241–250 of 344 posts
I left SRE four months ago to become a VC investing in developer tools. I wanted to see if I can contribute to tech in other ways than writing code/getting paged. Liking it so far!
Walked away from 20 years of software development last year. I've been day and swing trading stocks for last 2 years. I'm now trading full time and doing great. I don't miss the daily stand-ups, scrum meetings, planning meetings, "quick chats", one-on-ones with management, weekly department meetings, monthly company meetings, and late night critical support calls one bit!
Here’s the thing. If I could just code without being a slave to a scrum master or being product micromanaged.. I would never leave the industry. I worked five years in mobile gaming when the Apple Store first opened. Released 13 titles, had my hands in a half a dozen others, three teams in two countries, 15 employees at our height (95% remote). Never had a standup, planning meaning, grooming.. etc.
My current job has zero planning meetings and a standup twice a week with 20 people attending that lasts about 7 minutes on average; standup is literally "what are you working on and are you blocked?". If the person rambles in standup, our boss cuts them off and has the next person go. It's been this way for at least a year and a half (when I started). We're given wire-frames or high-level designs of what needs to be built and the target goal date. Developers are then left to code with nearly full autonomy. We always deliver the product early. I've worked in so very many places over the last decade and a half - from huge corporations to small startups - and if all of them took this approach, they would've increased their productivity at least 10-fold.
I did web development and graphic design for a couple decades, and wrote a few technology books (one of them was on DHTML, so this was a while ago). I'm now writing fiction, mostly fantasy. The $$ isn't quite where I'd like it to be, but it's getting better, and I'm 100x happier. My brain works with stories much more easily than it does with programming, in a much more satisfying way, and it took a long time to learn…
I'm in the process of transitioning out of a FAANG SWE position to be full time in property development. There's not enough houses for people to live in. Most people hate you for "driving up prices" and "gentrifying neighborhoods" - but it leaves me much more satisfied than engineering. After paying ~40% tax for a decade and paying ~3x what the Fed and State spend per Capita over a lifetime - it's nice to see my work…
Can you expand on you how transitioned to property development? Where there any books or classes that helped? I am interested in doing something similar but I don't know where to start.
I don't think BiggerPockets is actually a great source - but it might be the best to get started.
I left tech in July and I'm building furniture and woodworking now. I had been doing Rails since 2007, ending my career with a great 4.5 year stretch at Apple and was ready for a break. Two to four weeks off a year just isn't enough for me and my family and simply getting paid 10-20% more wasn't going to change our life. I'm loving it. I don't sit or stand in place for eight hours a day. I'm learning a ton. I'm engag…
How did you start and how long did it take to start making a sustainable income? I would prefer to switch to something that puts me on my feet but I can’t imagine how I could make it work financially. TBH at this point in my career I think I’d rather just deliver mail even if it paid 75% of my current salary (unfortunately it’s more like 33%).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a very shortsighted view.
Shortsightedness is exactly the problem with daytrading.
I left tech in July and I'm building furniture and woodworking now. I had been doing Rails since 2007, ending my career with a great 4.5 year stretch at Apple and was ready for a break. Two to four weeks off a year just isn't enough for me and my family and simply getting paid 10-20% more wasn't going to change our life. I'm loving it. I don't sit or stand in place for eight hours a day. I'm learning a ton. I'm engag…
How did you start and how long did it take to start making a sustainable income? I would prefer to switch to something that puts me on my feet but I can’t imagine how I could make it work financially. TBH at this point in my career I think I’d rather just deliver mail even if it paid 75% of my current salary (unfortunately it’s more like 33%).
TBD :) I've been doing more learning than earnings, but we did plan for this. We paid off our mortgage, got solar, drew down six months of expenses into cash, and bought $5,000 2011 Leaf this year.
Worst case scenario is I get another job in tech and I'm right back were I started from, so we saw it as little downside.