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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?

#291

Post by Nextgrid »

scottishfiction wrote: post #167
godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get out of the VC backed world then. Plenty of stodgy old enterprises that make actual useful stuff need good IT talent, and they pay well enough. These environments come with their own set of issues, but I've never felt like I'm working for companies where I am scamming the end user. Just stop working for shit companies producing stupid shit, money isn't everything.

Even better, get out of the private sector (if you can). I'm very happy with what I'm contributing to the world at the BBC, and I'm paid 'well enough'.

The BBC might be an exception here but typically government projects always go to some BS consultancy that will take lots of money and deliver a shitty solution, or sometimes the problem or spec itself doesn't make sense but you're not allowed to talk to them and clarify/rethink the spec because reasons.

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

#292

Post by devmunchies »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #117
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…

> 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 So much this.

there's no way it would happen. The powers in place will descend on you kicking, screaming, and lying to keep the status quo. It happens to any country tries to get rid of central banking or switch to a gold standard.

wars aren't started over human-rights, they are fought when you f%%k with someone's money.

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

#293

Post by redcat7 »

I want to make software development so simple that cost of entering the software industry and competing with current companies (except infrastructure) will be close to nothing.

I really want that normal people would be building functions on their computers which today are startups.

If everyone is super, no one is.

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

#294

Post by ScottFree »

jjav wrote: post #277

Open offices and the extreme micromanagement known as "agile". Both are so toxic to mental health that I had to move away. I haven't really left the industry itself but I've moved away from a pure engineering role (which is my true passion) to a more specialized role which is ok but not as enjoyable. But, I don't have to deal with open offices nor agile, so it's a win. The other aspect that makes me sad is that what…

May I ask what the specialized role is? Management? Sales Engineer? Business analyst? Data science?

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

#295

Post by hinkley »

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…

Your points remind me of something I've been saying for a while: We don't have a shortage of developers. We have too many developers and so they are all working on the same things for different companies, or on boondoggles.

(Also, I would really, really encourage you to invest some time and effort into living below your means. It's easier to retire or take a more fulfilling job when you only 'need' 75% of your salary and you already have a big chunk of the surplus sitting in an account somewhere. On the flip side it's made me complacent wrt to demanding raises I deserve)

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

#296

Post by sangnoir »

asdfman123 wrote: post #184
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…

You know, people worry about age discrimination a lot because there aren't a ton of older programmers around. But when the discussion comes up, people don't talk much about the reasons you describe. Sure, bad programmers age out because they were never great at programming in the first place. But I would assume the HN crowd falls in the top half of competence because there are so many people here who seem smarter abo…

> If you're good, you don't have to worry.

You don't have to worry about keeping your current job, but getting a different one becomes a lot harder. Your 27 year-old interviewer might be thinking "You're my dads age, and my dad is crusty. No way you can wrap your head around lib-of-the-week.js"

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

#297

Post by proverbialbunny »

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…

There is a lot of things that could be said here:

1) I switched from being a software engineer to a data scientist in 2010, in part because of the culture. I totally get not enjoying the culture, though I do recognize how much it varies from person to person and company to company, so I try not to stereotype. But on some level, I get it.

2) We're opposites in some way. I've been writing code since I was 8 years old, and enjoy it. I'm the type of person who loves to find a fun and challenging problem and dive in so much I don't turn off. However, people like me are rare. In the last 15 years in the Bay Area, I've only worked with one other person who fit that criteria. Everyone else treated it like a 9 to 5 job. Me, I've never been one to judge or think negatively of that. That's how people are. It's normal. I get there are problems with SE culture, but some people being super passionate about what they do, to me isn't one of them. I don't believe I've ever annoyed anyone, bothered anyone after hours, or done anything unreasonable, and if I did I would appreciate people letting me know in a 1-on-1 fashion. The last thing I want to do is bother my coworkers.

3) You're on ycombinator, the center of Bay Area tech culture. Frankly, I'm baffled you like hacker news, for the people who like this kind of stuff after work hours, yet at the same time are anti that. YC is the heart of tech passion, and if you don't like it, why are you here? Not judging. Your comments and views are valuable. I'm asking out of genuine curiosity.

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

#299

Post by lutorm »

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…

Maybe take a look at https://www.spacex.com/careers/list?field_job_category_tid%5.... (We don't screw our users, because the users are us. And all that counts is solving real problems.)

But if your criterion is zero pay cut to make the move, then you're placing zero actual value on all those things you complain about.

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

#300

Post by CydeWeys »

ehnto wrote: post #62
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…

> 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…

This is why open source software at least is good -- it tends to have much longer lifetimes, so chances are decent that your code will still be running decades down the line (so long as you picked the right project).

For example, one of the open source projects that I contributed to most heavily, PyWikiBot, has been around for almost two decades now, and most of my contributions were made ~13-15 years ago, plus some minor maintenance since then, and most of those features I wrote are still in continuous use to this very day by me and many others. And that's just some random tooling library for Wikipedia stuff; imagine how much long-term impact your work would have if you were editing MediaWiki itself, or the Linux kernel, or gcc, or any number of other incredibly widely-used things.

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