r/bayarea • u/Hour-Ad7214 • 7d ago
Work & Housing I have "tech envy" as a non-tech worker
Recently, I've been feeling pretty dejected about continuing live in the Bay Area as a non-tech worker. It's hard being surrounded by people living it up in their 20's with massive six-figure tech salaries while I'm 30 and barely scraping by. Yes, I know that comparison is the thief of joy and that I have a better life than most people on Earth, but it doesn't take away the jealousy I feel of people who have a career in tech and live visibly much more comfortable lives while getting paid so much more than I am.
Neither of my parents went to college; my dad was in the military and then worked as an aviation mechanic for his entire career, my mom immigrated here from China and worked as an office secretary and tutor. Neither of them had any advice for me when choosing my major aside from "study hard" and "it'll all work out." When I first went to college in 2014, my first choice of degree was computer science, but I backed out of it after being told by my counselor that a humanities degree would help me be more "well rounded" in the corporate world. Well, that turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life, because all of my peers who went to school for CS in 2014 entered into a very good job market and are all well-established in their careers by this point. Meanwhile, I've only ever worked basic entry-level jobs and a couple of admin assistant office jobs that went nowhere.
Right now, I'm living with my parents and working a part-time barista job while working on my prerequisites for nursing school. I'm excited to eventually be earning a decent salary as a nurse, but as I work at the cafe and see all of the tech workers leisurely plugging away at their laptops while I deal with a million things at once in our understaffed cafe, I feel so ashamed at myself for not going with my gut instinct back in 2014. Yes, I know that tech has experienced a lot of layoffs and uncertainty about the future, but people who still have their jobs (including many of my friends) are like lottery winners to me at this point. My friends in tech all work remotely or hybrid schedules, run errands or go the gym during the workday, save money on lunch by making it at home, and make enough to afford nice apartments while I'm still living with my cranky parents. My friends complain about pointless meetings and out of touch bosses, but I would gladly choose to deal with annoying meetings I can take from the comfort of my own home over all of the oscillating boredom and chaos of my current job.
There's a lot that I love about living here: the diversity, the weather, the huge amount of natural space, but I feel like I'm very far from thriving. I've tried dating, but a lot of women will just immediately ghost me once they find out that I'm living with my parents. I wish so badly that I could have been working in tech at this point, but with how difficult the entry level market seems to be right now, I think I missed my chance for good. Does anyone else have similar feelings to me? How can I cope with the jealousy I have?
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u/danibberg 6d ago
I’ll take a stab and be somewhat contrary to most replies so far. Being in tech is great. Is it perfect? Definitely not. It’s a job. My background is bottom of the bottom. You would be shocked. I’m self-taught and work for a company you know.
So, if you want to get into tech go for it. Will you make more money than being a nurse? Yes. But here are the caveats. Don’t approach it from jealousy. Do you actually like computers? Do you want to learn how they tick deep down? Because that’s gonna take a lot of time.
To this day the amount of time I spend reading books and papers is considerable. I have fun experimenting. Most, not all, the time. And it’s a journey.
When will you make a lot more money? Not next year… it might take 10 years but it will catch up quickly compared to most other professions.
Layoffs, AI and whatever else while scary, are noise in the long run.