Management is the different between you being given ample time to do a straightforward or decently challenging task, and being given a ridiculously small amount of time to do something impossible.

Management is the difference between you being supported in the work that you do and you feeling like you're on the edge of a precipice with potential freefall if you slip up.

Management is the difference between your work seeming like its a valuable contribution to a bigger picture, or that it's a pointless sisyphean exercise in futility cynically driven by profit or ignorance.

Management is the difference between you feeling like the pigeon or the statue.

Management is the difference between you feeling like your job is "programming" or "convincing a room full of ungrateful monkey morons that you deserve to get paid".

Management can be the difference between whether the obnoxious team mate completely totals your project or not. It can be the difference between whether you gain the right experience and be in the right position to get a promotion. Whether you work reasonable hours or whether you're clawing back time late into the night, knowing that you're putting your social and family life on hold to meet the deadlines that somebody else agreed long ago with no knowledge of what it would actually take to complete the task or deliver the project on time or to budget.

In short, sounds like you've got good management, dude. Good job.

Wait, this one is an objective property of the product you're working on, right?

In most other areas the work either runs out or is limited by external factors (ordering parts, other people’s availability, ...).

Considering the barrier to entry for software engineering is a lot higher than most industries, the notion that our managers are less capable of understanding than in other industries seems misplaced.

> Maybe that's a combination of artificial pressure with a high concentration of people who have difficulty coping with stress.

I think that this career is one of the better ones for people who have difficulty coping with stress. Not all software development jobs can be low stress, but it's quite possible to find a low stress niche for yourself doing software development.

The nature of the work is less of a factor in the stress than you co-workers. Stress is created by people, and their personalities and management styles. When hiring, people tend to hire others like them, so you end up with a distinct company "culture", since people who match it stay, and those who don't, move on. So, if you start with a culture of stress in a company, it's going to continue in that direction, and if you end up there and don't fit with their culture, you will be stressed out, even if your colleagues might not.

I've been working in tech for going on 30 years now, and I've seen plenty of super-stressful workplaces.

Edit: Obviously touchy, people actually have thoughts like this, how do we lovingly and selflessly address this and actually turn someone around rather than shaming them? (or is shame how we do it?)

Edit: How might you communicate about the thoughts that are going on in the head of suicidal tech workers, without everyone assuming that you are the person who is suffering that level of consciousness? maybe a disclaimer was all people would have needed to understand that?

Your description is not accurate, and sounds like a toxic approach where you are viewing women with a combative perception.

I’d suggest considering what areas of your life you can improve on for you, and maybe addressing the areas that are putting you into such a negative head space.

I hope you find your way to being happy.

I am happy but these are thoughts I've had in the past.

I can understand your perspective, and warranted frustration. Much of my childhood, I was raised to believe certain truths, only to be slapped in the face by a different reality later in life.

@McAtNite mentioned the "red pill/MRA" trap. It's common, to people seeing things that go against what they were raised to believe is 'right' or 'wrong', to become angered by that.

Try going to a festival. As a software engineer, I went to Sasquatch Festival in 2017 for the first time, and it was life-changing. I went again to the last one in 2018, and again, life-changing. Incredible music, amazing people, and no "deadlines", or deployment statuses BS. Just people celebrating what it means to be alive.

The judgmental side of you will fade over time and you'll come out of it a stronger person.

Yeah, it can't be you, it must be them.

Back to the topic. This is what I hate about the tech profession: how it perceives women. It is not healthy.

Why we work and why we mate are all part of our survival, and that's what generates these thoughts.

If I don't explain thoughts I've had and transcended in the past, that are tied to work and survival, what use is the conversation, am I shamed for sharing another aspect? or is it just too loosely related in your view.

But I will say this: stop blaming women for your shortcomings.

Apologies for not disclaiming

Edit: Tinder would be an example, depending on your location. Or instagram

It's OK to think wrong things. We all think a lot of wrong things.

It's important, because our brains are very good at rationalizing and filtering, to be skeptical of the voice that interjects those dark thoughts--to look for evidence that it's wrong rather than evidence that it's right.

Edit: addressing your edit. It's also important to reflect on how (and why) our experiential sample differs from a random sample. Apps, much like physical places, strongly filter who shows up. Just like you're statistically likely to meet different kinds of people at a library, supermarket, dog park, beach, state park, piano bar, orchestra, art gallery, or hackathon.

I think the big precondition is some combination of curiosity+humility. If they don't already have it, I wouldn't worry about much other than trying to create it. At first I wanted to compare this to opening a door that someone else has to walk through, but I guess what you really want is to teach them how to see doors.

I'm not really into street epistemology, but I read Peter Boghossian's book on the topic a few years back; IIRC he frames this in terms of creating moments of "doxastic openness" where people are willing to re-evaluate what they know. I'm probably torturing the text a little, but I think it roughly boils down to using the Socratic method to help people find things they think they know but don't.

It's a way of unsettling the equilibria or feedback loops they're in.

A thought that may help...

A bit over a decade ago I had a spell of depression that I sought counseling for, and for a few weeks at one point I crossed a little line into "suicidal ideation", and it was a very unnerving experience. My brain saw opportunities for death everywhere I went. I was morbidly amused with its ideas. I (thankfully) never felt any real impulse to take action on those thoughts, but the unnerving part was how rational it (and I) actually felt. I'll avoid details, but my mind was hard at work on very pragmatic details--solving a problem like any other.

I realized my thinking was working fine--but my perception was all askew--and it sort of snowballed into part of my worldview. I grew to find it more fruitful to see other people as roughly rational with varying degrees of disordered perception, and to imagine that we would probably make very similar decisions and think similar thoughts if our input streams were swapped. (FWIW: I'm not calling this an accurate model of reality, just a fruitful one.) I wasn't really aware of it at first, but it's turned out to be an empathy-cultivating framework. It leads me to imagine the preconditions that might cause me to think/behave as someone I'm finding surprising.

I enjoy living, trying, learning, seeing, hearing. I love to go to live music shows, eat good food, travel, meeting people and learning what they know. I'm a little socially awkward but I do enjoy talking to people about whatever they are experts in. I love to build things, I'm not artistic, but I enjoy art. I like to be alone, and camp and swim and read. There's so many things I love to do in life I'll never get to them all.

So for the most part, I get up as early as I can bear, and I do as much as I can for as long as I can. I find very few things through out my day to be un-enjoyable.

My first attempts at having a partner were so focused on having a partner, that it was difficult for me or them to see through that. I had some unhappy kinda forced relationships. At somepoint, I relized that no one else can make me happy, and looking for that in someone else is a waste of time and a turn off. Instead, I make myself happy, I've found what I love to do and who I love to be. I'm fatter, worse in bed and have less hair, but I'm more attractive because I love myself, and I love life. That's something people want to be around.

So, when you're done feeling sorry for yourself, take some time to be the best you, be someone you love, learn how to make yourself happy without having to seek out your happiness from someone else. You partner doesn't want another chore. Life is just as hard for your partner as it is for you.