>Even supposedly technically superior well paying work usually treats the workers like tools. Management which is often staffed by not the most intelligent has the most power in an organization. They stress coerce and harass people in order to get work out of them, work which is often earning the company multiples of what they are paying people. And that's how the whole economy is structured. It is still not is possible to be a technical person who is well paid yet still not feeling happy, pleasant, or even healthy. It can still be a somewhat miserable way to live your life. Not as miserable as being not intelligent and employable, but still can be problematic.
As humans, we have this really weird way of adjusting to "normal" - You can put us in a veritable paradise (and I'm not quite sure how else to describe the modern tech company) - or you can put us in really pretty bad situations, and either way, we're gonna whine.
I'm currently having many of the feelings you describe about my dayjob. But then I sit back and think: The worst day as a low-status technical grunt at this job is way better than the best day as a nerd in high school.
In high school, at best you are a burden. Yeah, there were a few teachers who really went out of their way to be kind and helpful to those burdens, but you are still a burden. More usually, though, your highest value use is to be torn down so that someone else can feel slightly less terrible about themselves.
Heck, I think this job is probably better on average than a few of my early jobs, which I loved at the time, simply because being treated as a thing with some small positive value is vastly better than being treated as a thing with no value, and after high school, I was so used to being treated as something with no value that being treated as if I had any value at all was absolutely wonderful.
Being as I'm now used to being treated fairly well, even small slights seem to really come to the forefront, and I find myself complaining about relatively minor social issues.
As humans, we have this really weird way of adjusting to "normal" - You can put us in a veritable paradise (and I'm not quite sure how else to describe the modern tech company) - or you can put us in really pretty bad situations, and either way, we're gonna whine.
I'm currently having many of the feelings you describe about my dayjob. But then I sit back and think: The worst day as a low-status technical grunt at this job is way better than the best day as a nerd in high school.
In high school, at best you are a burden. Yeah, there were a few teachers who really went out of their way to be kind and helpful to those burdens, but you are still a burden. More usually, though, your highest value use is to be torn down so that someone else can feel slightly less terrible about themselves.
Heck, I think this job is probably better on average than a few of my early jobs, which I loved at the time, simply because being treated as a thing with some small positive value is vastly better than being treated as a thing with no value, and after high school, I was so used to being treated as something with no value that being treated as if I had any value at all was absolutely wonderful.
Being as I'm now used to being treated fairly well, even small slights seem to really come to the forefront, and I find myself complaining about relatively minor social issues.