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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?

#361

Post by lnanek2 »

adrianN wrote: post #76
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…

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.

I've been at companies without ads that still screw the users. At one they had us remove the unsubscribe option, for example, to force users to call and argue their way into a cancellation. The call center was graded on how many users they got to give up.

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

#362

Post by uka »

apohn wrote: post #120
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.

>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. So I say this based on personal experience. The Siemens' sales force uses their size and influence (especially with existing customers) to absolutely screw over customers and smaller competitors with better products. Siemens is no different than many other big companies who can use…

Not only that. Siemens bribes people from the governments in third world countries to get the work from the government and totally destroys the local competition an the taxpayers.of those countries.

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

#363

Post by honkycat »

I will tell you when I can get back in. I quit my job in January before the economy crashed. Took a month sabbatical which is looking like it will an indefinite sabbatical.

9 years professional experience, four year Computer Science degree, multiple reviews of my resume and cover letter by trusted friends in the industry. Stable work experience where I am not hopping around a bunch. Important position at a successful start-up. Resounding success at every job I've had.

I've been putting my resume out. Radio silence. I have heard NOTHING back from anyone. People don't seem to like my start-up experience.

____

Why I (might) leave if I get back in?

* Infantilization and Micromanagement: Agile is a plague. I hate being micro-managed and forced into meetings all the time. I hate the constant pressure to sacrifice code quality for expedience of release ( when bugs will be much more expensive to detect and fix ). I just want to do my job but anymore that entails being harassed by middle-managers who can't take "no" for an answer when their boss's boss sets an unrealistic deadline.

* The people. I've been saying over and over that one of the best things you can learn in programming is how to lose an argument. I am done with the divas and the control freaks. I am done with the 0 training, three-years of experience clowns that show up and work extra hours ( thus creating an expectation for the rest of the team to work extra hours ), who suddenly know everything and think you are now their bitch ( management loves these people for some reason. Probably because they are cheaper. )

These two things were what I experienced at my last role. Though, I suspect these people exist in other careers as well.

Why do I want back in?

* I have had good jobs before. Jobs where the team is in sync and everyone just wants to do a good job. I think if I can find a team, I can create that environment around myself.

* I have learned a lot of lessons from my previous gigs. I think a layer of indifference is important for a developer job and I am ready to embody that role with kindness and mindfulness. I can deal with the people if I keep them on the other side of the bell jar.

* I love writing code and I am good at it. I even enjoy drudgery like writing a bunch of unit tests or writing documentation.

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

#364

Post by rapnie »

Nextgrid wrote: post #125
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.

Making its money with ads doesn't mean anything anymore. There are plenty of companies that have paid products and still do user-hostile things including stalking, spam, dark patterns, etc. I paid full price for a Playstation 4. I still had to opt out of "enhanced data collection" and spend 15 minutes disabling every option on their bullshit attempt at a social network. Even the games themselves had their own telemet…

Damn, didn't know that about Spotify (paying customer too), but indeed: 8 trackers, plus it needs 28 permissions on Android. Pff, I hate that so much.

https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.spotify...

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

#365

Post by shijiazhuang »

At 25, I quit my job at Google to join a Bay Area mayor's office (~$30K pay cut). My new job is intellectually stimulating, fast, and challenging in ways that tech was not. I get to work with every type of person from firefighters to economic development specialists. I love spending 100% of my time on public interest projects and was never inspired by large corporate motives. I have nothing against tech, but I'm so much happier in government.

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

#366

Post by subpixel »

scrapcode wrote: post #14

I got into facilities management. I get to create / manage construction projects for my "company" from planning all the way to final acceptance. In my area, the whole industry is quite behind technologically. Using tech has helped me excel. I'm now ~7 years removed from active development and am finding it increasingly more difficult to find time to make a side project to show off while trying to raise a family. I mi…

My father-in-law retired from facilities management and he absolutely loved it. Worked for a major manufacturer and built factories and clean rooms around the world. Somehow lived in Vietnam for a year and didn't know what banh mi is but we all have blind spots.

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

#367

Post by dsaavy »

wackget wrote: post #232
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…

> wrestling with package managers, version conflicts, obtuse configuration files The top answer also mentions this. Yours is currently second-top. I hope developers get the message. I'm SO tired of trying to navigate around the mountains of pure garbage every time I want to work on a new project. I long for the days when adding new functionality to your project was as easy as including a single external file, and whe…

Wrapping my head around modules, packages, and libraries while learning Python a while back was the biggest roadblock and most discouraging part. Trying to figure out why certain things wouldn't be installed was a slog. At the same time, this struggle definitely taught me much more than I would've learned otherwise. One topic it pushed me into unwillingly was containers which was definitely a benefit in the long run.

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

#368

Post by nicoburns »

munchbunny wrote: post #351
austincheney wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I have trouble believing that it's bimodal It surprised me just as much. I cannot speak to the capabilities or thoughts of any given candidate. Ultimately the test was a test of using a single standard API that is based upon a standard model. If it were just a matter of instructions or syntax I suspect a candidate would gotten over that by either asking the right questions, trial and error, using a reference of…

I think what really destroyed people was a complete inability to perceive the page as a series of nodes all interconnected with various relationships. Fair enough. :) I've experienced a similar issue with interview questions where they often floundered on the question because they hadn't ever spent time digging under the surface. For example, I notice that a lot of (typically junior) developers seem to only think of…

Yeah, I have an in-depth knowledge of the imperative DOM APIs, but I can't remember the last time I actually needed to use them in my day job. React provides a very good abstraction that one doesn't need to break out of very often for a lot of work.

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

#369

Post by werber »

I left and came back, and honestly it was a 100% financially motivated. Everything else that interests me requires basically being in poverty. I enjoy coding, but i enjoyed working with people in the non profit space more. I have this fantasy that I’ll find a way to merge the two worlds but so far i haven’t been able to do so. On a positive note, I have made so many more friends working in tech than at basically any time in my life. I gave mostly loved the people I’ve gotten to work with in the industry
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