I'd be satisfied with any job in the tech industry but I'm also reaching for one that aligns with my political values as an anti-capitalist. With this in mind, does anyone have any suggestions for the job search?
I'd be satisfied with any job in the tech industry but I'm also reaching for one that aligns with my political values as an anti-capitalist. With this in mind, does anyone have any suggestions for the job search?
Well my problem is that I hate all the people who hire for that work. I'm not interested in making home spying drones or whatever the fuck is popular right now. I wanted to make robots in space or some shit like that. That's obviously out of the question. I'd settle for home automation but the money-grubbers have managed to turn even that into something you ought to warn your friends to dodge.
While we're on this subject I just want to talk about how capitalism has wrecked computer science. "Compatibility" should be an academic question for the math majors, not some daily requirement for keeping your resume under six pages in length or responding to trick questions in interviews. Corporate propriety has turned this job into a blizzard of temporary and transient single-use qualifications that your fucking grandchildren will master before you do. Yes, I'm old. I got out of the business while I still had a chance. Let me just sit in a tin roof shack and grow my tomatoes and write AI for fuck's sake.
Can't blame you for feeling that way. I've been at the same job since I graduated college in part because I hate interviewing and all the BS that goes with it. (Why in God's name are you expecting me to write fully-functional, compile-ready code on a goddamn whiteboard? Do you interview a carpenter by having them pound a nail into a board with a rock?) And I can't stand being expected to always keep learning the latest New And Exciting Framework either.
Personally I find computer security fascinating (although I don't work in the field; maybe if I did I'd find it less interesting). Reversing malware to learn the secrets of how it breaks into and takes over a machine sounds like interesting work to me (but it also seems pretty damn hard, and my knowledge of assembly is somewhat limited). From what I hear, if you get good enough at it, and attract enough notice in the field, job offers can just kind of appear in front of you (still not leftist ones, but at least you can skip the interview process). This (fairly long) Wired article talks about a guy who started out writing malware, then got out of it and started reverse-engineering malware instead, and ended up getting a legit job out of it (but he later got busted by the Feds for his earlier work writing malware, sadly).
If I was hiring for a job right now, your interest and your demonstration of your understanding of the problems involved would be sufficient to me. Nobody can keep up with the tech. There's no way to do this work that doesn't involve laying your skull against an angle grinder.
I mean can we do this or something? How about instead of mock realities we just, you know, make a fucking robot. Or an app. Or something. I've got plenty of ideas, let's see which one fits the material conditions.
This sounds like a potentially cool avenue to follow. I have to sign off for a while, but I'd be interested in taking this discussion further afterwards.
Yeah, not thinking we're going to kickstart some bullshit in the comments, that hasn't ever led anywhere good that I know of. My enthusiasm is due to going decades without being able to get this off my chest. My notes and my plans will still be around tomorrow.