You know I’m in a certain mood when I start quoting John Lennon’s Imagine. I’ve known I’ve been in a certain mood for at least a couple months now, perhaps longer, but something about today turned a hunch into a full on realization.

It wasn’t one event either. It was several that ended with me quitting early because, why not?

Today started like many days in recent history. I could not convince myself to get out bed. I had an 8:30am meeting and just thought, “Oh well, next one ain’t till 10:00am. Fuck it.” I sort of rolled in around nine-something. The slight difference this morning was the nagging, “Why has this been so frequent lately?”1 I haven’t even bothered getting dressed or showering the past couple weeks. It’s straight from my bed to the computer and my new ball cap conceals my bed head too well.

Around 11:00am, a friend of mine posted this interview with Andrew Kelly of Zig fame in a shared Discord channel. It’s a great interview on every level. It’s not just about a guy who loves his project, but a guy who understands sustainability and the the art of work. The more programmers I hear talk about the general awfulness of the corporate world, the more I feel I’m not crazy. Some of these people, like Andrew, are a huge inspiration. The timing of sharing this interview was funny too since I just defended Zig sort of indirectly over their excellent stance on AI, which is covered in the interview.

This guy is living the fucking dream, and I do not mean that ironically. He is doing good work and good and not compromising it. This is awesome for him. This is awesome for humanity. Unfortunately, this also begs the question, “What the fuck am I doing?” I was asking myself that as I was working on a major refactor that I couldn’t really concentrate on.

By the time noon rolled around I went to a coffee shop down the street with my sons. They wanted pastries and I was out of coffee. I needed beans and I needed a quad shot of espresso really badly. While I normally spend about fifteen minutes there, I figured after about two hours of distracted work that I needed a full hour for lunch. I struck up a conversation with the new barista, much to the chagrin of my sons who are less than thrilled when I start ranting to strangers, and let time pass.

I rarely take lunch breaks beyond eating. I never have. I have shit to do and taking a break is decidedly not doing shit. I do not recommend this approach at all, by the way. I am explaining this because:

  1. Taking a real lunch break is unusual for me unless some kind of plans are involved.
  2. I actually took one today in an entirely impromptu manner.

In isolation, this isn’t that big of a deal. Today? “What’s wrong with you? Who needs an hour to regroup after half-assing it for two hours?” (Yes, I have a relatively abusive relationship with myself which is really part of the whole problem.) I got home, coded some more, and finished the interview. The entire time I couldn’t help but keep thinking back to The Worlds Left To Conquer which I read a few weeks ago. The author, Nik Suresh, is also living the fucking dream.

Before 5:00pm I was so over the work day. I was just over it. I didn’t get as far as I wanted but tests were passing and I felt incredibly lethargic and depressed. So, like an old lady, I drew a bath and decided to finish What The Goddamn Hell Is Going On In The Tech Industry? and since I finished it before I was done soaking, I looked for something else.

On Burnout, Mental Health, And Not Being Okay caught my eye because, obviously, I’m burnt out. I’m burnt out badly. This was particularly impactful because five minutes before reading this I was like, “Nik Suresh is living the fucking dream.” You know it because I said so just a couple paragraphs ago! This is another great essay. Go read it, even if you’re okay.

Let me be clear about something, I am burnt out. Like the real kind. Not the kind I mention in passing all the time. “Yeah, I’m burnt out, but it’s fine. I can put in another weekend.” That’s how I’ve dealt with this feeling as of late (by which I mean for like a decade). The complete lack of motivation coupled with the joyless work has been terrible. The AI zombie apocalypse has made it much, much worse too.

Today though, I really felt it. Or maybe I really recognized it as an actual problem rather than my status quo.

Andrew Kelly talked directly about this in his interview. It is clearer and clearer that there is an emotional and moral cost to working for a soulless and dysfunctional company—and make no mistake, my day job is absolutely with a completely soulless and utterly dysfunctional company2. I took to writing for much the same reason Nik Suresh did. I had to talk about all the nonsense and get it out. Weights and Measures is aimed directly at the stock villains that make up the leadership where I work. The oppression of the business idiots is immense on everyone beneath them, but it is born most heavily by those of us who care about our work and work hard for reasons beyond a job. We’ll work hard no matter what because it’s a part of our being.

My identity is, sadly, tied to my professional output for a lot of very stupid historical reasons that seem to require Herculean efforts to overcome. I’m working on it! But I’m too tired from my day job to make very much progress.

I care a lot about my team and direct co-workers. They’re a really good crew. We’re in the trenches together and there’s a special camaraderie that’s always come with that. My team is also blessedly devoid of any corporate true believers or apologists. We know the score. We know the difference between what our leaders say and what they mean. We know we’re expendable the moment someone says “our position is strong” and “things are going great.” We know “reorganization” is code for this quarter’s Jack Welch style blood bath. We know AI is just read herring.

My team is the reason I work. I have found solace in my place as a leader who leads by example rather than from some secure undisclosed location. Mentoring gives me some actual life satisfaction that I know transcends the corporate environment. The work itself, even if the output is entirely for the profit of said soulless and dysfunctional organization, is still a chance to keep my skills sharp. (Working around the nightmare of the dumbest infrastructure I have ever encountered is also a rite of passage I guess.) I also care to do right by our customers, even if only on the basis that I believe in being honest with people who are spending money on a service and acting in their best interest.

Till recently, this has been enough to carry on. In fact, work has been a welcome distraction. The death of my old mentor was one of a handful of deaths that’s come in my middle years, including my younger brother a little over two years ago. The related revelations it brought me about my own family and religious beliefs have been difficult to digest in their own right. Work was the place to bury it and, at the same time, provide for my family. See! Look at me! I’m being useful even if I’m completely miserable and coming apart at the seams. I can just wait for the anguish to pass in a background process while I get shit done!

Astute readers will probably note that this is not healthy behavior. It’s not. I know this. I haven’t actually done anything about it though because of a little lie I keep telling myself.

My manager and I were having a conversation late in the day when we were pushing some code after hours a few months back. He was two hours ahead at the time and I had joked that, “Just one more thing,” was going on my urn or tombstone or whatever. We laughed because I knew he had the same problem. I was telling him to get off Slack. One more thing though.

Adulthood is saying “but after this week things will slow down a bit” over and over until you die.

I’ve seen variations on this quote many times. It’s hilarious because it’s true which, of course, is why there’s nothing funny about it at all.

Next week turns into next year and then next decade faster than most of us realize until it’s too late. Time passes. Things change. We put off and miss what matters to tend to this modern rat maze we’ve constructed in the industrialized world. On one hand I basically have on demand food for the tiny slice of human history that this has been available. At the same time I am very empty. Many of us feel this creeping, awful emptiness in a land and time of plenty—even if plenty is being further consolidated by billionaire psychopaths, but I’d argue it’s still better than being a peasant 500 years ago.

In April of this year, I found myself at the edge of an event horizon of sorts. While on a business trip my wife texted me saying we needed to “discuss our dynamic” which is exactly the way she’d go about phrasing such a serious topic. To those who know, there is nothing good about a message like this from your spouse. Without diving into details, what followed was a situation that left me with no alternative but to stop putting my own life off until next whatever time interval.

The only serious option was a very swift reckoning about my life choices to this point and realization of what I had left behind and why and for how long.

Today marked the point where the emergency response panic has worn off. The situation has been triaged, changes have been put in place for the better, and the all important reflection is in full force. It’s by no means the end and it really isn’t meant to be a journey with an end. I’m past figuring out what to do and have moved on to mostly just doing it.

In this process I have managed to connect, for the first time in years, with my own family beyond the role of some kind of provider and enforcer who happens to occupy the same house. That’s realistically been my role for a while. The circumstances of my professional life and obligations related to it have left me sucked dry. By the time after hours work has ended, dad is not a very nice guy who is entirely out of patience.

As the Smiths sang in Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now:

I was looking for a job and then I found a job
And heaven knows I’m miserable now

In my life, oh, why do I give valuable time
To people who don’t care
If I live or I die?

Why does my wife get a combative and angry bastard while the pinhead who makes decisions based solely on bad metrics on spreadsheets at my place of business gets my best work? Why do my kids have to deal with someone with nothing left because his CEO—who talks to fucking Grok for inspiration—got it all instead? I am nothing but a resource to be exploited to both of these individuals.

This has changed because it had to. It should have a long time ago—a long time ago. That’s the trap of “next week.” It so easily becomes “next year,” before it invariably becomes “next decade” and the cliché kicks in where your babies are no longer babies. We know we’re never going to wish we spent more time at the office on our deathbeds, but well before death comes calling we have shit to do! For people who don’t care if we live or die—people who would do anything in their power to pay us as little as possible and then applaud themselves for it. We’re a society driven by fucking psychopaths! I wish that wasn’t it, but it’s where we are.

We reward and empower the very worst and they reward us with the very worst!

I want to be more understanding about this. I desperately want to believe there is something with more complexity and nuance going on among corporate and political leaders. There is not. The systems in the United States, and likely in many other places, create and elevate much of the same. Some places are worse. Some places are better. The only only metric bad systems seem to point to is that they are apparently less shitty than even worse systems. Isn’t that a fine ideal to pass on posterity! Who wants to aspire to be “least shitty”?3

In short, I am going to believe my own lying eyes. What looks like bad leadership is almost certainly bad leadership. What looks like a ship without a rudder is probably exactly that. Organizations are ultimately reflections of their leadership. When you get the impression your boss’s only inspiration is looking at other companies and trying to make a quick and cheap imitation, you’re probably right.

I cannot think of a single time in my entire professional life that I have found myself thinking or saying, “This is a bad idea,” where I was pleasantly surprised as a result of things magically working out. The moment of satisfying smugness that comes with saying, “Told ya so,” is never worth the resulting damage—especially when dozens of told-ya-so’s never seem to give rational people any kind of credibility with people who are drunk on Ayn Rand and believe themselves to be our betters.

Now that the emergency response to my own life has played out—I lack the energy and the will to maintain both sides at once—a choice has to be made about here and now. That choice will also affect tomorrow. Without a plan and without real direction toward escape, I’ll cross the event horizon and be consumed by the other side. Gravity is too powerful when it is unopposed.

It’s time to admit to myself that I just cannot do this any longer. My brother was only 43 when he dropped dead. While middle age feels like I’m only halfway there, there’s absolutely no guarantee that’s the case. I’m old enough to really think about what the book that will be written will say. How will it conclude? How will I be remembered?

Do I want to be someone who knew it was all rotten and played along anyway because I was too afraid to do anything else? Is all the arrogance and bravado merely a cover for insecurity? Or do I have the wits and the will to live and work in a way that is truly congruent with my own values and moral code?

As I keep saying to co-workers and others as I talk about my professional life and the state of the software industry, “I just want to use my powers for good. That’s all.” Why is it so hard for skills and good to align? You can do good without being a saint. You can do it by running a business that’s honest. Hell, the bar is so low in software right now all you have to do is not abuse your paying customers. That’s how pathetic it’s become.

It’s time to figure out what doing good looks like in a way that keeps my family fed. It’s been done by others. I’m certainly not asking for anything impossible or even improbable. And maybe, just maybe, something can be built that can free more than only me from this crippling absurdity.

There is something better and dammit, it’s time to really get after it right now, not “next week.”

In my life, why do I smile
At people who I’d much rather
Kick in the eye?

  1. On one hand, I have managed to work out consistently for about a month. This is probably the longest stretch of consistency I have had in many, many years. That’s definitely a factor but it’s not the factor. ↩

  2. The true absurdity of this is that throughout my career I’ve also noticed that the people responsible for this would be the ones who would literally benefit the most from running a company like adults. It’s completely bizarre. If my CEO woke up tomorrow and was like, “You know what, we’re simply going to try long term strategy, focusing on making the lives of our existing customers free from frustration, and taking the quality of our product in both production and code seriously. We’re going to simplify our infrastructure. We’re going to stop wasting time with AI. We’re going to stop looking for the trend du jour. We’re going to do basic honest business with the customer base we have right now.” Virtually every employee would see a massive boost in morale and production and his company would improve at every level which would benefit… him more than any single other person! ↩

  3. You know what? Don’t answer that. I work in an industry where “worse is better” has been practically enshrined as a guiding principle. If you’re going to adopt an axiom, maybe don’t pick that one. ↩