It’s fitting that I’m in Switzerland when blogging some thoughts about this. The last time I was in Switzerland, 4 years ago, my wife and I were flirting with the idea of building our side project FitFrame, into a startup.
A serious / full time pursuit never eventuated, but it was fun to get a taste of it in side project mode.
Over the past 2–3 years, perhaps longer, I’ve started to give up hope on finding a non-toxic job. My sampling of the tech industry lately has been either in environments where the expectations from management have been delusional and the coworkers have been great, or where the expectations have been realistic and the coworkers rampantly disrespect each other.
In the odd case where I come by an environment where it suffers from both, I’m out of there within weeks and it doesn’t even make my resume! I’ve never come across an environment where it suffers from none of the above.
The thing that really sucks though, is that I’m not the only one:
On closer inspection, prefacing this realization with lately is unjustified — it seems to be that the tech industry has always been this shitstorm of toxicity.
This is a dreadful realization, as when my wife and others try to stoke my resolve with thoughts of “should you leave the tech industry and do something else?”, my only answer is “there’s nothing I’d rather be doing” — I love coding, or any other way (past or future) to build anything with technology.
I used to be so ambitious.
Now I feel like giving up all the time.
The feeling is never going away.
I hate that I don’t recognize myself anymore! I used to believe that I was capable of anything if I put my mind to it, bla bla bla. Sounds like a cliche but it’s true, my ambition and self belief were strong.
This former strong self-belief the was partially the result of a sporting background, because competitive sport teaches you self-belief more than any other sitution does on the planet. It doesn’t stick with you forever though, and like any exercise, if you fall out of practise, or out of the environments that are nurturing and supportive to your growth, you stop believing. You stop being confident.
Now what was previously a hiccup in a daily task morphs into a deep seeded validation that I’m not only no good at whatever minor task got the best of me for a brief moment in time, but that I’m no good at anything. Then what comes next? In my experience you stop trying. You withdrawl and run away. It’s a horrible feeling, and one that I know affects minorities more than myself, and I can’t begin to even imagine how this problem magnifies to anyone who isn’t a straight white male.
After seeking clarity, among an unpaid leave of absence, followed by a vacation to Australia, and a quick stopover in Switzerland, I’m waking up to a realization. A realization that this is never going to end if I look for a healthy culture in some other company. A realization that the only way to achieve that is to create my own company and/or consulting.
It’s so fucked up that we have to part of a sociopath’s bullshit just to do the bare minimum of doing our job. God forbid doing our job with a bit of pride involved.
I don’t quite believe in myself again yet, but damnit, I believe that we should be able to get to a point in society where sympathy and empathy is the major currency.
That’s fueling my motivation to help get there.
So I’m not going to quit on this hope. While I’m rebuidling the path to believing in myself, I’m going to be building one possible piece in the puzzle for that objective, a side project that I’m calling Healthrank for now. It will be a health index to rate different companies on the workplace healthiness. Non-toxic workplaces will be presented to tech workers in a way that I feel Glassdoor is failing to do.
I feel as if with the help of 2–3 others that I’ve talked to, we could build this on the side to our day jobs. Taking some inspiration from the Indie Hackers approach. This should be possible alongside working full time, or alternatively if one of us is working just 1–2 days of consulting.
The tech industry prides itself on being progressive, but is light years behind competitive sport. Take the recent Raptors run up to their NBA Championship as an example — in the pivotal game 5 against Milwaukee, Fred VanVleet would sink 7/9 attempts at 3 pointers when he had a good night, then only make make 1/8 on a bad night in game 3. The coach gave him praise after game 5, and more importantly didn’t shame him and shred his confidence after game 3.
…and that’s just 1 example out of 100s, maybe 1000s, of how the tech profession lags behind the sporting profession! In pro sport it’s recognized that your best game doesn’t happen every single day, and every day leading up to that next performance is about boosting your confidence trying to get there.
It’s funny, when I had 1–2 years of programming experience I had a ton of belief. Now that I have 10 years of experience I have no self belief. I’m quite pissed off about this, and my anger gives me a lot of drive to contribute to the solution.
