Sure! Can also mention my name, hah, it’s no biggie. :)
Zach
On Oct 8, 2024 at 4:21 AM -0700, i@1a-insec.net, wrote:
> Hi, Zach. Thanks for the reply!
>
> Can I reproduce your reply to me on my website or somewhere else without mentioning your name? I feel like some of my friends can benefit from reading this in their trying times.
>
> Regards!
> Locria
>
> On 2024-05-31 2:33 AM, Zach Holman wrote:
>> Hi! Thanks for the email!
>>
>> So first of all, I’m definitely the first to say that yeah… the tech industry can be bad. I’ve had bad experiences, close friends of mine have had worse experiences… there’s some really bad companies and people out there. In some respects, it’s kind of just a refection of humans in general: tech has some things specific to it, but you can find similar things across finance, science, etc etc.
>>
>> But! There’s a lot of really great stuff out there, too. Even at companies where I’ve had some bad experiences, I’ve also had some life-changing great experiences, with deep friends I still talk to to this day. The highs can be *really* high. And especially in tech, you have the opportunity for your work to be multiplied against thousands, or millions… or billions of people. That’s just something that’s new to humanity, really, and it’s really damn cool. The people side can be great, too- much of the time people in tech are… *unique* people :) and meeting and working with all these varied individuals can really be a blast, too. So if you’re looking at just the bad, you might miss out on all the good, too.
>>
>> As far as job searches go… it’s always really hard to find the right fit (both of a company that you feel comfortable with, but then they also have to be hiring and want to hire you, too!)
>>
>> The biggest question is whether you’re most comfortable in a very large company or a small startup- there’s a lot of benefits and drawbacks for both. A small startup might make you feel far more like an individual, but it might be a lot more unstable compared to a safer large tech company. You can learn different abilities in each, too. There’s not really a right or wrong answer here; just a matter of trying a few out and seeing what you’re most comfortable with.
>>
>> So this might all be not super helpful, hah! Honestly, like most things in life, the answer is “it depends”. Depends on what you’re looking for, what opportunities are available, and honestly… what luck you have. Sometimes things can just be the wrong (or right) timing and that can be the difference from something working for you and something not working for you. One example of that: I hired someone very early on at GitHub straight out of college and at the time we were too small to give him enough support for him to be successful at the job, so I ended up having to let him go. But! Two or three years later he applied for a different role at GitHub, and he had grown and the company had grown and… he’s still there eleven years later. “It depends”.
>>
>> Hope my meandering words might help some! And I hope you find something that works for you, too!
>>
>> Zach
>> On May 27, 2024 at 7:44 PM -0700, i@1a-insec.net, wrote:
>>> Hi, Zach! I'm Locria (or 1A), and I don't know how to introduce myself actually.
>>>
>>> I maintain a website at https://www.1a-insec.net/, which detailed my experience of exploring this world.
>>>
>>> Recently, I have finished exploring Computing in its entirety, and I started looking for work. The tech industry is the obvious first choice, and..my experience with it not great. There's only a single company that I felt treated me (as a candidate) like a human being. The rest,, just,,, don't.
>>>
>>> Trying to figure out why, I then looked at the tech industry as a whole, and, I see lots of violence in it. Just, lots of lots of violence. I also wandered around to your blog post of being fired and read it. I'm,,, sorry to hear what you have gone through.
>>>
>>> So. After adsorbing all this little information, I am not even thinking right now. It's a lot of complexity, which I don't understand, which I can't make informed judgement for, so I don't think or feel much about it.
>>>
>>> Since you have a lot of experience working in tech, can you help me figure out what is that I am about to do? I need career advice, for sure, and interpersonal networking, but like, I keep asking myself, what is my form of existence and how do I come to terms with that. If you are willing to help me, it will leave a pretty big impact on my life trajectory, and, while I don't know what it is like to feel grateful to someone, I feel that I may never be able to repay you in full.
>>>
>>> I'm pretty much free forever forward in time, until I get my lack of direction solved.
>>> My favorite communication tools are Matrix, Jitsi, tldraw. Electronic mail is also fine, but it's slow, and I can't edit my thoughts in real-time, and I'll rather avoid that.
>>>
>>> Thanks for reading this
>>> Locria Cyber