I’m young and I’m already burnt out on tech work. Could I get some life advice?

So I’m young. Like really young. I’m still in my teen years. But I’ve worked in tech for years. My story might sound fake, but I don’t care; I’m not here to brag, just here for advice.

I’ve done a lot of paid internships. A few of them have been with the “big four” tech companies. I also go to uni.

I’m so burned out. I’m tired of so many things. And the more I work at these tech companies, the more I have a realization that a lot of the corporate speak they’re telling us at these companies is for the company’s interest. I feel like another cog in the machine. I feel like they’re telling us that the products we’re working on are “amazing” or “meaningful” or insert buzzword here, but in reality they’re just using me for money and herding me into a job where they’re underpaying me for what value I produce while they make billions. I just want to be treated like a human being, rather than a future money making machine for corporate.

They fill our offices with perks they use to keep us working for as long as possible, rather than us enjoying the very limited time we have alive the way we want to. They craft their words to make us feel like we need to dedicate our passion and time to the company rather than enjoying our own lives and loved ones. I just don’t understand the ethics of this behaviour at all…

Before you go and say “you’re so snooty and you have it good,” it’s not that I’m ungrateful for the perks I get at work, It’s that I don’t feel the companies we work for wouldn’t give us any those perks if they didn’t make lot of $$$ with them — I doubt they’d be there if there wasn’t a shortage of good SWEs, for example. And I’ve worked other jobs before, so I know how “good” it is in the tech sector.

I’ve always performed with exceeds expectations marks but I feel like I never get anywhere. I always get kicked out after 3 months. I’m never promoted. My salary never changes. I never get time off (I haven’t had real time off for more than 4 days at once in the past year; I work through school breaks). Because internship. And that’s also really frustrating. I have more work experience than many new grads but I still get zero stability in my work life because of school.

But recently I’ve just been feeling really burned out. I’ve always felt like 40 hours was too much. I’m always less happy when I’m working instead of at school. I’m starting to dislike programming in general even though I’m good at software engineering and I still enjoy building things.

I guess I’ve just realized that life is really short, and I’ve been working and adulting for years in hope of a better life in the future; In turn, I haven’t really enjoyed life at all. I’ve never even been a real teenager or young adult. It’s like I skipped it all to be 30.

So I really don’t know what to do here. I don’t know if this is a career I want to continue with anymore? I enjoy and I’m grateful for the perks, the people I work with, and the high salary, but I guess I just don’t know if I want to spend my life working in a job that I’m not extremely happy with. I always thought I’d be much happier being a park ranger or on a farm or something where I can enjoy the outdoors and not sit in front of a monitor for 12+ hours/day. But those jobs pay like crap, have weird hours, and bar me from raising a family with the finances for my future children and wife to enjoy their lives (and yeah, I KNOW I want a family. No question about it.).

But I’m just really good at this, I’m making good money, and I’m years of work experience ahead of nearly everyone my age, so I don’t know if I should be sticking with this or not. What’s your opinion on my situation?