Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

#431

Post by rramadass » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 2:52 AM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #178

non-entity wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently became kinda intrigued by PLCs and even consider buying one just to play with it (idk maybe it's the novelty of it) and the various programming languages for them and how they can be so different. What kind of education do you need to work on this kind of stuff?

Could you get started with Arduino? (Disclaimer: I don't know a lot about what PLCs actually do -- maybe that's too basic for you.) Right now I'm trying to hack my treadmill with an Arduino unit so I can control it with software, and I'm learning a ton. Plus it's not a huge investment.

I had come across Building Arduino PLCs: The essential techniques you need to develop Arduino-based PLCs when i was looking for something similar a while ago. You might find it a good starting point.

Re: Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

#432

Post by vatotemking » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

I am going to pursue farming. im tired of having to deal with something breaking at any point in time due to the pile after of complexities built on top of hardware, which is also built on top of more complexities. I am just tired at this point.

Re: Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

#433

Post by zerubeus » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:38 AM UTC

hackyhacky wrote: post #78

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 th…

I second the package managers hell It just makes my life miserable when working with NodeJS or any JavaScript library, or the number of Framework libraries out there that makes every choice an endless debate.

Re: Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

#434

Post by vatotemking » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 3:43 AM UTC

normalnorm wrote: post #49

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 weal…

> Meaninglessness. Most of the projects are simply not necessary, they do not help society in anyway, they just exist to make someone else wealthy.

True. Right now amidst the pandemic, it turned out the farmers, medical people, janitors, delivery guys are the most essential jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

#435

Post by lancewiggs » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 4:20 AM UTC

mkipper wrote: post #408

non-entity wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently became kinda intrigued by PLCs and even consider buying one just to play with it (idk maybe it's the novelty of it) and the various programming languages for them and how they can be so different. What kind of education do you need to work on this kind of stuff?

I don't have a ton of PLC experience, but you really don't need much of an education to create basic PLC programs. I wouldn't personally recommend PLCs to anyone who enjoys programming, but I understand the appeal of trying one out. The programming languages are all defined in IEC 61131-3, and you can more or less use them interchangeably. You can use structured text for (clunky) text-based programming, ladder logic…

Check out some kit at defineinstruments.com - lightweight and more accessible versions of PLC but also bridges between industry and internet.

Re: Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

#436

Post by therealdrag0 » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 5:09 AM UTC

vatotemking wrote: post #432

I am going to pursue farming. im tired of having to deal with something breaking at any point in time due to the pile after of complexities built on top of hardware, which is also built on top of more complexities. I am just tired at this point.

Isn’t stuff always breaking for farmer?

Re: Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

#437

Post by cagmz » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 5:24 AM UTC

awillen wrote: post #63

I had a ten year career mostly in product management at enterprise software startups, and I left last year to open a dog boarding business (which is a whole mess right now, but that's another story). For the most part I liked the companies I worked at (which tended to be ~50 people when I joined) and my coworkers. The problems were interesting, though largely not things I was especially passionate about (I spent a co…

> I had already started investing in some real estate on the side

I have a few questions, if you don't mind.

How did you get started with this? Is investing in real estate something you can do while being a salaried employee or do you need to do it full time? Also, what kind of investments were/are you making?

Re: Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

#438

Post by vatotemking » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 6:02 AM UTC

therealdrag0 wrote: post #436

vatotemking wrote: post #432

I am going to pursue farming. im tired of having to deal with something breaking at any point in time due to the pile after of complexities built on top of hardware, which is also built on top of more complexities. I am just tired at this point.

Isn’t stuff always breaking for farmer?

if its large scale mechanized farming yes. since tractor companies are removing your right to repair. but that doesnt stop farmers from being ingenious.

Re: Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

#439

Post by edanm » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 6:50 AM UTC

I'm kind of shocked at the amount of people here saying something like "all of tech is just finding ways to get people to click more ads". I mean yes, that's a part of our industry, and because of the dominance of Google and Facebook it's a pretty big part.

But that's still a drop in the ocean compared to all of the other tech out there!

Literally every system you can think of, both good and bad, had to have someone build it. Systems for managing schools? Someone built those. Systems for managing your local restaurant? Someone built those. Systems for internally managing some niche organization no one's ever heard of? Yep, someone built those too.

Those kinds of things are numerous, and super important.

Re: Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

#440

Post by jcbrand » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 7:01 AM UTC

naringas wrote: post #207

Nextgrid wrote: post #64

I wish I could leave. The tech industry nowadays is no longer about solving real-world problems and making the world a better place, instead it's all about screwing the end user in every single way possible, whether it's ads, stalking and privacy violations, spam ("marketing" as they call it) or just plain fraud where the company is happy to take the money but can't make it right if things don't go to plan and the cu…

> we no longer use engineering as a means to an end to solve a business problem. Instead, engineering became its own thing I hadn't though about why we over-engineer things this way. But I agree I might add, based on the over-engineered (and, in general, badly designed) software I have worked with, that it usually comes about because it's never possible to change any aspect of the underlying architecture with the pur…

IMO you should be spending time on refactoring and simplifying code without asking permission for it.

Improving the code-base is part of the job and you should be setting aside about 20% of the time you estimate for new features to do so.

There's no need to ask management for permission, your estimate is simply 20% larger.