Quit 10 years ago. In the meanwhile I tried building my own things, first few years have been poorly the last few have been great. Never give up people :)
Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
111–120 of 160 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
#112I’m using a throwaway for this.
In my previous job I was working in a boring old app, and all my attempts to modernise it were rejected. So I felt like this is not my project anyways.
And everything was hair-rippingly slow, asking external developers to implement a simple button was a nightmare of bureaucracy with jira tickets and meetings and reviews ugh.
And I’m coming from the indy hacker scene, I have always moved quickly and avoided unnecessary overhead. At home I was working on side projects and adding buttons was not even in my effort-radar, bc its so quickly done!
Then with ai getting good at coding + my experience I was able to ship so many projects and features, the slow progress at work became unbearable. I was wasting my time so badly there.
TLDR:
Maybe this is a new phenomenon, but I quit bc I can do much more alone while vibe coding. The opportunity cost of staying there was just too high.
Also: the models work much better during unemployed hours and I do so much more sports now, I love it!
Re: Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
#113I quit after almost five years at Stripe. Loved my team and manager but the product culture at the company were steadily going downhill and I wasn't building much. Honestly couldn't tell you what I was doing day to day but i was still sitting at my computer for 8 hours and feeling pretty unfulfilled. The direction of the company was also confusing and I kept getting pulled into its forays (its doing well but trying t…
I read these type of posts and wonder why someone would move away from such a deal. Maybe is a matter of age, as at 45 years old, I am very happy going to work in a monotone job, checkout at 5 and live my life. Ive achieved everything I dreamt in my professional life: Got a PhD, got to be CTO, got to be Principal Engineer, got to build several products and companies from 0 to 1. I just want to be left alone. Nowadays…
I appreciate your perspective. ultimately im going to start a family soon and I want to try my hand at starting something and building my skills since i felt like i was stagnating where I was at. I'm trying to build something in a totally separate industry and I think we might have our first few customers which is exciting! But not sure it'll pay the bills long term.
Also, I was still expected to produce work at stripe, the work was more like speculative or validation documents instead of building or maintaining systems. Of lot of work proposing things that never got built or adhoc supporting other teams. On top of that perf season was still tiring because i had to justify my existence even though I didn't really know what I was doing or how i was adding value. I got paid well while i was there and still hold my stripe stock but i wasn't really an engineer by the end of it.
I'm happy to retire at google when i have a few kids (if its still around) in like 10-15 years. Gotta shoot my shot while I have energy.
Re: Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
#114I quit in June. No real absurdity, I'd just spent two years after we were acquired feeling bad about leaving and abandoning everybody, or that's what I'd tell myself to not feel like a coward. Either way, out now, trying to balance curing burnout with a dozen personal projects and lots of well-intentioned, interesting people talking about new opportunities. I told people (my wife most pertinently) that my plan was to walk the dog a lot and not have a plan, but no lack of a plan survives contact with boredom. So, behold my thundering herd of shaven yaks: three screenplays, two TTRPGs (one CMS for TTRPGs that will do data-driven print layout for you), one video game, one piece of consumer electronics, slowly going through Lingua Latina. And I still feel like I have a lot of unfinished business in football analytics, which was the day job.
I don't really know what the right balance is now, but I'm having fun and generally much happier.
Re: Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you riding these days? Do you like it? I'm shopping to replace my old beginner bike
Enviolo stepless bicycle automatic transmission (never manually shift again, accelerate while continuously shifting under load), with a carbon fiber belt drive (maintainance free, silent, never get grease on your pants or hands again), and Bosch Performance Line mid-motor (strong zippy performance from the geniuses who paid a €90 million fine for Dieselgate), plus GPS tracker with "recovery service" (required for ins…
I've seen those belt driven CVTs and they don't seem like they have the gear range for my hilly area. Not interested in an ebike, I bike for recreation and fitness.
Re: Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
#116What an utterly privileged life we lead when we can just decide to quit our jobs because things are getting too “absurd”.
You might be factually correct about the privileged part, but if you think about it, it's simply a privilege to not be a slave of capitalism...
Careful now, you mustn't upset the cult of the job creator.
Re: Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
#117Quit 10 years ago. In the meanwhile I tried building my own things, first few years have been poorly the last few have been great. Never give up people :)
What did you build ?
Re: Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
#118Not long ago I had a dream about becoming a butcher, and so then I bought half a cow with a friend and after a week trying to cut it out in pieces I realised maybe I was too old to make the move... so im still a programmer.
I have a family member who has been a butcher for nearly 40 years.. if you'd want some tips on this to try it again I'm sure he'd be willing to tell you how to go about it properly.
That's grand! thanks for offering!
Re: Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
#119I quit about a year ago... I did a crazy experiment: Built and shipped 25 projects in 25 weeks. Several of those projects made it to the top of HN here. One went viral and ended up in TechCrunch and many other big-name sites: https://channelsurfer.tv I wasn't _trying_ to make money. I just wanted to build a bunch of cool shit, rekindle my love for building websites, make the web more fun, and maybe figure out what I…
That sounds intriguing. Did any of those 25 projects make money? Can you go back and monetize them if you haven’t already?
I did, and I've made money from channel surfer, but it's far from paying the bills, kind of money.
Re: Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)
#120I quit about a year ago... I did a crazy experiment: Built and shipped 25 projects in 25 weeks. Several of those projects made it to the top of HN here. One went viral and ended up in TechCrunch and many other big-name sites: https://channelsurfer.tv I wasn't _trying_ to make money. I just wanted to build a bunch of cool shit, rekindle my love for building websites, make the web more fun, and maybe figure out what I…
That sounds fascinating and I thought about doing similar, but as tech savy as I am to tackle every idea people throw at me, I am unable to come up with those ideas. Did you have a specific process to identify what your 25 projects to work on?
I pretty much kept a document of ideas. I would just randomly think of something and jot it down. The ideas I kept were exciting enough to keep coming back to and writing more down became what I built.