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Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

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Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

#341

Post by sixdimensional »

All due respect to the scale that FANG/FAANG employees work at, but I can't help feeling completely disconnected from this person's situation (being an "exiting high-level former-FANG employee with ridiculous compensation"), and like they come from a completely different walk of life/world.

I mean, I work in a global corporation with 6,000 employees, and yet I am not experiencing a financial/social/career status that I think this person is.

And then, I realized that, minus the "FANG" part, I can't think of a single person I know in tech that hasn't asked the same question about "burnout" at some point in their career.

It's amazing what different scales we work on.. but yet the same common human concern seems to be there. I don't really think it's specific to tech either, but it seems such a common theme in tech.

I wonder if "burnout" has something to do with the fact that tech/digital work involves so much repetitive mental labor (much like repetitive physical labor also causes injury if not managed).

EDIT: Or maybe this person is simply questioning their mission in life and finding that money and status isn't enough. If one persists in this condition long enough, performing repetitive labor without inspiration, maybe that is what causes the injury.

Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

#342

Post by ptmcc »

mepiethree wrote: post #237
alasdair_ wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just realize it's not going to be anything like a giant tech firm, where you don't realize they actually do 99% of the job for you. This. So much this. All those teams of devops people, the SREs, the QA people, the network engineers and all the other unsung heroes don't exist in a startup yet the people who only ever worked at BigCo assume that they do and so forget about all of the problems involved in building a…

I agree with most of this, but services like CircleCI, Rollbar, and (now) Github Actions are just as good as the build infrastructure at many large companies, and they are free at low usage

That may be true, but they don't configure themselves and adapt over time as new demands or bugs arise.

And sure, doing so may be "easy" but it's yet another context to switch in and out of. The difficulty and time required also increases as the scale of the company, codebase, and infra grows.

I used to work for small companies where I was very hands-on with all of that infra/devops sort of stuff in addition to app/systems dev, but now at a not-quite-FAANG-but-you've-heard-of-them company realize how much I don't actually know is going on in our infra because I don't have to. In some ways I appreciate it, in other ways I feel disconnected.

Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

#343

Post by pier25 »

brightball wrote: post #241
sriram_malhar wrote: post #53

I quit full-time work in 2001, after being burned out in the dot com boom. I did well for myself financially after the startup I was in got bought. The phrase "well" is of course subjective, considering that no colleague of mine quit. I left a whole lot of money on the table, but never once have I regretted it. I decided that the name of the game is to optimise quality of life. That means, infrequent brutal deadlines…

You’re describing the reason I wanted to transition into developer management for so long - to be in a position to have the conversations that will prevent the type of environments that create burnout. So far, it’s working but it’s not as easy at it should be. I do work for a company where I legitimately care about the mission, the company and it’s impact but I get most of my sense of purpose from taking care of my t…

I did that for a couple of years and it didn't work for me. I ended up quitting after a couple of years out of frustration. In part because big decisions were taken unilaterally without consulting other departments outside of management and sales so I couldn't really protect my team.

Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

#344

Post by amanaplanacanal »

ghaff wrote: post #328
ptero wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grass always seems greener on the other side. Academic careers have their own stresses and challenges with many postdocs and pre-tenure professors working slave hours at just-above-poverty wages for many years. If you want to do academic research (and teach a lot), you are definitely young enough to get a PhD. But make sure you are switching because academia is what you love doing, not because you hate your curre…

>The grass always seems greener on the other side. Everyone should memorize this adage. Sometimes making a change is the right decision of course. But I've also known a lot of people over the years who just got an itch to make a change because of some relatively minor gripes. And things did not work out as hoped. Academia in particular is easy to idealize based on successful tenured professors at top tier universitie…

On the other hand...

Most people have a built in bias to stick with what they know rather than trying something new. We probably stay in bad situations much longer than we should. Ymmv

Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

#345

Post by ghaff »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #344
ghaff wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The grass always seems greener on the other side. Everyone should memorize this adage. Sometimes making a change is the right decision of course. But I've also known a lot of people over the years who just got an itch to make a change because of some relatively minor gripes. And things did not work out as hoped. Academia in particular is easy to idealize based on successful tenured professors at top tier universitie…

On the other hand... Most people have a built in bias to stick with what they know rather than trying something new. We probably stay in bad situations much longer than we should. Ymmv

That's totally fair as well. Although things worked out pretty well, I have stayed at long-term jobs for longer than I probably should have.

One key is probably to really ask yourself why you want to make a change (or why you're hanging around if you don't really like the situation). If you have good answers, that's fine. If you don't...

Ultimately you have to make decisions based on incomplete information and with the knowledge that no situation is likely to be perfect.

Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

#346

Post by Maro »

I know a guy, he worked at MSFT, and we worked together at FB. Combined he had 10+ yrs of tenure and at one point he was L8 I believe. I assume he has $10m+ net worth. He "quit big tech" and now has a non-profit startup, with funding from a philanthropic tech foundation. That seems like a good way forward, you can continue working in technology and code, it's exciting bc it's a startup, there's social good, but with the funding you can pay yourself a salary so you're not burning your net worth (which is invested and cumulating presumably), and since you're already rich you don't mind if it's non-profit.

Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

#347

Post by plain4 »

I started working during the build up to the dot com boom at a small company. It was exciting and I threw myself into the work. Unfortunately, the company ended up going under and I scrambled to find the next gig. I kept chugging along making decent money (for the time) but was extremely bored. It started to feel like I was forced to sit in an office for 8 hours a day and do nothing (of value). I felt part of the problem was that I had transitioned away from coding to managing and missed the technical challenge of work.

I decided the best way to stop managing and go back to the hard technical challenges was to do a PhD. I was fortunate enough to financially have the option to quit working. I was 36 at the time.

Going back to do a PhD was great. I especially enjoyed the first 4 years where I was learning a ton of new stuff, meeting new people and going to conferences. I picked the subject, AI, based on what I had always been interested in. It was great to work fulltime on a subject that I found very interesting. It helped that I didn't care about the money or career prospects. The last two years of the PhD were a bit more difficult and I felt pressure to get the dissertation done, but it wasn't too bad.

After finishing I decided that the lifestyle required to pursue an academic career wasn't for me and ended up moving to a city my wife and I enjoyed and taking a job at a FAANG company. I've been there ever since making good money. I've been able to stay engaged with difficult technical problems. Unfortunately, although I find the problems technically interesting to solve, they aren't really addressing issues that I feel passionate about.

Now I'm starting to reach the point of thinking about quitting again. I'm currently more inclined to switch projects at the same company or retire rather than go to a startup or another FAANG company. A large non software focused company isn't that appealing because it seems like I would become part of a cost center. Working for another FAANG company feels like a sideways move and a startup seems like it would be a giant hit to the work life balance. I'm mainly planning on saving enough to not _have_ to work.

I see a lot of colleagues who started working around the same time I did and who ended up at a FAANG company and are now quitting to retire | startup | passion job. I feel very fortunate to be working in a field that I enjoy, for a company that pays me enough that I'll be able to retire relatively early.

Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

#348

Post by artificialLimbs »

adventured wrote: post #126
artificialLimbs wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great. As a new (1 year) coder starting out at 39 years old, this sounds very similar to the path I envision for myself. Thanks for the inspiration!

What language/s are you starting out in (if you don't mind answering)?

My path started with my wife coming to me with a unique gold-mine of a video game idea, so I started learning C# and Unity. Quickly realized that I needed and wanted to learn more programming, so started OSSU and did the Python course. Had a kid, then decided to fast track to get a decent paying job, and so switched to ODIN project. Have learned web (HTML/JS/CSS) and am learning Ruby/Rails stuff there. Have done some PHP + API integration work on the side for my local fixed wireless ISP, the owner of which is a good friend and former boss of mine.

Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

#349

Post by hanniabu »

GuiA wrote: post #250
schnable wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's FIRE?

Financial Independence/Retire Early The core idea is to define your annual expenditures (let’s say $50k), a long term investment strategy you personally feel comfortable with (say 5% ROI), and from there you can deduce the amount you need to save to be financially independent (in this case, $1M).

Most recommend using 4%, although that's also considered too risky by many. On the flip side 3% is also seen as too conservative. Not being savvy with economics myself, I've personally chosen to use a happy average of 3.5%

Re: Ask HN: Quitting Big Tech, what is it like?

#350

Post by ronyfadel »

I worked for Apple for 6 years on iOS/macOS.

Like any job, there was the good, the bad and the ugly.

It would surprise most people how small the iOS/macOS org is, and how big your impact is. Your fresh code gets to run on hundreds of millions of devices, and whatever you worked on is designed by a best-in-class design team and marketed by a best-in-class marketing team.

Fresh out of school, I knew I wanted to join a startup/small company. The hiring manager at the time told me that Apple operated like a startup so there was nothing to worry about. In hindsight, joke's on me!

I didn't like was how compartmentalized the teams were: the engineers had close to 0 contact with the design and marketing teams, and specs were ferried over by upper management.

I also felt that I wasn't developing much as an engineer and as an individual, which is why I quit. Management would be more than happy to keep you working in your area of expertise without much incentive to let you develop other skills.

The software org has recently made changes to make switching teams easier. Previously, I could say that it was easier for an engineer to interview for and get a job at Google than to change teams at Apple.

For me, changing teams 2 years in was a strategic mistake, and boy do they make you pay for it.

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