Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?

Those people are people less likely to be reading HN, no?

I have heard some people talk about leaving for woodworking and stuff like that, but most people in my circle who get burnt out just stop doing government contracts and get regular jobs when it gets bad. Or go on vacation, have kids, etc.

I agree, and will that said hobby is likely to be more effective if it partly, but not entirely, engages the same analytic & creative knowledge work skills that you've already honed by getting into tech in the first place.

for me, it's writing the dragon-as-protagonist fantasy novel I wish someone had already written.

There's a creative side (the world is whatever I say, mwahaha) but if you introduce the discipline to say 'my story should be publishable if i decide to go that route' then the analytic side comes up because there are relatively defined criteria a given story needs to contain in order to be publishable (total length, sequencing of action / reaction units, building scenes & sequels, viewpoint rules, description curtailments, etc.)

So - what is something that is not coding, but has a creative & analytic side to it that you could do as a side hobby? Woodworking is definitely that, writing a book is that, some people even seem to do side-gigs as their hobby, I'm sure it's even possible to make a video game hobby or a tabletop RPG hobby into those two pieces as well.

Just don't make your hobby 'I stare at the TV' level. 'I stare at the TV then blog about it' would even work.

I tech fast for 25 hours a week. No computer, no cell phone, no television, etc. It's amazing how much this sustains my motivation and enthusiasm. You can "switch" right now, at least 1/7th of the time. Not exactly what you're asking for but immediately actionable.

Yes, I have gone back and forth. I always miss the money but not the stress. I've been a junior dev at Bank of America, then a contract dev salaried through robert half, and after than a lot of odd end jobs, then a dev for a small manufacturing tracking software company, then retail, now I'm teaching computer science in high school. This is probably the best job I've had. It still has stress and burnout, but summers and breaks help mitigate a LOT of that. That and never being called at midnight because of a prod issue is a plus.

You could join the resource industry, there's a labor shortage and there's all sort of vocational training. Some jobs require minimal training others more but you can be up and running in as little as 3 months for something relatively skilled. It's a refreshing feeling to have a job where the deliverables are very specific and day to day like you need to move this crap from here to there and that's it, no thinking about tickets or infrastructure or having to liaise with 8 stakeholders, nah bro supervisor said you need to help the guy move the drill cores, that's it for the next 5 days.