It seems they get a patreon now
Guess it’s working for them? I donno
I quit the tech industry (2015)
31–40 of 276 posts
Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)
#32It's pays off to be rich. Not having to work is a luxury. I love money too much to simply take a year off, even if I could afford it. I would think about the opportunity cost the entire time. Maybe I just haven't had a proper burn out yet.
A few years ago I wanted to take 6-12 months off, just to unwind and do my own projects for a bit. But then my girlfriend moved in, cost of living went up, and I couldn't afford to dip that deeply into my reserves anymore. But I got another job too where the need to take extended time off wasn't as much of a thing, I got to do more of what I wanted to do without the BS of the company I worked at before.
Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)
#33I can't afford to leave my job, I would only be able to sustain myself for ~1 year. I think I would be satisfied if I only had to work half as much: 4 hours a day, 20 a week. Now I just need to find that job...
In my country (Netherlands), most employers are amenable - if not legally required - to allow you to work part-time, IIRC over half the workforce here works part-time - could be 36 hours (so you get an afternoon a week off, or a day off every two weeks, or a day off if you work 4x9 hours), 32, some even work only 24 hours.
So basically it is possible, and I think in the US too you can negotiate to work less hours.
Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)
#34Does this person have a family and kids? I don’t see how anyone can do this unless they contribute nothing to their families or extended families. Sounds to me like a very selfish view of life. Most people in the world have either ailing parents and/or spouse and kids to take care of.
self-ish is not a bad thing.
Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)
#35Damn, I remember this, even managed to find my own little comment. 2015, feels like a different life, two countries, three jobs, and five projects ago.
Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)
#36Does this person have a family and kids? I don’t see how anyone can do this unless they contribute nothing to their families or extended families. Sounds to me like a very selfish view of life. Most people in the world have either ailing parents and/or spouse and kids to take care of.
Not having a W2 job isn't the same as not earning a living. They earned enough to pay off their house and all debts in full. They now create and sell games and other software as a solo dev.
Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)
#37We talk about externalities. A chemical company pours toxins into a
river, an automaker knows its products kill X people per year. These
are tangible, understandable.
But we don't yet think of the effects on the workforce as social externalities. Industrial safety has made the workplace a much safer space physically, but not mentally.
The reality is, a great many jobs make us sick. Depression, anxiety, heightened aggression, sedentary atrophy, getting overweight because there's no time for the gym... the modern office workplace is no heath-farm. And Google throwing a few coloured bean bags around, or providing healthy food and gym equipment is only a sticking plaster if the foundational culture is toxic.
What is the cost to society? I have no idea, or how to even measure it.
But I have a few observations.
I meet lots of people who "got out of tech". People with PhDs who became landscape gardeners or opened a juice bar. I meet smart and engaging people in their 30s who dropped out of games or media careers.
The cost (to society) of educating a graduate is, what, $100,000? Average post-grad education is another 4 years. Then it costs approximately 20% of someones salary to hire and onboard them.
For what? So they can drop out after 5 years and go open a wind-surfing school?
In a way, these people, the workforce/pool are a national asset, and it could regarded a tragedy of the commons that harming them is inflicting an externality on the whole industry. By culturing inhospitable, mentally harmful environments the tech industry is pissing in its own drinking water.
Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)
#38> Even the most interesting technical things Yelp is doing probably involve reinventing something hundreds of other companies have already reinvented.
> Do you have any internal libraries or systems or platforms at your company? Do you think no one else has ever had the same idea and built the same thing?
Sometimes (most of the times?) it's not about being the first one solving the problem in a specific way, but about solving it with the skills and knowledge you have, the best you can, because at the end it's your problem if you took responsibility of it.
Personally think that relativizing problems is key, and can find joy in the process of solving them. Food for the brain and personal achievement. Whether it's important or remarkable for anyone else is anyone else's problem.
Anyway, none of that matters if the problem isn't interesting for you or you don't care about who you are enabling by solving the problem, doesn't matter if it's a worldwide new problem or a well-known-and-solved one.
By looking newer posts at the blog, he/she/they is having fun and writing about problems that aren't novelty, but are anyway personally interesting.
Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)
#39I think the picture of how he describes life and life-with-a-full-time-job is fairly accurate. One solution is to work 80%. Or even 60%. You can still make plenty of money to support yourself, and you can be happy while doing it.
There are barely any 80% jobs and the 60% ones are almost inexistent
One possible pathway is to get a full time job, work full time for a year or two, then negotiate to dial it back to 80% or 60%. Before joining, figure out if some people there are working part time. If no one employed there works part time, that's probably a red flag. Some less popular employers have a hard time attracting and retaining talent will be happy to have you even if you're only part time.
Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)
#40> just trying to put off sleeping — because the next thing I experience will be waking up and going back to work. Pretty much sums up my nightly routine.
Hmm, the going to work part of that is fine. It’s what happens at work that’s disturbing.