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I quit the tech industry (2015)

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Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#71

Post by Swenrekcah »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #30
billllll wrote: post #14

I sympathize and did the same thing earlier this year: I quit my job to try and strike out on my own. For most tech companies, they sell you on this "mission" and tell you how valuable your work is. Then, you realize all you do is grease the wheels of bureaucracy. Any serious attempts of asking the question "how would anything be different if I didn't do my work" only leads to depressing answers. I've found the resul…

> For most tech companies, they sell you on this "mission" and tell you how valuable your work is. That's because hiring is marketing; they're selling a job to you, you pay them in your labor and attention span. Nobody will be attracted to a job where the description says what it is - e.g. "legacy enterprise java application maintenance". Nobody wants to work a job that is just to fill a seat.

Plenty of people are mechanics and garbage collectors and janitors.

Stuff needs doing, I think there wouldn’t be a shortage of people to do it provided the pay is competitive.

In fact I think job happiness would be better if your actual job is more aligned with what you signed up for.

I guess part of the problem is that the companies themselves don’t want to admit they need maintenance workers because they want to be innovative entrepreneurial company where everyone is doing something innovative and new and exciting!

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#72

Post by [deleted] »

haswell wrote: post #25
logical_ferry wrote: post #13

It's pays off to be rich. Not having to work is a luxury. I love money too much to simply take a year off, even if I could afford it. I would think about the opportunity cost the entire time. Maybe I just haven't had a proper burn out yet.

As someone who once couldn’t imagine burning the cash, I’m a month into a 6-12 month sabbatical after finally burning out pretty hard. My advice to my former self would be to take extended time before it became a borderline personal crisis. The funny thing about that opportunity cost - I’m now spending time just building the energy to use this time away for things I find personally interesting. Had I taken the time s…

[deleted]

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#73

Post by amitport »

anthropodie wrote: post #63
21723 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually, when the money runs out, they return with their tails between their legs, often in shittier jobs that they'd have had if they'd stuck with it. You're right about the grass being greener. The tech industry is an absolute plague, but most other industries are just as bad. In the long term, and for most of us, the only way to escape this garbage system is to blow it up.

> Usually, when the money runs out, they return with their tails between their legs, often in shittier jobs that they'd have had if they'd stuck with it. People are trying to figure out their lives or how they want to live. There is nothing wrong in coming back to what they had quit. Making fun of other people's life choices is very immature in my opinion.

I read the previous comment as a figure of speech, not making fun of anyone.

It's a writing style (mannerism?) but not necessarily ill-intentioned.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#74

Post by barry-cotter »

nnoitra wrote: post #62

To become really succesful in a tech career the demands are simply too great even if you are in the top percentile in IQ. To go to a good university you literally have to be super focused in high-school and do all sorts of extracurricular activities and basically things that look good on a college application. No one cares if you were a caretaker for your grandma. But then once you are in university you haven't even…

You can skip all the school and college stuff though. People get MAGMA jobs off of bad tech jobs and grinding leetcode and nothing else.

> My bonafides: I’m a college drop-out with a background in mathematics who went from teaching and having almost no coding experience to working at a big tech company in SV in ~3 years. The result is not typical, but I’ve seen it repeated enough to know that I’m not just a fluke. I recently saw another college drop-out make the jump in 18 months.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31385015

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#75

Post by barrysteve »

logical_ferry wrote: post #17
noufalibrahim wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I echo this sentiment. My "real life" has improved massively because of the fact that I work in technology. Money can't solve all your problems but there is a class of important problems that only money can solve effectively and tech. is a good way of making that money. I'm extremely grateful for this and wouldn't diss it. On a more general level, the stress of working on multiple projects, dealing with different kin…

Once you realize work is work and not some romantic endeavour, then things become easier. All I read from this guy's post is a lot of bitching about how the work he has to do is meaningless and hard and it is just getting in the way of his hobbies. I once read a good line: Be thankful for all the problems out there otherwise you would be out of a job. This guy is lucky he had the money to buy his way out of this situ…

All work and no play makes jack a dull boy... so he quits.

You shouldn't have to buy yourself out of slavery if the situation could be solved with thursday afternoons at home.

People are sensing a coming economic collapse and are clamping down on employee's lives and the employees leave, which makes the management clamp down even harder on the next guy for fear of a collapse and the cycle brings about what they are trying to avoid.

Just give people time off to be homo sapiens and you might have employees you can call on when things get really bad.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#76

Post by hugg »

kettleballroll wrote: post #60
21723 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that, while it may not be selfish to have kids, most people who are having kids do it for selfish reasons. They don't want to "die alone". They want to show that they can afford it. They want to vicariously get into Harvard and work in publishing (if traditional publishing still exists in the 2040s at all) and live some imagined high life... even though the probabilities are minuscule and most children are…

Whoa, that's a lot of super weird assumptions you're making. Fwiw, neither myself nor any other parent i ever met even gets in the remote vicinity of the picture you're painting. It sounds to me like you just have shitty parent-friends in your bubble? But rest assured that there a legion of other parents out there who neither got kids because they're afraid to die alone nor want to force their own wishes and life goa…

I mean most people (like you) seem to justify having kids in a selfish way (self-growth, experiences).

As someone who doesn't want my own kids (but like kids and spend time with them), I feel no need to have my own

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#77

Post by logical_ferry »

21723 wrote: post #49
yodsanklai wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds to me like a very selfish view of life It's not selfish not to have kids. And in western countries, spouses/parents can take care of themselves financially.

I'd argue that, while it may not be selfish to have kids, most people who are having kids do it for selfish reasons. They don't want to "die alone". They want to show that they can afford it. They want to vicariously get into Harvard and work in publishing (if traditional publishing still exists in the 2040s at all) and live some imagined high life... even though the probabilities are minuscule and most children are…

There is nothing less selfish than havint kids. The amount of sacrifice you have to put in is huge. If you are not on board with that, don't have kids.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#78

Post by enrichyourlife »

kettleballroll wrote: post #60
21723 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that, while it may not be selfish to have kids, most people who are having kids do it for selfish reasons. They don't want to "die alone". They want to show that they can afford it. They want to vicariously get into Harvard and work in publishing (if traditional publishing still exists in the 2040s at all) and live some imagined high life... even though the probabilities are minuscule and most children are…

Whoa, that's a lot of super weird assumptions you're making. Fwiw, neither myself nor any other parent i ever met even gets in the remote vicinity of the picture you're painting. It sounds to me like you just have shitty parent-friends in your bubble? But rest assured that there a legion of other parents out there who neither got kids because they're afraid to die alone nor want to force their own wishes and life goa…

> It's rather that despite all those sacrifices, kids enrich your life, and they allow tremendous opportunity for self-growth and a host of experiences that are hard to replicate otherwise.

This is the reason why most people have kids. This doesn't entirely contradicts the parent post though: People are having kids for their self benefits.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#79

Post by jseban »

barrysteve wrote: post #70
jseban wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree about the criticism against long working hours, but it's unfortunate I think to use the nuclear family as an example of another superior example here, to shove people further into another old fashioned failing arbitrary power structure comes a bit short as a vision of a better alternative.

What's arbitrary about a family? It's changed in size over the history of homo sapiens, but it has always existed and is pretty obviously a biological necessity and unavoidable natural law for us. The arguments against it are entirely abstract and ungrounded.

You assign an enormous amount of special status to certain people who you happen to be related to by blood, and that's arbitrary. It works when it works, and it doesn't work when it doesn't.

What natural law says it's better to spend time with/live only with people who are related to by blood? The only necessity for reproduction is sexual intercourse. A family is susceptible to the same abuse and corruption as any other arbitrary power structure.

The arguments against it are the divorce rates, and they are not abstract or ungrounded.

Re: I quit the tech industry (2015)

#80

Post by nnoitra »

barry-cotter wrote: post #74
nnoitra wrote: post #62

To become really succesful in a tech career the demands are simply too great even if you are in the top percentile in IQ. To go to a good university you literally have to be super focused in high-school and do all sorts of extracurricular activities and basically things that look good on a college application. No one cares if you were a caretaker for your grandma. But then once you are in university you haven't even…

You can skip all the school and college stuff though. People get MAGMA jobs off of bad tech jobs and grinding leetcode and nothing else. > My bonafides: I’m a college drop-out with a background in mathematics who went from teaching and having almost no coding experience to working at a big tech company in SV in ~3 years. The result is not typical, but I’ve seen it repeated enough to know that I’m not just a fluke. I…

That's really impressive but you sell yourself short. You did do the college stuff just not in CS but in a related difficult field.

And then you had ultra high discipline to work hard for 3 years on top of that to break into software engineering. You didn't skip the process you just did it a bit differently but roughly in the same ballpark of difficulty,

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