Enjoying your job in the IT industry
Sunday, February 10th, 2008There is this constant theme about how this industry is overworked, poorly compensated and generally unhappy. This happens for a variety of reason but I tend to notice that some of the unhappiest also happen to be some of the smartest people I know. Or for that matter, possibly some of the smartest people on Earth right now. They also tend to be perfectionist and aren’t generally happy with even brilliant things they’ve done. Those statements obviously subjective. If you’ve ever heard “How could you possibly be happy with this industry?” or “I left programming/it/compsci for a better life in X” and thought to yourself why the fuck are all these people depressed? Part of it I suspect is the perfectionist thing, the other part is that some of these people simply shouldn’t have been in this industry in the first place. If you’re are the first, then you were unhappy because you simply were meant to be doing something else. For the latter; I used to be where you are, there were numerous times where I was close to selling all my shit, taking the next flight out to Barbados and going to live with one of my relatives. Summarily, taking up the occupation of beach bum. Rather than doing that, I ended up in the Army.