Live data from Hacker News

I am retiring from tech to live offline

openpath.quest

91–100 of 617 posts

Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline

#91
Impressive to take such a stand, doing something they believe is the right thing. The home depot line says a lot though. I guess tech has been good enough to provide some kind of economic cushion that you can retain a reasonable life style as home depot as your only source of income.

I would (genuinely) be interested in a follow up on how that works out for them. I've "threatened" to do this many times, but my partner points out that if I thought tech management was full of BS, wait until I am getting ordered about by retail industry management while working the shop floor, dead on my feet, penalised for taking too long a toilet break. I think reality could come down hard here.

Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline

#92

This reminds me of the movie Edge of Tomorrow where the main character decides he doesn't want to fight the aliens today and instead goes into town to get a drink at the pub. The aliens still get him. Robots and stuff are going to start appearing everywhere soon. He's not going to like that. Hoodlums are probably going to start burglarizing his house with their robot accomplices. Then he won't be able to go outside b…

Funny you should mention robots burglars. I just read this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317093

Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline

#93

This resonates with me as well. For more reasons than one: with the rise of AI (Mythos is but a pale forerunner) digital security — and by extension, digital privacy — has ceased to exist. The bomber will always win. The only way to win is not to play.

I don’t think is true - the endgame of software security is very secure atleast at the code level. I.e. fully clean supply chain, no memory safety issues, maybe even formally provable code.

Right now we are in a very unstable place but it might not be permanent!

Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline

#94
post #49
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Everyone has different situations and different level of risk. If u lost your job already, u didn't choosingly give up a stable(don't know u, so guessing) job as the other person alludes (don't know their situation so people guessing here). So if u had a stable good paying job, giving it up to start something new while having a new kid can be very hard .. but doable. Still I'll advised. If u lost your job, based on j…

> Everyone has different situations and different level of risk.

that's true, and also why it's prudent to not go around giving unsolicited family advice to strangers.

also it's why, when you're talking about one particular woman you've never met, you should keep the demographic insights you think you have about her to yourself.

Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline

#95
Very nice performative piece.

The reason he, and others, are "retiring" from tech now is because they have the wealth to do it, in big part due to being at the right place at the right time in life. That’s it.

AI has nothing to do with it, they just want a small ego stroke.

Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline

#96

I just retired after 40 years writing code. The last year or so wasn’t fun - battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted. For a long time, I thought I’d do a lot of hobby or open source coding when I retired. I haven’t even tried. I’m not burned out, but find I’ve lost the passion for coding I once had. Is that AI? Or is it me? Maybe as my retirement progresses, I can rekindle that passion, but as of now, I d…

I'm hoping to retire in the next 12 months (52 years old). When I do, I'll be buying a Chromebook. Any and all PC-related shit is being sold off.

I will quite literally never write a line of code again... with any luck!

Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline

#97
post #32

I just retired after 40 years writing code. The last year or so wasn’t fun - battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted. For a long time, I thought I’d do a lot of hobby or open source coding when I retired. I haven’t even tried. I’m not burned out, but find I’ve lost the passion for coding I once had. Is that AI? Or is it me? Maybe as my retirement progresses, I can rekindle that passion, but as of now, I d…

> battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted What I am selfishly curious about is: is it possible to remain a software developer, and ignore AI? To write code the same way we did before 2022? I understand that there are many companies in which managers demand more of workforce — but are there still places where people are satisfied to not rush ahead and do business same way they did three or four years ago?…

> are there still places where people are satisfied to not rush ahead and do business same way they did three or four years ago

They're getting outcompeted.

Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline

#98

I just retired after 40 years writing code. The last year or so wasn’t fun - battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted. For a long time, I thought I’d do a lot of hobby or open source coding when I retired. I haven’t even tried. I’m not burned out, but find I’ve lost the passion for coding I once had. Is that AI? Or is it me? Maybe as my retirement progresses, I can rekindle that passion, but as of now, I d…

I retired, after 30-some years. Actually, I was forced to retire, by folks that don't think us greyheads should be working. Fortunately, I had the means to retire. Those means had nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly, and stayed at a job for a couple of decades. But I have been doubling down on my tech work. Once the knuckleheads were removed from the soup, the flavor improved markedly. I lo…

> Those means had nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly, and stayed at a job for a couple of decades.

Finally some real talk for common folk. Godspeed, friend

Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline

#99
post #60

I think we're going to see a ton of this in the coming years. A return to the 60s/70s when people were going off the grid, moving to a farm, or just disconnecting

People have always done this, and always will. I don't think we'll see a lot more of it. I haven't met a lot of people who are actually happy living a very simple frugal life for very long. Maybe it will be a fad for a while, or people will do it as a sabbatical type of thing to recharge but really committing to it forever?

Then the younger generation who have never known life without AI will be entering the workforce (whatever that looks like in 10 years time), and it will just be normal.

Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline

#100
post #41

I just retired after 40 years writing code. The last year or so wasn’t fun - battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted. For a long time, I thought I’d do a lot of hobby or open source coding when I retired. I haven’t even tried. I’m not burned out, but find I’ve lost the passion for coding I once had. Is that AI? Or is it me? Maybe as my retirement progresses, I can rekindle that passion, but as of now, I d…

The battling ai bit you mentioned. This is my life right. Ai is both amazing and shit. I feel like everyone else is running dark factories and producing millions of lines of code and having amazing lives. Meanwhile I am going insane with stress because I've burnt so much time trying to wrangle it on a team I've just joined. My productivity has not been good. I half feel like I am being gas lit by YouTubers and half f…

> I feel like everyone else is running dark factories and producing millions of lines of code and having amazing lives

That is when I realize I'm spending too much time on HN. Because it is really only here that this vibe is so strong. My impression is that there is a lot of motivated reasoning in the folks that frequent HN.

It may also be that I work a boring job. If I turned up our code output by 10x it would not improve anything about our product. People who are pumping out dramatically more code have to be in an entirely different world. Or, you know, they're full of shit.

Post reply on HN