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achenetHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

Of course, I understand that "I built some software/racked some servers for a company 20 years ago …

… Of course, I understand that "I built some software/racked some servers for a company 20 years ago and they're still business" isn't the same as "I put the bricks in that wall twenty years ago and the house is still there". So I agree that the individual artifacts we create in the tech industry are somewhat fleeting, compared to things made of metal and stone, even if, compared to things like music or other performing arts, where the song disappears the minute you stop playing, software running on computers is relatively lasting. And artifacts created with software, while they are a relatively new thing, may prove quite durable. Films made with Final Cut, or songs made with Pro Tools, or heck, even video games like Doom, may prove to outlast every house that you ever worked on. It's possible that 200 years from now, people will still be watching YouTube videos made today, even if, in a Ship of Theseus like fashion, every line of code and every server that YouTube is currently using has been replaced since then.

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FU
FuzzwahHN

Grey hair sysadmin story time... I came to understand the "purposelessness" of my career very early on; when I decommissioned a bare metal server from a datacenter after finishing the deploy of it's replacement and realised that the old server was the first unit I'd racked when I started in the position 4 years ago. That was ~20 years ago. Nothing I've had a hand in building / maintaining has "survived" for more than ~7 years. My Dad worked to build houses. Prior to my IT career I'd laboured for him and played my small part in the creation of many homes around where I grew up. They'll be there for a hundred years maybe. Quitting the ephemeral world of IT to work on building a homestead and creating tangible things that directly keep humans alive seems like an obvious calling to me. The constant evolution of "tech" is a blessing and a curse.

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FU
FuzzwahHN

Every company I've worked for still exists and many will clearly continue for many many years (some previous employers were Universities). Some previous roles I was involved in solving "this could end the business" situations, so I do thank you for making me realise that I laid bricks (or more importantly; helped detect and repair serious foundation problems) for my employers.

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morleytjHN

This is a really beautiful sentiment, it's interesting to look more at our careers as stewards of a lasting organization in some ways, where every iteration of some product is dependent on the existence of work done before. Even with ephemeral software we all leave our mark in that way. Thank you for writing that.

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