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Ask HN: Have you ever considered leaving tech because you didn’t feel fulfilled?

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51–60 of 95 posts

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever considered leaving tech because you didn’t feel fulfilled?

#51
I built a fence around my yard a few years ago and got more satisfaction out of looking at that physical manifestation of work every day than I was getting from my day job.

Fence builders probably feel good when they do something outside of their comfort zone, though, so I think it's just a condition of being human.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever considered leaving tech because you didn’t feel fulfilled?

#52
post #4

It's important to understand that "tech" is mostly a "horizontal" part of the economy. Meaning it cuts across multiple "vertical" industries. You can do tech for retail, tech for finance, tech for media. Finding a new vertical to be part of can make a big difference. As can finding the right cohort of people to work with. But otherwise, the lack of fulfillment will likely follow you to whatever job you take.

the horizontal aspect of software has samey caricatures that get boring as well. Most of it is web development. If you switch verticals but stay in the same horizontal zone of back end web development you're mostly doing the same stuff if it's web dev.

Need to switch lanes both vertically and horizontally.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever considered leaving tech because you didn’t feel fulfilled?

#53
post #8

Hmm. I've had friends stating they feel like going into something agricultural. But consider that on that idyllic countryside farm, you need to wake up at 5 to feed the cows on a fine summer day. Also on that stormy day when you have to wade through half a food of mud to the barn * . And also when the snow is up to your waist * . Another solution is using that income from your cushy tech job to get some fulfilling ho…

Grew up on a farm. It's not mud :P

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever considered leaving tech because you didn’t feel fulfilled?

#55
I have always felt that my managers are the primary inhibitors. They are super focused on their career to the exclusion of others. It has helped a lot of have interesting side projects. I'm currently toying around with stable diffusion and LLMs.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever considered leaving tech because you didn’t feel fulfilled?

#56
I'm going to go ahead and say it's normal to feel some ennui from time to time, but in other jobs you'll likely feel similarly AND have financial concerns you are currently free from. Unless you are at an executive level, or are woefully underpaid (and even if you are) leaving tech will mean taking a 60%+ pay-cut. You probably don't have the mandatory qualifications for other professional jobs that pay reasonably well. All bets are off if you start your own business of course, but the results can be very bimodal.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever considered leaving tech because you didn’t feel fulfilled?

#57
post #33

I had a base-hit acquisition and probably could have turned around and done another VC- or self-funded startup. The burnout was too much. After a hiatus I opened a bike shop this year. I can't imagine going back to writing software for money again (I still do it on the side). Every bike industry vet I've talked to feels about bikes the way I feel about software. Broken industry, yada yada. Anything can wear you down.

After my first burn-out, I spent a year building bikes, going to frame welding classes. Then went back to software.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever considered leaving tech because you didn’t feel fulfilled?

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these people seem to be the ones who have done their FAANG stint and vested mid-6, low-7 figures so they can just hop off and start dallying in woodwork without a major loss in income.

I'm probably off-base here because I'm told i conflate woodworking and carpentry a lot, but isn't it a fairly well-paying profession?

In my head "Woodworking" is what you do at your basement/garage shop, building small furniture and fancy end-grain cutting boards.

"Carpentry" is "I built a garage/house/cabin".

The first one is where people gravitate, because there are no regulations on cabinet making or woodturning. If you move to carpentry, you need to know what you're doing and build to code.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever considered leaving tech because you didn’t feel fulfilled?

#59
post #7

I think the hard thing about mental work is you never feel like you've finished something. There's always more work to do and new features to build. The appeal of something like woodworking is it has a finish, and you have a tangible thing at the end. I think lifting and running scratch the physical exertion itch that the desk job leaves me with. At the end of the day, if you have a pretty easy going role that pays w…

The exact reason I like cooking. It has a start and a finish with a tangible result.
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