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I quit the tech industry

eev.ee

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Re: I quit the tech industry

#211

Post by yebyen »

mootothemax wrote: post #89
ode wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Ireland have a graduated tax system?

Doesn't Ireland have a graduated tax system? According to Wikipedia, it does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Republic_of_Ire... "The taxation of earnings is progressive" Which makes the OP's post rather confusing. Does any country out there not tax progressively? I just can't imagine it - "Great, you got a pay rise! Now you get to take home less, until your pay rises by another $5,000!" Edit: On second…

That's approximately how I read it. Even if it's his company, money he puts in his own pocket needs to have income tax paid on it (I would suppose this means, after any appropriate corporate taxes are paid by the corporation).

If the money does not actually leave the company and go into his pocket, the only taxes that would need to be paid are those (low) corporate taxes.

Of what value is money you can't have in your pocket and spend, of course, is an exercise for the reader, but presumably it could be paid out as personal income over a greater number of years (if the company survives that long) without ever paying $0.53/1.00 in personal income taxes on any portion of that money.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#212

Post by drzaiusapelord »

probablyfiction wrote: post #17

This is what burnout looks like. Unless Yelp has a toxic work culture, it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard. After several months, the author will probably start thinking about work again, and begin the job search once more. Not to say that the author's points are invalid; it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she m…

This isn't burnout:

" I stay up hours later than I mean to, not even doing anything, just trying to put off sleeping — because the next thing I experience will be waking up and going back to work."

This is straight up depression. We need to stop using office-cliches like "burnout" and start addressing the very real mental health issues in the tech industry. Maintaining my mental health is like staying in shape, eating right, etc. Only as an adult have I learned how much work it takes to stay mentally healthy and not fall into these traps. Things like pacing yourself, recognizing when you're stressed, being able to say 'no,' taking enough breaks, having a dialogue with your boss/clients on what your realistic expectations should be for this project, self identifying with your job too much, not having outside interests outside of tech, etc all matter.

Techies seem to love stress. We're competitive, asocial, difficult, etc. No wonder stuff like this is so common. How many high profile tech suicides have we had in the past few years? We're doing the opposite of staying mentally healthy. Turns out human beings are incredibly delicate creatures, but no one wants to admit it as to not look "weak."

Re: I quit the tech industry

#213

Post by zippy786 »

mpdehaan2 wrote: post #139
probablyfiction wrote: post #17

This is what burnout looks like. Unless Yelp has a toxic work culture, it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard. After several months, the author will probably start thinking about work again, and begin the job search once more. Not to say that the author's points are invalid; it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she m…

While not burnout related, I found out a while back, and this is somewhat paradoxical, that if I care TOO much, I'm less happy. What happens is I notice all the stuff I can't fix, or need to fix, and other people get stressed out making them fix it. The end result is that I stop caring quite as much (I still care), get happy, and then start caring too much again. It's especially hard at times when you have a lot of e…

This is what is fundamentally wrong with the industry. Often those who don't care or don't do much are the highest paid and get more reward that the ones who care the most and always try to do something. Obviously, the environment eventually turns those who care into someone not caring as much. Eventually not caring at all, thus a toxic environment is formed. Some may also feel that this is the norm in most companies and leave for freelancing etc.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#214

Post by kokey »

lkiernan wrote: post #145
yc1010 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh me and my kids will be paying for a long time for the worlds biggest banking (per capita) debacle and the destruction of the economy in the 00s by various governments. With kids its sort of hard to leave :( Tho' it is a nice place to live despite all the carry on. But hey look over there at the news yet another multinational setting up to launder/funnel money onto somewhere warmer and seems like a housing bubble…

Can you not pay yourself in dividends?

There's no scaling tax relief on dividends in Ireland, it gets taxed like any other income.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#215

Post by sopooneo »

rdtsc wrote: post #161
seivan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through this. Not sure what toxic culture entails, but fucked up deadlines burned me out. Why do all software companies rush so hard.

There are 2 reasons: 1) Developers cannot reliably estimate software timelines. That often comes with experience and age, but many never learn that skill. It is a skill like programming itself. It comes with practice. 2) Break down in communication between management (product managers) and engineers who are writing code. On the first part. Usually junior software developers simply have not had experience shipping sof…

Your point about the overly aggressive golf-made deal: how do we fix that? I really don't have an answer, but if we, as developers, are really so smart, we should be able formulate the problem and find a solution. We will have to avoid imagined constraints and thinking the answer is related to producing more code, but it's got to be there. Is it related to playing the office politics game better? And if so, can that be a learned and tolerable skill? Is it to do with organizing? With preferring self employment or contracting?

I am probably naive, but I think if we say: the situation is now X and I want to be Y, we can find a way to get there.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#216

Post by martin-adams »

johan_larson wrote: post #34
probablyfiction wrote: post #17

This is what burnout looks like. Unless Yelp has a toxic work culture, it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard. After several months, the author will probably start thinking about work again, and begin the job search once more. Not to say that the author's points are invalid; it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she m…

Generally speaking, if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work. It's strenuous or dangerous or dirty or degrading or stressful or boring. If it were actually fun, people would be doing it for free. (Exceptions, anyone?) We programmers are quite lucky. At its worst our work is only frustrating. And we are well compensated, usually. Don't get me wrong; programming itself can be lots of…

>> Generally speaking, if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work

I think this misses the point that a) you need people to do the fun awesome stuff at scale (you can't do everything), and b) you may not have the skills to do the fun awesome stuff yourself.

Practically speaking, I think you're right, but you don't have to accept that as the status quo.

>> If it were actually fun, people would be doing it for free

The trick is combining fun with career. Doing fun things for free is not scalable as we do kinda need money to survive.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#217

Post by mnglkhn2 »

zatkin wrote: post #194
jfe wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ditto.

Please make more meaningful contributions rather than simply feeling similarities with other users. That is what the upvoting feature is for.

The comment can be considered a meaningful contribution as well. Dialog is not only information but also flow enablers and/or facilitators. The fact that (s)he expressed sympathy/approval might show that others think the same, which in itself if a tidbit, if not too small. But it can greatly help others to chime in and relate or expand.

If you block these expressions then you get a lecture/dissertation, chock full of info, but not a dialog within a community.

So the question is: what do you see HN to be: a knowledge repository or a place that allows technology-minded people to share and belong?

Re: I quit the tech industry

#218

Post by reitoei »

maccard wrote: post #142
reitoei wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they're idiots because there are plenty of really well-paying job in the tech industry.

I'd love to get some links to these high-paying jobs in Dublin? Last I checked, IBM were offering sub 30k for graduates, and Microsoft weren't far off the same amount. In US terms, that's 34k USD, for a city where you'll spend 800 dollars a month of your salary on renting a room, and another 170 dollars on communting by bus.

> Last I checked, IBM were offering sub 30k for graduates

You expect to walk into an 80k a year job straight out of college? Everyone has to start somewhere. If I was a graduate, I'd much rather be working sub 30k for IBM than sub 40k for Dublin's next Groupon killer/Airbnb for iguanas.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#219

Post by aaggarwal »

mtbcoder wrote: post #173
aaggarwal wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going to start working soon. This makes me think if full-time work is really worth it. Wouldn't multiple short-term contracts with regular breaks be able to cut it in today's world? Isn't there people with experience on working on short-term contracts and still living well-off?

> Isn't there people with experience on working on short-term contracts and still living well-off? This is just my opinion and I can only speak from a US perspective, but yes and no. The ones who are able to do this have already gotten a 10+ year head start and have built up a deep network from which to source work from. The ones who are starting out today are more than likely having a very tough go at it. Competitio…

You could be very right here, since most of the people I come across working on contracts are already in the market for at least 10 years. In today's market, for someone new starting out, I guess there will be cut-throat competition to get programming contracts, with people ready to work at a very low rate (e.g. on Freelancer, oDesk).

Re: I quit the tech industry

#220

Post by stephengillie »

yc1010 wrote: post #11

I have been working for myself for last 8 years after completing my masters, in hindsight financially I did not do too badly (tho there was some great and ups and incredible downs!) and it is NICE working from home and watching your kid grow (tho there are quite a lot of distractions!!! says he who is procrastinating reading HN :D ) BUT if I was offered a job with guaranteed employment and steady wages and (gaaasp pe…

> All of these taxes really make you ask yourself "why bother work harder and longer" and really kill any incentive to work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

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