The way you’re feeling is not just about your role as a computer worker but as a worker in general.
There are three ways to break out of this:
1. Play the game inside the system - work “really hard”, be “visible”, demonstrate “strategic leadership” inside some game space like BigCo, VC-backed flavor of the month. You will still likely be a cog, but with luck you might be able to influence the edges of the game.
2. Find an orthogonal vector into doing computer work - look outside the set or opportunities typically presented to you and instead look at problems you care about and whether you have an edge that lets you put together a team to go solve it. Note that this works best with at least one other person, you need someone in the trenches with you to keep morale up and even if you’re both talented at the construction and people end of things it’s better one specializes in each.
3. Organize your fellow workers - we are quite possibly the single best paid, most powerful group of workers in the history of humanity. There are efforts to collect this power so that we may actually influence the decisions that get made.
One last piece of advice, the way you feel in this moment is where anyone who has ever done anything great has started. There is no assurance whatsoever that you will achieve what you initially set out to build. But what you can control is whether you try to do something or accept the existing structures as they are.
There are three ways to break out of this:
1. Play the game inside the system - work “really hard”, be “visible”, demonstrate “strategic leadership” inside some game space like BigCo, VC-backed flavor of the month. You will still likely be a cog, but with luck you might be able to influence the edges of the game.
2. Find an orthogonal vector into doing computer work - look outside the set or opportunities typically presented to you and instead look at problems you care about and whether you have an edge that lets you put together a team to go solve it. Note that this works best with at least one other person, you need someone in the trenches with you to keep morale up and even if you’re both talented at the construction and people end of things it’s better one specializes in each.
3. Organize your fellow workers - we are quite possibly the single best paid, most powerful group of workers in the history of humanity. There are efforts to collect this power so that we may actually influence the decisions that get made.
One last piece of advice, the way you feel in this moment is where anyone who has ever done anything great has started. There is no assurance whatsoever that you will achieve what you initially set out to build. But what you can control is whether you try to do something or accept the existing structures as they are.
Good luck!