If you're willing to leave Silicon Valley, there are a lot of small companies out there that need one or two or a handful of decent software developers to do useful but non-cutting-edge work. They can't pay Silicon Valley money, obviously, but you get to be a lot closer to other kinds of work, which you might find satisfying in its own way.
Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
11–20 of 187 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
#12Don’t be so weak. The world is a harsh, cruel place. You are owed nothing. A man makes himself.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
#13In some way, software development is going the way hardware development went years ago. The engineers built tools and modules that put most of them out of work. Who designs amps or discrete circuits these days? Once you design a piece of hardware that works well, it can be re-used ad-infinitum, and most hardware today is really firmware running on microcontrollers. So it is a natural evolution that software is becoming automated. Unfortunate, but also an opportunity to do more interesting things. It is the managers that need to be replaced unless they can see further than the tecchies, and I have known some that do, usually they are ex-tecchies.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
#14Anyone who can engineer software systems is likely able to engineer some kind of company. Not the path for everyone, but it is one way of moving forward without staying linked to the industry.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
#15you should never have allowed yourself to get sucked into corporate work. its the most common mistake that people make
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
#16The tech industry was always a little slimy but it's out of hand now. I've lost too much respect for the role of innovation in this current version of our society. We've passed a point where it's used against people more than for people.
Day after day here watching people with no substantive activity on their account spam their endless shovelware slop projects, I just can't feel like I want to be a part of this anymore.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
#17If you're willing to leave Silicon Valley, there are a lot of small companies out there that need one or two or a handful of decent software developers to do useful but non-cutting-edge work. They can't pay Silicon Valley money, obviously, but you get to be a lot closer to other kinds of work, which you might find satisfying in its own way.
I actually specifically look for those smaller companies. I don't live in Silicon Valley, nor have I ever made Silicon Valley money. I've never wanted to live there and I haven't wanted to work for FAANG since Google did away with "don't be evil."
If you happen to know where they are posting jobs, aside from the normal terrible job sites because I've been on them since November, I'm interested.
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
#18Hi! I've been doing this since 1994 (I started in the industry instead of going to college). I feel this way approximately once every 7-8 years. What I think I've learned is that I make stupid decisions reacting to those feelings.
Do those cycles happen to correspond with the tech market crashes? =)
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
#19If you're willing to leave Silicon Valley, there are a lot of small companies out there that need one or two or a handful of decent software developers to do useful but non-cutting-edge work. They can't pay Silicon Valley money, obviously, but you get to be a lot closer to other kinds of work, which you might find satisfying in its own way.
How do you find these positions?
Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
#20used to see 80-100 lines of good code per programmer. seeing up to 2400 lines a day in 4 hours of deep work. LLMs will greatly reduce the amount of people required, mainly seniors. erode the path for junior training and put further pressure in an industry continually contracting since 2021. the amortization of software developing as R&D expense among many years implemented by the IRS didn't help either
> used to see 80-100 lines of good code per programmer.
For what time frame? A day? A week? A ... ?
> seeing up to 2400 lines a day in 4 hours of deep work.
Now I get it.
Lines of code is not a metric for correctness nor fitness of purpose.
> LLMs will greatly reduce the amount of people required, mainly seniors.
This is just high-grade speculative bovine excrement.