Left engineering & Google on my own accord in August 2020. WFH was the catalyst that helped push me over the edge, but it was a long time coming. The underlying feeling I always had when working on programming at work versus programming at school and graduate work: I am being paid to re-type out things that many people have typed out before. As I saw waves of layoffs both pre and post LLMs, it's funny how my gut intuition led me down the right road at the right time. Always trust your gut.
I am retiring from tech to live offline
141–150 of 617 posts
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is that enforced though? At any normal workplace they will ask you "how long is this going to take"?
It depends on the management. Mine asks that, but others within my company get "this is going to be done by [DATE]".
And no one argues about unrealistic deadlines?
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#143If this is viral marketing for a typewriter company, it's genius.
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?…
Working on my own product using Claude, I feel like front-end coding hasn’t changed much. It still requires a lot of manual tweaking and understanding users at a human level. Personally I’m happy that the backend and algorithmic side writes itself.
That's refreshing to read (frontend is my wheelhouse). I mostly agree. It seems like most people using AI treat FE as a solved problem, satisfied using tailwind and settling for "looks close enough".
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#145Funny, 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.
If you don't need to support a family and are unhappy otherwise, why not?
Sure it's not 'the smart thing to do' but if it makes you happy and you're still not far worse of than most people...
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#146While I definitely respect the choice to live an offline life, as someone that grew up orthodox christian in an orthodox country I can't shake off the vibe this dude gives: very LARPy and sounds like an evangelical. Orthodox never tell you that they're sinners and to pray for their sins. That's an americanism.
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#147This 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…
burglars generally don't need technology and this likely won't change soon
with tracking in laptops/phones/airtags/etc it's more likely to be the enemy than the tool or even the object of acquisition
even in 2026 the most sophisticated stuff we get are wifi jammers and keyfob intercepts and that's still like the top relevant: https://xkcd.com/538/
I'm sure we'll get hackers trying to hack your home assistant bot to steal your credit card numbers though
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#148Earlier 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 if payment is involved, but I've heard Orthodox Jews can and do seek non-Jewish help when they need e.g. light switches toggled on the Sabbath.
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#149I am very fatigued by tech and AI too.
I do find occasional pleasure in personal projects, creating exotic programming languages that are not text-based, compilers and stuff like that, but otherwise coding work makes me wanna puke.
Re: I am retiring from tech to live offline
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
If things get as much as 10% as chaotic as you predict, there will be massive turmoil and the "Destroy all Clankers" party will actually be the one in charge.
Yeah, except we'll be a colony of China and those T800s will be on every street corner cause we didn't want to build datacenters and couldn't find a place to do yucky unaesthetically pleasing stuff like refining rare earth minerals and other primary industries anywhere that wasn't China.
Those industries have been reshoring for more than 5 years.