I dream of being the Zamboni driver for my town's arena. I have a plan I'm successfully executing to get to be that before I'm 50. The hardest part will be beating all the competition for the job.
There's no such thing as a zomboni roomba?
I am retiring from tech to live offline
131–140 of 617 posts
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#132This isn't an airport, you don't need to announce your departure.
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#133I 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…
It’s both, IMO from your brief comment, LLMs made you think it’s all troublesome endeavor because it outputs spaghetti code. No one likes hunting through spaghetti code and fixing it. Nobody wants to fill their plate with seconds immediately.
Mess around with a poc and try not using the LLM to get started (use a project scaffolding tool/code generator instead if you must). Start with some appetizers and a first course. Stop working on it even if you feel satisfied.
I like to try and get my pocs to a publishable state someone else can download and compile even if it’s wonky. That helps me bookend my work even if I don’t accomplish all the goals.
I most recently made a poc with nuklear ui and libuvc make a small app that displays my camera feed. I pushed it up, the camera frames have some green flicker but it works. I did more research and found out there are better libraries than libuvc for this kind of thing. Now I have another prototype to make for my ideas. And a base to clone if I need some starter template.
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#134Fair play to the chap, it was refreshing to read a scan of a letter typed from a typewriter. I just hope he doesn't start mailing packages to people in the tech industry in the next few years.
> refreshing to read a scan of a letter typed from a typewrite
But it's not responsive! Hadn't he heard of mobile-first? ;)
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#135Funny, if all goes well today is my last day as professional software engineer, after 20 years. I have enough savings to buy a modest cottage and to last me a year or two being frugal. After that it’s anyone’s guess, but I am beyond excited not having to program for a living any more, just on what feels meaningful, in complete autonomy. Projects lined up: a Erlang-like microkernel/runtime I have been designing for th…
Nothing like retiring with only 3 years worth of savings and no plan on what to do after that.
Definitely not my first rodeo, but feel free to gloat.
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not AI or you, it's this late stage capitalist marketing firehose of bullshit and enforced productivity. Hype is out of control, nothing is real, it's exhausting.
I think you're getting unfairly downvoted. A lot of people, across all salary ranges, are just vaguely tired of constantly Providing Maximal Shareholder Value™ to their managers day in and day out, having that One Purpose dominate their lives, and at the end of each day looking up and seeing nothing tangible to show for what they've done.
Its also the absolute assurance that we're all going to get screwed by a big crash circa 2028.
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Yeah, I've realized that the things I don't like in tech have everything to do with the culture and politics. When I've been able to work with a small team of people I really like and respect, I've generally been quite content.
I've rekindled by passion by working for a startup again.
My previous employer (which I also joined as a startup) ended up in a situation where the head product manager became VP of engineering (it's a complicated story - don't ask). We also had a yes-man director of Eng and together they went all-in on very orthodox scrum, where they sat in the sprint planning/point meeting and overrode every decision of what to take off the backlog and enforcing "themes" of each sprint to ensure that only product work got done. It was very rare that any tech-debt work got dealt with, and security work was only done if it burned down CVEs or other "quantifiable" metrics that were contractually obligated.
I ended up ok as there was eventually an exit, but the core experienced engineering team all left within 6 months.
Now I'm not only allowed, but encouraged to take initiative and while of course I do product work, I can also take a step back before taking two steps forward again.
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably had a friend do it for him
Do the Amish pay non-Amish to do forbidden things for them? Asking for a friend.
I'm not sure about "forbidden" per se but they definitely make accommodations for various things, e.g. riding as passengers in cars for long trips.
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#139Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#140This 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…
Ta da, this is the kind of future that will become the actual one, to everyone's surprise in the comment section.