Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?

I left (mostly) when tech became a tool for greed and scummery. Was asked too many times to participate in completely legal yet morally abhorrent actions.

Also saw that programmers were starting to be treated like factory workers where attendance and metrics like keystrokes per minute were more important than good well written and documented code.

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.

One could argue that app stores have also played a significant role, basically taking thirty percent gross while depriving the developer of direct contact with the end user.

Bottom line, I’d rather be sailing.

I left after over 25 years. I love programming and love working with Linux, but the jobs always came down to "help us steal peoples personal information so we can slam them with spam for products the neither want or need." It was unfulfilling. I went back to school and got an MA in history. I teach humanities though I still teach a couple of programming classes. I miss it a little. I would go back in a heartbeat for the right position, but I am through getting mauled in tech interviews which turned into combat trivial pursuit. I love technology and I still create applications mostly for myself or to help automate my school. I get new ideas from HN.

True - but a lot of people self-disqualify because of rumors and urban legends. Make them tell you "no" if it's something you want. There are waivers for many medical issues, but if you don't ask you'll never get one.

Ive not left yet but have all but resigned myself to a different field, likely EMS or nursing. Eight years in (health and ed tech) and its become project management with little actual engineering work. Im only 27 but I regret waiting this long. I started to see signs that my interest was waning a few years ago and figured I just needed a change of scenery...three changes later and I think the message is clear.

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 wealthy.

* Tedium. The intellectual challenges aren't there after a while. There are countless intellectual challenges in the field of computing / computer science, but they are usually precisely the ones that industry has no interest on.

* Micromanagement. "Agile" and similar management practices (yes, I know, you're not doing it right, blah blah blah) are downright humiliating and infantilizing. Almost no other highly skilled professional has to tolerate such level of intrusion on their day-to-day activities. I love deep thinking and creative expression. The modern corporate setting prevents this by design.

* Open-spaces. See above.

* Idealism. I was so excited about the possibilities that the Internet opened for humanity. Now we have ad-tech and horrible exploitation of "gig-economy", warehouse workers and the like. This is definitely not what I have in mind when I started.

* Conformism. The tech industry is extremely conformist. Monetary consideration always wins. Deference to power always wins. "Hacker" used to mean something completely different. Almost opposite to the current definition.

I realized that what I always loved about computing was the endless creative and intellectual possibilities allowed by the medium. This is more or less the opposite of what the industry values, despite what they might advertise endlessly. There is nothing cool about it. It is stale and anti-intellectual.

I don't need a lot of money to be happy. You probably don't either. Time on this earth is the most valuable thing we have, and I would rather spend it waiting tables than enduring one more stand-up meeting.

I think creative nerds are the life-blood of the industry, but they tend to be shy and not assertive, so they have their life controlled by the "business types". I honestly believe that if the nerds told them to fuck off and started spending their time working on things they think are relevant, the world would become much better quickly. This won't happen, I know.