Because it's highly relevant, I'm going to paraphrase a comment I made last week:
I think a big part of the problem is that middle-aged men are at the apex of their expectations to be successful in the eyes of society, and we are living through a period of time where success is very hard to define, much less attain.
There is a name for this in sociology: anomie [1]. Émile Durkheim coined it in his book Suicide, written not too long after the Industrial Revolution.
In times of great change, the set of norms and rules that we take for granted as an organizing principle of our lives get uprooted. It's as if all of the pieces and tokens and rules of the board game we played our whole lives are swept off the table to make room for a new game, but the new game has not been set up yet. In that interim, we all feel a sense of unease. It is our turn to move, but we don't know the rules of the game or what moves to make. We feel intense pressure to play the game well, but don't know how.
In the past, these transitions have ended and society has generally returned to some sense of stability. A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game. I hope we get to that point with AI soon, but the revolutions seem to keep coming faster and faster.
I think for a lot of men, it feels like just at the time when we should be able to rest on our laurels a bit after having worked so hard to play the game society told us to, the rules have been ripped out from under us and any sense of security going forward is lost. We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing.
Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
You hit a point in your life, reflect back on where you'd thought you'd be when you were in your early 20s, and think.. shit.. what I do all of this for?
This isn't even a flippant comment (especially given the subject matter); being at this age and thinking "I imagined it would all be easy by now" does hit home.
The midlife crisis is probably better described as a change or unease in the self and not knowing why you get out of bed in the morning anymore and that entire adventure, whereas this anomie is the social environment you're moored to breaking down.
Well said! 5 years ago I could have a pretty solid picture of what my career would look like through retirement.
Today, unclear what that would look like as well as unclear if the career will even exist that long.
One sunny spot I have is that life is very long. I think I have 1.5 careers left in me, and a full pivot is alright. I've been talking with older folks, and loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife.
pivot to what though, if "mind" jobs are going to be automated, it's not like there's a category of jobs that opens up, and going from mental to physical jobs in your 50s doesn't seem that easy
> One sunny spot I have is that life is very long.
Not sure exactly where you are in it, but as a 53 year old I disagree. The younger I was the less likely I would have been to disagree but imo/ime the older you get the faster it feels like it is flying by.
> and a full pivot is alright
The AI-related existential dread is that it is very unclear what a pivot looks like when the ground under everything is shifting all at once.
The shifting is certainly a lot more obvious in our career than some others, but all of that shift (so far) happened more or less in a mere 10 months and is accelerating. And I don't think it is very likely that our career will stay anomalous for very long in terms of how much AI impact there is.
maybe some just don't want to live that long. does everyone need to live as long as possible? you live your youth, and maybe that is enough for some.
if you start to hurt every day, get diagnosed with age-related disease, your cognition starts to deteriorate, etc, you might just decide "hey, i lived enough. i don't want to go through years of feeling like this."
I defined success for myself quite a few years ago: I want to leave the world better than I found it. No high aspirations, no figure. Just better than it was.
Some of that is political advocacy. Some of that is open source code that should exist. Some of that is helping a neighbor. I don't need to hit a certain bar, I just need to know that in a given interaction or situation, I am trying to make things... at least a little better.
That also scales well to differing life decisions. The video game I'm playing, can I get people to play a little nicer with each other and have more fun? Workplaces are full of dumb stuff, success is making it at least a little better. Turns out I have kids now. Wasn't the plan, but now my obligation is to make sure my involvement in their lives is positive. Not a specific bar I have to achieve, but you know, someday I hope someone appreciates how I chose to live my life.
Eh, I don't think today is really all that different from the last 100 years. We as software engineers may feel different as it's (maybe) our turn in the barrel.
My older brother killed himself nearly 20 years ago. I don't think he ever considered himself successful. He had financial problems, alcoholism, and was lonely without any lasting relationships. When his resources were exhausted he just ended his life. There was nothing in the estate of value since his assets, such as they were, were less than tax liability he had accumulated. The owner of the house he had been renting tried to get us siblings to pay for repairs and cost of disposal, but we demurred (and told the court we'd be happy if that owner was named executor; they declined the honor.) I think his car just disappeared off the street one day, probably towed to an abandoned car lot and auctioned.
I am 36 and I have been thinking about suicide a tiny bit lately. But I will share my perspective with you, hopefully to draw a picture how different circumstances can be. I live in Ukraine and my optionality in life collapsed the day the war started. I had a good life, good income and traveled a lot. I used to dream of a career in big tech and life in different countries just to give it a taste. Now I am not able to leave the country because I am a male of conscription age. My city is being attacked by drones daily, and ballistic rockets a few times a month. Witnessing your country getting wrecked with rockets and drones is hell of an experience. Businesses, electricity plants, infrastructure, gas stations becoming rubble. There is also little hope in a resolution of this soon. I have to work on a job which provides a reservation from military service if I don’t want to fight, otherwise I will be picked up on the street to join the military.
I have it so much better than a lot of my countrymen, but holy shit does this suck and it is not getting better anytime soon. The hopelessness gets you.
Software engineering is one of my last remaining pillars of life remaining more or less intact. At least I get to write some code and make computers do things.
I'm 40, and I am not suicidal, but I've definitely felt those thoughts more than ever in my life in the past two years. I wake up two or three times every night from anxiety dreams. I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit. Between (some of) the effects of AI on my career and hobbies, and the effects of politics on my country and even my own town, and many more problems, I can count more things I feel love and passion for that have been demeaned or destroyed in the past decade than such things that persist.
And this isn't even to mention money, and what my future is looking like, despite having every possible intrinsic and external advantage in The Greatest Country on Earth.
I've had one same-aged friend kill themselves, and I try to be attentive to the signals being put out by everybody in my circle.
> I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit.
Alcohol is incredibly dangerous after 40, particularly if you've got a history as a heavy drinker. I've had to cut back to virtually nothing as it's guaranteed to trigger anxiety and depressive episodes.
Almost all the premature deaths in my circle, including suicides, have been alcohol-linked.
Obviously, YMMV, everyone's different, but if anyone reading this thread is over 40, struggling, and still drinking regularly, taking a break can really help.
I’ve lost a lot of my spark in the past 6 years as well. So much has happened that it’s impossible to pinpoint one root cause, it’s all contributing.
Don’t know if you’re soliciting advice, but there are a few things that keep me feeling the way I did before: physical exercise, and live music. Unfortunately I find less time as the week goes by to dedicate to those things, but I at least know they’re there.
AI hasn't made a dent in my enjoyment of my hobbies and tech (the opposite, now I have more toys to play with than ever), but politics? Oh man, politics becoming the new religion has absolutely ruined pretty much everything for me.
I don't believe in politics. For me left and right are all *the same*. Just a bunch of megalomaniacs wanting to hog power for themselves. This extremely hot take has made people call me more names and costed me more relationships than if I went out and started screaming slurs in a crowded street. Because I am a "fence sitter" or whatever.
And I just can't handle it anymore, I just went full recluse. I don't go into social media anymore, I don't talk to anyone at a personal level anymore. Outside of some github issues and some comments here, I don't touch socials anymore. I am just overwhelmed by the level of vitriol and hate the new internet is based on.
This is a bait comment because any push back will just re-affirm your stance and I don’t know if you’ll find much agreement here otherwise. Millions of people died in WWII defending against ideas that are actively being brought by a clear side.
FWIW it’s not that hard to be a fence sitter and not advertise it to everyone. It sounds like either you’re hanging with the wrong people, or you’re the problem. I guess go back to playing with your toys!
I know friends and family with many kinds of beliefs, we don’t rehash why they believe those things every time we see each other. Humans are complex /shrug
Same, in many senses. But you can’t fully detach from humanity without losing your own humanity. Forget socials, and pretty much all media consumption, but go talk to real people, make friends, find an human partner. Even raise a family.
Our brains are constantly bombarded with ever growing information and noise. With mindfulness, deliberate separation from most of the daily noise we can all zero in our own purposes in life. This hard, doesn’t happen overnight but with little steps and a lot of patience we will find that eventual purpose. And you find it hang on to it. I found reading the New Testament brings me instant peace when my brain is in turmoil.
Hang in there strong with spiritual closeness, removing noise and avoiding those negative thoughts.
It's ironic that the "acktually.." atheist/anti-theist crowd don't do a modicum of research when it comes to this kind of stuff. It's pretty well-established in the literature that folks plugged into a religious community live better, happier, and healthier lives[1].
That study you linked does not establish a causal relationship. It may simply be that the sort of person who is able to extract well-being from church is the sort of person more likely to actually attend church with any regularity. It likewise does not address the possibility that depression itself might make one want to stop attending church.
>Millenial cynicism is so boring
Yeah, it's always Millennials who are in the wrong. Fuck us, right? It's all good, we're used to being the scapegoats for society's problems.
Not religious, but also not disputing that believers have lower rates of depression either.
Believing in a higher power has seemed to provide great comfort to a number of friends and family over the years. I went to a friend's father's funeral a while back, and I had to admit, the service, the way the community came together was moving, and it really made me question whether I should return to the church as an adult, even with my questions of faith.
He said something about moths and rust consuming matter and with that at the very least he pointed out quite clearly the source of our suffering in regards to the AI transformation
should i also mention that people who funded their religion hunted jews searching for the holy grail and were present at one if not the biggest holocaust of human history (the colonization of America, between 1500 and 1600, which killed from 25 to 100 million people)
I turn 39 this year and am just finding more and more ways to become irrelevant. I can’t be the only one so these stats make sense to me. Fortunately, Australia has a good start on what mental health care should look like and its subsidised (or at least a few sessions are).
I was made redundant in August and despite being a 20 year career vet who has done many different langs, I still can’t find a new job.
My skills as a developer are no longer required because the all knowing robot can (apparently) do what I need to do. I’ve heard multiple companies now using it to ship stuff all the way into production without any human intervention at all. This feels to me like driving the car without holding onto the wheel.
The side hustle I had of writing books to teach people development is over — they can just ask the robot instead. I was writing a new book about how developers can train up others, but have put that on hold (due to losing my job which was that thing, and because of AI)
I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here to provide for my family.
I think most white-collar people have similar feelings. I certainly am, and many dev-friends and coworkers have confided such to me.
My software skills are now irrelevant. I've accepted that the omniscience robot is a better engineer than me. No clue what I'm going to do next, but I have to figure it out fast once my job disappears.
I wanted a family, but I'm relieved that I don't have one now. I can't imagine the stress and pressure of that with how weird everything is now. I'm nearing the end of the timeline for that anyway, being in my late 30s. Probably a blessing in disguise.
I have a some good hobbies that keeps me on my toes (physically, mentally) and a full social and family life fortunately. That's what fills my cup. I'm not stoked about tech anymore anyway.
I've been through a 6 month long unemployment. Got let go from a company (along with the majority of the dev team) which picked up AI like a shiny object thinking it could do everything.
Then I got hired to a company which have been pushing AI 100% for like a year, not at the expense of headcount, but responsibly as the N+1th productivity increasing tool, like what it is.
It's a really nice environment where keeping and cultivating great talent is not just one of the primary marketing slogans on the hiring page, but it actually feels like it while on the job.
My talent is nowhere near yours, so don't lose hope, keep applying.
I solo founded and run a men's suicide prevention nonprofit organisation in the UK. It's early stage bootstrapped at the moment but I have long-term plans.
I've facilitated 200+ talking meetings at this organisation and another I was involved with previously. Anecdotally, the average attendee at the male-only meetings is ~45 years old, has some level of issues with personal and/or professional boundaries, has had suicidal ideation more than once, and has made plans for or attempted suicide more than once.
There is some form of survivorship bias in the above, but I get a lot of pride from our groups keeping men alive. We haven't lost anyone in 2 years.
It's a responsibility and fulfilling, extremes at both ends. The key thing is self-management, and knowing limits. I learned a lot from the ASIST course, and I retake the full two-day training every two years or so:
I would have guessed middle-aged men and women, not just men. I think the reason is being the sandwiched generation.
Most of us had/are having kids late. Now our parents are old/getting old and in need of our support. Along with that, parenting expectations have never been higher. So between shuttling kids from one thing to another all week, and taking parents to medical and other appointments, there isn’t much time or energy left to enjoy anything. It’s exhausting.
Combine that with someone already depressed, and any unfortunate trigger could push them over the edge. It’s partly anecdotal and some of what I’ve observed.
Ooof, not even that old here and I'm feeling that. Things are pretty bad all over. Gets hard to want to be around. AI took my job recently and I've been moved back to helpdesk and just awaiting further layoffs. There's not much fun in intellectual pursuits any longer as LLMs have taken it all. All my fun hobby projects are just jokes now as anyone with money can easily outdo me with an LLM. Sad times...
No pleasure really anymore, my hobbies were coding occasionally and there's no point to it. Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
Recently I started rebuilding a custom d3d9 hook for an old game and it was really fun and I planned to release it to the community. But before I could, many many others had an LLM do the same thing and my work was obsolete in a moment. There went that hobby... so now I'm hunting a new one...
I gain no joy from that, the joy I would have gained would be from other people using my work. Now they can produce my work without me entirely...
>Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
Then it's not really a hobby, no? Sounds more like a weird competition.
>But before I could, many many others had an LLM do the same thing and my work was obsolete in a moment. There went that hobby... so now I'm hunting a new one...
That sounds more like a job, at least with your perspective.
>I gain no joy from that, the joy I would have gained would be from other people using my work. Now they can produce my work without me entirely...
That's a job, man. Even if you're not getting paid money for it, you're not really doing it for yourself.
The point is a bit moot cause it's the same difference: you can get joy from a "job" and AI making that job obsolete sucks regardless. But if that's what you think a hobby is, then you don't have an actual hobby.
We've thoroughly pathologized this aspect throughout history, but doing things that earn you societal status and respect from others is a essential for having a healthy psyche for many, possibly most people, men especially struggle when they don't have avenues to demonstrate skill and competence.
I wish I could take up gardening but alas I live in an apartment like most other people... I suppose you got me, I have no hobbies and it's just another reason to not want to be here. :) Everything is work and not much fun, is it?
Doing things to share them with others is pretty normal in a hobby. You might be baking for friends and family or sewing clothes or whatever, and want to enjoy the recipients appreciation for it. If people don't accept your gifts, the satisfaction of it will go away, and the same is often true of small coding projects I think.
> and there's no point to it. Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
That's OK, you don't have to be the best at any one thing. The important thing about any hobby, be it programming, skateboarding, or playing the piano, is that you feel personal satisfaction in doing it, not in the reactions of people to your work. Your enjoyment of a hobby should never be based on whether or not people like it, or even whether or not they want to use the thing you created. If you feel that a project that you are working on could be summed up in a single prompt that can be given to an LLM, then your job is not to work on the project directly, but rather to find what makes what you are doing unique. It doesn't even have to be technically interesting or bring any new ideas to the table, just the fact that somebody has put in effort into making something (regardless of completion or quality) gives it value.
Try see if you can find some physical hobby that has nothing to do with computers.
Mine is gardening. With relatively little effort, I can grow a decent amount of foods, much of it interesting varieties that are not grown commercially anywhere. I really doubt that we're going to see affordable humanoid robots out-competing me in this hobby any time soon.
Do you not see a benefit in coding for the mental exercise and challenge?
Most hobbies are impractical... Machines can produce clothes much faster than a knitter, no chess player will beat the best computers, a boat can bring more fish to port in one trip than you can in a year, etc.
A hobby is something you do for yourself. Whether it's code, or painting, or woodworking.... you don't care if someone is better or faster than you. Unless you really see the hobby as a potential business, in which case you might want to reevaluate because with LLMs it's possible for an individual to do more by himself than ever before.
Well, some hobbies are fun because you're doing something no one else has done before, or which is challenging to accomplish without a lot of investment in time and growing in personal skill. A lot of hobbies are fun because of the competition and because you get to be at the forefront of something. It's fun because we're all limited in our time and energy and choosing to spend time on something means you can do things that someone else who doesn't spend time on it can't. That feels good.
People who were in the demoscene took joy in learning how to make a computer do things no one had done before and push the hardware to its limits. That's not as meaningful if someone can achieve the same thing by prompting an LLM.
A lot of hobbies are fun because of the human challenge in creating the output and knowing it was only achievable because someone had to take time to create it. Having an LLM accomplish the same thing absolutely devalues the fun in the hobby. Hobbies aren't 100% just about accomplishing something for yourself, even though if you sway to much into doing it for validation or to compete with others it can lead to burnout and lack of enjoyment.
You can do a hobby for any reason. It doesnt have to be for yourself. He could enjoy programming but also enjoy contributing to the wider open source community. So it makes sense to feel bad when he sees another project popup and invalidate his work. If it was another person who'd worked hard and thought about the project he could at least take solace in chatting about their solutions but with AI its nothing. It just solves the problem and there is little to be gained from it.
Ah, well I do nothing for myself sir. I work most days of the week and time off is limited. My company doesn't really do vacations. I haven't had one in at least 3 years and hopefully I'll have the PTO soon but never the money!
I don't know if it's common but I generally don't like to be bad at my hobbies. I like it when I can do things well. I've been learning the piano recently and striving to play more difficult songs is what makes it fun.
Not liking being bad at your hobbies is much different than not finding joy in them because people do them better than you. I work harder to be a better cook, it doesn't mean I'm in competition with people who cook better.
Sure. But AI doesn't make you bad at hobbies. It just makes others better at it, and even that is a stretch.
>I've been learning the piano recently and striving to play more difficult songs is what makes it fun.
And are you going to give up learning piano because now AI can just generate piano music better than anything you can ever produce? No? Then what you're doing is a proper hobby, which contrasts with the OP who feels their efforts are no worthless because AI can just do it better. That's not really a hobby; it's a job.
Hmm.. I meant to make my point in isolation from LLMs. I definitely don't feel that way about learning music.
I do kind of understand it when it comes to programming, though. Hobby-like side projects often felt like they had some utility down the line, even if not directly applied. It's fun to show others what you've accomplished, to show off, maybe land a job from being noticed, etc.
I'm sorry, but this is not realistic. Life is complex and involves many variables. You are right to engage with this question, but you are oversimplifying to the point of implying dishonesty, if I'm being frank (assuming you are not very neuro-divergent!).
Not the author you're replying to but I don't understand this reply at all? What variables? What oversimplifying?
They simply said
> Why do you imagine yourself you be in competition with others while doing hobbies? Do you not find pleasure in the doing?
Which... I don't understand how that is oversimplifying. If your hobby is golf are you unable to enjoy golf because you're not as good as the pros? If your hobby is music can you not enjoy it because you aren't going to win a Grammy award?
If you enjoy programming or working on something an LLM can do... can't you just enjoy doing it without an LLM? Heck there are plenty of people that will probably seek it out because of how many people hate AI being used in programming.
It's realistic to want to be competitive. But as soon as your "hobby" becomes competitive, at least in this sense, it ceases to be a true hobby. It effectively just becomes work.
Nothin' wrong with the OP feeling disheartened by AI taking away his "hobby"/job, but AI will never be able to take away a "true" hobby because a "true" hobby is something where such external factors are irrelevant.
You'll notice that people who lift weights, run marathons, maintain a garden, tinker with models, etc., are effectively immune to AI. An AI won't lift your weights for you or tend to your garden for you. Maybe one day it could technically do that, but it doesn't matter, because you simply wouldn't have it do that for you. And it wouldn't matter if AI is doing that for others, because you're not competing with others. You're doing it for yourself.
I exercise/lift weights, and you should too. My reps/effort/weight/PRs are a joke. I'm ~50% percentile on strengthlevel.com despite really fucking trying for ~6yrs now.
Many people are better than me at the EXACT SAME THING that I'm trying, at my bodyweight/age/sex. It doesn't discourage me. There is always room to improve. I track every workout, go to RPE 8-9, and try to do progressive overload. Seeing the numbers go up helps. I know it won't continue into infinity, especially as the decades go on... but yknow, I'm building a mentality here, not just a body. And when the weights go down, I'll be in the correct mental space for it.
I _loathe_ every. single. minute. of weightlifting. I'd rather be doing ANYTHING else. But I do it anyway. I think it teaches me things about life.
The only true goal is to grow and be better than yesterday. Effort is the reward.
I have multiple herniated discs in my back so working out isn't possible. The V.A. wouldn't help with it either... But thanks for the suggestion! I'll be going the way of the people in the article so ya'll enjoy what you got! Many of us have nothing. :)
It helps to know how achy the body gets without it. In my case, the back pain I had from desk work is entirely gone now. If you focus on the form rather than reps and getting through it, paired with some good music, you can reach a focus state. There are off days of course, but I'm surprised that I enjoy it much more than I used to, where my motivation dropped off quickly due to being externally motivated (visible gains). Now it's kind of cool to just see your ability change over time, better balance, capability to do more advanced exercises, etc.
Try doing some sports as well, I do weightlifting, but I do bouldering as well with friends, it is not only fun it also develops your strength in a kind of complementary way to lifting (also increases you stats on balance and other related stuff)
Hear hear! It took me a bit but I've reached the point where I'm enjoying just "growing". I think we grew up in a world that molded us to compete, and to judge ourselves based on others, but I think with AI we're going to reach a point where our hobbies are going to be just seeing what we can accomplish for ourselves.
50th percentile on there is pretty strong! I've also lifted for around six years and I'm very light so my raw numbers are terrible but I'm still proud of them
Most of my friends from high school and college are dead from random cancers, or drugs, or both.
I used to love skimming the new preprints on arXiv in the morning but now the signal is buried LLM drivel.
The one hobby I have that is kinda LLM-proof for now is speedrunning. Tool-assisted speedruns have always had their own categories for decades, and even if the LLMs or their descendants are used for routing or glitch hunting there’s still an element of human execution.
The things that motive me to stick around are holding the people ruining this world to account, documenting it and trying to thwart their efforts, a curiosity in seeing just how bad the climate crisis gets (morbid curiosity at the end of our world - how do we react, can it wake us from our stupor), and a desire to help others (whether volunteering or just life advice). So spite and a dash of absurdism (helps provide some levity and not take things so seriously). I had to step back from my career to focus on a mobility issue and at this point I don't know if the job path will continue to be there or even if I care. I'm focusing on small pleasures for now - cup of tea, exercise, peace and quiet. Music and film help provide a sense of meaning and catharsis.
I am not much of a gamer and sure as hell don't keep up with many people that I gamed with 20 years ago but there was one guy that I would talk with ever few years. I talked with him and a few months later he was gone. I don't know why his suicide hit me so hard. Maybe because I connect him to a different phase of my life. Maybe because he was the guy who was the life of chat. I don't know.
What I do know is that I wish he could have known how many people would miss him.
The graph shows that suicides overall are down from 30 years ago, while the same cohort that was higher in 1985-2005 (25-44) is now higher in 2005-2025 (45-64). Perhaps there is something about the generation more than the situation or the age of the individual.
I'm 40 and am accepting I will be single forever. I'm in shape / constantly lifting weights, dress well, work hard on maintaining a good attitude, and am financially stable etc. But not a great face, and extremely skinny (Think Oppenheimer or Bin Laden), am not funny or charismatic, and am not into dogs. Dating is a kick in the butt. Women don't "Feel the spark"
DON'T DO ONLINE DATING. Online dating has wrecked mating except for the most attractive 5%.
Go to meetups instead via meetup.com and also look for local group activities happening on EventBrite - don't make finding a partner the focus or even the objective - go to a ton of meetups doing the things you love doing.
People form relationships doing common interests and having shared experiences. Have shared experiences with people and take finding a partner off the agenda - just enjoy the company of others. You never know what might happen but don't go looking for it.
As for being charismatic or funny, as Oscar Wilde said: Be yourself - everyone else is taken.
I heard that before when I just started dating. I would say don't worry about the outcome (especially pertaining to one person - you know close to nothing about them early on anyway), just try to connect with people. In my case, it would've helped calm my nerves, which were a hindrance. I've been with my partner for 8 years. A given outcome is never preordained and you don't need everyone to like you, just the one that you click with if you don't let rejection discourage you.
Just do other things you like and don't worry about women. Relationships bring heartache and grief a good percentatge of the time anyway. Being engaged in things you like doing will bring you into contact with others and friendships or more may develop. But don't do them with that expectation.
If you don't know what to do, try to get involved with helping others in some way. It can be rewarding and give you a broader perspective on life.
being funny and charismatic are something it is possible to practice, same as lifting weights. From what you say, sounds like a high leverage thing to look into
I am not suicidal and I am lucky to have loving people who I also love around. That said, with all the rapid changes in the software engineering industry and in life in general, I sometimes wonder what I am doing with my life and why.
It's like plenty of things are happening by inertia, but none of them bring any joy or make lots of sense. In such moments, I really envy people who have the courage to work on something they truly believe in. I have quite a few people to take care of, which requires financial resources, so I am not there yet.
In my circle, I've objectively had both the best and the worst life. I can tell when people are thinking about suicide because they reach out to find out if I've done myself in yet lol.
For them, I keep going. I think because both the best and worst times in my life were roughly due to my own decisions, I always have the idea that I will get back to the good times.
I’m college educated, have a successful career doing things that I enjoy to a decent degree, have a wonderful house, wife and kid. If you showed my life to my younger self and asked “would you take this life?” I would have answered every single time wholeheartedly “yes! I’m living the dream!”
But I only recently truly accepted that the life I am living (and have created for myself and family) is actually the dream. We so often miss the greatest times in our lives because we are too focused on the unknowns of the future.
This rings true for me - I wish I could go back and tell my younger self not to prevaricate over trivialities. Maybe it's rose colored glasses but those times feel very idyllic otherwise.
Man this is for real. I’m 46 and I tell my therapist and my friends that I’m not suicidal but like… can we wrap this shit up already? (A tasteless joke stolen from Tom Segura)
I have been meditating on WHY I feel this way. On paper things are pretty good. I’m married. I have a job that is safe for now. I have kids. Two dogs. A house. Two cars.
But I feel really lonely and unseen and like I am a disappointment to everybody including myself. Like it makes sense I’m unseen because I’m unexceptional.
So I’ve done some things that have helped a little including scheduling lunches with friends and coworkers, more frequent date nights (especially double date nights), working out (setting and achieving even small pointless goals like mile time, distance, weight lifted, etc really helps).
All of that and it feels like I’m bailing water out of a sinking ship. It is barely enough to stay afloat and heaven help me if I skip a day or make a mistake…
It is hard to imagine doing this for another 30 years…
I used to think Soma was one of the more disturbing ideas in Brave New World. These days, I understand the temptation a little better.
It can be scary and hard to approach, but I would think you're not unexceptional or unimportant to your loved ones. Maybe you should talk to your wife about this at some point? It sounds like you're starting on this with date nights too which does seem good.
I hope you can find something that helps you feel like you're not just treading water, though.
I had a friend who transitioned and it was such a delight to witness the transformion. Before they were the most flaky of friends, always flitting from on thing to the next, not stable, couldn't hold a job or hobby together for very long. Then they finally transitioned and my god the difference was night and say. They're stable now, they're reliable they're just fun to be around. They've finished a second degree and have held the same job for eight years now.
It's crazy how much not being at home in their body disrupted every part of their life
Sometimes I think joining a cult wouldn’t be too bad right about now. Hear me out: a bunch of people pool money to buy a massive amount of land somewhere and then building everything they need by hand: homes, farms, etc. and everyone has a strong sense of community from daily interaction and shared purpose, with regular rituals to keep a sense of stability. If we must work by manual labor, it is more satisfying to work to benefit those around you than for increasingly worthless dollars. No smartphones or thinking machines allowed.
I’m bored of how shocked people are about this. It’s been going on decades now. Think of all the great and/or famous men that have killed themselves in the last 60 years. It stacks up quick. No one cares.
To anyone with a degree not in software, you can pivot to a hands-on job. I'm a technician for factory equipment. AI is not replacing me for a long time.
I'm an absolute doofus in the physical realm. No hand eye coordination of any kind. No common sense. No social skills or ability to read and understand humans.
In any other era I would have been a useless drain on society and yet I happened by an incredible stroke of luck to be born at a time when the few skills I do have perfectly aligned with a career niche. It's been a good few decades. Now I just go back to being a useless nobody but at least I have my memories and my investments.
Back when we were in high school we were aiming to do the least amount of work to get through the year and spend the rest of the time hanging out with our mates.
A big part of our fault is also that we accept to get dragged by women into a territory that is not ours which is made up of large amount of introspection, extremely fine margins between good times and awful times and walking on eggshells with regards to social cues , the avoidance of social faux passes, planning years and years into the future down to the smallest detail .
That's the perfect recipe for depression for guys
We should go back to the basics and hangout with our mates trying to do the least amount of work as possible, play sports, banter with each other, take everything much less seriously and when we feel the need to have sex shoot for ONS or visit escorts or prostitutes and then go back to our mates.
Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure from my understanding of human history and primate evolution that "long-term sexual/romantic partner" is, in fact, one of the basics.
Just got “over the hill” here. It’s…complicated, but not at all surprising on the whole.
My friends who are older are pessimistic as fuck. Several have been unemployed for lengthy stretches due to ageism in American hiring practices, which has resulted in their life crumbling around them as they lack the resources for basic upkeep anymore. I see that and shudder for myself, wondering if we’ll finally get this sorted before I hit my 50s or if this is just going to be a shitty fucking thing for the foreseeable future.
Social activity is hard for middle-aged men. We spend several hours a day commuting to and from work, which eats into our social budgets. Hard to host dinners, attend game nights, or go on dates when 80% of your day is spoken for work alone in some capacity (preparing for, getting to, performing, commuting home), which leaves us isolated. Most of our peers have paired off, so they have a stronger support structure - yet they too disappear at alarming rates.
At every conceivable intersection for the past fifty years, we’ve chosen to make life more hostile and less comfortable. I’m tired of feigning surprise at what, at least to me and my circles, is so sickeningly obvious.
Yes because when you are struggling to take care of yourself, piling on vet bills and food and more responsibility, and less social time will really help.
Worrying over another being you are responsible for and thinking less about yourself and your own situation...just might help with depression I would think.
And nothing increases the desire for other people to be sociable with you than walking a dog.
I love my dog but absent my partner's desires, I don't think I would've taken it on. The cost, attention, potential behavioral issues, the prospect of losing them eventually are not for everyone.
After having failed romantically one too many times and having an average dev job AI will probably take from me, that won't allow me to FIRE for 6 more years even if I can keep it, life's not fun for me at 35 already, how will it be at 55, all wrinkled up, frail, probably cancer stricken and with no future potential left?
Seriously,look at the age at which people run for president. We got a guy whose been living his best life by stealing from the US public in his late 70s. 50 is the new 30 after all
Less than 10% of 55 year old men have ever had cancer in their life. And many of them were diagnosed before 35. So if you don't already have cancer, your odds are much less than 10% that you'll have cancer by 55.
And if you're wrinkled and frail at 55 years old then that's your own fault. Put on some sunscreen and go for a bike ride.
Because it's highly relevant, I'm going to paraphrase a comment I made last week:
I think a big part of the problem is that middle-aged men are at the apex of their expectations to be successful in the eyes of society, and we are living through a period of time where success is very hard to define, much less attain.
There is a name for this in sociology: anomie [1]. Émile Durkheim coined it in his book Suicide, written not too long after the Industrial Revolution.
In times of great change, the set of norms and rules that we take for granted as an organizing principle of our lives get uprooted. It's as if all of the pieces and tokens and rules of the board game we played our whole lives are swept off the table to make room for a new game, but the new game has not been set up yet. In that interim, we all feel a sense of unease. It is our turn to move, but we don't know the rules of the game or what moves to make. We feel intense pressure to play the game well, but don't know how.
In the past, these transitions have ended and society has generally returned to some sense of stability. A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game. I hope we get to that point with AI soon, but the revolutions seem to keep coming faster and faster.
I think for a lot of men, it feels like just at the time when we should be able to rest on our laurels a bit after having worked so hard to play the game society told us to, the rules have been ripped out from under us and any sense of security going forward is lost. We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing.
It's a psychologically very difficult time.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie
Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
You hit a point in your life, reflect back on where you'd thought you'd be when you were in your early 20s, and think.. shit.. what I do all of this for?
This isn't even a flippant comment (especially given the subject matter); being at this age and thinking "I imagined it would all be easy by now" does hit home.
Internal vs external.
The midlife crisis is probably better described as a change or unease in the self and not knowing why you get out of bed in the morning anymore and that entire adventure, whereas this anomie is the social environment you're moored to breaking down.
Well said! 5 years ago I could have a pretty solid picture of what my career would look like through retirement.
Today, unclear what that would look like as well as unclear if the career will even exist that long.
One sunny spot I have is that life is very long. I think I have 1.5 careers left in me, and a full pivot is alright. I've been talking with older folks, and loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife.
pivot to what though, if "mind" jobs are going to be automated, it's not like there's a category of jobs that opens up, and going from mental to physical jobs in your 50s doesn't seem that easy
> One sunny spot I have is that life is very long.
Not sure exactly where you are in it, but as a 53 year old I disagree. The younger I was the less likely I would have been to disagree but imo/ime the older you get the faster it feels like it is flying by.
> and a full pivot is alright
The AI-related existential dread is that it is very unclear what a pivot looks like when the ground under everything is shifting all at once.
The shifting is certainly a lot more obvious in our career than some others, but all of that shift (so far) happened more or less in a mere 10 months and is accelerating. And I don't think it is very likely that our career will stay anomalous for very long in terms of how much AI impact there is.
We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing.
Well said.
maybe some just don't want to live that long. does everyone need to live as long as possible? you live your youth, and maybe that is enough for some.
if you start to hurt every day, get diagnosed with age-related disease, your cognition starts to deteriorate, etc, you might just decide "hey, i lived enough. i don't want to go through years of feeling like this."
I defined success for myself quite a few years ago: I want to leave the world better than I found it. No high aspirations, no figure. Just better than it was.
Some of that is political advocacy. Some of that is open source code that should exist. Some of that is helping a neighbor. I don't need to hit a certain bar, I just need to know that in a given interaction or situation, I am trying to make things... at least a little better.
That also scales well to differing life decisions. The video game I'm playing, can I get people to play a little nicer with each other and have more fun? Workplaces are full of dumb stuff, success is making it at least a little better. Turns out I have kids now. Wasn't the plan, but now my obligation is to make sure my involvement in their lives is positive. Not a specific bar I have to achieve, but you know, someday I hope someone appreciates how I chose to live my life.
Eh, I don't think today is really all that different from the last 100 years. We as software engineers may feel different as it's (maybe) our turn in the barrel.
My older brother killed himself nearly 20 years ago. I don't think he ever considered himself successful. He had financial problems, alcoholism, and was lonely without any lasting relationships. When his resources were exhausted he just ended his life. There was nothing in the estate of value since his assets, such as they were, were less than tax liability he had accumulated. The owner of the house he had been renting tried to get us siblings to pay for repairs and cost of disposal, but we demurred (and told the court we'd be happy if that owner was named executor; they declined the honor.) I think his car just disappeared off the street one day, probably towed to an abandoned car lot and auctioned.
I am 36 and I have been thinking about suicide a tiny bit lately. But I will share my perspective with you, hopefully to draw a picture how different circumstances can be. I live in Ukraine and my optionality in life collapsed the day the war started. I had a good life, good income and traveled a lot. I used to dream of a career in big tech and life in different countries just to give it a taste. Now I am not able to leave the country because I am a male of conscription age. My city is being attacked by drones daily, and ballistic rockets a few times a month. Witnessing your country getting wrecked with rockets and drones is hell of an experience. Businesses, electricity plants, infrastructure, gas stations becoming rubble. There is also little hope in a resolution of this soon. I have to work on a job which provides a reservation from military service if I don’t want to fight, otherwise I will be picked up on the street to join the military.
I have it so much better than a lot of my countrymen, but holy shit does this suck and it is not getting better anytime soon. The hopelessness gets you.
Software engineering is one of my last remaining pillars of life remaining more or less intact. At least I get to write some code and make computers do things.
Life is a strange thing.
I'm 40, and I am not suicidal, but I've definitely felt those thoughts more than ever in my life in the past two years. I wake up two or three times every night from anxiety dreams. I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit. Between (some of) the effects of AI on my career and hobbies, and the effects of politics on my country and even my own town, and many more problems, I can count more things I feel love and passion for that have been demeaned or destroyed in the past decade than such things that persist.
And this isn't even to mention money, and what my future is looking like, despite having every possible intrinsic and external advantage in The Greatest Country on Earth.
I've had one same-aged friend kill themselves, and I try to be attentive to the signals being put out by everybody in my circle.
> I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit.
Alcohol is incredibly dangerous after 40, particularly if you've got a history as a heavy drinker. I've had to cut back to virtually nothing as it's guaranteed to trigger anxiety and depressive episodes.
Almost all the premature deaths in my circle, including suicides, have been alcohol-linked.
Obviously, YMMV, everyone's different, but if anyone reading this thread is over 40, struggling, and still drinking regularly, taking a break can really help.
Well, not taking a break, but stopping.
I am very glad I ripped that bandaid off over a decade ago. But success for people with a genuine problem is stopping, not taking a break
I’ve lost a lot of my spark in the past 6 years as well. So much has happened that it’s impossible to pinpoint one root cause, it’s all contributing.
Don’t know if you’re soliciting advice, but there are a few things that keep me feeling the way I did before: physical exercise, and live music. Unfortunately I find less time as the week goes by to dedicate to those things, but I at least know they’re there.
Therapeutic writing that out loud, in a way.
AI hasn't made a dent in my enjoyment of my hobbies and tech (the opposite, now I have more toys to play with than ever), but politics? Oh man, politics becoming the new religion has absolutely ruined pretty much everything for me.
I don't believe in politics. For me left and right are all *the same*. Just a bunch of megalomaniacs wanting to hog power for themselves. This extremely hot take has made people call me more names and costed me more relationships than if I went out and started screaming slurs in a crowded street. Because I am a "fence sitter" or whatever.
And I just can't handle it anymore, I just went full recluse. I don't go into social media anymore, I don't talk to anyone at a personal level anymore. Outside of some github issues and some comments here, I don't touch socials anymore. I am just overwhelmed by the level of vitriol and hate the new internet is based on.
This is a bait comment because any push back will just re-affirm your stance and I don’t know if you’ll find much agreement here otherwise. Millions of people died in WWII defending against ideas that are actively being brought by a clear side.
FWIW it’s not that hard to be a fence sitter and not advertise it to everyone. It sounds like either you’re hanging with the wrong people, or you’re the problem. I guess go back to playing with your toys!
I know friends and family with many kinds of beliefs, we don’t rehash why they believe those things every time we see each other. Humans are complex /shrug
Same, in many senses. But you can’t fully detach from humanity without losing your own humanity. Forget socials, and pretty much all media consumption, but go talk to real people, make friends, find an human partner. Even raise a family.
Our brains are constantly bombarded with ever growing information and noise. With mindfulness, deliberate separation from most of the daily noise we can all zero in our own purposes in life. This hard, doesn’t happen overnight but with little steps and a lot of patience we will find that eventual purpose. And you find it hang on to it. I found reading the New Testament brings me instant peace when my brain is in turmoil. Hang in there strong with spiritual closeness, removing noise and avoiding those negative thoughts.
You know, I don't think Jesus cures depression
It's ironic that the "acktually.." atheist/anti-theist crowd don't do a modicum of research when it comes to this kind of stuff. It's pretty well-established in the literature that folks plugged into a religious community live better, happier, and healthier lives[1].
Millenial cynicism is so boring.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5127763/
> folks plugged into a religious community live better, happier, and healthier lives
Could be:
> folks plugged into a community live better, happier, and healthier lives
Or even
> folks with a weekly routine in a third space live better, …
There’s nothing causational about the denomination.
> There’s nothing causational about the denomination.
You're right, I'm sure the people that are publishing these studies have never heard of "correlation is not causation."
That study you linked does not establish a causal relationship. It may simply be that the sort of person who is able to extract well-being from church is the sort of person more likely to actually attend church with any regularity. It likewise does not address the possibility that depression itself might make one want to stop attending church.
>Millenial cynicism is so boring
Yeah, it's always Millennials who are in the wrong. Fuck us, right? It's all good, we're used to being the scapegoats for society's problems.
To each their own. I don’t think we should judge anyone on where they find their faith, that is, the drive to keep going on. Everyone is different.
Person A might find it in nature, camping, trailing, etc. Person B might pursue a more spiritual path, giving back to the community, being of service.
Whatever floats the boat man. Live and let live.
Not religious, but also not disputing that believers have lower rates of depression either.
Believing in a higher power has seemed to provide great comfort to a number of friends and family over the years. I went to a friend's father's funeral a while back, and I had to admit, the service, the way the community came together was moving, and it really made me question whether I should return to the church as an adult, even with my questions of faith.
He said something about moths and rust consuming matter and with that at the very least he pointed out quite clearly the source of our suffering in regards to the AI transformation
I don't know about Jesus curing depression, but it's certainly true that belief in Jesus has made many people feel better.
Excellent advice
oh yes! a racist, misogynist and homophobic literature book... best thing ever to get out of depression
THAT is your take away from the teachings of Jesus?
should i also mention that people who funded their religion hunted jews searching for the holy grail and were present at one if not the biggest holocaust of human history (the colonization of America, between 1500 and 1600, which killed from 25 to 100 million people)
Oh yes, those people were clearly acting out the precise instructions of Jesus as laid out in the Gospels.
I turn 39 this year and am just finding more and more ways to become irrelevant. I can’t be the only one so these stats make sense to me. Fortunately, Australia has a good start on what mental health care should look like and its subsidised (or at least a few sessions are).
I was made redundant in August and despite being a 20 year career vet who has done many different langs, I still can’t find a new job.
My skills as a developer are no longer required because the all knowing robot can (apparently) do what I need to do. I’ve heard multiple companies now using it to ship stuff all the way into production without any human intervention at all. This feels to me like driving the car without holding onto the wheel.
The side hustle I had of writing books to teach people development is over — they can just ask the robot instead. I was writing a new book about how developers can train up others, but have put that on hold (due to losing my job which was that thing, and because of AI)
I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here to provide for my family.
I think most white-collar people have similar feelings. I certainly am, and many dev-friends and coworkers have confided such to me.
My software skills are now irrelevant. I've accepted that the omniscience robot is a better engineer than me. No clue what I'm going to do next, but I have to figure it out fast once my job disappears.
I wanted a family, but I'm relieved that I don't have one now. I can't imagine the stress and pressure of that with how weird everything is now. I'm nearing the end of the timeline for that anyway, being in my late 30s. Probably a blessing in disguise.
I have a some good hobbies that keeps me on my toes (physically, mentally) and a full social and family life fortunately. That's what fills my cup. I'm not stoked about tech anymore anyway.
I've been through a 6 month long unemployment. Got let go from a company (along with the majority of the dev team) which picked up AI like a shiny object thinking it could do everything.
Then I got hired to a company which have been pushing AI 100% for like a year, not at the expense of headcount, but responsibly as the N+1th productivity increasing tool, like what it is.
It's a really nice environment where keeping and cultivating great talent is not just one of the primary marketing slogans on the hiring page, but it actually feels like it while on the job.
My talent is nowhere near yours, so don't lose hope, keep applying.
I solo founded and run a men's suicide prevention nonprofit organisation in the UK. It's early stage bootstrapped at the moment but I have long-term plans.
I've facilitated 200+ talking meetings at this organisation and another I was involved with previously. Anecdotally, the average attendee at the male-only meetings is ~45 years old, has some level of issues with personal and/or professional boundaries, has had suicidal ideation more than once, and has made plans for or attempted suicide more than once.
There is some form of survivorship bias in the above, but I get a lot of pride from our groups keeping men alive. We haven't lost anyone in 2 years.
I would imagine it feels like a huge responsibility, and also immensely fulfilling.
I couldn't imagine being brave enough for it, props to you for doing this!
It's a responsibility and fulfilling, extremes at both ends. The key thing is self-management, and knowing limits. I learned a lot from the ASIST course, and I retake the full two-day training every two years or so:
https://livingworks.net/training/livingworks-asist/
I have no connection or affiliation with the organisation beyond being a delegate.
I would have guessed middle-aged men and women, not just men. I think the reason is being the sandwiched generation.
Most of us had/are having kids late. Now our parents are old/getting old and in need of our support. Along with that, parenting expectations have never been higher. So between shuttling kids from one thing to another all week, and taking parents to medical and other appointments, there isn’t much time or energy left to enjoy anything. It’s exhausting.
Combine that with someone already depressed, and any unfortunate trigger could push them over the edge. It’s partly anecdotal and some of what I’ve observed.
Ooof, not even that old here and I'm feeling that. Things are pretty bad all over. Gets hard to want to be around. AI took my job recently and I've been moved back to helpdesk and just awaiting further layoffs. There's not much fun in intellectual pursuits any longer as LLMs have taken it all. All my fun hobby projects are just jokes now as anyone with money can easily outdo me with an LLM. Sad times...
Why do you imagine yourself you be in competition with others while doing hobbies? Do you not find pleasure in the doing?
No pleasure really anymore, my hobbies were coding occasionally and there's no point to it. Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
Recently I started rebuilding a custom d3d9 hook for an old game and it was really fun and I planned to release it to the community. But before I could, many many others had an LLM do the same thing and my work was obsolete in a moment. There went that hobby... so now I'm hunting a new one...
I gain no joy from that, the joy I would have gained would be from other people using my work. Now they can produce my work without me entirely...
>Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
Then it's not really a hobby, no? Sounds more like a weird competition.
>But before I could, many many others had an LLM do the same thing and my work was obsolete in a moment. There went that hobby... so now I'm hunting a new one...
That sounds more like a job, at least with your perspective.
>I gain no joy from that, the joy I would have gained would be from other people using my work. Now they can produce my work without me entirely...
That's a job, man. Even if you're not getting paid money for it, you're not really doing it for yourself.
The point is a bit moot cause it's the same difference: you can get joy from a "job" and AI making that job obsolete sucks regardless. But if that's what you think a hobby is, then you don't have an actual hobby.
Go take up gardening.
We've thoroughly pathologized this aspect throughout history, but doing things that earn you societal status and respect from others is a essential for having a healthy psyche for many, possibly most people, men especially struggle when they don't have avenues to demonstrate skill and competence.
I wish I could take up gardening but alas I live in an apartment like most other people... I suppose you got me, I have no hobbies and it's just another reason to not want to be here. :) Everything is work and not much fun, is it?
Doing things to share them with others is pretty normal in a hobby. You might be baking for friends and family or sewing clothes or whatever, and want to enjoy the recipients appreciation for it. If people don't accept your gifts, the satisfaction of it will go away, and the same is often true of small coding projects I think.
Woefully out of touch and crass.
Thank you for this post, enlightened being
This is hideous.
> and there's no point to it. Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
That's OK, you don't have to be the best at any one thing. The important thing about any hobby, be it programming, skateboarding, or playing the piano, is that you feel personal satisfaction in doing it, not in the reactions of people to your work. Your enjoyment of a hobby should never be based on whether or not people like it, or even whether or not they want to use the thing you created. If you feel that a project that you are working on could be summed up in a single prompt that can be given to an LLM, then your job is not to work on the project directly, but rather to find what makes what you are doing unique. It doesn't even have to be technically interesting or bring any new ideas to the table, just the fact that somebody has put in effort into making something (regardless of completion or quality) gives it value.
Try see if you can find some physical hobby that has nothing to do with computers.
Mine is gardening. With relatively little effort, I can grow a decent amount of foods, much of it interesting varieties that are not grown commercially anywhere. I really doubt that we're going to see affordable humanoid robots out-competing me in this hobby any time soon.
Do you not see a benefit in coding for the mental exercise and challenge?
Most hobbies are impractical... Machines can produce clothes much faster than a knitter, no chess player will beat the best computers, a boat can bring more fish to port in one trip than you can in a year, etc.
A hobby is something you do for yourself. Whether it's code, or painting, or woodworking.... you don't care if someone is better or faster than you. Unless you really see the hobby as a potential business, in which case you might want to reevaluate because with LLMs it's possible for an individual to do more by himself than ever before.
Well, some hobbies are fun because you're doing something no one else has done before, or which is challenging to accomplish without a lot of investment in time and growing in personal skill. A lot of hobbies are fun because of the competition and because you get to be at the forefront of something. It's fun because we're all limited in our time and energy and choosing to spend time on something means you can do things that someone else who doesn't spend time on it can't. That feels good.
People who were in the demoscene took joy in learning how to make a computer do things no one had done before and push the hardware to its limits. That's not as meaningful if someone can achieve the same thing by prompting an LLM.
A lot of hobbies are fun because of the human challenge in creating the output and knowing it was only achievable because someone had to take time to create it. Having an LLM accomplish the same thing absolutely devalues the fun in the hobby. Hobbies aren't 100% just about accomplishing something for yourself, even though if you sway to much into doing it for validation or to compete with others it can lead to burnout and lack of enjoyment.
You can do a hobby for any reason. It doesnt have to be for yourself. He could enjoy programming but also enjoy contributing to the wider open source community. So it makes sense to feel bad when he sees another project popup and invalidate his work. If it was another person who'd worked hard and thought about the project he could at least take solace in chatting about their solutions but with AI its nothing. It just solves the problem and there is little to be gained from it.
Ah, well I do nothing for myself sir. I work most days of the week and time off is limited. My company doesn't really do vacations. I haven't had one in at least 3 years and hopefully I'll have the PTO soon but never the money!
Many hobbies are collective endeavors or a way of providing something useful to other people.
That's silly. Why can't a hobby be something you want to show others and receive acknowledgement and validation from?
Maybe but any time you start depending on "validation" from other people you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Just be yourself.
Most people find joy in doing work that's useful to others.
I don't know if it's common but I generally don't like to be bad at my hobbies. I like it when I can do things well. I've been learning the piano recently and striving to play more difficult songs is what makes it fun.
Not liking being bad at your hobbies is much different than not finding joy in them because people do them better than you. I work harder to be a better cook, it doesn't mean I'm in competition with people who cook better.
Sure. But AI doesn't make you bad at hobbies. It just makes others better at it, and even that is a stretch.
>I've been learning the piano recently and striving to play more difficult songs is what makes it fun.
And are you going to give up learning piano because now AI can just generate piano music better than anything you can ever produce? No? Then what you're doing is a proper hobby, which contrasts with the OP who feels their efforts are no worthless because AI can just do it better. That's not really a hobby; it's a job.
How did AI make you "bad" at your hobbies?
(Apologies if I'm missing your point)
Hmm.. I meant to make my point in isolation from LLMs. I definitely don't feel that way about learning music.
I do kind of understand it when it comes to programming, though. Hobby-like side projects often felt like they had some utility down the line, even if not directly applied. It's fun to show others what you've accomplished, to show off, maybe land a job from being noticed, etc.
I'm sorry, but this is not realistic. Life is complex and involves many variables. You are right to engage with this question, but you are oversimplifying to the point of implying dishonesty, if I'm being frank (assuming you are not very neuro-divergent!).
Not the author you're replying to but I don't understand this reply at all? What variables? What oversimplifying?
They simply said
> Why do you imagine yourself you be in competition with others while doing hobbies? Do you not find pleasure in the doing?
Which... I don't understand how that is oversimplifying. If your hobby is golf are you unable to enjoy golf because you're not as good as the pros? If your hobby is music can you not enjoy it because you aren't going to win a Grammy award?
If you enjoy programming or working on something an LLM can do... can't you just enjoy doing it without an LLM? Heck there are plenty of people that will probably seek it out because of how many people hate AI being used in programming.
>I'm sorry, but this is not realistic.
It's realistic to want to be competitive. But as soon as your "hobby" becomes competitive, at least in this sense, it ceases to be a true hobby. It effectively just becomes work.
Nothin' wrong with the OP feeling disheartened by AI taking away his "hobby"/job, but AI will never be able to take away a "true" hobby because a "true" hobby is something where such external factors are irrelevant.
You'll notice that people who lift weights, run marathons, maintain a garden, tinker with models, etc., are effectively immune to AI. An AI won't lift your weights for you or tend to your garden for you. Maybe one day it could technically do that, but it doesn't matter, because you simply wouldn't have it do that for you. And it wouldn't matter if AI is doing that for others, because you're not competing with others. You're doing it for yourself.
> All my fun hobby projects are just jokes
I exercise/lift weights, and you should too. My reps/effort/weight/PRs are a joke. I'm ~50% percentile on strengthlevel.com despite really fucking trying for ~6yrs now.
Many people are better than me at the EXACT SAME THING that I'm trying, at my bodyweight/age/sex. It doesn't discourage me. There is always room to improve. I track every workout, go to RPE 8-9, and try to do progressive overload. Seeing the numbers go up helps. I know it won't continue into infinity, especially as the decades go on... but yknow, I'm building a mentality here, not just a body. And when the weights go down, I'll be in the correct mental space for it.
I _loathe_ every. single. minute. of weightlifting. I'd rather be doing ANYTHING else. But I do it anyway. I think it teaches me things about life.
The only true goal is to grow and be better than yesterday. Effort is the reward.
I have multiple herniated discs in my back so working out isn't possible. The V.A. wouldn't help with it either... But thanks for the suggestion! I'll be going the way of the people in the article so ya'll enjoy what you got! Many of us have nothing. :)
It helps to know how achy the body gets without it. In my case, the back pain I had from desk work is entirely gone now. If you focus on the form rather than reps and getting through it, paired with some good music, you can reach a focus state. There are off days of course, but I'm surprised that I enjoy it much more than I used to, where my motivation dropped off quickly due to being externally motivated (visible gains). Now it's kind of cool to just see your ability change over time, better balance, capability to do more advanced exercises, etc.
Try doing some sports as well, I do weightlifting, but I do bouldering as well with friends, it is not only fun it also develops your strength in a kind of complementary way to lifting (also increases you stats on balance and other related stuff)
Hear hear! It took me a bit but I've reached the point where I'm enjoying just "growing". I think we grew up in a world that molded us to compete, and to judge ourselves based on others, but I think with AI we're going to reach a point where our hobbies are going to be just seeing what we can accomplish for ourselves.
50th percentile on there is pretty strong! I've also lifted for around six years and I'm very light so my raw numbers are terrible but I'm still proud of them
I feel ya.
Most of my friends from high school and college are dead from random cancers, or drugs, or both.
I used to love skimming the new preprints on arXiv in the morning but now the signal is buried LLM drivel.
The one hobby I have that is kinda LLM-proof for now is speedrunning. Tool-assisted speedruns have always had their own categories for decades, and even if the LLMs or their descendants are used for routing or glitch hunting there’s still an element of human execution.
Happy to hear that. What are you speedrunning?
The things that motive me to stick around are holding the people ruining this world to account, documenting it and trying to thwart their efforts, a curiosity in seeing just how bad the climate crisis gets (morbid curiosity at the end of our world - how do we react, can it wake us from our stupor), and a desire to help others (whether volunteering or just life advice). So spite and a dash of absurdism (helps provide some levity and not take things so seriously). I had to step back from my career to focus on a mobility issue and at this point I don't know if the job path will continue to be there or even if I care. I'm focusing on small pleasures for now - cup of tea, exercise, peace and quiet. Music and film help provide a sense of meaning and catharsis.
I am not much of a gamer and sure as hell don't keep up with many people that I gamed with 20 years ago but there was one guy that I would talk with ever few years. I talked with him and a few months later he was gone. I don't know why his suicide hit me so hard. Maybe because I connect him to a different phase of my life. Maybe because he was the guy who was the life of chat. I don't know.
What I do know is that I wish he could have known how many people would miss him.
The graph shows that suicides overall are down from 30 years ago, while the same cohort that was higher in 1985-2005 (25-44) is now higher in 2005-2025 (45-64). Perhaps there is something about the generation more than the situation or the age of the individual.
I'm 40 and am accepting I will be single forever. I'm in shape / constantly lifting weights, dress well, work hard on maintaining a good attitude, and am financially stable etc. But not a great face, and extremely skinny (Think Oppenheimer or Bin Laden), am not funny or charismatic, and am not into dogs. Dating is a kick in the butt. Women don't "Feel the spark"
>> Dating is a kick in the butt
DON'T DO ONLINE DATING. Online dating has wrecked mating except for the most attractive 5%.
Go to meetups instead via meetup.com and also look for local group activities happening on EventBrite - don't make finding a partner the focus or even the objective - go to a ton of meetups doing the things you love doing.
People form relationships doing common interests and having shared experiences. Have shared experiences with people and take finding a partner off the agenda - just enjoy the company of others. You never know what might happen but don't go looking for it.
As for being charismatic or funny, as Oscar Wilde said: Be yourself - everyone else is taken.
I heard that before when I just started dating. I would say don't worry about the outcome (especially pertaining to one person - you know close to nothing about them early on anyway), just try to connect with people. In my case, it would've helped calm my nerves, which were a hindrance. I've been with my partner for 8 years. A given outcome is never preordained and you don't need everyone to like you, just the one that you click with if you don't let rejection discourage you.
Just do other things you like and don't worry about women. Relationships bring heartache and grief a good percentatge of the time anyway. Being engaged in things you like doing will bring you into contact with others and friendships or more may develop. But don't do them with that expectation.
If you don't know what to do, try to get involved with helping others in some way. It can be rewarding and give you a broader perspective on life.
being funny and charismatic are something it is possible to practice, same as lifting weights. From what you say, sounds like a high leverage thing to look into
I am not suicidal and I am lucky to have loving people who I also love around. That said, with all the rapid changes in the software engineering industry and in life in general, I sometimes wonder what I am doing with my life and why.
It's like plenty of things are happening by inertia, but none of them bring any joy or make lots of sense. In such moments, I really envy people who have the courage to work on something they truly believe in. I have quite a few people to take care of, which requires financial resources, so I am not there yet.
In my circle, I've objectively had both the best and the worst life. I can tell when people are thinking about suicide because they reach out to find out if I've done myself in yet lol.
For them, I keep going. I think because both the best and worst times in my life were roughly due to my own decisions, I always have the idea that I will get back to the good times.
I’m college educated, have a successful career doing things that I enjoy to a decent degree, have a wonderful house, wife and kid. If you showed my life to my younger self and asked “would you take this life?” I would have answered every single time wholeheartedly “yes! I’m living the dream!”
But I only recently truly accepted that the life I am living (and have created for myself and family) is actually the dream. We so often miss the greatest times in our lives because we are too focused on the unknowns of the future.
This rings true for me - I wish I could go back and tell my younger self not to prevaricate over trivialities. Maybe it's rose colored glasses but those times feel very idyllic otherwise.
I graduated college in 1992.
2 male friends from college died by their own hand within the last decade.
By most measures, they were successful professionals.
Man this is for real. I’m 46 and I tell my therapist and my friends that I’m not suicidal but like… can we wrap this shit up already? (A tasteless joke stolen from Tom Segura)
I have been meditating on WHY I feel this way. On paper things are pretty good. I’m married. I have a job that is safe for now. I have kids. Two dogs. A house. Two cars.
But I feel really lonely and unseen and like I am a disappointment to everybody including myself. Like it makes sense I’m unseen because I’m unexceptional.
So I’ve done some things that have helped a little including scheduling lunches with friends and coworkers, more frequent date nights (especially double date nights), working out (setting and achieving even small pointless goals like mile time, distance, weight lifted, etc really helps).
All of that and it feels like I’m bailing water out of a sinking ship. It is barely enough to stay afloat and heaven help me if I skip a day or make a mistake…
It is hard to imagine doing this for another 30 years…
I used to think Soma was one of the more disturbing ideas in Brave New World. These days, I understand the temptation a little better.
It can be scary and hard to approach, but I would think you're not unexceptional or unimportant to your loved ones. Maybe you should talk to your wife about this at some point? It sounds like you're starting on this with date nights too which does seem good.
I hope you can find something that helps you feel like you're not just treading water, though.
at 40 I became a woman and never been happier
I had a friend who transitioned and it was such a delight to witness the transformion. Before they were the most flaky of friends, always flitting from on thing to the next, not stable, couldn't hold a job or hobby together for very long. Then they finally transitioned and my god the difference was night and say. They're stable now, they're reliable they're just fun to be around. They've finished a second degree and have held the same job for eight years now.
It's crazy how much not being at home in their body disrupted every part of their life
Became? Do you not consider yourself to have always been so?
(Out of curiosity, if you don't mind the question).
Imagine if we had the technology to actually do this!
It advances every so often. We might have womb transplants in the next decade, surgical techniques get more and more refined, etc.
Sometimes I think joining a cult wouldn’t be too bad right about now. Hear me out: a bunch of people pool money to buy a massive amount of land somewhere and then building everything they need by hand: homes, farms, etc. and everyone has a strong sense of community from daily interaction and shared purpose, with regular rituals to keep a sense of stability. If we must work by manual labor, it is more satisfying to work to benefit those around you than for increasingly worthless dollars. No smartphones or thinking machines allowed.
I’m bored of how shocked people are about this. It’s been going on decades now. Think of all the great and/or famous men that have killed themselves in the last 60 years. It stacks up quick. No one cares.
To anyone with a degree not in software, you can pivot to a hands-on job. I'm a technician for factory equipment. AI is not replacing me for a long time.
I'm an absolute doofus in the physical realm. No hand eye coordination of any kind. No common sense. No social skills or ability to read and understand humans.
In any other era I would have been a useless drain on society and yet I happened by an incredible stroke of luck to be born at a time when the few skills I do have perfectly aligned with a career niche. It's been a good few decades. Now I just go back to being a useless nobody but at least I have my memories and my investments.
Guys should go back to the basics.
Back when we were in high school we were aiming to do the least amount of work to get through the year and spend the rest of the time hanging out with our mates.
A big part of our fault is also that we accept to get dragged by women into a territory that is not ours which is made up of large amount of introspection, extremely fine margins between good times and awful times and walking on eggshells with regards to social cues , the avoidance of social faux passes, planning years and years into the future down to the smallest detail .
That's the perfect recipe for depression for guys
We should go back to the basics and hangout with our mates trying to do the least amount of work as possible, play sports, banter with each other, take everything much less seriously and when we feel the need to have sex shoot for ONS or visit escorts or prostitutes and then go back to our mates.
Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure from my understanding of human history and primate evolution that "long-term sexual/romantic partner" is, in fact, one of the basics.
Forget human history, that's the resultant of the median behavior optimized by Nature to produce the continuation of the specie.
At the individual level the pinnacle of happiness is teenage years and early adulthood.
Why wouldn't a rational individual not seek to prolong the behaviors in which one engaged during the pinnacle of happiness
but how does that effect women?
Just got “over the hill” here. It’s…complicated, but not at all surprising on the whole.
My friends who are older are pessimistic as fuck. Several have been unemployed for lengthy stretches due to ageism in American hiring practices, which has resulted in their life crumbling around them as they lack the resources for basic upkeep anymore. I see that and shudder for myself, wondering if we’ll finally get this sorted before I hit my 50s or if this is just going to be a shitty fucking thing for the foreseeable future.
Social activity is hard for middle-aged men. We spend several hours a day commuting to and from work, which eats into our social budgets. Hard to host dinners, attend game nights, or go on dates when 80% of your day is spoken for work alone in some capacity (preparing for, getting to, performing, commuting home), which leaves us isolated. Most of our peers have paired off, so they have a stronger support structure - yet they too disappear at alarming rates.
At every conceivable intersection for the past fifty years, we’ve chosen to make life more hostile and less comfortable. I’m tired of feigning surprise at what, at least to me and my circles, is so sickeningly obvious.
How did previous generations working similar number of hours manage to have much richer social lives?
Wives organizing social events, I think is part of the conventional wisdom? And more communal work and eating together after work etc.
get a dog?
Yes because when you are struggling to take care of yourself, piling on vet bills and food and more responsibility, and less social time will really help.
Worrying over another being you are responsible for and thinking less about yourself and your own situation...just might help with depression I would think.
And nothing increases the desire for other people to be sociable with you than walking a dog.
I love my dog but absent my partner's desires, I don't think I would've taken it on. The cost, attention, potential behavioral issues, the prospect of losing them eventually are not for everyone.
Depression hates a moving target. The responsibility for exercising my dog is tremendous for my mental (and physical) health.
This is the way.
https://archive.ph/sBfx5
Who can blame them?
After having failed romantically one too many times and having an average dev job AI will probably take from me, that won't allow me to FIRE for 6 more years even if I can keep it, life's not fun for me at 35 already, how will it be at 55, all wrinkled up, frail, probably cancer stricken and with no future potential left?
Go to the gym. I'm 60 and in the best shape and strongest I've ever been in my life.
57 here
Yeah ....all frail and falling apart here.
Seriously,look at the age at which people run for president. We got a guy whose been living his best life by stealing from the US public in his late 70s. 50 is the new 30 after all
Less than 10% of 55 year old men have ever had cancer in their life. And many of them were diagnosed before 35. So if you don't already have cancer, your odds are much less than 10% that you'll have cancer by 55.
And if you're wrinkled and frail at 55 years old then that's your own fault. Put on some sunscreen and go for a bike ride.
besides haven't you heard? AI will cure cancer
bruv that's some serious cope!
We all know what the problem is.