I found this to be true for me. I used to be so involved in TC39, framework wars, build systems, I was super-passionate and excited about the work; I loved the inner workings of things and loved making the products and tools I and my team use as awesome as possible.
That lasted for nearly 15 years. In the last two years or so, though, I've realized that management at the utterly enormous corporation I work for simply abused that passion. Things that were "works of programming art" or miraculous deliveries of impossible things became not just expected but demanded. That passion was simply burned out of me. Even when I see something I built in a keynote in front of thousands of people or on a website that gets literally millions of unique views every day, my feeling is, "meh."
The upside is that I've discovered other things in work and life: physical fitness, better work-life balance, and a learned defensive approach to scoping to protect the health and well-being of my team have started to define me more as a person instead of an on-demand voodoo-doctor/wizard/miracle worker. It comes as a detriment to my employer though... I refuse to pull all-nighters every week and my velocity has definitely dropped.
I have a feeling I'm not alone in this experience here. I'm assuming this very shift in perspective is why companies are less willing to hire us greybeards as opposed to fresh-faced amped-up kiddos despite our experience... we just know better.
The biggest problem with chatbots is that getting conversations right is hard... and expensive. To make one actually helpful, it requires extensive knowledge not just about the potential topics that customers could ask about, but also linguistics, NLU/P/Q, scripting, and the diverse technical environments that these tools will be interacting with. With all the drag-and-drop chatbot creation tools out there now, companies are being sold on the idea that ANYONE can make these chats, and as such don't see the benefit of hiring an experienced professional whose sole job it is to make these things work well. Instead, their creation is being left to existing help desk/HR/doc employees that lack said in-depth cross-functional knowledge, with predictable results. Sparse NLU models are poorly constructed, background tasks are hacky and frequently broken, and the resulting chats are stilted and disjointed at best. Which is why they're so frustrating.
The tools to make good chatbots are complex, but they exist, and in the hands of someone who is trained in all of the requisite areas can be wielded to create something useful. It just costs money most companies don't believe is worth spending.
Lol... the number of times I've had my placeholders end up not just in the finished product, but on stage at keynotes in front of thousands of people...
> All the recovering addicts I know are still addicted to something in one way or another. The new addiction may or may not be a healthy one. For instance, running 100+ miles a week, every week - while objectively better than drinking yourself out of a job and home - isn't exactly "healthy".
So very, _very_ frequently, addiction isn't "the" problem, it's a symptom of one. The behaviors you mentioned are in the same vein, something used as a way to work around whatever the problem may be. In my case, the relief I experienced from alcohol blocking out an underlying anxiety problem I didn't understand I had (and made me not care about the ADHD problem I knew I did have), it was like a miracle. The inability to speak to others, rationally work through life's tough issues, heck even my grades went UP... everything got better. And for a good 16 years it kept on being that miracle to me, going so far as to hide the worsening social, emotional, and mental calamities it was causing.
> I also notice a higher level of selfish behavior among the recovering addicts I know. It takes an insane amount of pathological selfishness to neglect your responsibilities, especially children, for the bottle.
Funny thing about this... I've come to believe that most folks who haven't experienced addiction just can't initially grasp the fact that (assuming an underlying psychological/emotional issue), the addict doesn't see the addiction as selfish, even when it disrupts everything else in their lives. There's this inexplicable compartmentalization that occurs when self-medicating via addiction, sort of like, "They don't understand how this helps me!". Which, in a way is true; they don't. But neither does the addict. Most folks who are on their way down to the rock-bottom don't understand that the activity or substance is a (terrible, and temporary) way to deal with a larger problem they either don't know they have or don't know how to properly address. All they know is that it works. Even when their destructive behavior completely isolates them, leaving them feeling alone and hopeless because it feels like everyone is against helping you to feel better, it still feels like it works.
> AA doesn't seem to address the selfishness as much as just to get folks to stop drinking.
AA, in its own way, does its level best to address this given the understanding of psychology/psychiatry at the time the Big Book was written. And to be fair, if everyone actually mustered up enough strength and humility to get past Step 5 (heh, myself included), this might be less of a concern. But from a 30k foot view, it IS a good framework to approach lasting recovery, and you replace "selfishness" with "underlying psychological problem causing the addiction" in your observation, it's probably a bit more of a clearer picture. For me, and for the vast majority of the wonderful people I lived with during my 6 months in a sober living facility, meetings were only going to be as effective as long as I was being monitored. Some folks (like myself) even found that attending meetings and hearing stories about drinking was a trigger, and although I appreciated the friendships, it was counterproductive.
What ultimately and completely removed my desire to self-medicate with whatever was on hand was CBT. The meetings were absolutely necessary for the initial support I needed to stop the destructive behavior, but CBT gave me the tools I truly needed to understand why I felt the way I did, and how to handle the thoughts and emotions that seemed to come from nowhere all my life. Although I am a believer (and give Him the credit for all I am today!), CBT has the benefit of not requiring anything other than walking the difficult path through your own screwiness. Once you've acquired the tools to handle your own brain, attending meetings may not even be necessary in order to maintain lasting sobriety. As always, YMMV, CBT is powerful enough that I'm of the mind non-addicts oughta do it too. Heck, the world would probably be less messed-up place.
Today, I'm ok with not tracking my time spent sober or keeping a heavy constant focus on what was a symptom of my problems. I'm screwed up in all kinds of clinically fascinating ways, but now I deal with it sans substances.
Just a heads-up, I installed it and signed in with one of my two accounts, but then decided to switch the one free account to my other account. After removing the original account, I wasn't given the option to add in the single free account, only upgrade (I'm guessing there was an assumption in the code that the user would always have one account, and never remove it?). Uninstalling/reinstalling didn't give me the option to re-register, either.
That lasted for nearly 15 years. In the last two years or so, though, I've realized that management at the utterly enormous corporation I work for simply abused that passion. Things that were "works of programming art" or miraculous deliveries of impossible things became not just expected but demanded. That passion was simply burned out of me. Even when I see something I built in a keynote in front of thousands of people or on a website that gets literally millions of unique views every day, my feeling is, "meh."
The upside is that I've discovered other things in work and life: physical fitness, better work-life balance, and a learned defensive approach to scoping to protect the health and well-being of my team have started to define me more as a person instead of an on-demand voodoo-doctor/wizard/miracle worker. It comes as a detriment to my employer though... I refuse to pull all-nighters every week and my velocity has definitely dropped.
I have a feeling I'm not alone in this experience here. I'm assuming this very shift in perspective is why companies are less willing to hire us greybeards as opposed to fresh-faced amped-up kiddos despite our experience... we just know better.