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Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

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

#481

Post by sabman83 »

Winterflow3r wrote: post #378
sabman83 wrote: post #247

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 i…

Wow what a career change! Congrats and thank you for sharing your story!

Thanks!

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

#482

Post by gofreddygo »

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…

> there's just nothing out there that pays as well

Tech pay will flatten out/drop in the next decade.

Skill requirements are diverging. Tech skills are being commoditized by influential, huge, monopolistic companies. There is no licensing body to keep supply in check (like doctors, lawyers do) and there isn't one likely to be either. Put that together and you have a recipe for excess skill supply, replaceable talent and incredible effort required to switch roles.

One effect of that is lower pay.

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

#483

Post by shmooth »

snuusnuu wrote: post #10

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 u…

contact me pls psmithsf gmail

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

#484

Post by martijn_himself »

How do you find an interesting career to pursue outside of the tech industry?

I have no standout passion or interest, like many in this thread I am tired of the industry in general and the job itself.

I am considering doing a part-time horticulture degree to dome something different. How did you find your passion?

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

#485

Post by qkls »

martijn_himself wrote: post #484

How do you find an interesting career to pursue outside of the tech industry? I have no standout passion or interest, like many in this thread I am tired of the industry in general and the job itself. I am considering doing a part-time horticulture degree to dome something different . How did you find your passion?

Try many different things. Or think what excited you when you were young.

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

#486

Post by president »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #479
president wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The worst part is how this leads to more on-call and an increase in working off-hours.

Oh, exactly this! First I get lectured about how delivering a solution fast is more important than getting the technical details right... and then I get assigned for on-call duty. Because "move fast" means someone else gets a bonus, and "break things" means I have to fix the bugs over the weekend.

> Because "move fast" means someone else gets a bonus, and "break things" means I have to fix the bugs over the weekend.

This is a great quote, I'm going to steal this from you!

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

#487

Post by cableshaft »

joenot443 wrote: post #334
karatestomp wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That squares with my experience of software development. It's like being a furniture maker but spending 80% of your time fixing your goddamn hammer because it keeps breaking and no better…

Experiences like this are one of the major reasons I decided to keep my focus on iOS development rather than pivoting to full-stack as I was considering doing. The iOS dev experience is far from perfect, and while YMMV, I definitely found I spent _much_ less time fixing my hammer when I'm building for a single platform using a single language in a (largely) excellent IDE. Sometimes I think there must be engineers out…

I am much more productive on iOS than when I do web development. Unfortunately I want my games to be cross-platform, so sticking with Swift isn't much of an option for me. I did have an iOS only project to learn modern Swift again (with SpriteKit), and it's been an extremely smooth experience for the most part. Most of the time I'm just thinking about the logic of my game.

Nowhere near as many headaches as juggling all the moving parts in the Javascript web app ecosystem, which I'm doing for work right now (currently stuck on something right now).

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

#488

Post by tomp »

perl4ever wrote: post #424
collyw wrote: post #348

I am ready to leave. 18 years experience. My Current job the tech lead is a diva, doesn't listen to anyone else and just add more and more to our enormous codbase. There are now 3 devs. The other two just basically clean up behind him as he builds technical debt. Trying to discuss is likely to end up in an argument. I have had a could of technical test recently and failed them both. Today I was given a number of reas…

"How to avoid deadlocks in Java" I'm curious, this is not something I've needed to know, but what would be Java specific to an answer? If I was asked about deadlocks, I would say "always acquire resources in the same order".

> If I was asked about deadlocks, I would say "always acquire resources in the same order".

I don't think that's the correct solution, unfortunately - see e.g. the dining philosophers problem.

Edit: or rather, you have to be very careful what the "order" of resources is.

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

#489

Post by newhotelowner »

papapra wrote: post #452
newhotelowner wrote: post #319

Worked as a Frontend engineer. Now a hotel owner. Few reasons why I left: - Wanted to try something different. - Incompetent management (Biggest reason), and politics at the workplaces. - I am not good at expressing my self. Not good at kissing asses. Political correctness and all the stuff/ - Getting old (40) - Single earner in the bay area with family. I couldn't afford a house in the area that I was living in. I d…

How much money did you need to start your business ?

It depends on how big/small/location.

I invested roughly $600k. Typically, if you buy in rural or small cities, you get a 25-30% YOY return.

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

#490

Post by mrfusion »

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…

Great write up. What are you doing now instead?
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