they cut their hair and Lars had that clanky sound on his snare drum. This wasn't the fade into black metallica, which I would of bought. This was the aging metallica who I wouldn't have bought.

I still think napster should be around. Everything should be open. Like the days we recorded onto cassettes and gave them to our friends.


That's the way the world works.


This is why I cannot, why I REFUSE to work in any industry today...

So.. I guess, I'll just end up homeless in 5 years. My money will run out ... and then, if I'm desperate, I may have to "sell out" again due to that or dying.


Who else believes in principle more than money???

Is there a club I can join??

Is there a movement?? (oh yeah, the anti SOPA movement)


But.. to me, even the Anti-SOPA movement is corporate!!!! That's the thing. EVERYTHING is so... BIG online. Even the anti-BIG things are BIG.


You know???? Yet, honestly.. after all the glitz and glamor of the intial excitement is gone, all these things online really mean NOTHING.

Do they ADD to your personal life happiness?? Honestly. Ask yourself.

It doesn't. The only people benefitting are super attractive people who actually find a marriage partner on eHarmony.

But if you ain't that... it adds NOTHING.


The social value of it is only good for the people who are already socially succesful. They don't really NEED the web. It's simply an enhancement.

The web could've been used more to help those who could not get in in reality.. like all the struggling people.. but instead, it simply enhances those who already have.


The beauty of the web before was that, it sort of equalized society. Today's web only further separates.


Some don't want society equalized though. The prettier get prettier and the rich get richer, and they like it that way.

But pretty people and rich people, I find, don't always make the best content.

That's why they're against the napsters and the free internet, because, they know they don't make the best content.

If we had the free will and choice, we wouldn't be buying theirs. And they know it.



The internet KILLED hip hop, the true fans all admit and know this.


It turned relationships into Amazon products. YOu are just a product, like buying a TV online. You're not a person, who has a favorite song.. you are just "your picture" plus how socially important you are.



I remember the web in 97. You would NOT have things like.. these online poker companies all corrupt. Things like that would not have passed.. instead, we would have some guy in his bedroom who made a legit poker game that had some integrity, because unlike a corporation who can be protected by the complexities of things and hide behind illegal tactics, a guy in his bedroom has more personal value at stake....


Social sites of the 90's were often made by people in their own home, and actually encouraged and spawned social relationships MORE. I had actual friends online in 97. We met up. I Knew their last name. I saw their flesh. Sometimes I got lucky and got to date them. Sometimes, it didn't work out yet we remained friends.

I'm a fan of growth and evolution, but I always believed there was a threshold as far as how much it should grow before the opposite effect starts to happen, and it ruins life...



I think, around 98-99 is when it reached it's peak productivity in terms of it's actual value and use...

After 9/11, because the world got paranoid, and began "looking" more inside our personal sites, and regulating, is when it went wrong...

Because of things like racist sites, or sites that formed groups such as pedophiles or terrorists...


A "free" internet had that as it's one pitfal, the ability for these rogue orgs to form.


The "new" internet of today, keeps that "in check" by having everything on the net more visible and known by public eyes....



That's THE REASON. It's not money. It's because of fears of rogue organizations being able to form online and recruit and gain support.

But the expense is quality goes down. Innovation goes down. Usefulness goes down. Free choice goes down.

Some argue, well... we would NOT have things like Google maps, had it been the internet of before...


I disagree.


Smart people would STILL have worked to make a "google-like map" that would have served the same purpose. Some genuius would have tapped it into the NASA satellite imagery and .. bam, we have it.

Smarties would still have innovated.


Someone would have invented a photo sharing site that worked and functioned just as good as Flickr...

We didn't need corporate involvement.


I WOULD HAVE DONE IT!!!! I was alreaDy doing it!! FOR FREE.


And so were thousands of others. We were all contriubuting to web technologies, USEFUL technologies, FOR FREE.



Because we liked it! Because, it was fun.


Corporate jobs have made us NOT LIKE IT and that's why the jobs are all gone and going overseas.



Because we do not like the way it operates. Your putting business people in control telling us what to do, but the internet is OUR domain, the techies...


Business should have stuck to the real world of wall street and your fancy cars.


Leave this techie stuff to the geeks who had self interest in building things of value to people.

Sure, some of their motives might have been to gain respect of people, but.. isn't that more pure than money???


That those 'geeks' just wanted people to like them, so they would build that very useful recipe app for you to use free.


And you can say, "wow, cool! thanks man!"


And they would smile.


And that's all they did it for....



those days are GONE.

[jane_sm1th73]

73, you are burned out. Please accept my sincere empathy. It happens to all of us from time to time, and you may want to consider being kind to yourself over the next couple weeks to give your mind a chance to stop spinning.

What I do when I get burned out is to pull back (as you have done), relax a bit, and get a reset by doing something in a completely different modality for a week or two. As in, you've been living in your head for a decade. So maybe take a couple weeks to be physical. You want to engage some pathways in your brain that AREN'T burned out. "Adventure" consists of doing ANYTHING that you don't normally do - it can be as unglamorous as buying a tourist book of hikes and biking trips, and forcing yourself to do several day walks or multi-day biking trips during the course of your reset. Try not to be anxious about your next move while you're away. Your brain will be evaluating the situation in the background. Give it a chance to do its thing. Sort of like, when you go to sleep with a thorny problem, and you wake up in the morning and you have a new approach? IMHO, you ought to consider giving THIS thorny problem the same treatment.

Workwise, there are alternatives to living in your head as well. There are several guys on these boards who have first hand experience in doing things in the physical world. One is NICET4, who has written extensively about his experiences as a fire sprinkler technician. One is chacho_keva, who has written extensively about his experiences in power generation. One is andywire, who has written extensively about his experience in Swiss CNC machining. All three of these are career switches, and require training, which you will need to foot. In NICET's and chacho's situations, it's the kind of thing where every day is different from the prior day, they are licensed positions, there are not enough qualified people, and you have job security if that is important to you.

In andywire's case, although the position is not licensed, it is highly skilled, interesting work that requires intelligence and acumen, with the added advantage that you can actually touch the results of your work. There's a certain wholeness to feeling the results of what you've done in the physical world, and finding it is good.

Another way to get out of burnout and onto something different is to use your skills at a different level. Maybe organize a consortium of people in the area that you know, and become a broker for their services at a lower cut than what is usually taken by the temp agencies. Your people will make more, and you get to step away from dealing with it yourself.

Not trying to preach - just floating ideas to try out as a thought experiment.

To repeat the old saw - this is no longer a "one career for life" world. Personally, I guess I would be on my fifth career now, and except for the time I was in the CT during the mass professional depopulation that started in the 90s, I have done OK. (The symptoms of that kind of thing are: all of a sudden there are no more professional jobs in the area, although there seem to be in other areas of the country. Heaven help you if you are the last one out the door!)

My objectives may have been different from most. I wanted first hand experience in the different aspects of running a company. It's not been easy, since I had to get at least one additional Master's and a couple of tough certifications to get street creds while on the job. Thankfully, there was tuition reimbursement, but it was still tough. But I can honestly say that learning something new is the "cold shower" antidote to burnout. Personally, it had the added advantage that it gave me an escape route if I was stuck in a dead geography. On several occasions, I have had to move states for that reason.

It all worked out in the end, I'm now in consulting within a large firm, and there is no risk of burnout since every six months, there is a new set of problems with which to stay invigorated. For me, the large firm concept has worked well because your income stream is not contract-dependent and they generally have a tuition reimbursement policy. Plus, there's always another cranny to run into and hide if you need to.

Another option to consider - look for a BIG company whose income stream comes from something other than clicks. Use your skills without re-tooling to develop and maintain their corporate web site. That will take the pressure off, and you can approach your work with a different viewpoint. While you're there, use the tuition reimbursement program to tool up in something else to get a new viewpoint. Because of all the hacking that's in the news, network security seems prized.

So, in short, don't despair. It's a big world, you were astute in building yourself a financial buffer, and are to be congratulated. You don't need to be stuck in something you dislike. In fact, you may find after you give yourself a chance to step back and do something completely different to allow your brain to reset, that you don't dislike it that much after all. Our minds are strange things, and sometimes the best way to seek the best course is to step away long enough for the next avenues to float up by themselves.

Best wishes to you, and best of luck. You are not alone, and you won't be the first to successfully negotiate your way to an acceptable path back from burnout. We should start a club!

[kodaka]

Nothing is ever the way it was when it was first a brand new thing, untouched by mass culture and corporations. That's true of every new thing that's ever been thought of. If you want to experience the pioneering spirit again, you sure as hell aren't going to find it on the internet or anything else that's been around for twenty years.

You aren't going to find anything genuine and wholesome on the internet either. It's fake and manmade. So turn off your computer. Go find something new to experience.

[Irishtom29]

So what? Quite feeling sorry for yourself (and superior to others) and put your sorry ass to work. At least you have a skill that's in demand and the ability to make good dough, leave the self pity for those who deserve a little.

[sware2cod]

People are used to internet ads and spam these days. It no longer bothers us...it is just a nuisance. But we accept it. The spam and pop up blockers are asisting us against the spam.

Don't you worry...the market place will sort this out. If YOU never bought something from a spam or internet Ad, chanced are that most others also never did. I never did. If companies are not making money by selling products via Spam or advertisements, then they will stop marketing this way. In the meantime, YOU can be the beneficiarly and make money off these ads.

Accept that your line of work is really not harming people. We are ok with it...it has become the accepted norm. Go back to your big bucks. And thanks for having compassion.

[seain dublin]

Originally Posted by Irishtom29

So what? Quite feeling sorry for yourself (and superior to others) and put your sorry ass to work. At least you have a skill that's in demand and the ability to make good dough, leave the self pity for those who deserve a little.

Nobody who writes like that should feel superior to others.

I guess they never heard of a double negative?

[Cyber Surfer]

I think I can emphasize with the OP. I remember how the internet was back then to what it is now.

The days of the well paid web/graphic designer are over. For the few that are still making good money, there are literally thousands who won't be able to get into that market. It's not only over saturated with grads and the unemployed, but I'm seeing that profession integrated with marketing. (Hence the advertising)

It's like people who had stable careers as architects. Seems technology has a way of phasing out jobs as the years go by. I'm deathly afraid of trying any career that has a computer as the primary source of my job.

The times are forcing many of us to adjust and adapt to find something else to make a living.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by nineteenseventy3

Who else believes in principle more than money???

Is there a club I can join??

Is there a movement?? (oh yeah, the anti SOPA movement)

Jullian Assange. Wikileaks.

Originally Posted by nineteenseventy3

That those 'geeks' just wanted people to like them, so they would build that very useful recipe app for you to use free.

And you can say, "wow, cool! thanks man!"

And they would smile.

And that's all they did it for....

those days are GONE.

If that's all you did it for, those days aren't really gone. You could do work for people who appreciate it that way. You're the one who sold yourself out and thinks that $12 an hour isn't good enough now. If you really are in it for the "wow, cool! thanks man!" and a smile, the $12 wouldn't bother you much. I'm not downing you. It's your own contradiction you have to resolve.

You can decide NOW, while you have the money, to retrain yourself with different skills for a different career. Don't wait until your money runs out before you resolve your conflicts and figure out what you want to do.

[CoolSocks]

This is an interesting thread, although I couldn't read it all. I have often wondered how people who lived and thrived in the sixties and seventies and are now much older, deal with the new technology. Look at Betty White, she just turned 90. She has lived through sooo many technological advancements it's uncanny. I'm sure there are many people who haven't fully recovered from all of our new technology.

I personally would like to experience all of the 70's magic that is portrayed in Almost Famous-
Almost Famous - Penny Lane's dance - YouTube
but that's never going to happen, so it's often best to adapt and move on.

[TheEarthBeneathMe]

Yep, because nostalgia has never been viewed through rose colored glasses...

Napster...I remember spending all day trying to find a decent copy of a song from my nonmainstream bands, and then spending all day downloading that one song.