Suffering from high-tech burnout? You're not alone

AnchorDesk

Suffering from high-tech burnout? You're not alone

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Friday, May 3, 2002

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Feeling burned out on technology? If so, you aren't the only one. There's every sign the tech biz is suffering from a collective case of the blahs.

My colleague Rachel Konrad got me thinking about this with her news story about President Ed Zander's departure from Sun. As she points out, he was just the latest in a series of execs who've bailed on tech companies recently. (We talked about her story and her theories on my Thursday radio program.)

MY TAKE on the whole thing: The exodus from the executive suite is just the most visible sign of a general malaise that has settled over the tech industry. Let's face it: Things just aren't as much fun as they used to be.

Tech people are no longer the heroes we were during the dot-com boom. We're earning less, our bonuses are down, our options are deeply underwater. And even if we're not getting laid-off ourselves, we all know people who have been.

Even I, your loyal columnist, am tired. I used to write about hardware and software that changed lives. These days I spend as much time trying to understand social and legal issues as I do technology. My God, I've gone from geek to wonk!

(I should also note that the dark cloud of Sept. 11 is still hanging over many of us.)

For the corporate CxO-class, burnout is easy to understand: What's the fun of presiding over layoffs after years of economic breezes so strong even turkeys could fly? I'm expecting wholesale changes in executive lineups as the Internet visionaries (and others propped up by our formerly energetic economy) head for the fire escapes.

WHICH IS actually a good thing. The dearly departed will be replaced by harder-nosed, back-to-basics (meaning real profits from real customers buying real products) managers.

Also, I know that we're in a transitional period. We're waiting for technologies like wireless, broadband, home entertainment, Web applications/services, and real electronic commerce to take hold. The Internet still hasn't made nearly the contribution it's going to make to the economy; new companies will appear to develop the applications necessary to make that contribution real.

Telecommunications and computing capacity continue to increase. Eventually, they'll cross a threshold that will make possible new, smarter, and more useful applications than those we use today. And we're still waiting for computers that can actually be used by the vast majority of people around the world.

All of this creates a tremendous upside for technology.

FOR US, the technology troopers, our main task will be riding out not the storm but the doldrums that have followed it. I suppose this would be a good time to rest and recharge the batteries--yet everyone I know is working almost as hard as they did during the faux Internet boom. OK, there are fewer really, really late nights and weekends. But back then, those were fun. Now, many of us are just happy that we still have jobs.

Technology has always been cyclical, subject to booms and busts, periods of rapid development and times of retrenchment. And while we are in the latter right now, the real future of technology (as opposed to the fake future of the dot-com era) looks better to me than it has in years. While I am tired, I am also very bullish on the future.

I just wish we could get on with it.

What do you think? Are you burned-out? Are you working harder than ever? How are you feeling about the future these days? TalkBack to me and take my QuickPoll below!

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