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I quit the tech industry

eev.ee

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Re: I quit the tech industry

#61

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Retric wrote: post #56
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?

A 40 hour a week job works out to ~1/3 of your time while awake which is fine. ~(40 * 48)/(16 * 365) The problem is it's easy to get worse than that add a 1h each way commute and 10 hour days, and skip vacations that's half your waking life. ~(60 * 50)/(16 * 365) And of course you need a few hours a day just for prep time and meals etc so quickly you only get free time to relax on the weekends.

Right; its important to realize that the marginal cost of work hours goes up geometrically. There are only so many in the day, and each remaining one becomes more desperately important.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#62

Post by yc1010 »

jahnu wrote: post #50
yc1010 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try this calculator, in the last few years taxes have increased a lot. Also keep in mind if you are a director of a company (Startup etc) you lose a good chunk of your tax credits Anyways to answer your question, play around with calculator http://download.pwc.com/ie/budget-2015/index.html A single 30 year old (average age of HNers?) earning €100K will receive €58,869 after all the income taxes From this money he/she…

If you can't live well €100K in Ireland you are doing something wrong. Do you realise that you are in the top ~12% of household income with that sort of money? I do sometimes wonder what kind of self-awareness people have of their status.

I just pulled a round figure that someone working in tech either in US or EU would be expecting

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-developer...

A lot of HN readers are from US and would be shocked at the tax rates here (on everything) and they further shocked as to how little we get to see for our tax money (no free healthcare etc)

Re: I quit the tech industry

#64

Post by fsloth »

seivan wrote: post #41
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…

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.

" all software companies rush so hard."

I suppose it depends on the business model the software is part of. If you want a pace that is compatible with proper engineering I would suggest looking into companies that deal with products whose lifetime is measured in decades such as CAD vendors or other highly technical software.

All freshmen to software engineering have this weird idea that a piece of code can ship once it builds and just shipping as much code as much as possible is the best road to maximize productivity.

Until they get hit in their faces time and again by recurring bugs and they start to understand that the way to manage long term software profitably is by making sure as few bugs as possible leave the software engineers desk, at which point best practices and long term planning starts to take hold.

That's at least my view, YMMV to a large extent, probably.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#65

Post by shalmanese »

It's sad to me that the industry is pushing out so many great people because they feel so disenfranchised by it. I believe technology is one of the most potent forces of good in the world but for that to sustain, a culture has to develop around it with a deep desire to solve serious, large problems.

I attended my first (and last) Hackathon a couple of weeks ago because it was immigration themed and so I thought I could meet some smart, thoughtful people. The pitches were mostly terrible with a few more decent ones sprinkled through as you would expect from a Hackathon.

One of the pitches that was made though, was "Greendir", a Tinder for Green Card marriages. Now, I fully support the guy's desire to pitch whatever idea he chooses but it was depressing to me that Greendir turned out to be the most popular app on the pitch board and the one the most people indicated they wanted to work on. It just seemed to me to be the epitome of the "we're in it for ourselves", move fast and break things, easy X-meets-Y description, get rich quick schemes attitude that is increasingly gaining mindshare in the tech industry.

It really made me wonder, what did these people come to this weekend to do? Why were they giving up their precious time? Because they wanted to be entertained and have a laugh? Or because they believed their powers could be meaningfully leveraged to solve hard problems that have the potential to fundamentally alter people's lives? Furthermore, what impression does it give to the newly entering workers in the tech field who use events like hackathons to get connected into a community of peers and who subconsciously absorb the value of those peers?

Fortunately, I'm seeing the other side of the picture too. I'm in the process of building a startup right now with a serious social mission (we want to get people excited about donating to charity by doing for charity what Whole Foods did for organic foods). I reach out to my network and I see my friends who came up 5 - 20 years ago in tech having the same frustrations by the triviality that's morphed the industry over the last couple of years. The outpouring of support has exceeded, by an order of magnitude, that of any previous startup I've worked on and I think it's precisely because there's a real yearning to see entrepreneurs solving hard problems with large impacts.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#66

Post by DanielBMarkham »

In a way, this is a good argument for contracting, as long as you do it right.

If you know useful stuff, people will always offer you a bag of money to help them out. It is extremely rare that you get the bag of money and you get to do exactly what your passion is. Heck, most of us just have some vague idea of what our passion is anyway. So it's always some sort of compromise.

But with contracting, you should be looking at a fixed amount of time working, then a fixed amount of "downtime", then back to the market again. You should ask for enough money in the bag (or adjust your expenses) so that both the uptime and downtime is included in the payout. Otherwise you become a prisoner of your own lifestyle -- which is a godawful place to be.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#67

Post by JoeAltmaier »

CrLf wrote: post #59

"I’ve worked remotely my whole career" I wonder how much of a role does this play in (not) caring about your employer's problems... As much as I can understand the benefits of working remotely on occasion, doing it all the time will cause a kind of disconnect all by itself. You see the problems as your employer's problems, instead of your team's problems. Your are fixing your employer instead of helping your teammate…

That's a social problem we'll have to address as remote working becomes ubiquitous. It helps if the remote environment is more immersive, with the team aware of each others' presence and activity even when they're not directly communicating. Keeps your head in the space, so to speak.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#68

Post by harkyns_castle »

nine_k wrote: post #4

> I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to sit at this desk and I’m going to work on whatever the hell I feel like working on. > I don’t know how to turn this into dollars yet. Hopefully I’ll figure that out. Well, good luck. I'm just afraid the reality will kick in soon. Tech industry is by far not the worst way to get some food for fifty picnics; many others are much more soul-crushing, with less chance to retire early…

Very much agreed. It sounds like OP is a bit burnt out, and I had much the same thing - I said to myself I'll do my own thing, I've done the hard yards, I'll just sit down to think of something, got a few good ideas... time keeps ticking though, and unless you have endless cash, the bills will keep rolling in. Discipline and focus I guess is pretty important to doing the solo thing.

It's easy to forget the plethora of shit jobs out there once you've been doing software development/ops/IT for a while. Sure, its painful, and some companies more than others, but I agree with another poster that often it's more what you put on yourself versus what's forced on you (at least in my case I think that was often true). I guess it's vital to look for that work/life balance and a company that will offer that (not just lip service); or do your own thing, but that can be pretty hard work too - it's not just coding then, it's all the roles, even the ones you hate.

If there were an easy answer, we'd all be doing it.

[edit] added bit.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#69

Post by mgkimsal »

CrLf wrote: post #59

"I’ve worked remotely my whole career" I wonder how much of a role does this play in (not) caring about your employer's problems... As much as I can understand the benefits of working remotely on occasion, doing it all the time will cause a kind of disconnect all by itself. You see the problems as your employer's problems, instead of your team's problems. Your are fixing your employer instead of helping your teammate…

Even if you're f2f, at some point, especially if you've worked a few places, you'll still see the same patterns of problems cropping up, and the same ennui will likely set it. Perhaps not as soon as for remote workers, but it will happen.

If you really bond with your teammates, but still see the same recurring problems, you'll almost certainly develop an 'us v them' mentality against 'management', justified or not (though, it likely will be justified if you're seeing jr-level mistakes constantly promoted as the next magic bullet).

Re: I quit the tech industry

#70

Post by pessimik »

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…

Go to Poland - 19% flat income tax rate for companies - you can get flat by 400 euro / month in biggest cities and work remotely for foreign clients.
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