I have been wondering a lot about my career path, lately.
Started as a biologist, then a lab techie, then a biostatistician, and eventually an IT person. I recently left (was pressured out, essentially) a soul sucking job at a mediocre healthcare IT shop and I have zero desire to go back to that field.
We have a plethora of high quality data available to make important decisions... But as we've seen with at least COVID, the bottleneck seems to be more cultural than technical 😒
I'm wondering what my next move should be. I have work available in the healthcare IT field, but it's hard to get motivated to do it. The company is better and more dynamic than my last gig, but it makes me question if this is really the best use of my abilities. And if it's not, then what is? Or does it really matter and these are just rich white boy problems?
The electrical trades feel like they could be a good fit for me, so I think I'll give it a try. Feels less ambiguous morally.
The fact that the vast majority of my former colleagues in healthcare are in direct line of constant #SarsCoV2 reinfections and have hextupled on their denialism has shone a very unflattering light on the work that goes on in that space. It's like we took a tiny step towards recognizing the benefits of adequately protecting and staffing clinics in 2020-2021, and then were crushed repeatedly by corporate greed, vaporizing morale and letting PH off the hook instead of fighting for accountability.
The thing is I'm not convinced leaving the healthcare space for another would necessarily be any better.
A vision of the future that keeps playing out in my mind, as I consider a career change, is what the world of energy and electrification will look like a few years out. From the writing on the wall, it's not hard to imagine big energy players deciding which parts of the grid to power, and if shitty power hungry AI demands more electricity than available, who would be cut off first.
While adapting my skill set to energy could be healthier emotionally than staying in (returning to?) the healthcare space, the reality is the corporate oligarchy will not hesitate to sacrifice workers and entire families in the line of profiteering.
If rolling brownouts through low-income residential neighborhoods will free up a few TW to power shitty AI marketing algorithms for PepsiCo, it could well become my charge to implement it. Is this any better than complictly concealing a pandemic???
Obviously the only sensible option is to give up entirely on any sort of professional career, try to get a job at Amazon until I'm replaced by a robot, and die penniless in a gutter waiting for govt benefits that simply can't be funded because the corporation cannot be taxed.
Amazon probably wouldn't hire me because of an AI algorithm (I have a very ethnic looking last name and high education level) so I should try to come up with another plan.
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