> Don't be afraid of traditional gender roles and arrangements, and take pride in this accomplishment.
Maybe consider defying gender roles -- and not just those roles, all the expectations that brought you to this point.
The OP's post resonates pretty deeply with me - I've been disillusioned with my career (and my expectations of it) for a long time. Expectations met reality, and I, too, am unhappy with the status quo.
Okay, maybe lean into a family. Maybe don't, and don't buy into the traditional gender roles. Maybe find some way give up all the expectations you've had - and cultivate your own happiness in defiance of what has been indoctrinated into you your entire life. College, careers, marriages...perhaps all of these institutions should be questioned as you forge your own path.
Side note: I have nothing figured out. I have only just recognized that I am not fulfilled by my career and that working for $GIANT_MEGACORP in $PRESTEGIOUS_ROLE does not give me purpose. My extended mid-life crisis continues.
Indeed, it's an interesting and alluring point to defy. My experience so far is that it's not so easy to distinguish between misleading indoctrination and archetypal patterns that lead to positive long term outcomes. I try to share the things I've learned that have/are leading to good outcomes.
It's also interesting how mental framing can dramatically change outcomes. There are many people out in the world building widgets. Some people try doing it for the love of the widget. Other research indicates that fulfillment in building widgets only comes after getting good at it and practicing that craft. Then others do it solely to earn money for family, hobbies, travel. This mental framing for each individual seems very related to purpose and positive outcomes.
This is getting down-voted but it's fair criticism of the parent comment. As a former Army grunt-turned-dev, I can personally verify that there are many very smart military personnel. They do deserve some blame for failing to imagine how their data could be used by our adversaries. It's a major OPSEC issue, no doubt, and a great learning opportunity for the military. Troops on the ground are adopting consumer tech too quickly for the DoD to keep up. In my experience in wartime operations overseas, this is often a failure to see the forest for the trees; that is, you're too involved in operations on the ground to see the danger of the (seemingly) innocent technology you're using to make your life easier, better, etc.
Ironically the CAN-SPAM Act only prevents commercial entities from doing this, however shady the practice may be. Political emails are protected free speech and AFAIK the means by which addresses are obtained is irrelevant.
> These people are not only stupid (look at that 'suspicious' device), they are abusing power with no repercussions.
That's the part that bothers me the most - that they were too stupid to know what they were looking at. He was proud of his invention and wanted to show it off.
OpenStack isn't perfect, for sure. Huge community, big corporate players, huge code base. I do feel the barrier to entry into the community is very high; using the stack is not a small undertaking, particularly in a production capacity. The APIs are mess, but I have high hopes that the new OpenStack SDK will bring some ease of use to the stack that boto has done for AWS.
Overall, even though I feel like a reasonably competent coder with a lot of experience as a user, I don't feel like I could ever contribute to the project in a meaningful way - and I don't think I want to.
Working at an Openstack cofounder, I do have a lot of code deployed into an OpenStack cloud, and have written a lot of automation around the stack and APIs. I still have high hopes for the platform.
Maybe consider defying gender roles -- and not just those roles, all the expectations that brought you to this point.
The OP's post resonates pretty deeply with me - I've been disillusioned with my career (and my expectations of it) for a long time. Expectations met reality, and I, too, am unhappy with the status quo.
Okay, maybe lean into a family. Maybe don't, and don't buy into the traditional gender roles. Maybe find some way give up all the expectations you've had - and cultivate your own happiness in defiance of what has been indoctrinated into you your entire life. College, careers, marriages...perhaps all of these institutions should be questioned as you forge your own path.
Side note: I have nothing figured out. I have only just recognized that I am not fulfilled by my career and that working for $GIANT_MEGACORP in $PRESTEGIOUS_ROLE does not give me purpose. My extended mid-life crisis continues.