crankytown
To a certain extent, I agree that there are today floods of news and information that have never existed in preceding decades. But overall, over the centuries, trends have been tracing increasingly worse trajectories, contemporary news and information overload notwithstanding.
Coincidentally, I was re-reading the Powell memorandum today[1], and trying to unpack the layers upon layers of deception and evil and all the other failings of humanity in its every line. It is a reminder of the propensity of the human psyche to prey upon itself and other life, just because. (Also, this pre-dates the internet as we know it today, and was (and still is) being "implemented" by the powers that were and are.)
My unshakeable (though highly personal and highly subjective) worldview is that the systems that humans have been collectively building (or are being forced to build against their will) across many generations are force-multipliers to the detriment of this planet and all its lifeforms.
This leads to shrapnel like:
* System efficiencies are designed for, and forced towards accelerating exploitation at all costs rather than optimizing for general well-being.
* Human effort has largely been, and is still being massively misdirected for generations into building things that shouldn't have even been ideas to begin with. All modern "innovations" (ads? zero-privacy faang walled-gardens?) operate under the implicit assumptions that your consciousness is game; that your consciousness exists as the ultimate cannon-fodder to satisfy these "innovations", and then some? F*ck that noise.)
* We have more hydrocarbons and their residues inside and around living things today, than in earlier decades.
* There is more water draining away from the poles and into the oceans than ever before.
* There is more orchestrated exploitation of the planet and its organisms than before.
As for me, I address it by a bit of selflessness and selfishness combined, being both single and childfree by choice. I've seriously considered offing myself. I refuse to bring a child into a world accelerating downhill, and forced human reproduction (just like your tasty chicken came to be) is actually beginning to take root in some places around this world (see what's up with Roe v Wade these days, as an example.) That sentiment will probably keep spreading rapidly across the world in the years to come.
I know I am to blame to some extent for the world I end up creating through my actions and my profession (as maybe you do as well.) But I have really, sincerely and honestly tried to do my bit as well: never owned or cared for a car, barely ride a motorbike a couple score kilometers a month, veggie, adore my cats. I know it doesn't amount to anything in the grand scheme of things, but hey, my cats purr at me, my poops are just better with all that fiber and I like learning to cook new things that aren't heart-attack food if I'd have to buy them instead.
It is sad that the only way to "win" (atleast in my mind?) is not to play the game: every day I have lived is the most powerful reinforcement of having made the choices I made. I have some regrets, but those pale in comparison to knowing that my children and descendants will never have to suffer through the minefields and exclusion-zones that many generations before me have laid out for them in full coherence and with full force of will. That pain and regret is a small price to pay for such an assurance.
[1] https://law2.wlu.edu/deptimages/Powell%20Archives/PowellMemo...
/soapbox
edit: formatting
With that out of the way, if your bosses want to fire you a week after you've consistently and proactively been trying to learn workflows that are new to you in your new job, you'd actually be dodging a bullet.
> I hate that I am always asking people for help
You only need to do this for "tribal" knowledge, for which you should have (or start) an internal wiki. For the rest, you kinda have to plumb the depths of the public internet...
> like today I asked for help to rebase my branch since I have never done it before
Yeah, I still remember my first rebase very well, thinking I would just lose everything if it went wrong. I tried a bunch of things on a throwaway repo to figure out what exactly happens, which turned out to be very helpful. I particularly enjoyed this talk once I'd found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ffBJ4sVUb4
> At my old job I was the guy that got things done, gathering requirements, designing and developing new features <...> did anyone else ever feel this way and if so how did you over come, did anyone get fired because they are incompetent?
That is still your skill set, and not knowing something does not make you incompetent; though not wanting to learn new workflows and tribal knowledge does.
I have always had pride in being a newbie to a new team - I get to learn another set of ways someone has thought about working through problems, and more often than not - my new team benefits from the fresh perspective I bring to the table when I start asking questions on why something is the way it is, and to mull over whether there could be a better way to do it before you get crusty. Win-win.
See if anyone on the new team is willing to volunteer to mentor you. That looks nice on yearly reviews for both of you as well. Cheers!
I switched roles and got myself away from obnoxious self-glorifying micromanagers who couldn't conceive of the idea of not lording over my shoulder when I'm working. They would never consider WFH even for a couple days a week, ("because I say so") -- until Covid shut them up ("Tell me, Mr. Anderson. What good is a phone call, if you're unable… to speak?").
The irony was as delicious as watching all their pointless flailing. I hope they have figured since that their days of milking workhorses are over, and had diminishing returns from having their pets scratch their back instead of doing real work. Also, pay peanuts, get monkeys. Enjoy what you deserve, suckers!
I've never met my current manager in person, video calls are just as good to discuss business, if not better since there's exactly zero travel to deal with. He isn't even in the same country as I am, let alone an office building. No complaints.
I work exclusively with folks across the globe now and I'm the only one in my TZ on the current team, so going to office no longer makes sense just to have small talk with maybe loosely related folks in the office working on completely orthogonal commitments.
I'm single and have an aging parent who was hospitalized and recuperating, so I can actually cook and clean and get stuff done at home, even on a workday, taking breaks that I need when I really need them, and filling out work at other off-work times of the day that are more appropriate for me.
I have lower-back pain at times and biking (motorcycling) to work over a 50-minute commute was just exasperatingly painful, even for a cruiser. Cars took 1.5h one way, that's a lot of time to get back not having to commute.
All in all, yay. Never been better. The schadenfreude of seeing my previous managers squealing like little piglets at things they can't get their lilgrabbies on, especially after the meltdown leading to the exodus of the most useful people from that team, is so satisfying to watch and it pays for itself every day...