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

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

#131

Post by TheCapn » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

rustyboy wrote: post #112

TheCapn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find your way into Industrial Electrical work if you can. You get a strong mix of tech and electrical, moreso than Residential, can't really say the comparison to Commercial work though... My company (Automation & controls) is partnered with electricians for all the jobs we bid on. Having electricians that know wiring for specialized bus networks, how to do basic troubleshooting on control circuits and all that is am…

For someone with a MS CS what would you recommend for transitioning to such a field?

Likely just find a system integrator in your area and apply.

The guy who got me my job was a MS CS, my employer sought him out because they needed a guy for internal software projects. I did a hackathon with him and he hired me as his replacement when he moved to the gaming industry.

My degree is Software Systems Engineering, most of my coworkers are Electrical Engineers or some form of Electrical Diploma.

As long as you have a decent foundation in Networking and Digital Logic you'll be perfectly suited to program PLC/SCADA...

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

#132

Post by axegon_ » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

I haven't but what really disgusts me is the so called "marketing", which is in 100% of all cases composed of incompetent idiots who have 0 knowledge in any field, including marketing. If you want good marketing, hire a psychologist with side interests in the field of your product, not someone who thinks they can sell a product because they've spent most of their lives in shopping centers and bars.

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

#133

Post by Nextgrid » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

BerislavLopac wrote: post #126

adrianN wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could always switch to a company that doesn't make its money with ads. For example I work for Snowflake and I don't feel like I'm building stuff to screw the end user at all. I just make our database better. I also worked for Siemens. There too I didn't try to screw any users, I just tried to make trains run cheaper, faster and more reliably.

> You could always switch to a company that doesn't make its money with ads I always thought that I would be able to switch to any programming job I wanted, and that the only decision would be between making a lot and roughing it up (like the GP), or working for a better cause for less money (as you propose). But now I find it -- after 25 years of professional experience -- nearly impossible to find any job. Maybe it…

This is my observation as well, and it was even before the coronavirus. The majority of tech jobs in London are bullshit startups chasing after AI, blockchain or the latest JS framework. It's very rare that a real company hires (presumably because they have all the talent they need and don't need to hire for the sake of "growth") and when they do it's often a bad fit for my skills (Python/Django).

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

#134

Post by TheCapn » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

angstrom wrote: post #98

TheCapn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find your way into Industrial Electrical work if you can. You get a strong mix of tech and electrical, moreso than Residential, can't really say the comparison to Commercial work though... My company (Automation & controls) is partnered with electricians for all the jobs we bid on. Having electricians that know wiring for specialized bus networks, how to do basic troubleshooting on control circuits and all that is am…

You uh...built a better mousetrap I see.

Heh, speaking of mouse traps, while working at an inland grain terminal I met a guy who was using arduinos hooked up to what's essentially a highly pressurized central vac system as a pest control system. Against the walls were small little "tunnels" the mice would run through, trigger an optical sensor then get sucked into the vac system at something like 500psi and their goop put into a holding tank for them to clean-out on routine checkups.

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

#135

Post by panoramas4good » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

I previously worked in cyber security. Great job as a PM for a start up in the space. Great industry, for the most part. I loved the tech. But it just got boring.

At the same time I was running an environmentally focused project on the side that I really enjoyed and was starting to take off commercially.

One day I just decided to jump into it full-time.

Now I must stress, I am incredibly fortunate 30 year old, no massive student debts, large mortgages, kids, etc. In some ways, this was one of the biggest contributing factors in the decision. Sure, doing good is nice, but we all need to survive.

The reason I'm posting though, is that the project went full circle, and is now what I brand as a tech company (non-profit) with an environmental focus. I put this down to my background in tech.

Moral of my story (I think), is that most humans all long to do something new and different, but typically head back towards what we are good at. I'm just hoping I don't get bored this time around...

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

#136

Post by mihaaly » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:47 PM UTC

Jemm wrote: post #41

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 pu…

> pump out change for the sake of change and let the end user do quality control

So true! Saying both as developer and user!

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

#137

Post by dmux » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:47 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #81

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…

> Instead, engineering became its own thing and most companies encourage and reward those who opt for over-engineered solutions, which means you spend more time fighting with dozens of layers of abstractions and chasing the latest JS framework instead of actually delivering functionality. I've been thinking about this in relation to the concept of incidental complexity lately. Every year there is more and more toolin…

>Every year there is more and more tooling and configuration to do before actually coding anything.

I've become increasingly worn-out from this as well. It's strange that as an industry we parrot the "premature optimization is the root of all evil" line, yet we build out our tech stacks as if we were all part of FAANG.

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

#138

Post by RMPR » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:47 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #129

hobs wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think B2B is a much less predatory place - most of the businesses have real money, want a real thing to help them make more of it, and are engaged in the process of making that work. There's plenty of bad actors (like any biz) but most of the time when I ship features everyone is happy, and no one is taken advantage of.

A friend of mine works at a B2B business. Every week they have a "lead forensics" meeting where they somehow figure out which companies visited their website and then spam them with unsolicited sales calls/emails.

Business intelligence, they call it.

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

#139

Post by CaciaraAsAServi » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

rustyboy wrote: post #112

TheCapn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find your way into Industrial Electrical work if you can. You get a strong mix of tech and electrical, moreso than Residential, can't really say the comparison to Commercial work though... My company (Automation & controls) is partnered with electricians for all the jobs we bid on. Having electricians that know wiring for specialized bus networks, how to do basic troubleshooting on control circuits and all that is am…

For someone with a MS CS what would you recommend for transitioning to such a field?

Now that more IT is entering the shop floor, many places are adopting some solutions (for diagnostics, data collection etc.) with more "computer" content than the past; for example all the predictive maintenance platforms big vendors are developing. Or you can concentrate on the "upper" levels, like SCADA, MES; of course working with these tools is not super CS rocket science, most of the time. You can start from positions more akin to programming, then work your way into process sensors technology, electrotechnics, etc. That's what I did.

Edit: System integrators as sibling says, I second that!

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

#140

Post by s1k3s » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #109

s1k3s wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything but your last point. Having worked on software projects where nobody was thinking about how things are done and they were only thinking about deliveries, I can say that you don't need more than 6 months to make the solution a completely unmaintainable mess.

What are the things that you think other devs would label over engineering but was instrumental in your project not becoming an unmaintainable mess?

An example I often see is database normalization. Why use 5NF when we can simply do with 3NF? Fast forward this a few months later and you end up doing pattern matching on blocks of text instead of querying indexed columns.