The Lost Developer with a lost soul
I lost my reason for becoming a developer, and in the process, I lost my soul. As we all stand and watch Coronavirus, sweep through our land. I’ve done some soul searching and I now stand at a crossroad in a desert screaming for return back to my roots.
Technology is now all around us, from such a young age, we have been programmed to adopt new technologies. From parents throwing devices to their children to everyday jobs. Technology is there, and their no running away, it’s now weaved its way into the heart of our society. From a young age, I witnessed the boom on the technology, and I’m now very much embedded into the industry as a Developer. While I sit at my desk developing next products/systems, getting to travel around the work, enjoying hotels and swimming pools after work. I got compliances in providing material good to friends and family. On nights out with clients and colleagues cracking open champagne, using Uber executive/business to travel and simply picking up the tab refusing anyone to pay. People often ask why, or so-called friends state they are in the “wrong job”.
However, I have a confession to make, I sold my soul out for NOTHING. Sure it sounds fun, the anonymous donations to charities and fundraiser gives you some reason to carry on. But, after 6 years of development, I’ve come to realise I’ve became institutionalised in the tech world and lost the reason why I joined. As an industry, we are all thriving to get to the markets the quickest. We are all forgetting that technology was designed to “help” people. To allow everyone to have access to information and to stay connected. I’m often get asked the same question, what got you into development. To this day, only a handful of people know the truth. Not one company or client I’ve had done work for had ever experienced the depth and stretch of why I got into the industry. Its time to explain to all the #recruiters I’ve p***ed off rejecting jobs and, why I’m unsure what my next role should look like.
I started developing at the age of 14, small projects to begin with to learn how to write the code behind “modded” games Xbox 360. After that, I got bored and almost given up on IT. Then in around 2011–2012, I was talking to a few people online. We notice how many filthy animals were online, talking to me, them and a lot of people. One of these people I was talking too was called “NaziGod” (wasn’t a nazi but real antifascists, not the fake Antifa scum we see today) another guy named AnonymousSynn who we got talking via HackForums — though were the days of enjoyment in IT. So at a young age and still in full-time education, I helped out on “Operation Pedo Hunt”. I learnt new skills, from SQL Injections, Metasploit, and we even used social engineering to track down sensitive information. My goal couldn’t be more precise, I learnt the industry to help fight the good fight. In the few years that followed I helped release 100’s of databases, 1000’s of users home locations, you see these degusting filthy creatures were actively talking about abusing a child — DISCLAIMER for any law enforcement officers I never once accessed the websites. Only the database for which I’ll never apologies for. Heck, we event discovered paedophiles on a prominent America University talking about abuse and “how to find.
Overall in the 2–3 years that followed, we revealed 100s of details of these filthy animals and completely destroying databases at the time rendering websites dead. This provided with a buzz, knowing I’m doing something for the familiar good while at the same time not being a local nuisance being on the street corners underage drinking.
Fast ward to 2020 and I just finished a mentally challenging contract breaking every single UK employment law to meet my tight deadline with the number of hours worked on each day with only around 4 hours sleep. It became apparent to myself, I no longer the IT industry for the thrill, the excitement or enjoyable. I was pi**ing money up the wall left, right and centre just to try and stay happy and wasn’t even doing the work of the money. I’ve realised I’m working for the sake of working and not using my new knowledge and experience to help improve lives. Going to the beginning of this article/post
Technology is now all around us, from such a young age, we have been programmed to adopt new technologies. From parents throwing devices to their children to everyday jobs.
Technology is here, and while we thieve in the industry to create new tools like Twitter, Tictok and Facebook. We are forgetting a core aspect of what technology was designed to do “to help solve issues and make life easier”. I started out my journey into the tech world fighting against filthy animals online, but instead of ensuring services we create are suitable for our users to keep them safe. We are endearing them by bringing them ever deeper into technology dependant from such a young age. We see AI now being introduced to keep us all in our gossip corners of society. From politics to sports and even social activates. But these have grave consequences, we keep each other in echo chambers, including criminals. We see the use of open-source AI to detect signs of becoming radicalised by religious scriptures from Christianity to Islamists. But nothing is being done to protect our future generation from exposing themselves to filthy animals that seek to destroy souls for their own gratification.
Today, a recruiter asked me why I turned down a role. The truth is, I’m looking for something that excites me and brings me back to the reason I joined the industry. An interview process is a two-way streak, designed for the employer to understand the employee, and the employee to get to know the business better. Both parties in the transaction need to be happy. Stop pushing for your next commission.
Next Steps for the lost developer? Unsure, standing at a crossroad in the middle of nowhere. But it’s time to get back to why I got into tech. So using this downtime for personal development and maybe one or two children safety application. Already have a system blocking adult content from Facebook — They really need to do more in protecting their users and not just political monitoring of content.
