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

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

#211

Post by blodkorv » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

I haven't left yet but i do less and less programming work.

The reason is simply that i realized that i was not as good at problem solving as i thought, i also dont find joy in sitting for hours solving problems.

I used to be passionate when it came to programming, but i realized that the reasons i thought it was fun was mostly because i thought i was better at it than i actually where. I was the only kid in the entire school to program and all that.

But after starting a startup and working with other developers i realized that am pretty crappy at it. I also don't get enough joy to try to become better and on one level i can kinda see where my limit will be.

I always been extremely bad at maths and logic solving, i always had problems with sitting down and being focused on doing something like writing, playing video games or coding. I never will be able to solve problems fast enough to be a productive programmer.

It just is not for me, and its just a burden now when i have to do some coding.

Also other people in tech are just annoying, people who only brag about how smart they are. CEOs who are bullies and try to mimic steve jobs. Managers and other people seen tech as a burden for the company etc etc.

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

#212

Post by TigeriusKirk » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

pansa2 wrote: post #79

ehnto wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm tired. I'm tired of the artificial deadlines I think the ephemeral nature of software really plays poorly with the artificial deadlines, and the artificial importance of some projects in general. Eventually you recognize the pattern, and there's no logical way to justify it, so it's harder to motivate yourself. You know the deadline isn't real, and you know the software will be rewritten next year with some new…

> the ephemeral nature of software [...] it's harder to motivate yourself It's been a few years since I left the industry, and I'd be surprised if any of the code I wrote professionally hasn't been superseded by now. Even worse, plenty of it was scrapped before it was even released. Of course, I knew this would be the case when I was writing it - that does indeed affect one's motivation.

The code I wrote in my first job out of college is still running in thousands of locations 25 years later. But then, it was Windows software for a particular industry, not a website. Most stuff I've written since then has been replaced or will be soon.

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

#213

Post by organicfigs » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

About to start med school, I looked around in the tech industry and never found a role model and found that distressing. I never met a single person in 10 years in the industry and said "I aspire to problem-solve like him/her" or "this is the career trajectory I want to take". I also never wanted to be in tech, was a premed in college, but after taking 1 CS class before the twitter IPO and getting internships at a string of popular companies I somehow became locked into the CS degree.

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

#214

Post by asiachick » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:11 PM 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 looked into teaching programing once. What I found has horribly designed classes teaching in poor ways and I could tell the likelihood of me being able to re-write some of the curriculum was close to zero and I'd have to deal with tons of school politics.

Have you somehow avoided this stuff?

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

#215

Post by naringas » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

ratww wrote: post #171

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…

And when you're doing woodworking and has to do some repetitive task you make a jig or a template for your router. This is something that you're supposed to know on the first day after you finish apprenticeship. In the modern tech industry you need authorization from your product owner/manager and engineering manager just to build a new tool or abstraction to automate or speed up your own job, because god forbid you…

at the other extreme, everybody does whatever the day requires and JIRA is just an annoying after thought that for some reason (the agile coach tells us to?) we have to keep up to date and yet is always outdated.

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

#216

Post by asiachick » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #28

I haven't left myself yet, but at almost-55 I know a fair number who have. Here's what I know of what their answers would be. The first simply had another passion - travel. Work was just a way to pay for that. Eventually went to work for an agency, been there a long time and AFAICT couldn't be happier (despite being less well off materially). I've known a couple of others who fit this pattern. One left the industry t…

> The first simply had another passion - travel.

I thought engineering enabled travel. I met countless "digital nomads" traveling the world, doing 20 hours of work a week at cafes. Making bank and getting to travel all they want.

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

#217

Post by logotype » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

I’m 38 and working as a developer at a well-known investment bank. I’ve been thinking of running my own specialty coffee shop. Been working as a developer for my whole life (front-end primarily). The day to day work is okay, and the problems are challenging. Definitely not working on mundane CRUD apps, but still it isn’t as fun as it used to be in the past. I started with programming because I found it rewarding to build things, to master the art. But programming today has switched from being a “master of tools” to “master of change”.

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

#218

Post by opportune » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #170

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.

I went to Stanford undergrad and honestly, the Bay Area tech scene (and Seattle from what I've noticed) looks unappealing to me. The culture is a turn off. I'd much rather have a 40 hour a week job somewhere else, where everyone understands it's a job and you can be your own person at home. It's hard to articulate, and I could write much more about it, but it's almost like the identity you have to don to fit in there…

I think you would be surprised just how many people see their job as a means to an end in Seattle/Bay Area, especially outside of the startup world. At FAANG and other big companies I think there is actually very little Kool-aid drinking compared to the smaller companies. And at a subset of those companies, people work normal hours and don't brag about things like working on side projects at home. Especially many of the parents I've worked with have been great engineers but at the end of the day just want to go home and spend time with their family, and it's fine from both a career and social perspective.

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

#219

Post by iamwil » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

mmargerum wrote: post #84

me_me_me wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to be so closed-minded as you, not realizing that other people are different than you. Ignorance is a bliss. Some people are in tech because its a job, not because they love it. Some people got burned out. Some people discover other things that they love more then what they doing currently.

Programming would be the worst job in the world if you didn't love it and weren't naturally good at it. I don't know why people would get involved in it otherwise. You either have an aptitude for it or you don't. It's completely obvious within days of trying it out. If you don't you honestly shouldn't pursue it.

Your comment has little empathy. You may have started out loving it and was naturally good at it. But, as life goes on, you change, your circumstances change. It's one of those phrases that mean little until it happens to you.

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

#220

Post by analog31 » Wed, Apr 15, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

I haven't left the tech industry per se, but have had a good career using my programming skills without ever being employed as a programmer. I work for a company that makes measurement equipment, and am in kind of an "architect" and R&D role, so I use programming for everything but actual code that ships to a customer.

Something I kind of like about the hardware side, is that you're forced to keep at least one foot on the ground. Real physics problems are a good source of real business problems because you can't wish them away, and mother nature will tell you if your stuff works or not.

Granted, I'm not rich. I'll never see the kinds of salaries that get thrown around for programmers at the big five.

I've read a lot of the posts here, about the headaches of programming in a modern setting, and the ethical issues spanning a large swath of the "tech" industry. At one time I thought that I'd encourage my kids to get into coding, and I'd still do so, but they are aware of what the culture is like these days, and I'm not sure the money is a big enough attraction for them to jump through the hoops. Also, I can't honestly say that it's career worthy, given the level of attrition and the specter of age discrimination.

One of them is easing her way into coding anyway, because it's fun, and I always guessed that she might have a bent for it. I'm inclined to let her do it as a hobby without pushing her to make a career of it.