Today I want to talk about something that has been bothering me for quite a while now. In case you don’t know, I have dropped out of school and was looking for an apprenticeship as system administrator for the past 4-5 months and.. I didn’t have much success, I was called for interview 4 times, but it never worked out. The moment I got the last email saying that I am not getting the apprenticeship, I realized how good it felt. I felt free again, how SUSE said it “Free in my IT”. The thought of having to work in a company led to me not feeling like I can try out everything because I knew that I had to know certain things to do my job, and it would only be a disadvantage if I personally used something else. Just like how an Apple Developer probably shouldn’t use a linux desktop as their daily driver. This also meant that I would not have to “violate my moral ideals” of free software and digital privacy just because I work at a company.

So, I also started looking into doing a “voluntary social year” which is a german thing you can do, basically just a year at something social-related, such as working in a hospital, daycare, etc. Which sounds amazing, both because I will get to know people with different interests but also because my job/thingTodoDuringTheDay doesn’t require technology, especially not proprietary technology. And it doesn’t require me to write proprietary code or work on proprietary projects. I like the thought of being able to work at a place where I am not required to manage a server, or write a software on time. It defeats what I love about software development, or specifically free and open source software development. There is no bureaucracy involved, no deadlines, just me, the other contributors and the users. Freedom.

I think in conclusion.. I don’t want to work in the Tech Industry. There is a saying “If you turn your hobby into your job, you won’t work a single day of your life” but I think this doesn’t apply here, because, my hobby is writing software without wanting anything in return for it. I don’t want money for my software/services, I want to provide them because I want to help people and myself. Turning it into a job would require me to somehow make money off of it, which I don’t want to. If I can’t compute freely, why would I want to compute at all. If you made it to the end, thanks for reading, and have a nice day :)