As a kid, I aspired to be a programmer. As an adult, I succeeded, and I stuck around for a good long while. There are a lot of reasons to like working tech, obviously: the salary, the flexible working environment, the prestige, the opportunity to build products that real people use, the chance to play with new technology, and of course working with occasionally brilliant colleagues.
I tried to convince myself that these advantages made it worthwhile to sit alone in a dark room for >10 hours a day, but in the end I couldn't. I was spending more time wrestling with package managers, version conflicts, obtuse configuration files, pointless deadlines, egotistical colleagues, and almost zero time solving interesting problems on products that I care about. You might argue that I should have just found a better job, and I did, several times, but I found that no matter how much enthusiasm I had for a job at the beginning, eventually it got bogged down in software engineering detritus. I didn't much care for my colleagues: no offense to those present, but I just don't really like tech people, despite the fact that I obviously am one of them.
Through a series of coincidences, I found myself with an opportunity to teach programming at the university level. It was a lot of fun: I can talk about problems that interest with me with people who want to hear it. I operate with very little supervision. I still get to learn new technology, but fortunately I can ignore the rough edges and focus on the benefits. Meetings are minimal. The salary is adequate for my lifestyle. Best of all, I get to interact with real, live human beings. (Although at the moment, of course, we're doing everything via Zoom.) Fundamentally, the problems I'm solving are not technology problems, but human problems. At this stage in my life, this is more interesting.
I never imagined I'd end up a teacher, partly because I was a terrible student. Over the years, I had gone back and forth between industry and academia but now I think I'm in academia to stay: there's nothing I miss about slinging bits for a living.
Ironically, I'm helping my students enter a career that I left, but I let them make their own life decisions.
I haven't left myself yet, but at almost-55 I know a fair number who have. Here's what I know of what their answers would be.
The first simply had another passion - travel. Work was just a way to pay for that. Eventually went to work for an agency, been there a long time and AFAICT couldn't be happier (despite being less well off materially). I've known a couple of others who fit this pattern. One left the industry to raise goats and make cheese instead.
Multiple have left to become full time parents. I hope they don't regret it, since this group includes my wife. ;)
Several others have left the industry but have not necessarily left tech. Some do light consulting. One's writing a book. Most are working on long-deferred personal tech projects.
I just about joined this third group before my savings took a 15% hit, so I might as well say why. I'm tired. I'm tired of the artificial deadlines, and processes that slow people down more than they improve quality, and the omnipresence of coworkers who exhibit every kind of bad engineering or interpersonal behavior (even though others are awesome). I want to enjoy making things again, and the moments when I can do that within the industry seem all too fleeting. Even the best of my dozen jobs stopped being fun, or just stopped. The thought of going through a modern tech interview process yet again so that I can do all the rest again just fills me with dread.
> I'm tired. I'm tired of the artificial deadlines
I think the ephemeral nature of software really plays poorly with the artificial deadlines, and the artificial importance of some projects in general.
Eventually you recognize the pattern, and there's no logical way to justify it, so it's harder to motivate yourself. You know the deadline isn't real, and you know the software will be rewritten next year with some new technology. You may even be rewriting last years right now.
Tooling churn hurts here as well, because eventually after enough iterations, new tools are just in the way of getting real work done. You know it's not gaining you anything by putting in the effort to learn Toolchain X, because arbitrarily different Toolchain Y is about to become the new industry fad, and will make all that prior arbitrary knowledge pointless.
Some of my favourite years in software were when I worked at an eCommerce agency that served only one framework. Learning I invested directly impacted my work for the coming years. I began to master the tools, which feels amazing. I could also see the real world effect the software had. Sure, it was simple, selling products to people. But commerce is an interesting problem space, and a fundamental part of society, so it was neat to be a part of it and see real companies I worked with grow because of my software.
I am in the same shoes and would add the reason of no pride or sometimes shame. Not only in the many marginal products I am forced to squeeze out rapidly and in parade but of belonging to this group of profession. Basically both stems in the pretentious design of incomplete products making people more miserable than successful or satisfied. Phones, 'smart' appliances, revolutionary technology, software and OSes promise the world and beyond (twice!) bringing tons of 'dream' (sometimes nightmare) functionality but f*k up even the most elementary function (repeatedly!) while being unreliable to the extent that it needs to be updated in the frequency of watering your plants, to no avail.
Despite the mounting problems the industry takes itself very seriously with infant obscure practices considered rock solid fundamentals and with robotic approach to human resources and processes. Talking to recruiters feels like they expect not thinking humans but custom programmed organic mechanisms able to type and can be judged by ticking checklists in a couple of minutes.
In seeking satisfaction in self and results I left several places for something assumedly better, sometimes leaping into unknown, but my bitterness just mounts with each position. Financial limits forces me to seek engagement in something I am experienced in but I am afraid my lethargy shines though of my smiley and optimistic face I wear for interviews. I have little trust in those sitting in front of me.
I hope I can figure out something better, meanwhile trying to make money for living.
> The thought of going through a modern tech interview process yet again so that I can do all the rest again just fills me with dread.
A couple years older than you. I was working a nice gig at a startup until November. Nice because the owners were nice, the coworkers were nice and it was an interesting embedded application involving renewable energy - so not the run-of-the-mill web app. They ran out of funding in November but there was the possibility (prior to covid-19) that they would get more funding so I didn't look around much hoping I could just go back to work for them when they get more funding and avoid having to interview again.
Of course, that's not likely to happen at this point given where the economy is at. And I still can't bear the thought of interviewing again. So I'm effectively out of tech at this point. If someone comes along and offers me a gig without the arduous interview process I'd take it, but otherwise, I think I'm done.
You know, people worry about age discrimination a lot because there aren't a ton of older programmers around. But when the discussion comes up, people don't talk much about the reasons you describe.
Sure, bad programmers age out because they were never great at programming in the first place. But I would assume the HN crowd falls in the top half of competence because there are so many people here who seem smarter about programming than me. If you're good, you don't have to worry.
Maybe good programers age out because the technical side gets too repetitive, their jobs become more about politics, and they have enough money to change tracks later in life.
I had a coworker at BigCo who would disappear for a month every summer. I wasn't paying attention to other PTO days through the year so I assumed that extra PTO for work anniversaries added up faster than I thought.
Turns out they were just taking a leave of absence, every year, to travel, and just eating the pay cut.
I thought engineering enabled travel. I met countless "digital nomads" traveling the world, doing 20 hours of work a week at cafes. Making bank and getting to travel all they want.
What is a full time parent? I remember as a kid that I was always encouraging my mom to take up hobbies so that she's leave me alone so I could get on with my own stuff. I can't imagine putting all your identity into being a parent. Kids grow up extremely fast.
I left it before I really got started, and looking back at it now, I don't regret it. In my mid-twenties I decided I'd rather be an electrician. I don't sit on my ass all day. I get to meet new people, and see new places all the time. Some places that few ever get to see. Power plants, clock towers, police stations, homeless shelters, church attics. All sorts of stuff. Not all of it equally exciting, but a lot of it interesting. I get to build physical things that people will use for many many years into the future.
I get to play with lots of tech still, except it's more of the layer 1 stuff. Doing fiberoptical backhaul work, or installing DSL in peoples homes.
I'm still interested in both hardware and software. I run Gentoo Linux on my machines at home, and I have a DO VPS for "cloud things", but I'm glad it's not my job, because software issues can piss me off like no other thing is capable of.
Find your way into Industrial Electrical work if you can. You get a strong mix of tech and electrical, moreso than Residential, can't really say the comparison to Commercial work though...
My company (Automation & controls) is partnered with electricians for all the jobs we bid on. Having electricians that know wiring for specialized bus networks, how to do basic troubleshooting on control circuits and all that is amazing to have.
Alternatively, for those reading this in the tech side, the job is super engaging. I get to work on programming machines the size of my bedroom. I get to travel and see equally interesting locations (Dam spillways, Agricultural facilities inland and at port, underground mines, etc.). The fact that I get to get out of my office a few days a month is a big reason I've stuck with my job for as long as I have (7+ years now)
EDIT TO INCLUDE SOME PICTURES (Both the Cool and the Ugly):
"because software issues can piss me off like no other thing is capable of."
This in reverse is part of why I am a programmer; it can take two or three days before I'm really pissed at a software problem, but physical stuff really annoys me in mere minutes.
Why? Don't really know. I know a bit of it is that I know how to get myself into trouble in software and then usually get back out much better than I do in the real world, but even so, I had the patience in software to develop that and I really don't for real things.
In a parellell universe, this would've been me. Electrician seem to be the perfect "manual" labor - not a lot of heavy lifts, work with your head a lot, good mix of in- and outdoors.
I got into software mostly for the money so I can fund some extended travel, and when I get back from that extended travel I don't plan to go back into software.
My BF's dad owns an electrical company, and I know BF will most likely end up working there - I've considered in the past joining him. This post is encouraging because it seems like I could get all the movement and outdoor time that I'm missing with coding, and also be building stuff that's useful to people.
Do you see many female electricians? I suspect there are few - any ideas as to why? Is there a lot of heavy/difficult physical labor that I would be unable to do?
I was working as a SWE for a large defense contractor on some pretty neat projects, and I felt like I was good at what I did. It was 40 hour weeks, good benefits, good pay, but I was bored and miserable. I lived in a town with no friends, and was so desperate for a change and some adventure, that I left the industry to join the military.
I took what I call a 12 year sabbatical from tech. I became an officer, went to pilot training, learned lots of new and useful skills, met lots of very good and interesting people, some of whom are my best friends.
Taking off from a short airfield in a blizzard, at night, wearing NVGs is an experience I don't care to re-live, but I'm glad I have something to talk about at parties.
A quote that affected me greatly during the time I was thinking about leaving: "if somebody wrote a book about your life, would anybody want to read it?"
After getting married (to somebody I met during one of my training courses), settling down, and having kids, a quieter, 40-hour-a-week lifestyle started to sound pretty good again. I had always been a hacker at heart, and realized that I was getting to the age where it was probably now-or-never if I wanted to re-enter the industry. So I went back into tech! It's better the 2nd time around.
I think the warning here is that most people will drop out of the pilot program and/or aren't qualified for it in the first place (eyesight, blood pressure, age, fitness to a lesser degree since it's "fixable" within 6 months). There's always army rotary, I guess.
I love computers since I can remember, and started learning to code when I was still in basic school. This lead me to think that the tech industry was the obvious career for me. During my time in the industry, I felt miserable. I would say that the main reasons for that were:
* Meaninglessness. Most of the projects are simply not necessary, they do not help society in anyway, they just exist to make someone else wealthy.
* Tedium. The intellectual challenges aren't there after a while. There are countless intellectual challenges in the field of computing / computer science, but they are usually precisely the ones that industry has no interest on.
* Micromanagement. "Agile" and similar management practices (yes, I know, you're not doing it right, blah blah blah) are downright humiliating and infantilizing. Almost no other highly skilled professional has to tolerate such level of intrusion on their day-to-day activities. I love deep thinking and creative expression. The modern corporate setting prevents this by design.
* Open-spaces. See above.
* Idealism. I was so excited about the possibilities that the Internet opened for humanity. Now we have ad-tech and horrible exploitation of "gig-economy", warehouse workers and the like. This is definitely not what I have in mind when I started.
* Conformism. The tech industry is extremely conformist. Monetary consideration always wins. Deference to power always wins. "Hacker" used to mean something completely different. Almost opposite to the current definition.
I realized that what I always loved about computing was the endless creative and intellectual possibilities allowed by the medium. This is more or less the opposite of what the industry values, despite what they might advertise endlessly. There is nothing cool about it. It is stale and anti-intellectual.
I don't need a lot of money to be happy. You probably don't either. Time on this earth is the most valuable thing we have, and I would rather spend it waiting tables than enduring one more stand-up meeting.
I think creative nerds are the life-blood of the industry, but they tend to be shy and not assertive, so they have their life controlled by the "business types". I honestly believe that if the nerds told them to fuck off and started spending their time working on things they think are relevant, the world would become much better quickly. This won't happen, I know.
> I honestly believe that if the nerds told them to fuck off and started spending their time working on things they think are relevant, the world would become much better quickly. This won't happen, I know.
Most of the "creative nerds" I have encountered in this industry are arrogant, have grandiose beliefs about their own intelligence and have zero empathy for anybody who is not exactly like them. I don't think things would be much better if they ran the show.
> I think creative nerds are the life-blood of the industry, but they tend to be shy and not assertive, so they have their life controlled by the "business types". I honestly believe that if the nerds told them to fuck off and started spending their time working on things they think are relevant, the world would become much better quickly. This won't happen, I know.
I recently saw a video about Boeing that concluded that the whole debacle was due to it straying aware from its commitment to good engineering and to trying to please the wall street. It traced back to the source of decline as the purchase of McDonnell Douglas which was mainly done due to Boeing management feeling that they needed better "business types", which was all that McDonnell Douglas.
Slowly, but I am seeing an acceptance and respect towards the nerds/engineering instead of hype men & impressive stock figures. Wall street types are seen as the hyenas/fox in a sheep's skin that need not be celebrated and looked upto.
> I think creative nerds are the life-blood of the industry, but they tend to be shy and not assertive, so they have their life controlled by the "business types". I honestly believe that if the nerds told them to fuck off and started spending their time working on things they think are relevant, the world would become much better quickly. This won't happen, I know.
This is how I felt about myself, I spent my early twenty working a job living frugally saving and then quitting to work on my own projects. Failed entrepreneurship was a great lesson in how hard it is build things people want and how easy it is to build things you think people want. The difference is often very subtle small details, but asking the right questions to unearth those details in incredibly challenging.
The amount of things that someone will give their time or attention to our suprisingly small
> I honestly believe that if the nerds told them to fuck off and started spending their time working on things they think are relevant, the world would become much better quickly
I stated my career early - while I was still in high school. I went from bagging groceries and doing checkouts at a grocery store to programming for a local company my senior year of high school. I continued doing this for my first couple years of college.
But then dot-bomb happened and it looked like the party was over. I looked down at the job opportunities after graduation. I didn't really want to spend the rest of my life wearing a tie, writing bank software and sitting in a cubicle every day, so I decided to try something different.
I became a seasonal park ranger. And it was awesome.
Like most jobs, I got it through knowing someone. My grandparents had volunteered for the NPS and were able to connect me with the right people. I became a seasonal park ranger at Yellowstone.
It's not for everyone. The pay is not great, but you do get lots of good benefits because it's a government job. And you're often living in remote areas (the nearest grocery store was an hour and a half drive from where I was stationed). It's also not conducive to family life if that's your thing (again, the closest school was 1.5 hours away and everyone around me was my coworkers). And the days are long, helping tourists, checking permits, etc. Permanent jobs are also incredibly hard to get - you usually have to do years of seasonal work to accrue enough seniority to get considered for a permanent position.
But the benefits? Being able to crack open a drink after a long day and look up at more stars than I ever thought existed - I spent many nights on the front porch of my cabin looking up at the Milky Way. Hiking, camping, boating on the weekends are easy because I was right there in the park. Clean air, clean water. A good group of coworkers (for me) who legit really care about protecting these astounding natural resources. And a feeling that you're really making a difference and reaching people.
I did this for a few years and they were among my happiest years prior to my marriage. Ultimately, I ended up going back into tech after things recovered. But there are days that I really miss the outdoors and wearing the uniform.
> A good group of coworkers (for me) who legit really care about protecting these astounding natural resources. And a feeling that you're really making a difference and reaching people.
This feeling of 'feel' for a thing, its what I miss in tech personally. Companies offer a service, want a happy customer and make money that way. But a 'feel' for the actual goal and way its done usually lacks. Too many egos...
The rpi started me on electronics, rabbitholed into manufacturing of all kinds... material science, applied chemistry.
I end up looking at nature with both my old eyes and the cold scientific ones. A piece of wood, pale shades, smooth, is also a matrix of nanoscopic sugar fibers. It's odd to confront the two point of views. Same goes for butterfly wings, or flower petals..
Like most people here, I developed myopia fairly soon after starting a cubicle job, and I can’t even see the stars anymore. It’s just a memory now. Even with glasses it’s not the same. Whether staring at a acreen was the cause, or just the thing I wasted it on, it’s gone.
I left after over 25 years. I love programming and love working with Linux, but the jobs always came down to "help us steal peoples personal information so we can slam them with spam for products the neither want or need." It was unfulfilling. I went back to school and got an MA in history. I teach humanities though I still teach a couple of programming classes. I miss it a little. I would go back in a heartbeat for the right position, but I am through getting mauled in tech interviews which turned into combat trivial pursuit. I love technology and I still create applications mostly for myself or to help automate my school. I get new ideas from HN.
A mix of the fact that most companies I've worked for don't value their workers (they say they do, but their idea of valuing workers is buying fizzy drinks in the office and giving you "unlimited vacation" which just means they pressure you to come back after a few days and don't have to pay out accrued vacation time when you leave), and because they don't care about what they're building or how much it hurts the customer as long as they can increase their bottom line a few percentage points.
That being said, I haven't left but have been wanting to for ages. I'd be more interested in staying if I could find a unionized work place (when Delta cut salaries by 20%, the pilots union was able to negotiate for profit sharing after the hard times were over, when my company did that, they refuse to even discuss whether we'll ever be bumped back up to normal… even if we get paid well already it doesn't mean we shouldn't work together for better working conditions and more of a stake at the table) or a worker owned co-op to work for, but so far that hasn't materialized.
I haven't left but I'm trying to figure out something else to do with my life.
I've been doing customer projects for the last 8 years and it has been horrible experience. 99% of the things you're building are the same thing all over again (CRUD apps and various integrations) and pretty much 100% of the problems are caused by people acting stupid in different ways. It all just feels so pointless.
I wish I could come up with something else, but currently this is all I know. At least it all pays well. So golden handcuffs of sort I guess.
I've made a few rules for myself regarding working in tech:
1. Do not work for a company where tech is not their primary product. If you are only a cost center, you will be treated like a second-class citizen.
2. Work for a smaller company. Your work is so much more impactful when you are not part of a mega-machine.
3. Work only remotely. The quality of life increase that comes with working remotely is massive, and I am not willing to give that up.
Of course this is not always going to be realistic. For one, working for a company that sells tech does not mean that you will be treated well, but it is more likely. Smaller companies, and remote only tend to pay a bit less (and definitely less than a FAANG), but still more than plenty to live a great life.
Who knows where life will lead me, but I will try to stick to these points.
I left (mostly) when tech became a tool for greed and scummery. Was asked too many times to participate in completely legal yet morally abhorrent actions.
Also saw that programmers were starting to be treated like factory workers where attendance and metrics like keystrokes per minute were more important than good well written and documented code.
The final straw however was "move fast and break things". Basically pump out change for the sake of change and let the end user do quality control.
One could argue that app stores have also played a significant role, basically taking thirty percent gross while depriving the developer of direct contact with the end user.
> Also saw that programmers were starting to be treated like factory workers where attendance and metrics like keystrokes per minute were more important than good well written and documented code.
This is why I quit being a software engineer as well (I didn't leave the tech industry altogether tho, just switched career trajectories a bit).
I spent years trying to talk some sense into the people pushing that and trying to explain (it's as much art as science) but in the end the Scrum people won. So, I moved over to devops and consulting where most of the time I'm helping people with stuff, and the long death-march sprints to satisfy an arbitrarily deadline that nobody cared about until it got put on paper two weeks ago, and still doesn't matter except it will turn some spreadsheet field red that draws the Eye of Sauron from higher ups, are mostly over now. I get my coding fix by working on open source projects, and it's way more fulfilling.
My personality changed around my early 30s in a way that meant I found it very hard to align myself with anything less than the highest quality leaders in the company.
Which is a euphemism for “I turned into an obnoxious punk” but I’m fine with that too :)
It feels like as the years pass and ones sense of autonomy as a human being overflows the brim, it gets harder to tolerate not being your own boss.
I took five years off work and was complete master of my destiny, which finally wore off, and I now work at a private boarding school that is recognized globally as being a center of excellence for teaching and learning.
The summary is it’s completely different and challenging to switch careers like this. It’s also been fantastic because (1) I am naturally a very gifted teacher (2) but I am completely unqualified, very raw, and full of newbie naivety which is all very humbling (3) and yet very liberating as once again the expectations on me are low and I have room to learn and grow, and (4) I am surrounded by people who actually know what they are doing and are committed to helping me get better.
The best part is that I can approach the day to day of the new role and the skills it requires with the mindset of someone who has been through one career already. I may turn into a punk again but for now I’m enjoying being a level headed journeyman surrounded by masters.
Never enjoyed it. I knew from the second day of my first tech job that it wasn't what I wanted to be doing, but I blamed the job itself rather than the industry. Moved on after a year and tried other tech jobs (different size companies, different types of software), but they were all essentially the same.
I like building things for people to use, but as a programmer found myself very isolated from users (even at small companies). It felt like I was doing the hard work of building a product but then someone else got to do the fun part of showing it off, while my reward was just... more programming.
Also, I found the job extremely boring at times, extremely difficult at others. I decided that the stress wasn't worth it, especially when my work was having a limited impact.
Finally, I'm not in the USA so tech jobs had no "golden handcuffs". Many other jobs were available that paid as well as a Software Engineer.
I still work on personal programming projects, where I can be much more involved in the whole product and not just the code. I can also choose to only work on things that I really care about and/or that I feel can make a real difference.
I worked in the industry for over 10 years and I have a PhD in Computer Science. In my last job I felt miserable from Day 1. I had reached a point where coding brought me no joy. In all of my job, at the end of the day, I was serving ads to users. I was also an average developer and part of that is because I never found the motivation to keep improving. I was only so much interested in getting things done and never interested in going deep and figuring out how it’s getting done at lower level.
So I quit. I decided that movies is something that I have always loved and it’s what brought me most joy. I researched different career options and I came across creative development and producing. It resonated with me. Read movie scripts, give notes to improve it, work with writers, directors and identify the best strategy to get a movie made. One doesn’t need need money to become a producer. So I left the Bay Area and moved to Los Angeles and interned at two companies. The second company was a great fit for my interests (genre, etc) and I am now in full time Role and absolutely enjoying every minute of it.
I earn a quarter of what I used to make but I am much happier. But there are things about technology that I still like. And I am always curious about new developments. So I still enjoy reading Hacker News everyday.
I left before I got into it. It seemed like the whole field went to web & mobile & saas, none of which I care for. And interesting things like OS research got largely killed by excessively complex hardware & software stacks and bloat that must be supported or nobody will look at the thing. Freedom got attacked (saas, centeralization, nat and other efforts to kill p2p, drm, browser & web apps to enslave you instead of user agent and desktop software to empower you, portability and choice got killed for "our way or the highway", list goes on) quite hard, hackers across the board dropped principles for "pragmatism" or whatever. None of the job ads I saw had had anything in them that resonated with me. So I got depressed, dropped out of high school and gave up on going to college.
Since then? I did stints in various unskilled & skilled blue collar jobs. Can't say I had much passion for any of them. So now I'm back, without education (mild regret but I can always study more myself; I think education should be increasingly on-demand and lifelong), but at least the pay is better and I get to work in a clean office while listening to music of my choice. I think the field still sucks (well, I imagine there are jobs I would really like but the chances of finding them, without leaving my country and family and everything behind, is probably quite slim), the grass wasn't very green on the other side.
Of course, I'm still a hacker at heart and I hope to create something nice one of these days. Probably nothing commercial.
Got sick of dealing with assholes. One weekend, a director said that we all had to come in to finish the last features for a Monday launch, so we all came in ten hours both days and finished the parts necessary for the feature. He never showed up in the office. Monday rolls around and we find out that he knew on Thursday that the launch wasn't going to happen.
I had been at the company for over a decade, and had gotten quite lucky in the RSU lottery & thought, wait, I have enough money to last forever, so why do I do this to myself?
My health was bad, I was overweight, smoked, was depressed. I felt like it was going to kill me if I stayed another decade.
So I quit. In the years since, I stopped smoking, lost 1/3 my bodyweight & really got my shit together. I dink around on personal projects and learn new things. I follow HN because I'm genuinely interested in tech & now I can pursue what things I want, rather than those I need for $JOB or $NEXT_JOB.
I miss the good people I used to work with, but this is almost completely offset by how much I don't miss the assholes and the hassles (annual review, recruiting, meetings, explaining basic math to MBAs, etc).
Why did I leave? I retired after programming for over 40 years.
I started with Fortran while in the US Air Force (yay CDC 6600 and VAXen), got my CS degree, got out, worked in C/C++ and TCP/IP in the early '90s (yay SunOS), got married, moved to a big buy-side investment manager (meh Solaris), more C++, then Java. Lots of Sybase (yay JDBC).
7 years ago I quit after our big company was bought by a bigger company (yuck Perl).
Took 6 months off for a sabbatical (yay Rome. wow Bernini), then entered my "encore" career at a public safety agency. Introduced Python to that org, of which I am slightly proud. As always, plenty of RDBMS (Pro tip: don't run Oracle on (yuck) Windows Server 2008).
Regrets? Just that it's a shame programmers tend towards philistinism, and that office culture and beer culture overshadow any appreciation of history, philosophy, and the arts.
I worked as a web developer for a couple of years after teaching myself ruby and javascript. I got into programming because I found it intellectually interesting, but unfortunately commercial programming is mostly mindnumbing. I got bored of creating CRUD apps over and over again for boring business applications. I considered upping my CS and maths skills to get more interesting jobs, but decided to pursue more of a nonprofit strategy/research path instead.
I now work for a small consultancy company doing research and designing funding programmes for charitable foundations. It's great because I get to do lots of research, writing, and thinking and have a positive impact on the world. No regrets, I'm very glad to have made the transition.
Still follow HN out of mild addiction and because there are interesting articles.
Open offices and the extreme micromanagement known as "agile".
Both are so toxic to mental health that I had to move away.
I haven't really left the industry itself but I've moved away from a pure engineering role (which is my true passion) to a more specialized role which is ok but not as enjoyable. But, I don't have to deal with open offices nor agile, so it's a win.
The other aspect that makes me sad is that what we call tech companies today, aren't. Their product isn't tech. Netflix is an entertainment company. Google and FB are advertising companies. And so on. Very few actual tech companies in SV today.
I haven't left, but I'm thinking about it (despite still being early in my career lol). For me, it's the frustration of "nothing really matters." I value helping people, and building software actual people will use is one of the ways of doing that. Unfortunately, I have not had that opportunity. I've had to work on multiple projects that served no real purpose. It's extremely annoying.
[+] [-] hackyhacky|5 years ago|reply
I tried to convince myself that these advantages made it worthwhile to sit alone in a dark room for >10 hours a day, but in the end I couldn't. I was spending more time wrestling with package managers, version conflicts, obtuse configuration files, pointless deadlines, egotistical colleagues, and almost zero time solving interesting problems on products that I care about. You might argue that I should have just found a better job, and I did, several times, but I found that no matter how much enthusiasm I had for a job at the beginning, eventually it got bogged down in software engineering detritus. I didn't much care for my colleagues: no offense to those present, but I just don't really like tech people, despite the fact that I obviously am one of them.
Through a series of coincidences, I found myself with an opportunity to teach programming at the university level. It was a lot of fun: I can talk about problems that interest with me with people who want to hear it. I operate with very little supervision. I still get to learn new technology, but fortunately I can ignore the rough edges and focus on the benefits. Meetings are minimal. The salary is adequate for my lifestyle. Best of all, I get to interact with real, live human beings. (Although at the moment, of course, we're doing everything via Zoom.) Fundamentally, the problems I'm solving are not technology problems, but human problems. At this stage in my life, this is more interesting.
I never imagined I'd end up a teacher, partly because I was a terrible student. Over the years, I had gone back and forth between industry and academia but now I think I'm in academia to stay: there's nothing I miss about slinging bits for a living.
Ironically, I'm helping my students enter a career that I left, but I let them make their own life decisions.
[+] [-] notacoward|5 years ago|reply
The first simply had another passion - travel. Work was just a way to pay for that. Eventually went to work for an agency, been there a long time and AFAICT couldn't be happier (despite being less well off materially). I've known a couple of others who fit this pattern. One left the industry to raise goats and make cheese instead.
Multiple have left to become full time parents. I hope they don't regret it, since this group includes my wife. ;)
Several others have left the industry but have not necessarily left tech. Some do light consulting. One's writing a book. Most are working on long-deferred personal tech projects.
I just about joined this third group before my savings took a 15% hit, so I might as well say why. I'm tired. I'm tired of the artificial deadlines, and processes that slow people down more than they improve quality, and the omnipresence of coworkers who exhibit every kind of bad engineering or interpersonal behavior (even though others are awesome). I want to enjoy making things again, and the moments when I can do that within the industry seem all too fleeting. Even the best of my dozen jobs stopped being fun, or just stopped. The thought of going through a modern tech interview process yet again so that I can do all the rest again just fills me with dread.
[+] [-] ehnto|5 years ago|reply
I think the ephemeral nature of software really plays poorly with the artificial deadlines, and the artificial importance of some projects in general.
Eventually you recognize the pattern, and there's no logical way to justify it, so it's harder to motivate yourself. You know the deadline isn't real, and you know the software will be rewritten next year with some new technology. You may even be rewriting last years right now.
Tooling churn hurts here as well, because eventually after enough iterations, new tools are just in the way of getting real work done. You know it's not gaining you anything by putting in the effort to learn Toolchain X, because arbitrarily different Toolchain Y is about to become the new industry fad, and will make all that prior arbitrary knowledge pointless.
Some of my favourite years in software were when I worked at an eCommerce agency that served only one framework. Learning I invested directly impacted my work for the coming years. I began to master the tools, which feels amazing. I could also see the real world effect the software had. Sure, it was simple, selling products to people. But commerce is an interesting problem space, and a fundamental part of society, so it was neat to be a part of it and see real companies I worked with grow because of my software.
[+] [-] mihaaly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UncleOxidant|5 years ago|reply
A couple years older than you. I was working a nice gig at a startup until November. Nice because the owners were nice, the coworkers were nice and it was an interesting embedded application involving renewable energy - so not the run-of-the-mill web app. They ran out of funding in November but there was the possibility (prior to covid-19) that they would get more funding so I didn't look around much hoping I could just go back to work for them when they get more funding and avoid having to interview again.
Of course, that's not likely to happen at this point given where the economy is at. And I still can't bear the thought of interviewing again. So I'm effectively out of tech at this point. If someone comes along and offers me a gig without the arduous interview process I'd take it, but otherwise, I think I'm done.
[+] [-] asdfman123|5 years ago|reply
Sure, bad programmers age out because they were never great at programming in the first place. But I would assume the HN crowd falls in the top half of competence because there are so many people here who seem smarter about programming than me. If you're good, you don't have to worry.
Maybe good programers age out because the technical side gets too repetitive, their jobs become more about politics, and they have enough money to change tracks later in life.
[+] [-] hinkley|5 years ago|reply
Turns out they were just taking a leave of absence, every year, to travel, and just eating the pay cut.
[+] [-] asiachick|5 years ago|reply
I thought engineering enabled travel. I met countless "digital nomads" traveling the world, doing 20 hours of work a week at cafes. Making bank and getting to travel all they want.
[+] [-] gman83|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] encom|5 years ago|reply
I get to play with lots of tech still, except it's more of the layer 1 stuff. Doing fiberoptical backhaul work, or installing DSL in peoples homes.
I'm still interested in both hardware and software. I run Gentoo Linux on my machines at home, and I have a DO VPS for "cloud things", but I'm glad it's not my job, because software issues can piss me off like no other thing is capable of.
[+] [-] TheCapn|5 years ago|reply
My company (Automation & controls) is partnered with electricians for all the jobs we bid on. Having electricians that know wiring for specialized bus networks, how to do basic troubleshooting on control circuits and all that is amazing to have.
Alternatively, for those reading this in the tech side, the job is super engaging. I get to work on programming machines the size of my bedroom. I get to travel and see equally interesting locations (Dam spillways, Agricultural facilities inland and at port, underground mines, etc.). The fact that I get to get out of my office a few days a month is a big reason I've stuck with my job for as long as I have (7+ years now)
EDIT TO INCLUDE SOME PICTURES (Both the Cool and the Ugly):
https://imgur.com/5uOWDGB https://imgur.com/oJozMBr https://imgur.com/95HSxlx https://imgur.com/yhrPUC3
[+] [-] jerf|5 years ago|reply
This in reverse is part of why I am a programmer; it can take two or three days before I'm really pissed at a software problem, but physical stuff really annoys me in mere minutes.
Why? Don't really know. I know a bit of it is that I know how to get myself into trouble in software and then usually get back out much better than I do in the real world, but even so, I had the patience in software to develop that and I really don't for real things.
[+] [-] brtkdotse|5 years ago|reply
Ps. Love the username/post combo.
[+] [-] lizzieshipwreck|5 years ago|reply
My BF's dad owns an electrical company, and I know BF will most likely end up working there - I've considered in the past joining him. This post is encouraging because it seems like I could get all the movement and outdoor time that I'm missing with coding, and also be building stuff that's useful to people.
Do you see many female electricians? I suspect there are few - any ideas as to why? Is there a lot of heavy/difficult physical labor that I would be unable to do?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] _vdpp|5 years ago|reply
I took what I call a 12 year sabbatical from tech. I became an officer, went to pilot training, learned lots of new and useful skills, met lots of very good and interesting people, some of whom are my best friends.
Taking off from a short airfield in a blizzard, at night, wearing NVGs is an experience I don't care to re-live, but I'm glad I have something to talk about at parties.
A quote that affected me greatly during the time I was thinking about leaving: "if somebody wrote a book about your life, would anybody want to read it?"
After getting married (to somebody I met during one of my training courses), settling down, and having kids, a quieter, 40-hour-a-week lifestyle started to sound pretty good again. I had always been a hacker at heart, and realized that I was getting to the age where it was probably now-or-never if I wanted to re-enter the industry. So I went back into tech! It's better the 2nd time around.
Zero regrets.
[+] [-] asdfman123|5 years ago|reply
If you don't let yourself explore, you're not going to be happy long term. (Eventually, you will hit that fabled mid-life identity crisis.)
Perhaps it's less that any one situation is preferable, but more that you need variety.
[+] [-] throw1234651234|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] normalnorm|5 years ago|reply
* Meaninglessness. Most of the projects are simply not necessary, they do not help society in anyway, they just exist to make someone else wealthy.
* Tedium. The intellectual challenges aren't there after a while. There are countless intellectual challenges in the field of computing / computer science, but they are usually precisely the ones that industry has no interest on.
* Micromanagement. "Agile" and similar management practices (yes, I know, you're not doing it right, blah blah blah) are downright humiliating and infantilizing. Almost no other highly skilled professional has to tolerate such level of intrusion on their day-to-day activities. I love deep thinking and creative expression. The modern corporate setting prevents this by design.
* Open-spaces. See above.
* Idealism. I was so excited about the possibilities that the Internet opened for humanity. Now we have ad-tech and horrible exploitation of "gig-economy", warehouse workers and the like. This is definitely not what I have in mind when I started.
* Conformism. The tech industry is extremely conformist. Monetary consideration always wins. Deference to power always wins. "Hacker" used to mean something completely different. Almost opposite to the current definition.
I realized that what I always loved about computing was the endless creative and intellectual possibilities allowed by the medium. This is more or less the opposite of what the industry values, despite what they might advertise endlessly. There is nothing cool about it. It is stale and anti-intellectual.
I don't need a lot of money to be happy. You probably don't either. Time on this earth is the most valuable thing we have, and I would rather spend it waiting tables than enduring one more stand-up meeting.
I think creative nerds are the life-blood of the industry, but they tend to be shy and not assertive, so they have their life controlled by the "business types". I honestly believe that if the nerds told them to fuck off and started spending their time working on things they think are relevant, the world would become much better quickly. This won't happen, I know.
[+] [-] chuck3201|5 years ago|reply
Most of the "creative nerds" I have encountered in this industry are arrogant, have grandiose beliefs about their own intelligence and have zero empathy for anybody who is not exactly like them. I don't think things would be much better if they ran the show.
[+] [-] bythckr|5 years ago|reply
I recently saw a video about Boeing that concluded that the whole debacle was due to it straying aware from its commitment to good engineering and to trying to please the wall street. It traced back to the source of decline as the purchase of McDonnell Douglas which was mainly done due to Boeing management feeling that they needed better "business types", which was all that McDonnell Douglas.
Slowly, but I am seeing an acceptance and respect towards the nerds/engineering instead of hype men & impressive stock figures. Wall street types are seen as the hyenas/fox in a sheep's skin that need not be celebrated and looked upto.
[+] [-] nbardy|5 years ago|reply
This is how I felt about myself, I spent my early twenty working a job living frugally saving and then quitting to work on my own projects. Failed entrepreneurship was a great lesson in how hard it is build things people want and how easy it is to build things you think people want. The difference is often very subtle small details, but asking the right questions to unearth those details in incredibly challenging.
The amount of things that someone will give their time or attention to our suprisingly small
[+] [-] mr_gibbins|5 years ago|reply
So much this.
[+] [-] vatotemking|5 years ago|reply
True. Right now amidst the pandemic, it turned out the farmers, medical people, janitors, delivery guys are the most essential jobs.
[+] [-] rcfox|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slx26|5 years ago|reply
Ah, don't be so negative. I'm gonna do it or die trying.
[+] [-] mrfusion|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peckrob|5 years ago|reply
But then dot-bomb happened and it looked like the party was over. I looked down at the job opportunities after graduation. I didn't really want to spend the rest of my life wearing a tie, writing bank software and sitting in a cubicle every day, so I decided to try something different.
I became a seasonal park ranger. And it was awesome.
Like most jobs, I got it through knowing someone. My grandparents had volunteered for the NPS and were able to connect me with the right people. I became a seasonal park ranger at Yellowstone.
It's not for everyone. The pay is not great, but you do get lots of good benefits because it's a government job. And you're often living in remote areas (the nearest grocery store was an hour and a half drive from where I was stationed). It's also not conducive to family life if that's your thing (again, the closest school was 1.5 hours away and everyone around me was my coworkers). And the days are long, helping tourists, checking permits, etc. Permanent jobs are also incredibly hard to get - you usually have to do years of seasonal work to accrue enough seniority to get considered for a permanent position.
But the benefits? Being able to crack open a drink after a long day and look up at more stars than I ever thought existed - I spent many nights on the front porch of my cabin looking up at the Milky Way. Hiking, camping, boating on the weekends are easy because I was right there in the park. Clean air, clean water. A good group of coworkers (for me) who legit really care about protecting these astounding natural resources. And a feeling that you're really making a difference and reaching people.
I did this for a few years and they were among my happiest years prior to my marriage. Ultimately, I ended up going back into tech after things recovered. But there are days that I really miss the outdoors and wearing the uniform.
[+] [-] matonias|5 years ago|reply
> A good group of coworkers (for me) who legit really care about protecting these astounding natural resources. And a feeling that you're really making a difference and reaching people.
This feeling of 'feel' for a thing, its what I miss in tech personally. Companies offer a service, want a happy customer and make money that way. But a 'feel' for the actual goal and way its done usually lacks. Too many egos...
[+] [-] agumonkey|5 years ago|reply
I end up looking at nature with both my old eyes and the cold scientific ones. A piece of wood, pale shades, smooth, is also a matrix of nanoscopic sugar fibers. It's odd to confront the two point of views. Same goes for butterfly wings, or flower petals..
[+] [-] jl2718|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cushychicken|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elroyjetson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamWhited|5 years ago|reply
That being said, I haven't left but have been wanting to for ages. I'd be more interested in staying if I could find a unionized work place (when Delta cut salaries by 20%, the pilots union was able to negotiate for profit sharing after the hard times were over, when my company did that, they refuse to even discuss whether we'll ever be bumped back up to normal… even if we get paid well already it doesn't mean we shouldn't work together for better working conditions and more of a stake at the table) or a worker owned co-op to work for, but so far that hasn't materialized.
[+] [-] snuusnuu|5 years ago|reply
I've been doing customer projects for the last 8 years and it has been horrible experience. 99% of the things you're building are the same thing all over again (CRUD apps and various integrations) and pretty much 100% of the problems are caused by people acting stupid in different ways. It all just feels so pointless.
I wish I could come up with something else, but currently this is all I know. At least it all pays well. So golden handcuffs of sort I guess.
[+] [-] ativzzz|5 years ago|reply
1. Do not work for a company where tech is not their primary product. If you are only a cost center, you will be treated like a second-class citizen.
2. Work for a smaller company. Your work is so much more impactful when you are not part of a mega-machine.
3. Work only remotely. The quality of life increase that comes with working remotely is massive, and I am not willing to give that up.
Of course this is not always going to be realistic. For one, working for a company that sells tech does not mean that you will be treated well, but it is more likely. Smaller companies, and remote only tend to pay a bit less (and definitely less than a FAANG), but still more than plenty to live a great life.
Who knows where life will lead me, but I will try to stick to these points.
[+] [-] Jemm|5 years ago|reply
Also saw that programmers were starting to be treated like factory workers where attendance and metrics like keystrokes per minute were more important than good well written and documented code.
The final straw however was "move fast and break things". Basically pump out change for the sake of change and let the end user do quality control.
One could argue that app stores have also played a significant role, basically taking thirty percent gross while depriving the developer of direct contact with the end user.
Bottom line, I’d rather be sailing.
[+] [-] president|5 years ago|reply
The worst part is how this leads to more on-call and an increase in working off-hours.
[+] [-] freedomben|5 years ago|reply
This is why I quit being a software engineer as well (I didn't leave the tech industry altogether tho, just switched career trajectories a bit).
I spent years trying to talk some sense into the people pushing that and trying to explain (it's as much art as science) but in the end the Scrum people won. So, I moved over to devops and consulting where most of the time I'm helping people with stuff, and the long death-march sprints to satisfy an arbitrarily deadline that nobody cared about until it got put on paper two weeks ago, and still doesn't matter except it will turn some spreadsheet field red that draws the Eye of Sauron from higher ups, are mostly over now. I get my coding fix by working on open source projects, and it's way more fulfilling.
[+] [-] mihaaly|5 years ago|reply
So true! Saying both as developer and user!
[+] [-] gorgoiler|5 years ago|reply
Which is a euphemism for “I turned into an obnoxious punk” but I’m fine with that too :)
It feels like as the years pass and ones sense of autonomy as a human being overflows the brim, it gets harder to tolerate not being your own boss.
I took five years off work and was complete master of my destiny, which finally wore off, and I now work at a private boarding school that is recognized globally as being a center of excellence for teaching and learning.
The summary is it’s completely different and challenging to switch careers like this. It’s also been fantastic because (1) I am naturally a very gifted teacher (2) but I am completely unqualified, very raw, and full of newbie naivety which is all very humbling (3) and yet very liberating as once again the expectations on me are low and I have room to learn and grow, and (4) I am surrounded by people who actually know what they are doing and are committed to helping me get better.
The best part is that I can approach the day to day of the new role and the skills it requires with the mindset of someone who has been through one career already. I may turn into a punk again but for now I’m enjoying being a level headed journeyman surrounded by masters.
[+] [-] pansa2|5 years ago|reply
I like building things for people to use, but as a programmer found myself very isolated from users (even at small companies). It felt like I was doing the hard work of building a product but then someone else got to do the fun part of showing it off, while my reward was just... more programming.
Also, I found the job extremely boring at times, extremely difficult at others. I decided that the stress wasn't worth it, especially when my work was having a limited impact.
Finally, I'm not in the USA so tech jobs had no "golden handcuffs". Many other jobs were available that paid as well as a Software Engineer.
I still work on personal programming projects, where I can be much more involved in the whole product and not just the code. I can also choose to only work on things that I really care about and/or that I feel can make a real difference.
[+] [-] sabman83|5 years ago|reply
So I quit. I decided that movies is something that I have always loved and it’s what brought me most joy. I researched different career options and I came across creative development and producing. It resonated with me. Read movie scripts, give notes to improve it, work with writers, directors and identify the best strategy to get a movie made. One doesn’t need need money to become a producer. So I left the Bay Area and moved to Los Angeles and interned at two companies. The second company was a great fit for my interests (genre, etc) and I am now in full time Role and absolutely enjoying every minute of it.
I earn a quarter of what I used to make but I am much happier. But there are things about technology that I still like. And I am always curious about new developments. So I still enjoy reading Hacker News everyday.
[+] [-] fluroblue|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clarry|5 years ago|reply
Since then? I did stints in various unskilled & skilled blue collar jobs. Can't say I had much passion for any of them. So now I'm back, without education (mild regret but I can always study more myself; I think education should be increasingly on-demand and lifelong), but at least the pay is better and I get to work in a clean office while listening to music of my choice. I think the field still sucks (well, I imagine there are jobs I would really like but the chances of finding them, without leaving my country and family and everything behind, is probably quite slim), the grass wasn't very green on the other side.
Of course, I'm still a hacker at heart and I hope to create something nice one of these days. Probably nothing commercial.
[+] [-] throw_away2|5 years ago|reply
I had been at the company for over a decade, and had gotten quite lucky in the RSU lottery & thought, wait, I have enough money to last forever, so why do I do this to myself?
My health was bad, I was overweight, smoked, was depressed. I felt like it was going to kill me if I stayed another decade.
So I quit. In the years since, I stopped smoking, lost 1/3 my bodyweight & really got my shit together. I dink around on personal projects and learn new things. I follow HN because I'm genuinely interested in tech & now I can pursue what things I want, rather than those I need for $JOB or $NEXT_JOB.
I miss the good people I used to work with, but this is almost completely offset by how much I don't miss the assholes and the hassles (annual review, recruiting, meetings, explaining basic math to MBAs, etc).
[+] [-] blendo|5 years ago|reply
I started with Fortran while in the US Air Force (yay CDC 6600 and VAXen), got my CS degree, got out, worked in C/C++ and TCP/IP in the early '90s (yay SunOS), got married, moved to a big buy-side investment manager (meh Solaris), more C++, then Java. Lots of Sybase (yay JDBC).
7 years ago I quit after our big company was bought by a bigger company (yuck Perl).
Took 6 months off for a sabbatical (yay Rome. wow Bernini), then entered my "encore" career at a public safety agency. Introduced Python to that org, of which I am slightly proud. As always, plenty of RDBMS (Pro tip: don't run Oracle on (yuck) Windows Server 2008).
Regrets? Just that it's a shame programmers tend towards philistinism, and that office culture and beer culture overshadow any appreciation of history, philosophy, and the arts.
[+] [-] explange|5 years ago|reply
I now work for a small consultancy company doing research and designing funding programmes for charitable foundations. It's great because I get to do lots of research, writing, and thinking and have a positive impact on the world. No regrets, I'm very glad to have made the transition.
Still follow HN out of mild addiction and because there are interesting articles.
[+] [-] jjav|5 years ago|reply
Both are so toxic to mental health that I had to move away.
I haven't really left the industry itself but I've moved away from a pure engineering role (which is my true passion) to a more specialized role which is ok but not as enjoyable. But, I don't have to deal with open offices nor agile, so it's a win.
The other aspect that makes me sad is that what we call tech companies today, aren't. Their product isn't tech. Netflix is an entertainment company. Google and FB are advertising companies. And so on. Very few actual tech companies in SV today.
[+] [-] _davebennett|5 years ago|reply