I quit the tech industry (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#241

Post by adhesive_wombat » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 10:03 PM UTC

logical_ferry wrote: post #114

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if sacrifice and selflessness were always the same, if one would treat having your own kids differently to adopting a newborn, all other things equal, then at least part of your desire to have kids is some kind of "selfish" motivation, rather than a purely altruistic endeavour to bring up a child or contribute to the workforce of tomorrow (or whatever the ostensible motivation is). If one actually only cared abo…

You are intellectualizing too much.

I believe that is actually called "thinking", though it can be a shock to some, so take care when starting out.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#242

Post by dvwqcq » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

ornornor wrote: post #225

csdvrx wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since you're giving up that total control of your life whether you're working 20 hours or 80. You forget the age effects: when you're 80 you will have less control on the basics (like, control over being able to run for a few hours without pain) > Then, when you've got enough money, you get total control of your life for as many years as possible. Depending on what you value, it can be a totally reasonable optimiza…

Not having to work doesn’t mean you can’t be participating in society anymore. It just means you’re now calling 100% of the shots instead of suffering someone else’s decisions.

Based on your theory I'm calling the shots but somehow my kid's elementary school still starts at 8am... What gives?

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#243

Post by morelisp » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 10:17 PM UTC

chimchiminey wrote: post #237

lostcolony wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If someone doesn't fit into one of those boxes That's kind of the point of using them though. The goal is to -stop- saying "you either fit into this gender binary, or you are 'other'". It's kinda like normalizing the use of "partner" instead of "husband/wife" even for the straight married people; it helps normalize relationships that fall outside of monogamous, state recognized marriage, and doesn't force gender d…

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Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#244

Post by akhmatova » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

yata69420 wrote: post #198

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the weirder side effects of the early retirement (FIRE) movement is that it selects for people who value freedom and time away from work and then convince them that they need to work the highest paid job they can find no matter how miserable it makes them right now. A lot of tech companies capitalize on this by offering 20% raises to recruit people and then demand 50-100% more work until they burn out. They ca…

I'm doing the weird thing you're describing right now! I have a miserable high paying tech job that I would absolutely not do if I wasn't being paid so well. Maybe I'm delusional, but I believe this is my best strategy for buying my freedom. The way I see it, it takes about $3M to bond yourself away from a lifetime of servitude. That much capital would allow me to pay myself a middle class income without any time com…

I wouldn't want to birth a child into a life of bondage under capitalism anyway.

I understand the economic issues (and de-facto coercion) you are referring to.

But at the end of the day -- whether it's "bondage" or not is all in your head. Especially if you let it go so far as to block you from having children. In fact this outlook seems to fall under the very definition of "prisons we build for ourselves".

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#245

Post by wnolens » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 10:20 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #224

wnolens wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Sounds like a ride. Glad you're able to have space to do work well-aligned with your values. I'm finding it really hard to do. Even if I wanted to make the personal sacrifice (and thus sacrifice my future children's stability and environment..) for more virtuous pursuits for far less compensation, I have a hard time believing in any organization's ability to affect meaningful change. I'm trying to start small…

> I have a hard time believing in any organization's ability to affect meaningful change. Organisations are generally pretty shit at achieving anything. But the good news is that individuals can and do make a difference and ultimately change things. It's the small wins that count. Changing one person's habits. Getting one more friend to drop BigTech. Getting one teacher to rethink the effect of over-connectedness on…

> Help your doctor friend [...] but also make it clear that [...] what you're doing comes with a message that you expect her to pass on

I don't really agree with this part. You can't demand that another adopt your morals, certainly not genuinely by offering conditional help. I avoid people like this, because they think they've figured out what's best for someone else and judge everyone who doesn't think the same.

Just aim for the highest good, and course correct since chances are you don't know what that really is. Others will join or oppose you, that's feedback.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#246

Post by wnolens » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #223

wnolens wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Sounds like a ride. Glad you're able to have space to do work well-aligned with your values. I'm finding it really hard to do. Even if I wanted to make the personal sacrifice (and thus sacrifice my future children's stability and environment..) for more virtuous pursuits for far less compensation, I have a hard time believing in any organization's ability to affect meaningful change. I'm trying to start small…

> I'm trying to start small by helping my one friend who is a doctor to streamline her office tech. I think I could give her 20% of her time back performing repetitive tasks. Sounds like a worthy cause. The ten-year project that I mentioned was actually ready to go, after a couple of years. All the rest of the time, was spent, talking about it, and trying to help people use it, until it went viral, and was taken over…

Awesome. If I may ask: what was this project?

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#247

Post by wnolens » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #229

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > But I did them for no money > And I assume you acquired the means to do that for free by.. doing the opposite for long enough to buy you freedom to do so? Or marry/born rich? By working my butt off for over 30 years, making a rather humble salary, but never living large, avoiding personal debt like the plague, driving old cars, or crappy company cars, living in apartments and a small house, saving 25-40% of my ea…

Doctors aren’t exactly starving for business, hope you are getting compensated, even if it’s minimal. You it would cost the doctor 10x if they hired a software shop to do the work.

It would cost 10x, and thus they never do. They instead can only pay old crusty companies for software that's passed through all regulatory hoops to which they provide shit support.

I'm not trying to replace that company with my free labor. Mostly looking for ultra low hanging fruit - like scripted replies to FAQs that burn 15 mins/day replying to.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#248

Post by joeman1000 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 10:55 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #37

We 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 agg…

I’ve tried to talk to people about this for so long. This is the root of the problem with ‘office culture’ and just ‘work culture’ in general.

Productivity is the goal, right? Increasing worker happiness and reducing stress should be the focus. I think this will produce the largest effect on productivity.

Instead, we get sociopathic slave-driving at work: a narrow focus on KPIs, mandated hours of work and methods of working, prostration from micro-management (it can go on forever).

Working environments are low-trust and hostile, with no focus on what truly makes a worker happy, and what actually makes them productive!

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#249

Post by gkop » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 10:56 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #240

gkop wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2022 is a great time to join a start up. Tech compensation has plateaued at a high level. The “recession” is good for innovation. And in recent years early and extended exercise have become the norm, so equity is less of a scam. And start ups are fun. https://zachholman.com/posts/the-basement/

In what sense has tech compensation plateaued? Maybe compared to a few months ago, but my sense is that there has been significant growth over the past year.

Over the last couple months, we’ve seen hiring freezes from several top payers, which has a knock on effect in reducing negotiation leverage with competing offers. Just my subjective SF-based opinion, it may well be growing still in aggregate or in particular segments!

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#250

Post by alex504 » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:09 PM UTC

nnoitra wrote: post #62

To become really succesful in a tech career the demands are simply too great even if you are in the top percentile in IQ. To go to a good university you literally have to be super focused in high-school and do all sorts of extracurricular activities and basically things that look good on a college application. No one cares if you were a caretaker for your grandma. But then once you are in university you haven't even…

In my experience none of what you are talking about is necessary to have a successful tech career. In my case I have an English degree, went to a boot camp, and worked fairly hard at medium sized companies for a few years. I work at a company where I make as much or more than a lot of doctors. A lot of my colleagues are from places like Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc.

I could probably not have even gone to college, it was just getting the first job that mattered. Probably wouldn't have gotten into Google or whatever with that first job, but it isn't hard to work your way up if you interview well.

Maybe we disagree about what "really successful" means. I personally feel that the way things are now if I was actually motivated to make as much as possible I could get promoted and ladder my way up about as far as I wanted to in this industry, but I have no desire to do this because I make plenty of money and only work about 25 hours a week. If I wanted to I could also go work for some exciting startup, but I would have to work a lot harder which is something I don't want to do.

The point being that what you do in high school, college, or even most of your career doesn't really matter that much if you are smart and can actually figure out what you are doing.