[muffinman26]

A variation of this question gets asked semi-regularly on HN, but I think the reason the results so often seem unsatisfying is that the people who actually find a meaningful answer and switch careers aren't hanging out on Hacker News anymore. They're living their life and have found community with other people doing what they actually want to do.

As a result, the Hacker News responses are often incredulity that anyone could ever leave the software industry (even if it's a miserable soul-draining place), or slight career shifts that aren't really career shifts, with a little bit of Financial Independence Retire Early thrown in.

Now, where to find the community of folks who have left Hacker News for something they genuinely enjoy, that would be great to know.

[qqqwerty]

There are plenty of good answers here. There just really isn't anything out there that is remotely close to SWE in terms of comfort, pay, and accessibility.

For the last decade or so, SWE has been one of the most accessible and lucrative professions that mankind has ever seen. Before that, most folks needed to go the finance/lawyer/doctor route to access similar levels of financial security. And those professions require significantly more trade offs than SWE (more training, worse work life balance, etc...)

The fact is, you are not going to make SWE level salary doing hobby level woodworking in your garage. You can get into the trades and with a fair amount of time and effort you might be able to pull in the equivalent of a junior level SWE salary. But the trades are rough on your body and you will pay for that later. Or you can try and transition to other types of white collar work, most of which will never come close to what a SWE gets paid.

And of course, these answers are pretty personal. I have a few too many hobbies and would be more than happy to spend a few years making not very much money trying to turn some of those into paying gigs, but I also have a wife who has a well established career and we have kept our expenses in check. If you are the sole bread winner and sitting on an expensive mortgage and sending your kids to pricey private schools, then your options are going to be much more limited.

Also, just to keep this conversation a bit more productive. I would recommend looking into jobs that are software related (or software adjacent) in interesting fields. i.e. construction, energy, biotech, government labs, etc... You will almost certainly take a pay cut, and you will still get some of the typical SWE BS, but it is much less pronounced in my experience.

[muffinman26]

Maybe it's true that

>> There just really isn't anything out there that is remotely close to SWE in terms of comfort, pay, and accessibility.

Making the jump from there to keeping a software job being the right choice for everyone makes a lot of values assumptions, though. I personally can't stand working at a desk all day. If I stick to software engineering, there's no way to get away from the desk. Similarly, I value sending my kids to a public school where they aren't limited to a bubble, and I don't need an expensive house.

There are people who genuinely love physical labor. I have family who still live on a farm and didn't even own a computer last I heard. Sure, they're not making SWE money, but they're happy with their life. Their son went off to school but chose to come back to the farm. I have family who happily spent their entire working lives as carpenters/woodworkers and are still very able, but there are plenty of Hacker News responses that claim all carpenter/woodworkers end up cripples.

[gaws]

> Now, where to find the community of folks who have left Hacker News for something they genuinely enjoy, that would be great to know

They're in private Discord servers.