Was working on a PhD in CS focused on industrial cybersecurity, though current events involving the three letter agency that funded my research lead to me crashing out and now I’m trying to get into law school and do immigration law. Far too frail and pasty to buy a farm though
Anyone in tech confirm?
Submitted 3 weeks ago by LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone to memes@sopuli.xyz
https://piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone/posts/oX/MP/oXMPY8OtMwKZZ8W.jpg
Comments
Gust@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Jayjader@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
Good luck with getting into law school!
Gust@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Thanks! Trying right now to figure out how to ask my former advisors for letters of rec without explaining my motivations, which heavily imply that I think they’re in denial about their work being “make tools for fascists”
antonymous_bosch69@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Haven’t owned a printer in well over a decade. Fuck printers.
Gust@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Same but I still keep the gun around in case any printers sneak back in
ComfortableRaspberry@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
lemming741@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Holy shit, gaoibg from farming programmers to geese? That’s an escalation, for sure
vane@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
He stopped that profession in Jun 2025
Bonsai farmer
Self-employed Jun 2025 - Present · 7 mosAnother classic
Sorry I missed your comment of many months ago. I no longer build software; I now make furniture out of wood.
gramie@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
The Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Soul of a New Machine, chronicling the development of Data General’s Eagle computer in the 1970s, one of the characters is a microcode developer, responsible for hardwired logic that runs the CPU.
Part of his job is managing electrical impulses that last for microseconds or nanoseconds. One day, the team comes in to find his workstation abandoned, with a note on the monitor saying that he is going to join a commune in Vermont, and never dealing with a unit of time smaller than a season again.
The tech may be ancient for us, but it’s a superb book.
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Reminiscent of how Brian Eno spoke on creating the startup sound for Windows 95:
The thing from the agency said, “We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,” this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said “and it must be 3¼ seconds long.”
I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel.
In fact, I made eighty-four pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I’d finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.
Mk23simp@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Nah, I like PC gaming too much to want that. What I want is to just to be free of capitalism.
Sine_Fine_Belli@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, same here honestly. I too wish to be free of avarice
justaman123@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think a self sufficient farm is the closest you can get to escaping capitalism
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The issue isn’t the tech itsefl but the corporate world and its effects throughout society.
There is a lot of cool tech, but used for the most asinine products. 2015-2016 was especially terrible with the accessibility of IoT. Everyone and their mother had a Kickstarter with a common everyday item with wireless capability tacked into it.
No, my bottle doesn’t need Bluetooth.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The longer I work in tech the less I’m impressed by new tech. I don’t want the latest and greatest phone. I don’t need a crazy gaming PC. I don’t need or want a bunch of smart devices. I want a few useful things that I can manage myself, and the freedom to wake up to no alarm except the livestock.
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Because tech should be boring. Just like politics.
But companies shove tech in our face with fancy bells and whistles to make us buy more.
I mean, just look at PC where RGB is everywhere. I want a silent PC that I don’t see.
hark@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sometimes I wonder if it’s me getting old or if it’s tech being more and more about solutions in search of a problem. I feel like we had reached a “good enough” point for a while, but I can’t tell if the “good enough” judgement is just me getting old and stubborn.
BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Well, it’s driven me to Debian.
ThatGuyNamedZeus@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I read somewhere that Debian was never supposed to be used as a daily driver.
If you want to use Debian it’s only worth using within QubesOS as far as security is concerned
mech@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Please try to find where you read that, cause that sounds ridiculous.
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
Source for any of this?
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
The heck are you talking about? The baseline security config in Debian is far better than most distros out there, and QubesOS is really only realistic for folks with the threat models of those in C-suites or targets of nation state hackers. Seriously what makes your threat model so severe that you need better isolation and security than what Debian provides (which is already far above average) yet you’ll still post about it on forums?
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
The tech worker pipeline:
help desk > sysadmin > CISO > goat farmer
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As a long time tech user within about 5 years of retirement, I don’t quite agree with this for a couple of reasons. Tech is fine if its tech that serves me. I’m certainly not going to be doing JIRA updates in retirement, but I’ll absolutely use a web browser, word processor, and probably a coding environment for my own personal projects. Retrocomputing is much more appealing to me too.
Also, I think most folks in IT have no idea how hard farming actually is, both mental and physically. Farming is really hard work, and having to manage some of the same annoying things we deal with in IT such as following complicated regulations, dealing with asinine people in power over you, and delivery dates.
bastion@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
grass is always greener on the other side. …but, sometimes, it actually is, depending on who you are.
In my case, the forest was, and still is, the greener side. can’t really complain, and I don’t think I’ll be switching back to tech anytime soon.
Can confirm, though, a lot of people approach farming or homesteading with really unreasonable expectations.
Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Honestly it’s just the Internet. Tech is fucking awesome, as long as it’s decoupled from anything and anyone else trying to control, monitor, impose, or otherwise fuck with the tech that’s mine, bought or built fairly. And also the untold psychological torture the Internet is just constantly inflicting on us.
Sabata11792@ani.social 3 weeks ago
I prefer cabin in the woods, but my paycheck says small house in a shitty neighborhood.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Actually, that cabin may be cheaper. Property is way more expensive in dense areas.
A major reason lots of people move to the country in retirement is because the land is cheaper and.they end up with a bigger house and more land for less than they were paying before because it’s cheaper land with lower property tax.
noxypaws@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
great movie, too
Console_Modder@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Nah. I can understand why someone would think that way, but the more I work with tech the more I want to mod or jailbreak my own stuff so it doesn’t suck
mech@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
There’s different types of people in tech.
Some of my colleagues have elaborate home labs built from hardware discarded at work, and when there’s kitty litter on the floor, their cleaning robot sends an email to the fridge to buy a new pack.
I have 1 PC running Slackware, a vegetable garden, and I’ve actually considered buying a goat.dwzap@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Can confirm. I’ve been working in tech for 16 years. I now own a house in the forest.
antonymous_bosch69@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Joke’s on me, I will never earn enough money to afford a house in the forest.
mitchty@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
I grew up on a farm, hell no. If you think farming is going to be any different you’re delusional. It’s also full of physical labor that takes a toll on you.
But give it a go if you want just don’t think farming or ranching is simpler it’s not. And now you alone take on the responsibility of managing many lives be they plants or animals.
Yes it’s rewarding keeping a baby calf alive in -30 weather but be prepared to wake up every couple hours to keep watch on the animals. Also say goodbye to vacations. Without a family member or 5 to help out it’s hard to take a vacation without worrying that coyotes got into the chicken coop or other shenanigans.
potpotato@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
These people are “farming” in retirement, not for a living. Basically have a bunch of ducks and a couple mule.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Exactly. There’s a huge difference between being a hobby farmer and actually trying to make a living as a farmer or rancher. Without needing to support yourself off of it, you can raise only a small number of animals you can comfortably care for, grow what you want without concern for market prices, etc. It’s the difference between coding for a hobby and coding for a job.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I have a business plan ready for raising heirloom breeds of pigs and expensive ingredients and selling them to fancy restaurants. If I can get the right connections I can make it a profitable business. Damn near broke even on four hogs last time, even with setup costs.
Jayjader@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
Can confirm, though it’s mostly because tech workers are so de-politicized that they don’t realize they would have the power to change things if they acted collectively – so they do the “next best” thing, remove themselves from the equation.
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago
Nope.
Grew up having a huge garden (~1 acre) to help feed us all. Last thing I want to do is farm later in life, fuck that.
I’ll keep a small garden, but keeping any animals is right the fuck out. I know first hand how much effort it all is.
Tech is fine - in the end it’s like any other work… You’re a salesman for your field, regardless of what it is. Plumbers have to educate every customer, because most people know fuck all about plumbing.
Googlies@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I love growing things and I also love tinkering, building, finding new gadgets.
Have been a techie all my life so far, will be a techie until I die.
People that get tired of tech jobs, might not be because of tech, rather the people they have worked with and the unrelenting pull of a capitalist society.
jali67@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I have a tech degree but I more so would love to focus on open source and just enjoying tech other ways. Putting a or towards software for a large corporation that I only get a very small piece of the pie for and would drop me at any moment isn’t motivating to anyone I would imagine.
DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Yes and no. Just like John Wick still had his hitman tools hidden in his house, tech workers who say they want to buy a farm and be a luddite will not be able to resist having a hidden server closet in their farmhouse.
Hule@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I present to you: Home Assistant on the whole farm!
bastion@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
living this. although, more, a homestead.
Homeassistant keeps my water pump from freezing!
vortexsurfer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
(Tech worker here, hoping to move to the countryside next year.)
Absolutely. I probably wouldn’t be doing any farming, except grow some vegetables for my own needs. But I would definitely build my own awesome local infrastructure with a server room and network cables in the walls and all that good stuff. When I retire and don’t have to spend 8-10 hours a day in front of a computer at work, it’ll probably be enjoyable and satisfying again to work on and maintain my own computers and stuff. Currently I rarely have the motivation or energy to do that.
And if the house is large enough I’d also make certain areas/rooms completely tech free. Like maybe a small library with only books and comfy chairs, and no wifi signal.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’ve lived in the countryside with a bunch of tech in my basement and it was still better than living in the suburbs
bassgirl09@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I can confirm. I learned real quick in college working a part-time help desk job for the University that I attended that I under no circumstances want to work in IT at any level or program because they are both thankless and stressful career paths – when tech works, then why do we need you and when it breaks, why do we have you is all the “leaders” ask in many companies because they do not have a basic understanding how any of the IT systems function, hardware lifecycles, etc.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Confirmed, although I’ve been looking a a live-aboard yacht instead of a micro farm. (not rich, but the housing market is so crazy that these things are in the realm of being cheaper than my house)
Pringles@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
I plan to open a bar when I stop working in tech. The farm life is not for me, but I love the atmosphere of a good bar.
forkDestroyer@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I regret to inform you that salaries in tech are not as glorious as I thought they’d be. I’d be surprised to have enough to own a farm any time soon.
Would be nice to be able to afford a house, though.
billwashere@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
In IT for over 30 years… 💯 %
Mika@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
Not really. But the more you understand tech, the less you like the high tech market solutions and have the urge to have the same but in opensource.
I kinda dream that one day setups for mid-power home AI racks would be affordable enough to drop all the proprietary AIs and start automating my daily routines with agents & helping me build my local knowledge vector database with AI embeddings. No way in hell I’m exposing anything like that to thirdparties.
Unforeseen@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The efficiency improvements in some open models are becoming crazy, like hundreds of times from a year ago. I have a setup such as yours on my framework which can handle a 120b param model fully loaded. It’s capable of the RAG setup you are already envisioning.
Illecors@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago
Moar deets, please!
cornshark@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What do you mean framework? What are the specs?
Mika@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
If you are capable of running 120b, the mistral cli bigger open source model in agentic mode could be available to you.
How much did your setup cost, if you don’t mind to disclose such information?
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
Nah, not really. I just want to spend moee time working on my own projects.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Same, either that or become a beach bum if my wife passes away too soon.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Definitely not everyone :) I am bad at agriculture, even worse at raising animals, so computer it is for quite a long while from now. But I would really appreciate an opportunity to just sit by the sea and stare at it for days on end
mastertigurius@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Harboured a lifelong passion for computers. Having it as my job for 13 years made me lose much of that passion. To the young’uns: if you love something, consider whether you want to separate between what you do to pay for food and bills, and what makes you heart shine.
Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
The Stardew Valley pipeline is real.
MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
People when they realize the smell
ICastFist@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
I’ll only want to keep a computer around to play some games, but I really wouldn’t mind ditching that for boardgames with actual people.
oretoise@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
It tends to be more “I want a thing that just works.” rather than no technology, but yes.
Self-hosting services that are reliable and don’t get in my way, not using cloud-connected smart devices, running Linux instead of Windows, etc.
tatterdemalion@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
It’s sad that self-hosting is apparently the path to having a solution that “just works”. You’d think that paying for a product would be more effective, but alas…
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
I’m starting to realise that a big part of why self hosting works is the customisability of it. There’s no financial incentive for Google or whomever to make sure process A has an interface to talk to process B because it’s a minority use case in their clientbase.
Self hosting - either someone has already had the same issue and made a plugin or I can create a shim of some description to make the two things talk to each other that wouldn’t be practical at scale.
baines@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago
i just want away from tech bro leadership and want star treck instead