This article is not a "I want to leave tech" article. It is an "I want to have more ownership of the nature of my work" article.
Practically every recommendation is also a tech job, its just not "big tech" where you have very little real decision making power.
Tech itself is not the issue here - tech being filled with high paying jobs where you effectively work on issues that directly damage humanity is the issue. And after you have a high paying job its hard to justify leaving it, and every other similarly paying job is basically the same thing in a different package.
This is the most important comment I've read in a while. It has become really easy to feel trapped in software as a trade even though I love working on software as much or more than ever in the details of the work. I'm fortunate that my current gig doesn't involve doing anything that I find directly objectionable in a Hippocratic Oath sense (though some might, its trading stuff which I long ago decided is about a 1.01 out of Meta on a scale of 1 to OpenAI).
The thing is that the software business has discovered its Three Big Lies:
- Everything is Exponential (Sigmoids are For The Small Thinkers)
- Breaking The Law is Progress if You Do It With a Computer
- Computer People Know What's Best
Other industries that have become tentacled over the years have had similar Big Lies (High Finance has Price Movements are Gaussian Distributed for example, and Bailouts are The Business Cycle).
I'm at the age both in life and career terms where its like, this could be a cyclic thing and these assholes are going to get thrown out soon, or it could be I came of age in an aberrant exceptionally good time, this is how it always ends up.
What I do know is that that software is an effective tool for mitigating the damage of malware, excellent computers are cheap now, and so it might be possible to fund an effective resistance doing rewarding work for the greater good with frugality and some creativity about paying the bills, I'm still figuring out the details.
Everything that exists to make money, gradually takes it to an extreme as it becomes more difficult to make money on the up and up. Everything that doesn't exist to make money ends up existing to make money once it reaches a sufficient size - this includes nonprofits and charities.
This is one of the many reasons I tend to be vehemently in favor of decentralization. A lot of these problems are just because organizations become too large. It also feels kind of dystopic, or sterile at least, how you can be a thousand miles away and have a main street that looks largely indistinguishable from the one you just came from.
I don't really disagree with anything you've said, other than a vague sort of discomfort around practicality. I dislike market failures very much, I war-crime dislike engineered market failures (the two co-occur with alarming frequency).
But markets are effectively part of the natural world: if you engineer the most oppressive, regimented, panopticon nightmare prison available to human deviousness you will succeed in creating a black market, not in eliminating markets.
So any solution has to be about preventing market failures, not eliminating markets. If North Korea can't effectively inhibit markets from forming, it's a pretty convincing demonstration that no acceptable amount of anti-market intervention is going to be okay.
Like I said, I'm broadly sympathetic to your view. I was just pointing out that you led with "things that exist to make money..." and while the point you raise is true (or often true), its kind of an unsolved problem.
On halting monopolies I would vote and canvas for you if you ran on it.
I agree about the appeal of decentralization, I just don't know how to make it happen in a world where centralized control is enforced by MQ-9 Reaper drones with sole executive discretion on "kill or capture" of anyone and decentralization is considered a national security priority.
An example would be the people who argue that inherently sovereign and anonymous money would liberate people. What it would do is get you shot for fucking with the Mint.
I suppose I'm guilty of the high crime of replying on a phone where the usernames are small, you were continuing a line of thought and I answered the renewed objections to my very reasonable point. `somenameforme` and `spacedmadness` look a lot alike at 8pt.
This is one of those comments where I'm like, I bet the big LLM can write a FireFox extension that will block HN comments by username now...
I think there's a dividing line in society between those who understand systems and those who don't. The systems people look at the non-systems people as stupid; the non-systems people look at the systems people as evil.
Some of those insights are overused cliches at this point.
My pet peeve is the "S-curve argument":
> Everything is Exponential (Sigmoids are For The Small Thinkers)
Yes, that's technically true because universe is finite, yadda yadda, but in practice where you are on the curve and your time horizon matters. Plenty of things are still effectively exponential[0], and I feel some people bring up sigmoids specifically because they you squint hard enough, it seems nicely and comfortably linear. But it isn't.
--
[0] - Random example from a recent HN discussion: total amount of all written text to date. It's obviously going to be a sigmoid (or worse, if disaster strikes), but right now, we're still before the inflection point, so I wouldn't short the stock of storage providers just yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44442770
It is absolutely going to be a sigmoid, because population in high-literacy areas is crashing generally to name but one antecedent, and so your example is not even a particularly good one.
But really what you're doing is arguing for a nasty status quo with a bunch of deflective name-calling because this is hard to argue against in good faith: calling a potent, contrarian-to-the-gravy-train argument a "cliche", and in so doing implying that it is "asked and answered", that it has been raised, addressed, and disposed of, is the worst kind of argument on 2025 HN. To the extent that it's been raised before and is being raised again, it's precisely because no one has addressed in a satisfying way. And we're going to keep raising it until someone does.
Saying "we're in the the pre-inflection part of a sigmoid" is not the same as manipulating everything from stock markets to wars premised on log-scale-and-ruler math.
"They are not identical. The aspects you are willing to ignore are more important than the aspects you are willing to accept. Robbery is not just another way of making a living, rape is not just another way of satisfying basic human needs, torture is not just another way of interrogation." - Erik Naggum
I guess it depends on perspective, or maybe circles you frequent. I for one am tired of sigmoids, I truly perceive them to be a tired cliche. Hell, most people haven't even grasped exponential growth to this day, and here we are, pointing at the ending and implying they can skip the beginning.
Litmus test: when you hear soundbites like "in the last N years alone, the world used more energy/emitted more CO2 / did more whatever than it did in all recorded history", are you shocked? Surprised? If so, you failed to understand what exponential growth means. I mean, I assume you do understand this, but most people don't.
> implying that it is "asked and answered", that it has been raised, addressed, and disposed of, is the worst kind of argument on 2025 HN
If it were, I wouldn't have written my comment in the first place. I see the HN commentariat, on average, to be still enamored with sigmoids, treating the s-curve nature of growth in real world as some profound insight that invalidates the entire concept of exponential growth.
> Saying "we're in the the pre-inflection part of a sigmoid" is not the same as manipulating everything from stock markets to wars premised on log-scale-and-ruler math.
For one, it worked (and still does), so there's that. But secondly, this is not just about capitalism and wars. It's everywhere. COVID-19 was actually a nice demonstration. Yes, infections ultimately followed a sigmoid, as they were expected to, but the first part of the sigmoid is exponential, it was also the part that mattered at the beginning, and which most people across all social and economical strata failed to grasp.
Also thanks for the Naggum quote. I do consider myself a moral being and I am proud to be firmly in the S-expression camp.
Worked for who? Because behind the Valley I see a trail of broken technooptimist promises ranging from the ones so egregious their peddlers are in prison (SBF, Holmes), I see entire continents and cultures at war with a fundamentally antidemocratic surveilanvce capitalism, I see an entire clique of TESCREAL/EA psychos in positions of terrifying power, openly on the record about antidemocratic, authoritarian agendas (Thiel and everyone who has ever shaken his hand, Yarvin at the "quiet part out loud" end of the spectrum, pmarca and pg in the sort of edgy libertarian / still wants some mainstream acceptability tension zone, down to gladhanding collaborators of every stripe in the Roganverse, every shade in between: all rich, all anti competition, all anti democrocratic institution).
I see all of the CEOs lined up at the inauguration kissing the ring, buying up the commons that the DoD and Bell Labs built with taxpayer dollars into oligarchic empires straight out of Russia circa 92-94.
And at the apex of the Altman Era you have the swindler in chief peddling the absurdity that we weren't deep into the LLM asymptote a fucking year ago with implications ranging from wild infringements on the power of states to enforce their regulations in conflict with "AI Innovation..." /cuts to Amodei/ ..."to stay competitive with China!"
This is a fucking disaster for everyone but a small clique of Battery-frequenting bottom feeders who a better generation would have put in prison for crimes innumerable.
But it works for a few people. Those people are building bunkers though, and its not to keep out rogue AI.
I think that my understanding of how systems work has had very differing degrees of effectively translating into other regimes. Math and the hard sciences? Very effective, doing stuff in biotech or something has always been a fruitful two way street.
But for human systems? Eh... Yeah I struggle with agreeing there. I think much harm has come from trying to think about human systems like computer systems both in the small of my own immediate life and in larger regimes. No matter how you feel about Elon Musk and DOGE? That didn't look like it went great for either side of that equation to mention one recent high-profile exanple. That looked pretty lose/lose.
I agree: systems thinkers' inability to fully represent the complexity of human systems is a large part of why non systems thinkers think systems thinkers are evil.
Having systems thinking is a bit like being Cassandra: doomed to know the future yet doomed never to be believed.
What's odd is that you'd think tribal thinkers would respond to a track record of being proven correct but they emphatically do not. Moreover they're invariably convinced that you too think tribally.
As an example, I can think of one politician (edit: not trump) who is definitely a systems thinker (who is not nice, but is successful and generally outplays his opponents because of it) and ~80% of Hacker News is convinced beyond the shadow of any doubt that he's an evil idiot loser who invariably makes stupid mistakes.
> As an example, I can think of one politician who is definitely a systems thinker (who is not nice, but is successful and generally outplays his opponents because of it) and ~80% of Hacker News is convinced beyond the shadow of any doubt that he's an evil idiot loser who always makes stupid mistakes.
Not sure whether you’re talking about the Orange Man, but calling him a systems thinker is a hard sell given the damage his tariffs, defunding, and other nonsense are causing.
i have a feeling that he sometimes listened to advisors who were capable of it, especially during his election campaigns but as you correctly point out the tariff clusterfuck was probably the most poignant example in recent history of where systems thinking was so desperately needed and so obviously lacking.
You have a man who was not part of the elite establishment and yet has managed to get wealthy by breaking the law and avoid getting caught, then managed to become president against all odds, twice.
Sure, he came from wealth, but plenty of other people came from even more wealth and had way more political connections and failed to become presidents.
Hate him all you want, but if achieving all that is not a form of intelligence and system knowledge, I don't know what is.
>People already distrusted the elites and the `deep state` and he marketed himself as the outsider who’d fix things.
Q: If this was such an obvious slam dunk on how to win the presidency, why didn't the Dems come up with such a candidate? Wouldn't that make them stupider than the Donald for such an obvious oversight of the electorate?
>That still isn’t sufficient evidence in his favor, given everything happening now.
Managing to become president twice is insuficient evidence?
> why didn't the Dems come up with such a candidate?
For one thing, the GOP have had a successful campaign over the last 50+ years to win the framing war. They're now able to present themselves as the plucky outsider who'll come in and fix things, even when they're not. Likewise, the Dems are *not* able to do this, even when they are.
"Good system thinker" was obviously meant in a self serving way that benefits himself and his cronies. I assumed that was obvious since we're talking about world leaders here, not nurses. Presidents aren't there to make YOUR life better.
All world leaders are cut from the same self serving cloth as you don't get to become a presidential nominee if you're a genuine threat to the establishment.
These kinds of selfish policies backfire when they cut the ground out from under you. Trump and his cronies live in the US and are predominantly invested there, and undermining the US in the long term also undermines them and their interests. The stability of the US correlates with the stability of their power, I would consider this to be basic systems-thinking on the scale of a nation.
>Grifters are systems thinkers but in a limited short sighted way.
For the average voter, the grifts are irelevant since all candidates do it anyway, they just want a candidate that executes on their dissatisfactions with the system and that turned out to be the Donald.
Just follow the portfolios of those who funded the campaigns of the presidential winner, it doesn't matter if it's Clinton, Bush, Trump or Obama, all politicians are grifters, since once elected they need to pay back via grifts those who funded their campaigns as that's the main reason wealthy elites spent million for their candidate to win, to get into grifts with the government that make them even richer.
>The morons who support them dont see why this is not the optimal strategy
What IS the optimal strategy? I think MAGA base is getting what they voted for (mass deportations and shit) so for them IT IS the optimal strategy.
They are gonna be sad about the health care cuts, and the hit to the economy from tariffs and kicking out the folks who do all the shit jobs, though. We'll see how they feel in a year or so.
Right. In 2019, I was like, I am worse off than 4 years ago, the Trump Presidency sucked. But in 2024, I was like, I'm worse off than 4 years ago, the Biden Administration sucked.
If you know both sides are going to leave you worse off, it's probably pretty understandable that I'm always mad at the last guy to take a strip off my ass.
If you're a systems thinker who can see the future then you can prove it in trading basically anything.
The number of people who have done this is vanishingly small (and skeptics raise credible objections about even the best examples).
Jim Simons was such a man, and (to the satisfaction of most) proved it. Some might say the same of Buffet. After that a list that started controversial rapidly gets into the zero consensus asymptote.
So if you genuinely believe that your systems thinking prowess is prescient in its scope like something out of a Herbert novel, I can point you the narrow way through: get an account on Interactive Brokers and ascend!
Well this is a new angle for MAGA isn’t it? Stop questioning him as he’s a stable genius with systems thinking. Nice try, but you’re going to have to own that one with a full explanation to get anywhere with it.
>Moreover they're invariably convinced that you too think tribally.
^^ this bit was in anticipation of a response exactly like yours.
I was actually referring to Putin. It was quite impressive to watch him successfully provoke sanctions to just about the level needed to result in a steady and sustainable level of import substitution and export oriented industrialization over the course of 12 years. It reminded me of that scene in die hard where the FBI cut the power.
This was the same thing Trump fell flat on his face trying to do even when he was setting his own tariffs.
Hiding what you’re talking about with no actual examples so you can spring a gotcha is just dumb, sorry. This is how the far right works generally online.
Glad this was the top comment. It is extremely easy to "leave tech" (or, as you point out, leave "big tech") - you just have to accept that you will most likely make substantially less money and that your "standard of living" will have to adjust accordingly.
I put "standard of living" in scare quotes because I strongly believe that, after a certain point in the US, people are conditioned by society and marketing to spend gobs of money on shit that doesn't make them happier and often actively makes them feel worse. I'm going through the process of moving and downsizing, and I can't even begin to go through the gobs of crap in my house that I'm throwing or giving away. Even home ownership itself is something that I feel is a bad lie - you're signing up to spend huge amounts of money to live in a box where you'll also need to spend huge amounts of money to slow its inevitable decay.
But I digress. The main point is that leaving (or changing) tech is easy, but you just have to have an honest conversation with yourself about how much you, your family and your self image requires a lot of money.
It always astounds me of how relatively well-off people simply cannot even fathom how the vast, vast majority of Americans with kids manage to get by without paying $2k/month/kid in childcare expenses.
OK, I'll bite. Are you a single parent? If so, I agree, but I think most single parents aren't worried about downsizing - they're worried about how to both work and raise their kids at the same time.
If you are in a situation with two parents making a professional level salary, which I suspect is the case given you stated paying $2k/kid/month for child care, well frankly you should STFU. In those cases, that is simply a choice you are making. There are certainly other options (which millions of people do because they don't have a choice), so you're not garnering much sympathy pleading poverty because you have to pay for your children's daycare.
> tech being filled with high paying jobs where you effectively work on issues that directly damage humanity is the issue. And after you have a high paying job its hard to justify leaving it, and every other similarly paying job is basically the same thing in a different package
A thousand times, yes.
And even if you find ethical jobs (e.g., paid-for and ethically committed open source work), they are much-much more difficult to do well. Distrust and secrecy are absolutely rampant between you and your (inevitably proprietary) partners; reverse engineering plays a central role. It's a warzone -- and the constant fighting, battling, against measures put in place by other humans, just takes the will to live out of me.
It should be possible for well-paying, ethical, interesting, and co-operative jobs to exist. They only exist as exceptions.
one of the reasons I find it hard to leave a high paying job is because "underpaid" has always been the best predictor of job toxicity.
In general (with a few exceptions like finance that are generally up front about what they are), the chillest, sanest jobs with the most accomodating environments tended to pay the best and vice versa.
I also have too many friends who tried sacrificing pay for better working conditions and more meaningful work and ended up bitter because they were sold a hollow dream.
A few years back I left “big tech” for a much lower paying tech-ish job that had a meaningful mission.
I was fine having a lower paying job, but what I didn’t expect was that the lower pay meant that the skill level for my colleagues was also much much lower. Years of the “Dead Sea effect” [0] had turned it into an environment where the blind were leading the blind and they weren’t even aware of how bad things were.
> one of the reasons I find it hard to leave a high paying job is because "underpaid" has always been the best predictor of job toxicity.
Being 'underpaid' is different than being paid less, though. Describing a job as underpaid is, almost by definition, assuming a company is exploiting its workforce. It's not hard to believe such a company would also be a toxic environment in other ways. But if two companies pay different amounts, but they're both paying a fair salary, it doesn't necessarily imply anything about the company that pays less.
Strong agree. It takes very little effort to pay someone a few more dollars, whereas all the other intangibles are a lot harder to offer. So it is exceptionally rare to find one without the other.
It blows my mind people feeling mistreated at X FAANG company just to go to Y FAANG company and expect any better treatment. They are all the same at this point. At least the unhinged career ladder climbers on Blind aren’t kidding themselves.
How “high paying” a job do you need though? My last three companies, I’ve worked on products that don’t involve marketing or data mining of any sort that I’d consider unethical. While they have certainly involved automating away jobs (car sales/bank loan people, pathologists, and now accountants, respectively), they were all software designed to benefit humanity.
And they all paid $180k+, the last two $200k+, in salary alone, plus benefits and equity. I only work over 40 hours if I’m working on something I’m passionate about. I realize FAANGs can go into the $400k+ range, but… do you really need that? Is it worth it? For the stress, the rat race, the pressure and all that?
Granted, they’ve been remote roles, and I live in North Carolina, not one of the HCOL metros (I don’t see how anyone can justify living in NYC, SF, or LA, honestly).
But like… this just seems untrue. There are plenty of good-paying, ethical roles to be had. Moreover, I’d say if you spend some time actively seeking out ethical, fairly (not excessively) compensated roles… they’ll find you, without you having to search for them.
I agree, in the same boat as you. There are a lot of tech jobs that are a net positive for society. I think you nailed it - once you have that salary giving up 400k, 600k, 800k TC is a really big decision.
> every other similarly paying job is basically the same thing in a different package.
Well, a lot of them. Not every. There are jobs at big tech companies where you work on good things benefiting society, like improving security in open-source, or developing a lot of the OSS tools out there. (Think Project Zero, or many of your favorite major OSS project, which are developed by engineers at big tech.) They are not nearly as common as other roles obviously, but they do exist, and it's worth at least attempting to get them.
A corollary to this is that “tech” is simply the method of accomplishing a business’ goals/objectives. At this point, all companies employ lots of hardware and software in their operations. No one working in a modern company can “leave tech,” but OP’s comment about “big tech” stands.
Working in smaller tech companies with worse pay is worse than working these tech jobs.
Most of your co-workers you cannot trust to do anything e.g. Today I was investigating an issue (screen for X not updating). I open the dashboard and there was a sea of read over my console. They hadn't even checked the terminal for errors.
> Tech itself is not the issue here - tech being filled with high paying jobs where you effectively work on issues that directly damage humanity is the issue.
That is a matter of point of view. I've worked in industries that most consider amoral. I've had the most job satisfaction from working in those industries. I actually got to do interesting work. Every other job has me over-engineering basic web apps because they are a <Azure/Sitecore/AWS/Google Cloud> partner.
The worst job was working for a large charity, do you know why? They literally pissed money away on bullshit, while collecting large sums of via unpaid volunteers. That sickened me and so I left.
What kind of business? Most of the dream ones people envision are capital-intensive and failure-prone (speaking as someone who started a capital intensive business that failed)
I think the problem is the "dream ones" part. Yes, everyone would love to make tons of money with very little work. But that almost guarantees high risks or very high capital exposure. There are countless small business opportunities that you could operate from home with almost no risk or exposure if you have a car and can afford some basic tools. But you won't get rich - or at least you'll have to work your ass off for a while.
My dream job was a specialty retail store - not low effort or tons of money, but hopefully something that could grow into a lifestyle business. Imagine something like a bicycle shop. Trust me when I say I have worked my ass off.
The only small businesses I know that are succeeding in my area are basically services - restaurants, cafes, etc. They rely on exploiting a bunch of underpaid workers in a way I wouldn't ever want to.
In your other comment it sounds like you're just kind of doing "handyman" stuff in a low CoL area. It's great if you can handle your own plumbing, electrical, etc. but there's definitely a ceiling on how much work you can get as a single, unlicensed person with a van driving around. Maybe that's enough to live on but it doesn't feel like a sustainable plan for 30 years.
You seem to have confused the comments. I'm an employee living in one of the highest CoL areas in the world. But I know quite a few who run small businesses here and make use of that fact to the fullest extent. They can charge insane amounts of money for minimum quality work that wouldn't even put enough food on the table, let alone afford any luxury at home elsewhere. In the countryside I imagine you'd actually need to bring some talent or do quality work as well and not just make use of unsaturated business markets in overeducated areas.
Plumber, carpenter, welder, electrician etc. In the countryside where I live, I do all of these when I feel like it for myself, friends and sometimes strangers in trouble (pipe burst, no power). It pays well; I could live of that and save very comfortably here if I did it half of the time, but I only do it the odd few hours while people begging for welding jobs, wooden doors, etc. It can be a nice little business, especially if you can find employees and move on to house building or renovations, but it will never be bigger than that was of course, you would be in the countryside.
My wife and I moved to a rural area after covid. You're not magically saving money by doing so. And there is a shit load more work in terms of maintenance. I like it but this is such a strange recommendation.
Even if you don’t live paycheck to paycheck, the life style of owning a place AND living off your investments, is extremely hard to pull off.
You most likely need to be single (or couple both in tech), no kids, making FAANG salary, living frugally (no travel, no expenses outside of food, shelter and necessities). Or you need to use geo arbitrage, which again means probably no kids, while being able to secure a high paying remote job in the US.
I wish it was more affordable, but it’s not. Therefor advice like “buy a house and live off your investments” are equivalent to filling a winning lottery ticket.
You don't need the "buy the house" part, which is actually bad advice now - renting is now half the cost of home ownership in many areas of the US.
But I strongly believe you're making this out to be much more difficult than it is if you are making decent (not "FAANG level") tech-type salaries. Where I live tech jobs generally pay at about double the amount of people in trades, for example. E.g. a mid-level software engineer is making at least 160-180k, while a trades person (plumber, etc.) with similar experience is making 80-90k.
So obviously if you can live at the level of these trades people, you can save up enough to be able to live without a salary for some time.
The problem is that most people just get used to their standard of living and find it hard to downsize. That's fine, but it's still very much a choice.
The problem with what you say is that you need to be in such environment. Not everyone pays good salaries. Europe is far behind US salaries. In US high salaries are concentrated around SF, which in turn means high cost of living, or subpar living conditions (I couldn’t imagine myself living with roommates in my 30s for example, and what do you do when having a relationship?)
And then comes the downsizing. Sure you can live only with necessities, but then question do you want to find yourself in mid thirties, or early forties, without any travel experiences, no relationship, living in your parents basement? I exaggerate a bit, but the math does not work out. You either live very frugally, or you use exploit geo arbitrage (low cost of living area, with a high paying remote job). There are no other shortcuts.
Every time this topic comes up, I'm a little astounded how whiny people get.
First, I wholly agree Europe salaries are far worse. But in the US, there are plenty of locales besides SF that pay comparatively high tech salaries (I live in Texas). But the main point is that making a professional software engineer-level salary at a tech company with 5+ years of experience in a mid-to-large American city should put you squarely in the top 10% of American earners. I mean, what you decry as "very frugally" is simply figuring out how the vast, vast majority of Americans manage to get by. It kind of reminds me of those NYT articles that would explain how people were basically living paycheck-to-paycheck on $500k a year: private school costs $X, a nanny costs $Y, Upper East Side co-op costs $Z. I'm like yeah, no shit Sherlock, expensive stuff is expensive, but don't pretend forgoing that stuff means you're living in poverty.
It's not whiny, in exact terms, it's something much worse: people not wanting to admit they can have agency.
You see this a ton on social media. People make excuses after excuses of why they can't get out of debt, why they can't lose weight, why they can't…
And, sure, some people have it tough and have the odds stacked against them. But most people would just prefer to swat down ideas on how to get what they want like they're playing Beat Saber.
(And I can be sure that someone will come through and accuse me of being insensitive because I haven't considered someone who has X, Y, or Z that only impacts .5% of the population, and almost never the person making the complaint.)
Agreed. Nearly all of the arguments I see about this (again, from people who are relatively extremely well off) boil down to "but it's not easy!" Well, you got me there, but it often isn't nearly as hard as people make it out to be, it's just they have locked themselves in to a particular lifestyle and change is difficult.
That is true, but it's not out of reach for "most people" who have been paid professional software engineer-level salaries in mid-to-large cities in the US for a few years or more, which I'd guess is a substantial portion of the readership of this site.
Please keep us up-to-date on how that goes. It sounds like you are having progress.
Most of the smart and talented people I know that dropped out to create companies abandoned them and ended in someone else’s company later. The two exceptions were salesmen who ended up becoming rich after selling their companies.
What you're describing is essentially the whole FIRE movement (financial independence, retire early). While I find adherents to that movement can be "culty"/extreme around the edges, the general advice of living below your means so that you can then have at least some number of years where you can engage in a more meaningful use of your time (doesn't have to be "retire") is good advice.
That’s not FIRE. FIRE is keep your tech job, live very frugaly, invest, maybe make some other passive income, then actually retire. OP is rather focusing on getting out of tech to do something else but it is still going to be work. Maybe a lot of work. They’re downsizing lifestyle because they’re also downsizing their pay.
I don't think it's worth it to "No True Scotsman" this, but there are plenty of people who go by FIRE principles, which are generally to live below your means so you can be more financially independent later (which is exactly what OP was focusing on), without actually retiring completely. In fact, most people don't retire completely because they find they get bored as hell.
How to life well as an independently wealthy computer person is an important question to address and I encourage you to continue addressing it because it sounds like you'd give better advice than most.
You might find the messaging more effective if it was declared in more direct terms though, its a pretty different problem than still needing to make a living when computers are your stock in trade.
Because for the rest of the world rural (or a village) means literally rural or a village. What the people from the developed world may never understand is the wide gigantic chasm between urban and rural here, in every aspect of(un)imaginable.
It means that here too. There's no infrastructure where my I'm at. No power, water, there's a very rough private road and that's it. It's very far away from pretty much everyone.
I actually grew up in a place like this (yes they exist in the US) so I know how it goes.
Off topic, I started working in tech because I enjoyed it. That it was also well paid was a nice coincidence. You can be in the grind and be unaware of that.
Of course people like this still suffer due to overexposure to work and js frameworks; and many eventually grow to dislike tech jobs and want to leave.
Why would anyone work in tech? Because making something that didn't exist before is kind of a thrill. (No, that is not the same as cranking through Jira tickets...)
Right. That's what got me into tech, too. Turned out to be mostly a lie - most jobs aren't making anything exciting or new (except maybe for the wealthy in the financial sense), and those that do tend to limit your autonomy.
Now I stay in tech for the same reason most people stay in their careers - it's comfortable and pays well, but because that's mostly a function of "time served"[0], it also means that I'm trapped now. I can't just switch fields anymore - at this stage of life, switching is a major multi-year project!
(Also I question whether it would help. Working in some field never looks much like you imagine while being outside of it.)
--
[0] - Tech has an unusually large multiplier here, but the trend is the same as with any other job.
Exciting and new doesn't necessarily mean novel. I get quite excited when I build a new bit of code that solves a frequent pain point for someone. It's likely built on a boring framework, in a boring language, wouldn't work at scale, and solves a boring problem only a few people have, but the drug makes for a nice little high, and the small business world has a huge supply.
That thrill is present in any creative endeavor. If you like tech and enjoy that thrill, yeah, work in tech. At the same time, if you are tired of tech and want that thrill, go make something else. I'm a collector of hobbies at this point, having at least dabbled (if not more) in woodworking, stone carving, jewelry making, furniture upholstery, fused glass, painting, drawing, sculpture, clothing design, and creating nature trails in our forest. They all give that thrill.
Tech pays better, though - so I work in tech to pay the bills, then spend the money on tools to get that creative thrill somewhere else.
Note that this joy is not unique to tech. Carpenters, farmers, painters, etc, all make things that didn’t exist before. Some of them haven’t heard about Jira.
First thing to do is get used to a much lower salary. Mostly kidding but channeling how often I see sentiments online of people saying they want to leave tech and then balk at the salaries normal people have.
When I left big tech for doing tech at a nonprofit, I had to keep reminding myself that even though I took a 66% pay cut I was still making ~double the median wage. By all accounts the job I had with a pay cut was still seen as a “good, high-paying job” in the community
In a past life I worked at a nonprofit. In an attempt to woo higher quality engineers we bumped our salaries as high as we possibly could. It worked to an extent, more mission driven people would come from Big Tech to join us. But despite them taking a huge paycut they were still getting paid a lot more than engineers in other areas of our company. And that, as you point out, was still a fantastic wage in the grand scheme of things relative to the rest of the country.
Well a lot of those folks got themselves trapped in a mortgage possibly with a family. I see it all the time here in the Bay. People think they’re on top of the world, buy a house, then start to have second thoughts. Then they’re trapped and will lose out by selling and downsizing. They don’t want to do that, so complain and stick with their job fearing layoffs and hating life.
I’ve heard this argument many times; some of those times it came out of my own mouth.
the thing is… if you and your spouse get a 25% bump in salary right now, a year or so from now it is likely you’d write the exact same comment as this one above even though a year ago you were in the same boat and obviously managed beautifully without the extra 25%… :)
> I want to significant change, but not to my income!
I realize that life is expensive, but if you feel stuck, not needing a high salary gives you more options. It's often easier to control spending than income.
> I want significant change, but not to my income!
That's not it. The issue is (as the GGP mentions) irreversibility (and, I'd add, unpredictability). When you go for a less-paying job, two things are sure: (1) it'll be nearly impossible to return to the previous (better paying) job, if shit hits the fan, (2) the new job will pay a lot less than you are used to (and what your entire current way of living is based upon) from day 1. Whereas, what you desire in return for this, is totally unpredictable: the new job might or might not give you the meaning and inspiration you are seeking; and you'll only learn the outcome months later.
Thus, the negatives are immediate and certain, while the positives are delayed and uncertain. It's a totally irrational and fiscally irresponsible choice.
Of course, sometimes you do have to make that choice; for example when you get psychosomatic symptoms from the stress and the violation of your core identity at work. But then -- let's be clear about it -- the decision does not come from "carefully weighing the pros and cons"; you do it (literally) to survive.
> I almost died [...] to this day I still suffer from chronic issues. This whole experience forced me to slow down, accept my limits, and reframe my plans for the future. It was very liberating: I was forced to quit the rat race [...] I started to appreciate the freedom that comes from restrictions.
You don't implement such life-uprooting changes, you don't take such risks until/unless you have no other way to survive. These changes are inaccessible through reasoning.
It's easier to move in one direction than the other :). People have goals, getting a bump in salary lets them achieve those goals faster; getting a 75% cut on the salary means undoing all that and then some.
Not to mention, costs of everything also go up, and our bodies are not getting younger and healthier either. If you're to give up your current salary for the one you had 5 years ago, you wouldn't afford the kind of life you had 5 years ago.
If you want to leave tech you should save up for 4-5 years of expenses to accomodate for under-employment, downsize your lifestyle to fit a household income under 80k, and then reskill in another field.
I have tried to move away incrementally from the tech industry by working less and consulting, and it is not effective. There's simply nothing else you can do that pays as well for so little effort. It draws you back in like a tarpit because there's always more work to do. Committing to a clean break and immersing yourself in a new field seems like the better approach.
Assuming that you save 1/3rd of your monthly net income, and spend only 2/3rds of it on expenses -- which I believe is already beyond what most people can do --, and that you are already frugal (which means that you don't have easily cuttable expenses [*]), you'd need to save twice as long as you planned to live off of those savings. If you wanted a buffer for 4-5 years, you'd need to pinch every penny for 8-10 years, and do that -- presumably -- while you are in your thirties, and raising kids. This can work, but mostly as an exception, I think.
[*] I don't consider expenses that improve health and lifestyle "cuttable" -- organic food, locally produced meat, food supplements / vitamins, therapy, dentist, gym / sports, etc. I've recently learned that even holiday trips (which are insanely expensive, assuming you are not from the US, to the point of being financially injustifiable) are crucial for mental and marital health.
If you don't consider any expenses "cuttable" you're not downsizing. Especially taking expensive vacations? I travel a couple times a year domestically by driving and it's very manageable.
One of the happiest periods of my life was when I was working for a non-profit tech company building software for humanitarian work (human rights documentation, labour law compliance, election monitoring etc), after working a full decade in capital markets trading systems. Half the salary for 2 years, did a number on my savings, but it recharged me enough to return to the industry, with expertise in a new tech stack. It was in fact during this period I became a regular reader/contributor to HN.
I understand that this option may not be available to all. I suppose my point is that you may not actually need to leave the industry permanently. Just long enough for you to recharge and find a way to repel the BS without psychological trauma (and without causing psychological trauma to others).
There are so many problems to solve. I always like to post these lists when an article like this is posted on HN and the discussion ensues about what feels good to work on. There are so many problems that need your help to solve.
My father always told me: "you will have a vocation, and an avocation. They are separate activities." What he was telling me is that I should find a job, and a hobby. And they should be separate.
I believe that there has been a severe injustice done to students over the past 30-40 years by instructing them to find a job that is their passion. That's putting too much pressure on a person; and it’s largely unachievable.
It's okay to make money doing one thing, and enjoy yourself by accomplishing something great doing another.
> It's okay to make money doing one thing, and enjoy yourself by accomplishing something great doing another.
Maybe.
First, the thing done for money (or the way it is done) shouldn't at least be at odds with your identity (and/or work ethic).
Second, if you consider how large a proportion of our waking lives are spent at work, you start questioning whether just "neutral" is good enough, for a job.
The meme with all of the buzzwords around Shinji suggests that the author doesn't really understand that that stifing environment is due to bureaucracy rather than working in tech.
You can be in a large non-tech company (or government agency, technical or not - source: I survived one) and have the same miserable experience. You can work in a small tech company and get very little of it.
The idea that you'll escape by "Working for a public institution" is goofy.
It feels like this is missing the mid sized company that isn't looking to grow and IPO. There are plenty of companies that just have a product and sell it to make payroll. They're just overlooked in the hustle.
these are usually worse, especially if IT is treated as a cost center and the SME is run by people with autocratic tendencies.
half of the questions on /r/cscareerquestions are about how to deal with working in this type of company ("why does the boss always defer to his nephew who cant code his way out of a paper bag?") or how to get out ("where are all the jobs paying over $100k?").
I don't think such a thing exists (unfortunately). Show me a business leader that says, "oh we've been successful, we've got orders and new clients lined up, but no, I won't hire more workers, more managers, and turn our flat org structure into a hierarchy, because I want my employees to have a sustainable and fulfilling work experience, and because I want my current customers to enjoy the usual, stable service or product quality". Only a unicorn would not perceive saying "no" to growth as leaving money on the table.
This may vary from country to country, but in my part of the world, public institutions are mostly dysfunctional, political, nepotistic, filled with cronies and people with negative productivity. And then there's one bright eyed idealist who actually does most of the work until they realize they're being taken advantage of, learn their lesson and starts behaving the same (or leave for private sector).
> Joining a tech co-operative
ie. become a freelancer or start/join a consultancy; sure, but after a couple dozen projects, it starts feeling the same as a corpo job.
> Joining a tech NGO
Again, may vary from country to country. Here NGOs are incredibly political things and desperately dependent on continous outside funding (the two are interconnected). You'll switch office politics for NGO politics.
> Working for a union or a party
Politicians and union representatives are some of the last people I'd ever want to socialize with.
> Becoming a mentor or a teacher
That's nice, but can you live on that salary?
> Becoming a techno-political hustler
For an article that starts with one's quest to find a more meaningful job, this is about as far removed from it as "used car salesman that exclusively uses bitcoin payday loans financing".
At the same time, some of the more promising alternatives that crop up at local IT watering holes are floor tiling, plumbing, roofing, ... All honest work, good pay, visible results, and zero bullshit.
Agree with your points about public institutions and NGOs. Where I live, having NGO projects on your CV could even work against you (in case you were looking for a government job, down the line).
> floor tiling, plumbing, roofing, ... All honest work, good pay, visible results, and zero bullshit
I'm not sure. First, you need to be good at it. "Leaving tech" does not necessarily imply "good at trades". Second, you need to be very flexible in the quality vs. delivery time tradeoff (and personally I find that really difficult). Third, I'm not keen on talking with clients directly. Fourth, even if there's a general contractor, representatives of the different trades always blame each other, when things go wrong, or the schedule slips.
The title is a bit clickbait because it's not really about leaving tech, it's about leaving the bullshit behind. If you don't want to work for FAANG actively ruining the world then you have options. In addition to what is posted here, the best advice I can give is to work at a company that isn't a tech company. More regular companies than you think employ software engineers.
I worked the majority of my career at an optical equipment manufacturer. It was technical, but in a very old-fashioned sense (sometimes, too "old-fashioned").
One of the reasons that I stayed there, was because I was satisfied that most applications of our products were for artistic, creative, or scientific purposes. I felt decent about working there.
Also, the culture was very focused on delivering the very best to our end-users. Unlike almost every tech company in existence, these days, the company was not interested in selling itself.
Many of the top manufacturers are non-American, and have a very "staid" corporate culture. The best are German or Japanese, so learning about those cultures is helpful.
In my case, I had done a lot of "extracurricular" learning and work, which was attractive to the people that interviewed me. Like I said in another post, on another thread, I have always enjoyed doing tech, and spend most of my free time, working on software.
I also come from a hardware background. My experience in connecting software to hardware was important. I should mention that most hardware companies treat software rather casually. I hope that's starting to change.
The job market, these days, is drastically different from what it was, but I suspect that these companies may be more "traditional" than a lot of tech companies.
That is all very helpful—thank you! And your comment about how hardware companies approach software 100% matches what I've observed in consulting. The idea of combining my love of photography and my software skillset at a more traditional company is actually very appealing to me at the moment. Thanks for the inspiration!
Yep, there are so many options one couldn't list them all. I spent the first 10 years of my career in defense contracting and got out because I didn't want to contribute at all to that. Since then I've worked for companies whose products are tangible and needed by everyone. The downside is, not being tech companies per se, you're not working on anything that will change the world. The upside is, your work generally helps the company provide needed products more efficiently.
Agreed, personally I work for a university now (not in the US) - I’m still a software dev, but it’s the best job I’ve ever had because the people/work/purpose is all good.
I think the title implies "tech industry", as in companies producing digital technology for profit. Working for an union as a developer is not working "in tech" imho.
Seems like the majority of arguments against the articles premise are the inability to sacrifice exorbitant living standards. I left big tech in 2022 and much happier living on a tiny fraction. It's called sacrifice. I personally don't understand why people need so much money. A family of 3 can easily live on $150k even in a HCOL area.
> I personally don't understand why people need so much money
- healthcare (where I live, we have public health care, i.e., my salary is taxed to oblivion, but if you want good for yourself and your family, you'll pay a second time, and seek out private practices / clinics)
- housing crisis, with unpreditable and unreliable rental market: you really want your children to start their own lives in small apartments that are owned by the family. And in the opposite generational direction: at some point your parents (or in-laws) will start dying, and the widow(er)s may have to be moved to different towns, apartments, assisted living facilities.
- healthcare#2: food supplements, therapy, gym, sports -- requires both a lot of money and a lot of time. No time for side jobs.
- home maintenance, car maintenance, etc.
In short, there's never enough money. If you don't spend your income all at once -- and you really should not spend it at once --, you will definitely spend it later, on valid things.
I guess it depends on how you view the world. Trustworthy and reliable? Then less money is fine, and the "sacrifice" that you mention only seems to apply to "exorbitant living standards". But if you view the world as hostile, unfair, at best indifferent and uncaring, then money equals safety, and you'll never feel you have enough of it -- even though you could be a responsible and frugal person already.
Considering the scale and frequency of layoffs across the board and the difficulty of finding a new job for many, you could just...run out the clock and wait for the inevitable?
I want to leave tech as well. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to replace my income (yet). I'm working on a VERY niche SaaS offering, that has some novel growth areas. But getting time to work on it is slow going. Maybe it will some day be enough to replace my income, and I can bail on the FTE thing.
I’m thinking what I could offer for the world if there was no computers or even electricity. I don’t have too many ideas and this article didn’t help.
To continue working without coding, while still making use of coding skills and experience, I suppose roles like CTO or technical project lead might be suitable?
Almost every complaint I see about working in tech is 90% applicable to any industry. The problem in every company is other people. Some are greedy, selfish, dishonest. Some mean well but market forces demand unsavory practices. You won't escape it by trading a keyboard for a hammer or a pastry bag or whatever.
You have to either have a specific target in mind. Like you actually love doing some other thing and want it to be your career. Or, as the article lays out, just keep doing tech someplace more fulfilling.
Having spent time in tech in both government and nonprofit space, I can tell you the organizations are not very different from corporate ones. Day-to-day frustrations are very similar. You have to just take heart in doing something constructive for the public good.
Techno-political hustler sounds fun tbh. Sounds like you need to have a fundraising network though, which often means coming from a well-off background. A shame.
Contrary to popular belief, in the US there are state/federal government software jobs.
They don’t pay as well as the private sector, but it’s only a few steps down, not “get used to earning 20% as much”.
Is the bullshit rate in many of those jobs incredibly high? Absolutely. But can a talented generalist from the private sector make huge improvements for real people? You bet. So much of government IT is crippled by dated approaches and over-reliance on contractors (and the lack of knowledge of best practices that comes from very few folks transitioning from the private sector—those few steps down in salary are not a road often travelled).
As a result, someone with talent and familiarity with how much better things can be (and a willingness to push on broken rules/processes) can have a huge impact. You’ll have to do a lot of “here is a prototype nobody asked for built in a way nobody here is currently allowed to build it”-type performing in the first year or two, but at the right government agency folks who do that get to deliver massive benefits to real people every day.
There are enough sub components of government (agencies, sub-agencies, state, municipal) that you can easily find work you agree with. It’s frustrating to apply, but truly: once in the door, talented folks can achieve a huge amount.
Public workers are more positively impactful to the operation of society than many engineers working in digital widget factories. Bureaucracy limits potential, for good reason, but doing something is still more than nothing.
Except that the public sector workers are being paid for by the engineers working in the digital widget factories. So the core of the "positive" impact is coming from private industry. Maybe it is morally superior in the end to work at a digital widget factory so that others can chill and work in the public sector.
Reality is - if you’re an American and got into tech and are working for well paying tech companies, you’re not leaving and there’s no escape unless you fatFIRE. This is why FIRE is so big among the Silicon Valley tech crowd. Everyone knows. What’s the alternative for an American tech worker (primarily the people who read HN) who wants to stay where they live, keep a similar quality of living, and not work in toxic faang-esque H1B factories? There ain’t one.
If by "keep a similar quality of living" you mean "keep FAANG-sized paychecks", there probably isn't an alternative. If you mean "keep upper-middle-class paychecks", well, there's more to "tech" than just web programming.
For instance, embedded systems is pretty good. Yeah, they don't pay FAANG levels, and they never will. They typically aren't a "toxic faang-esque HIB factory", though.
My point is more that you can’t afford a typical home in Silicon Valley or many other major cities in the US on a single non-faang income. If you happen to luck out and get a partner with a high income - congrats, not all of us are blessed like that.
This is like asking how you can keep drinking the blood of babies without the guilt of killing babies. The quality of living attributed to tech workers is on the condition that they participate in the system that extracts value from people and society. If you don't want to participate in that system of exploitation, you don't get the privileges that come with being an exploiter.
It's not exclusive to tech workers and it has nothing to do with Maoism. I'm not even leftist. It's just how our present economy works: since needs have long been satisfied, profit goes to who exploits better. Either the workers, nature, or the consumer. The more you exploit, the more you profit. Or do you think it's by chance that every major investment group, tech unicorn and military company does or enables unthinkable dystopic horrors?
Well, I live in Central-Eastern Europe, and even though I 100% agree with the problem statement, the proposed solutions sound unrealistic to me as well ;)
Honesty I don't think USA tech workers would fit with European workplace culture. Imagine some cali crypto bro refugee pulling out his Cheese wiz or bud light in a French startup's Canteen. There would be a riot and then dudes in tractors would be blocking the highways demanding "the government do something"
What age did you start med school? Probably not feasible for those of us who didn’t have stellar academic records. (Regardless of professional accomplishment)
This article is not a "I want to leave tech" article. It is an "I want to have more ownership of the nature of my work" article.
Practically every recommendation is also a tech job, its just not "big tech" where you have very little real decision making power.
Tech itself is not the issue here - tech being filled with high paying jobs where you effectively work on issues that directly damage humanity is the issue. And after you have a high paying job its hard to justify leaving it, and every other similarly paying job is basically the same thing in a different package.
This is the most important comment I've read in a while. It has become really easy to feel trapped in software as a trade even though I love working on software as much or more than ever in the details of the work. I'm fortunate that my current gig doesn't involve doing anything that I find directly objectionable in a Hippocratic Oath sense (though some might, its trading stuff which I long ago decided is about a 1.01 out of Meta on a scale of 1 to OpenAI).
The thing is that the software business has discovered its Three Big Lies:
- Everything is Exponential (Sigmoids are For The Small Thinkers)
- Breaking The Law is Progress if You Do It With a Computer
- Computer People Know What's Best
Other industries that have become tentacled over the years have had similar Big Lies (High Finance has Price Movements are Gaussian Distributed for example, and Bailouts are The Business Cycle).
I'm at the age both in life and career terms where its like, this could be a cyclic thing and these assholes are going to get thrown out soon, or it could be I came of age in an aberrant exceptionally good time, this is how it always ends up.
What I do know is that that software is an effective tool for mitigating the damage of malware, excellent computers are cheap now, and so it might be possible to fund an effective resistance doing rewarding work for the greater good with frugality and some creativity about paying the bills, I'm still figuring out the details.
Everything that exists to make money, gradually takes it to an extreme as it becomes more difficult to make money on the up and up. Everything that doesn't exist to make money ends up existing to make money once it reaches a sufficient size - this includes nonprofits and charities.
This is one of the many reasons I tend to be vehemently in favor of decentralization. A lot of these problems are just because organizations become too large. It also feels kind of dystopic, or sterile at least, how you can be a thousand miles away and have a main street that looks largely indistinguishable from the one you just came from.
I don't really disagree with anything you've said, other than a vague sort of discomfort around practicality. I dislike market failures very much, I war-crime dislike engineered market failures (the two co-occur with alarming frequency).
But markets are effectively part of the natural world: if you engineer the most oppressive, regimented, panopticon nightmare prison available to human deviousness you will succeed in creating a black market, not in eliminating markets.
So any solution has to be about preventing market failures, not eliminating markets. If North Korea can't effectively inhibit markets from forming, it's a pretty convincing demonstration that no acceptable amount of anti-market intervention is going to be okay.
I’m not following. I don’t think they said anything about eliminating markets, rather halting monopolies.
Like I said, I'm broadly sympathetic to your view. I was just pointing out that you led with "things that exist to make money..." and while the point you raise is true (or often true), its kind of an unsolved problem.
On halting monopolies I would vote and canvas for you if you ran on it.
I agree about the appeal of decentralization, I just don't know how to make it happen in a world where centralized control is enforced by MQ-9 Reaper drones with sole executive discretion on "kill or capture" of anyone and decentralization is considered a national security priority.
An example would be the people who argue that inherently sovereign and anonymous money would liberate people. What it would do is get you shot for fucking with the Mint.
I didn’t state a view. You’re talking to someone else.
I suppose I'm guilty of the high crime of replying on a phone where the usernames are small, you were continuing a line of thought and I answered the renewed objections to my very reasonable point. `somenameforme` and `spacedmadness` look a lot alike at 8pt.
This is one of those comments where I'm like, I bet the big LLM can write a FireFox extension that will block HN comments by username now...
Insightful comment.
I think there's a dividing line in society between those who understand systems and those who don't. The systems people look at the non-systems people as stupid; the non-systems people look at the systems people as evil.
Some of those insights are overused cliches at this point.
My pet peeve is the "S-curve argument":
> Everything is Exponential (Sigmoids are For The Small Thinkers)
Yes, that's technically true because universe is finite, yadda yadda, but in practice where you are on the curve and your time horizon matters. Plenty of things are still effectively exponential[0], and I feel some people bring up sigmoids specifically because they you squint hard enough, it seems nicely and comfortably linear. But it isn't.
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[0] - Random example from a recent HN discussion: total amount of all written text to date. It's obviously going to be a sigmoid (or worse, if disaster strikes), but right now, we're still before the inflection point, so I wouldn't short the stock of storage providers just yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44442770
It is absolutely going to be a sigmoid, because population in high-literacy areas is crashing generally to name but one antecedent, and so your example is not even a particularly good one.
But really what you're doing is arguing for a nasty status quo with a bunch of deflective name-calling because this is hard to argue against in good faith: calling a potent, contrarian-to-the-gravy-train argument a "cliche", and in so doing implying that it is "asked and answered", that it has been raised, addressed, and disposed of, is the worst kind of argument on 2025 HN. To the extent that it's been raised before and is being raised again, it's precisely because no one has addressed in a satisfying way. And we're going to keep raising it until someone does.
Saying "we're in the the pre-inflection part of a sigmoid" is not the same as manipulating everything from stock markets to wars premised on log-scale-and-ruler math.
"They are not identical. The aspects you are willing to ignore are more important than the aspects you are willing to accept. Robbery is not just another way of making a living, rape is not just another way of satisfying basic human needs, torture is not just another way of interrogation." - Erik Naggum
I guess it depends on perspective, or maybe circles you frequent. I for one am tired of sigmoids, I truly perceive them to be a tired cliche. Hell, most people haven't even grasped exponential growth to this day, and here we are, pointing at the ending and implying they can skip the beginning.
Litmus test: when you hear soundbites like "in the last N years alone, the world used more energy/emitted more CO2 / did more whatever than it did in all recorded history", are you shocked? Surprised? If so, you failed to understand what exponential growth means. I mean, I assume you do understand this, but most people don't.
> implying that it is "asked and answered", that it has been raised, addressed, and disposed of, is the worst kind of argument on 2025 HN
If it were, I wouldn't have written my comment in the first place. I see the HN commentariat, on average, to be still enamored with sigmoids, treating the s-curve nature of growth in real world as some profound insight that invalidates the entire concept of exponential growth.
> Saying "we're in the the pre-inflection part of a sigmoid" is not the same as manipulating everything from stock markets to wars premised on log-scale-and-ruler math.
For one, it worked (and still does), so there's that. But secondly, this is not just about capitalism and wars. It's everywhere. COVID-19 was actually a nice demonstration. Yes, infections ultimately followed a sigmoid, as they were expected to, but the first part of the sigmoid is exponential, it was also the part that mattered at the beginning, and which most people across all social and economical strata failed to grasp.
Also thanks for the Naggum quote. I do consider myself a moral being and I am proud to be firmly in the S-expression camp.
Worked for who? Because behind the Valley I see a trail of broken technooptimist promises ranging from the ones so egregious their peddlers are in prison (SBF, Holmes), I see entire continents and cultures at war with a fundamentally antidemocratic surveilanvce capitalism, I see an entire clique of TESCREAL/EA psychos in positions of terrifying power, openly on the record about antidemocratic, authoritarian agendas (Thiel and everyone who has ever shaken his hand, Yarvin at the "quiet part out loud" end of the spectrum, pmarca and pg in the sort of edgy libertarian / still wants some mainstream acceptability tension zone, down to gladhanding collaborators of every stripe in the Roganverse, every shade in between: all rich, all anti competition, all anti democrocratic institution).
I see all of the CEOs lined up at the inauguration kissing the ring, buying up the commons that the DoD and Bell Labs built with taxpayer dollars into oligarchic empires straight out of Russia circa 92-94.
And at the apex of the Altman Era you have the swindler in chief peddling the absurdity that we weren't deep into the LLM asymptote a fucking year ago with implications ranging from wild infringements on the power of states to enforce their regulations in conflict with "AI Innovation..." /cuts to Amodei/ ..."to stay competitive with China!"
This is a fucking disaster for everyone but a small clique of Battery-frequenting bottom feeders who a better generation would have put in prison for crimes innumerable.
But it works for a few people. Those people are building bunkers though, and its not to keep out rogue AI.
I think that my understanding of how systems work has had very differing degrees of effectively translating into other regimes. Math and the hard sciences? Very effective, doing stuff in biotech or something has always been a fruitful two way street.
But for human systems? Eh... Yeah I struggle with agreeing there. I think much harm has come from trying to think about human systems like computer systems both in the small of my own immediate life and in larger regimes. No matter how you feel about Elon Musk and DOGE? That didn't look like it went great for either side of that equation to mention one recent high-profile exanple. That looked pretty lose/lose.
I agree: systems thinkers' inability to fully represent the complexity of human systems is a large part of why non systems thinkers think systems thinkers are evil.
Having systems thinking is a bit like being Cassandra: doomed to know the future yet doomed never to be believed.
What's odd is that you'd think tribal thinkers would respond to a track record of being proven correct but they emphatically do not. Moreover they're invariably convinced that you too think tribally.
As an example, I can think of one politician (edit: not trump) who is definitely a systems thinker (who is not nice, but is successful and generally outplays his opponents because of it) and ~80% of Hacker News is convinced beyond the shadow of any doubt that he's an evil idiot loser who invariably makes stupid mistakes.
> As an example, I can think of one politician who is definitely a systems thinker (who is not nice, but is successful and generally outplays his opponents because of it) and ~80% of Hacker News is convinced beyond the shadow of any doubt that he's an evil idiot loser who always makes stupid mistakes.
Not sure whether you’re talking about the Orange Man, but calling him a systems thinker is a hard sell given the damage his tariffs, defunding, and other nonsense are causing.
i have a feeling that he sometimes listened to advisors who were capable of it, especially during his election campaigns but as you correctly point out the tariff clusterfuck was probably the most poignant example in recent history of where systems thinking was so desperately needed and so obviously lacking.
But yea, definitely not him.
>calling him a systems thinker is a hard sell
You have a man who was not part of the elite establishment and yet has managed to get wealthy by breaking the law and avoid getting caught, then managed to become president against all odds, twice.
Sure, he came from wealth, but plenty of other people came from even more wealth and had way more political connections and failed to become presidents.
Hate him all you want, but if achieving all that is not a form of intelligence and system knowledge, I don't know what is.
He’s definitely a good salesman. People already distrusted the elites and the `deep state` and he marketed himself as the outsider who’d fix things.
That still isn’t sufficient evidence in his favor, given everything happening now.
>People already distrusted the elites and the `deep state` and he marketed himself as the outsider who’d fix things.
Q: If this was such an obvious slam dunk on how to win the presidency, why didn't the Dems come up with such a candidate? Wouldn't that make them stupider than the Donald for such an obvious oversight of the electorate?
>That still isn’t sufficient evidence in his favor, given everything happening now.
Managing to become president twice is insuficient evidence?
> why didn't the Dems come up with such a candidate?
For one thing, the GOP have had a successful campaign over the last 50+ years to win the framing war. They're now able to present themselves as the plucky outsider who'll come in and fix things, even when they're not. Likewise, the Dems are *not* able to do this, even when they are.
Also the Dems are incompetent boobs.
> If this was such an obvious slam dunk on how to win the presidency, why didn't the Dems come up with such a candidate?
The Democratic party in it's current state is ineffective & incompetent in many ways.
> Managing to become president twice is insufficient evidence?
Yes. You are ignoring the damage he is doing now, which is direct evidence against him being a good “systems thinker”
"Good system thinker" was obviously meant in a self serving way that benefits himself and his cronies. I assumed that was obvious since we're talking about world leaders here, not nurses. Presidents aren't there to make YOUR life better.
All world leaders are cut from the same self serving cloth as you don't get to become a presidential nominee if you're a genuine threat to the establishment.
These kinds of selfish policies backfire when they cut the ground out from under you. Trump and his cronies live in the US and are predominantly invested there, and undermining the US in the long term also undermines them and their interests. The stability of the US correlates with the stability of their power, I would consider this to be basic systems-thinking on the scale of a nation.
>These kinds of selfish policies backfire when they cut the ground out from under you
How? They keep giving themselves more tax breaks. Sounds like their ground is just fine.
Grifters are systems thinkers but in a limited short sighted way. Their answer to the prisoner dilemma is to betray their partner.
The morons who support them dont see why this is not the optimal strategy
>Grifters are systems thinkers but in a limited short sighted way.
For the average voter, the grifts are irelevant since all candidates do it anyway, they just want a candidate that executes on their dissatisfactions with the system and that turned out to be the Donald.
Just follow the portfolios of those who funded the campaigns of the presidential winner, it doesn't matter if it's Clinton, Bush, Trump or Obama, all politicians are grifters, since once elected they need to pay back via grifts those who funded their campaigns as that's the main reason wealthy elites spent million for their candidate to win, to get into grifts with the government that make them even richer.
>The morons who support them dont see why this is not the optimal strategy
What IS the optimal strategy? I think MAGA base is getting what they voted for (mass deportations and shit) so for them IT IS the optimal strategy.
They are gonna be sad about the health care cuts, and the hit to the economy from tariffs and kicking out the folks who do all the shit jobs, though. We'll see how they feel in a year or so.
Right. In 2019, I was like, I am worse off than 4 years ago, the Trump Presidency sucked. But in 2024, I was like, I'm worse off than 4 years ago, the Biden Administration sucked.
If you know both sides are going to leave you worse off, it's probably pretty understandable that I'm always mad at the last guy to take a strip off my ass.
Successfully leverages barbarism isn't a virtue of systems thinkers. You're proving GP's point.
I think you might be proving mine actually.
"Vices and virtues" are pretty much irrelevant to systems thinking but they are the bread and butter of tribalism.
This is exactly that classic dril post
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/994/418/48b...
i was not making a normative statement at all.
bizarre. tribal thinking doesnt seem to let you comprehend this.
If you're a systems thinker who can see the future then you can prove it in trading basically anything.
The number of people who have done this is vanishingly small (and skeptics raise credible objections about even the best examples).
Jim Simons was such a man, and (to the satisfaction of most) proved it. Some might say the same of Buffet. After that a list that started controversial rapidly gets into the zero consensus asymptote.
So if you genuinely believe that your systems thinking prowess is prescient in its scope like something out of a Herbert novel, I can point you the narrow way through: get an account on Interactive Brokers and ascend!
Well this is a new angle for MAGA isn’t it? Stop questioning him as he’s a stable genius with systems thinking. Nice try, but you’re going to have to own that one with a full explanation to get anywhere with it.
>Moreover they're invariably convinced that you too think tribally.
^^ this bit was in anticipation of a response exactly like yours.
I was actually referring to Putin. It was quite impressive to watch him successfully provoke sanctions to just about the level needed to result in a steady and sustainable level of import substitution and export oriented industrialization over the course of 12 years. It reminded me of that scene in die hard where the FBI cut the power.
This was the same thing Trump fell flat on his face trying to do even when he was setting his own tariffs.
Hiding what you’re talking about with no actual examples so you can spring a gotcha is just dumb, sorry. This is how the far right works generally online.
Im left wing.
[dead]
Glad this was the top comment. It is extremely easy to "leave tech" (or, as you point out, leave "big tech") - you just have to accept that you will most likely make substantially less money and that your "standard of living" will have to adjust accordingly.
I put "standard of living" in scare quotes because I strongly believe that, after a certain point in the US, people are conditioned by society and marketing to spend gobs of money on shit that doesn't make them happier and often actively makes them feel worse. I'm going through the process of moving and downsizing, and I can't even begin to go through the gobs of crap in my house that I'm throwing or giving away. Even home ownership itself is something that I feel is a bad lie - you're signing up to spend huge amounts of money to live in a box where you'll also need to spend huge amounts of money to slow its inevitable decay.
But I digress. The main point is that leaving (or changing) tech is easy, but you just have to have an honest conversation with yourself about how much you, your family and your self image requires a lot of money.
What do you do with kids when you want to downsize? Give them away?
Of course, because that's obviously the only option.
Finally! No more $2k/month/per kid for daycare expenses!
It always astounds me of how relatively well-off people simply cannot even fathom how the vast, vast majority of Americans with kids manage to get by without paying $2k/month/kid in childcare expenses.
Sounds very illegal, just leaving kids at home alone all day
OK, I'll bite. Are you a single parent? If so, I agree, but I think most single parents aren't worried about downsizing - they're worried about how to both work and raise their kids at the same time.
If you are in a situation with two parents making a professional level salary, which I suspect is the case given you stated paying $2k/kid/month for child care, well frankly you should STFU. In those cases, that is simply a choice you are making. There are certainly other options (which millions of people do because they don't have a choice), so you're not garnering much sympathy pleading poverty because you have to pay for your children's daycare.
Pamper them less?
> tech being filled with high paying jobs where you effectively work on issues that directly damage humanity is the issue. And after you have a high paying job its hard to justify leaving it, and every other similarly paying job is basically the same thing in a different package
A thousand times, yes.
And even if you find ethical jobs (e.g., paid-for and ethically committed open source work), they are much-much more difficult to do well. Distrust and secrecy are absolutely rampant between you and your (inevitably proprietary) partners; reverse engineering plays a central role. It's a warzone -- and the constant fighting, battling, against measures put in place by other humans, just takes the will to live out of me.
It should be possible for well-paying, ethical, interesting, and co-operative jobs to exist. They only exist as exceptions.
one of the reasons I find it hard to leave a high paying job is because "underpaid" has always been the best predictor of job toxicity.
In general (with a few exceptions like finance that are generally up front about what they are), the chillest, sanest jobs with the most accomodating environments tended to pay the best and vice versa.
I also have too many friends who tried sacrificing pay for better working conditions and more meaningful work and ended up bitter because they were sold a hollow dream.
A few years back I left “big tech” for a much lower paying tech-ish job that had a meaningful mission.
I was fine having a lower paying job, but what I didn’t expect was that the lower pay meant that the skill level for my colleagues was also much much lower. Years of the “Dead Sea effect” [0] had turned it into an environment where the blind were leading the blind and they weren’t even aware of how bad things were.
So high pay also means “better coworkers”
[0] http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...
> one of the reasons I find it hard to leave a high paying job is because "underpaid" has always been the best predictor of job toxicity.
Being 'underpaid' is different than being paid less, though. Describing a job as underpaid is, almost by definition, assuming a company is exploiting its workforce. It's not hard to believe such a company would also be a toxic environment in other ways. But if two companies pay different amounts, but they're both paying a fair salary, it doesn't necessarily imply anything about the company that pays less.
Strong agree. It takes very little effort to pay someone a few more dollars, whereas all the other intangibles are a lot harder to offer. So it is exceptionally rare to find one without the other.
It blows my mind people feeling mistreated at X FAANG company just to go to Y FAANG company and expect any better treatment. They are all the same at this point. At least the unhinged career ladder climbers on Blind aren’t kidding themselves.
Meta seems like it's definitely worse than the others now, though, since you're liable to be explicitly labeled a "low performer" if you get laid off.
How “high paying” a job do you need though? My last three companies, I’ve worked on products that don’t involve marketing or data mining of any sort that I’d consider unethical. While they have certainly involved automating away jobs (car sales/bank loan people, pathologists, and now accountants, respectively), they were all software designed to benefit humanity.
And they all paid $180k+, the last two $200k+, in salary alone, plus benefits and equity. I only work over 40 hours if I’m working on something I’m passionate about. I realize FAANGs can go into the $400k+ range, but… do you really need that? Is it worth it? For the stress, the rat race, the pressure and all that?
Granted, they’ve been remote roles, and I live in North Carolina, not one of the HCOL metros (I don’t see how anyone can justify living in NYC, SF, or LA, honestly).
But like… this just seems untrue. There are plenty of good-paying, ethical roles to be had. Moreover, I’d say if you spend some time actively seeking out ethical, fairly (not excessively) compensated roles… they’ll find you, without you having to search for them.
I agree, in the same boat as you. There are a lot of tech jobs that are a net positive for society. I think you nailed it - once you have that salary giving up 400k, 600k, 800k TC is a really big decision.
> every other similarly paying job is basically the same thing in a different package.
Well, a lot of them. Not every. There are jobs at big tech companies where you work on good things benefiting society, like improving security in open-source, or developing a lot of the OSS tools out there. (Think Project Zero, or many of your favorite major OSS project, which are developed by engineers at big tech.) They are not nearly as common as other roles obviously, but they do exist, and it's worth at least attempting to get them.
A corollary to this is that “tech” is simply the method of accomplishing a business’ goals/objectives. At this point, all companies employ lots of hardware and software in their operations. No one working in a modern company can “leave tech,” but OP’s comment about “big tech” stands.
Working in smaller tech companies with worse pay is worse than working these tech jobs.
Most of your co-workers you cannot trust to do anything e.g. Today I was investigating an issue (screen for X not updating). I open the dashboard and there was a sea of read over my console. They hadn't even checked the terminal for errors.
> Tech itself is not the issue here - tech being filled with high paying jobs where you effectively work on issues that directly damage humanity is the issue.
That is a matter of point of view. I've worked in industries that most consider amoral. I've had the most job satisfaction from working in those industries. I actually got to do interesting work. Every other job has me over-engineering basic web apps because they are a <Azure/Sitecore/AWS/Google Cloud> partner.
The worst job was working for a large charity, do you know why? They literally pissed money away on bullshit, while collecting large sums of via unpaid volunteers. That sickened me and so I left.
Wow! Tech people have a really difficult time figuring out normal people's diction!
Buy rural land and live on investments while you start a small business. That's what I'm doing.
I think we need a monthly "who wants to be fired" thread where we share our progress on this.
What kind of business? Most of the dream ones people envision are capital-intensive and failure-prone (speaking as someone who started a capital intensive business that failed)
I think the problem is the "dream ones" part. Yes, everyone would love to make tons of money with very little work. But that almost guarantees high risks or very high capital exposure. There are countless small business opportunities that you could operate from home with almost no risk or exposure if you have a car and can afford some basic tools. But you won't get rich - or at least you'll have to work your ass off for a while.
My dream job was a specialty retail store - not low effort or tons of money, but hopefully something that could grow into a lifestyle business. Imagine something like a bicycle shop. Trust me when I say I have worked my ass off.
The only small businesses I know that are succeeding in my area are basically services - restaurants, cafes, etc. They rely on exploiting a bunch of underpaid workers in a way I wouldn't ever want to.
In your other comment it sounds like you're just kind of doing "handyman" stuff in a low CoL area. It's great if you can handle your own plumbing, electrical, etc. but there's definitely a ceiling on how much work you can get as a single, unlicensed person with a van driving around. Maybe that's enough to live on but it doesn't feel like a sustainable plan for 30 years.
You seem to have confused the comments. I'm an employee living in one of the highest CoL areas in the world. But I know quite a few who run small businesses here and make use of that fact to the fullest extent. They can charge insane amounts of money for minimum quality work that wouldn't even put enough food on the table, let alone afford any luxury at home elsewhere. In the countryside I imagine you'd actually need to bring some talent or do quality work as well and not just make use of unsaturated business markets in overeducated areas.
Some examples?
Plumber, carpenter, welder, electrician etc. In the countryside where I live, I do all of these when I feel like it for myself, friends and sometimes strangers in trouble (pipe burst, no power). It pays well; I could live of that and save very comfortably here if I did it half of the time, but I only do it the odd few hours while people begging for welding jobs, wooden doors, etc. It can be a nice little business, especially if you can find employees and move on to house building or renovations, but it will never be bigger than that was of course, you would be in the countryside.
Plumber
This is pretty far out of reach for most people, unfathomable if you have debt and/or living paycheck to paycheck.
One weird trick: try being rich.
My wife and I moved to a rural area after covid. You're not magically saving money by doing so. And there is a shit load more work in terms of maintenance. I like it but this is such a strange recommendation.
^ this.
Even if you don’t live paycheck to paycheck, the life style of owning a place AND living off your investments, is extremely hard to pull off.
You most likely need to be single (or couple both in tech), no kids, making FAANG salary, living frugally (no travel, no expenses outside of food, shelter and necessities). Or you need to use geo arbitrage, which again means probably no kids, while being able to secure a high paying remote job in the US.
I wish it was more affordable, but it’s not. Therefor advice like “buy a house and live off your investments” are equivalent to filling a winning lottery ticket.
You don't need the "buy the house" part, which is actually bad advice now - renting is now half the cost of home ownership in many areas of the US.
But I strongly believe you're making this out to be much more difficult than it is if you are making decent (not "FAANG level") tech-type salaries. Where I live tech jobs generally pay at about double the amount of people in trades, for example. E.g. a mid-level software engineer is making at least 160-180k, while a trades person (plumber, etc.) with similar experience is making 80-90k.
So obviously if you can live at the level of these trades people, you can save up enough to be able to live without a salary for some time.
The problem is that most people just get used to their standard of living and find it hard to downsize. That's fine, but it's still very much a choice.
The problem with what you say is that you need to be in such environment. Not everyone pays good salaries. Europe is far behind US salaries. In US high salaries are concentrated around SF, which in turn means high cost of living, or subpar living conditions (I couldn’t imagine myself living with roommates in my 30s for example, and what do you do when having a relationship?)
And then comes the downsizing. Sure you can live only with necessities, but then question do you want to find yourself in mid thirties, or early forties, without any travel experiences, no relationship, living in your parents basement? I exaggerate a bit, but the math does not work out. You either live very frugally, or you use exploit geo arbitrage (low cost of living area, with a high paying remote job). There are no other shortcuts.
Every time this topic comes up, I'm a little astounded how whiny people get.
First, I wholly agree Europe salaries are far worse. But in the US, there are plenty of locales besides SF that pay comparatively high tech salaries (I live in Texas). But the main point is that making a professional software engineer-level salary at a tech company with 5+ years of experience in a mid-to-large American city should put you squarely in the top 10% of American earners. I mean, what you decry as "very frugally" is simply figuring out how the vast, vast majority of Americans manage to get by. It kind of reminds me of those NYT articles that would explain how people were basically living paycheck-to-paycheck on $500k a year: private school costs $X, a nanny costs $Y, Upper East Side co-op costs $Z. I'm like yeah, no shit Sherlock, expensive stuff is expensive, but don't pretend forgoing that stuff means you're living in poverty.
It's not whiny, in exact terms, it's something much worse: people not wanting to admit they can have agency.
You see this a ton on social media. People make excuses after excuses of why they can't get out of debt, why they can't lose weight, why they can't…
And, sure, some people have it tough and have the odds stacked against them. But most people would just prefer to swat down ideas on how to get what they want like they're playing Beat Saber.
(And I can be sure that someone will come through and accuse me of being insensitive because I haven't considered someone who has X, Y, or Z that only impacts .5% of the population, and almost never the person making the complaint.)
Agreed. Nearly all of the arguments I see about this (again, from people who are relatively extremely well off) boil down to "but it's not easy!" Well, you got me there, but it often isn't nearly as hard as people make it out to be, it's just they have locked themselves in to a particular lifestyle and change is difficult.
I said to buy land, not a house. Houses are ridiculously overpriced for what you get (one housing unit.)
That is true, but it's not out of reach for "most people" who have been paid professional software engineer-level salaries in mid-to-large cities in the US for a few years or more, which I'd guess is a substantial portion of the readership of this site.
Which is crazy. Somehow simple living is a complete luxury
No, living on investments is the luxury here
Living on your investments, is not "simple" living.
Please keep us up-to-date on how that goes. It sounds like you are having progress.
Most of the smart and talented people I know that dropped out to create companies abandoned them and ended in someone else’s company later. The two exceptions were salesmen who ended up becoming rich after selling their companies.
What you're describing is essentially the whole FIRE movement (financial independence, retire early). While I find adherents to that movement can be "culty"/extreme around the edges, the general advice of living below your means so that you can then have at least some number of years where you can engage in a more meaningful use of your time (doesn't have to be "retire") is good advice.
That’s not FIRE. FIRE is keep your tech job, live very frugaly, invest, maybe make some other passive income, then actually retire. OP is rather focusing on getting out of tech to do something else but it is still going to be work. Maybe a lot of work. They’re downsizing lifestyle because they’re also downsizing their pay.
I don't think it's worth it to "No True Scotsman" this, but there are plenty of people who go by FIRE principles, which are generally to live below your means so you can be more financially independent later (which is exactly what OP was focusing on), without actually retiring completely. In fact, most people don't retire completely because they find they get bored as hell.
How to life well as an independently wealthy computer person is an important question to address and I encourage you to continue addressing it because it sounds like you'd give better advice than most.
You might find the messaging more effective if it was declared in more direct terms though, its a pretty different problem than still needing to make a living when computers are your stock in trade.
This is such a developed world comment :)
Because for the rest of the world rural (or a village) means literally rural or a village. What the people from the developed world may never understand is the wide gigantic chasm between urban and rural here, in every aspect of(un)imaginable.
It means that here too. There's no infrastructure where my I'm at. No power, water, there's a very rough private road and that's it. It's very far away from pretty much everyone.
I actually grew up in a place like this (yes they exist in the US) so I know how it goes.
Cool, congrats and wishing you good luck and success!
> monthly "who wants to be fired" thread Reminds me of Mad Fientist blog.
love this!
If you already have enough investments to not work, why would anyone even work in tech?
Leaving the grind when you already kind or rich is easy mode. Leaving it when your net worth is negative is another story.
Off topic, I started working in tech because I enjoyed it. That it was also well paid was a nice coincidence. You can be in the grind and be unaware of that.
Of course people like this still suffer due to overexposure to work and js frameworks; and many eventually grow to dislike tech jobs and want to leave.
Why would anyone work in tech? Because making something that didn't exist before is kind of a thrill. (No, that is not the same as cranking through Jira tickets...)
Right. That's what got me into tech, too. Turned out to be mostly a lie - most jobs aren't making anything exciting or new (except maybe for the wealthy in the financial sense), and those that do tend to limit your autonomy.
Now I stay in tech for the same reason most people stay in their careers - it's comfortable and pays well, but because that's mostly a function of "time served"[0], it also means that I'm trapped now. I can't just switch fields anymore - at this stage of life, switching is a major multi-year project!
(Also I question whether it would help. Working in some field never looks much like you imagine while being outside of it.)
--
[0] - Tech has an unusually large multiplier here, but the trend is the same as with any other job.
Exciting and new doesn't necessarily mean novel. I get quite excited when I build a new bit of code that solves a frequent pain point for someone. It's likely built on a boring framework, in a boring language, wouldn't work at scale, and solves a boring problem only a few people have, but the drug makes for a nice little high, and the small business world has a huge supply.
That thrill is present in any creative endeavor. If you like tech and enjoy that thrill, yeah, work in tech. At the same time, if you are tired of tech and want that thrill, go make something else. I'm a collector of hobbies at this point, having at least dabbled (if not more) in woodworking, stone carving, jewelry making, furniture upholstery, fused glass, painting, drawing, sculpture, clothing design, and creating nature trails in our forest. They all give that thrill.
Tech pays better, though - so I work in tech to pay the bills, then spend the money on tools to get that creative thrill somewhere else.
Thank you. I needed to hear that. As someone getting close to retirement (and with a job that's getting more boring), that was very helpful.
Note that this joy is not unique to tech. Carpenters, farmers, painters, etc, all make things that didn’t exist before. Some of them haven’t heard about Jira.
May I introduce you to all of blue collar work.
Sure, that's what Github is for. Working in corporate environments is another story.
First thing to do is get used to a much lower salary. Mostly kidding but channeling how often I see sentiments online of people saying they want to leave tech and then balk at the salaries normal people have.
When I left big tech for doing tech at a nonprofit, I had to keep reminding myself that even though I took a 66% pay cut I was still making ~double the median wage. By all accounts the job I had with a pay cut was still seen as a “good, high-paying job” in the community
In a past life I worked at a nonprofit. In an attempt to woo higher quality engineers we bumped our salaries as high as we possibly could. It worked to an extent, more mission driven people would come from Big Tech to join us. But despite them taking a huge paycut they were still getting paid a lot more than engineers in other areas of our company. And that, as you point out, was still a fantastic wage in the grand scheme of things relative to the rest of the country.
Well a lot of those folks got themselves trapped in a mortgage possibly with a family. I see it all the time here in the Bay. People think they’re on top of the world, buy a house, then start to have second thoughts. Then they’re trapped and will lose out by selling and downsizing. They don’t want to do that, so complain and stick with their job fearing layoffs and hating life.
that's the hard part for me, I'd have to change every aspect of my life because any other job would probably start me at 25% of what I make now
sell my house, put my kids in a different school district, be terrified about health insurance
if I fail I'd have to go back into tech and would have uprooted everything in a way that's probably irreversible
I’ve heard this argument many times; some of those times it came out of my own mouth.
the thing is… if you and your spouse get a 25% bump in salary right now, a year or so from now it is likely you’d write the exact same comment as this one above even though a year ago you were in the same boat and obviously managed beautifully without the extra 25%… :)
Paraphrasing to bring clarity to the point:
> I want to significant change, but not to my income!
I realize that life is expensive, but if you feel stuck, not needing a high salary gives you more options. It's often easier to control spending than income.
> I want significant change, but not to my income!
That's not it. The issue is (as the GGP mentions) irreversibility (and, I'd add, unpredictability). When you go for a less-paying job, two things are sure: (1) it'll be nearly impossible to return to the previous (better paying) job, if shit hits the fan, (2) the new job will pay a lot less than you are used to (and what your entire current way of living is based upon) from day 1. Whereas, what you desire in return for this, is totally unpredictable: the new job might or might not give you the meaning and inspiration you are seeking; and you'll only learn the outcome months later.
Thus, the negatives are immediate and certain, while the positives are delayed and uncertain. It's a totally irrational and fiscally irresponsible choice.
Of course, sometimes you do have to make that choice; for example when you get psychosomatic symptoms from the stress and the violation of your core identity at work. But then -- let's be clear about it -- the decision does not come from "carefully weighing the pros and cons"; you do it (literally) to survive.
See the author's story <https://write.as/conjure-utopia/the-verbose-story-of-how-i-l...>:
> I almost died [...] to this day I still suffer from chronic issues. This whole experience forced me to slow down, accept my limits, and reframe my plans for the future. It was very liberating: I was forced to quit the rat race [...] I started to appreciate the freedom that comes from restrictions.
You don't implement such life-uprooting changes, you don't take such risks until/unless you have no other way to survive. These changes are inaccessible through reasoning.
Not to discount your overall point, but you're comparing a 25% increase with a 75% decrease here. Not quite the same thing
It's easier to move in one direction than the other :). People have goals, getting a bump in salary lets them achieve those goals faster; getting a 75% cut on the salary means undoing all that and then some.
Not to mention, costs of everything also go up, and our bodies are not getting younger and healthier either. If you're to give up your current salary for the one you had 5 years ago, you wouldn't afford the kind of life you had 5 years ago.
unfortunately a bunch of it are healthcare expenses
If you want to leave tech you should save up for 4-5 years of expenses to accomodate for under-employment, downsize your lifestyle to fit a household income under 80k, and then reskill in another field.
I have tried to move away incrementally from the tech industry by working less and consulting, and it is not effective. There's simply nothing else you can do that pays as well for so little effort. It draws you back in like a tarpit because there's always more work to do. Committing to a clean break and immersing yourself in a new field seems like the better approach.
Assuming that you save 1/3rd of your monthly net income, and spend only 2/3rds of it on expenses -- which I believe is already beyond what most people can do --, and that you are already frugal (which means that you don't have easily cuttable expenses [*]), you'd need to save twice as long as you planned to live off of those savings. If you wanted a buffer for 4-5 years, you'd need to pinch every penny for 8-10 years, and do that -- presumably -- while you are in your thirties, and raising kids. This can work, but mostly as an exception, I think.
[*] I don't consider expenses that improve health and lifestyle "cuttable" -- organic food, locally produced meat, food supplements / vitamins, therapy, dentist, gym / sports, etc. I've recently learned that even holiday trips (which are insanely expensive, assuming you are not from the US, to the point of being financially injustifiable) are crucial for mental and marital health.
If you don't consider any expenses "cuttable" you're not downsizing. Especially taking expensive vacations? I travel a couple times a year domestically by driving and it's very manageable.
One of the happiest periods of my life was when I was working for a non-profit tech company building software for humanitarian work (human rights documentation, labour law compliance, election monitoring etc), after working a full decade in capital markets trading systems. Half the salary for 2 years, did a number on my savings, but it recharged me enough to return to the industry, with expertise in a new tech stack. It was in fact during this period I became a regular reader/contributor to HN.
I understand that this option may not be available to all. I suppose my point is that you may not actually need to leave the industry permanently. Just long enough for you to recharge and find a way to repel the BS without psychological trauma (and without causing psychological trauma to others).
How did you find out about the non-profit company and got into it?
Pure luck. A friend of mine was one of the founders. This was in 2013.
Good for you!
Alas, as you say, this is mostly pure luck. And not sustainable over the longer term, financially speaking.
Some related recent Asks: (related to the concept of the title anyways, not so much the body)
Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44393304
Ask HN: I don't want to work in software anymore. Where do I go?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43836353
Ask HN: Facing unemployment – what now?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44008554
Ask HN: Decided I no longer want to be a SWE – what next?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44110944
Uncle J. here, sitting in my rocking chair...
There are so many problems to solve. I always like to post these lists when an article like this is posted on HN and the discussion ensues about what feels good to work on. There are so many problems that need your help to solve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_global_issues
My father always told me: "you will have a vocation, and an avocation. They are separate activities." What he was telling me is that I should find a job, and a hobby. And they should be separate.
I believe that there has been a severe injustice done to students over the past 30-40 years by instructing them to find a job that is their passion. That's putting too much pressure on a person; and it’s largely unachievable.
It's okay to make money doing one thing, and enjoy yourself by accomplishing something great doing another.
> It's okay to make money doing one thing, and enjoy yourself by accomplishing something great doing another.
Maybe.
First, the thing done for money (or the way it is done) shouldn't at least be at odds with your identity (and/or work ethic).
Second, if you consider how large a proportion of our waking lives are spent at work, you start questioning whether just "neutral" is good enough, for a job.
The meme with all of the buzzwords around Shinji suggests that the author doesn't really understand that that stifing environment is due to bureaucracy rather than working in tech.
You can be in a large non-tech company (or government agency, technical or not - source: I survived one) and have the same miserable experience. You can work in a small tech company and get very little of it.
The idea that you'll escape by "Working for a public institution" is goofy.
> The idea that you'll escape by "Working for a public institution" is goofy.
I agree. Where I live, "public institution" is code for "infinite inefficiency and corruption".
It feels like this is missing the mid sized company that isn't looking to grow and IPO. There are plenty of companies that just have a product and sell it to make payroll. They're just overlooked in the hustle.
these are usually worse, especially if IT is treated as a cost center and the SME is run by people with autocratic tendencies.
half of the questions on /r/cscareerquestions are about how to deal with working in this type of company ("why does the boss always defer to his nephew who cant code his way out of a paper bag?") or how to get out ("where are all the jobs paying over $100k?").
> company that isn't looking to grow
I don't think such a thing exists (unfortunately). Show me a business leader that says, "oh we've been successful, we've got orders and new clients lined up, but no, I won't hire more workers, more managers, and turn our flat org structure into a hierarchy, because I want my employees to have a sustainable and fulfilling work experience, and because I want my current customers to enjoy the usual, stable service or product quality". Only a unicorn would not perceive saying "no" to growth as leaving money on the table.
The article is about staying in tech.
Correct, it's about leaving the private sector corporate / startup grind
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This is "grass is greener" type article:
> Working for a public institution
This may vary from country to country, but in my part of the world, public institutions are mostly dysfunctional, political, nepotistic, filled with cronies and people with negative productivity. And then there's one bright eyed idealist who actually does most of the work until they realize they're being taken advantage of, learn their lesson and starts behaving the same (or leave for private sector).
> Joining a tech co-operative
ie. become a freelancer or start/join a consultancy; sure, but after a couple dozen projects, it starts feeling the same as a corpo job.
> Joining a tech NGO
Again, may vary from country to country. Here NGOs are incredibly political things and desperately dependent on continous outside funding (the two are interconnected). You'll switch office politics for NGO politics.
> Working for a union or a party
Politicians and union representatives are some of the last people I'd ever want to socialize with.
> Becoming a mentor or a teacher
That's nice, but can you live on that salary?
> Becoming a techno-political hustler
For an article that starts with one's quest to find a more meaningful job, this is about as far removed from it as "used car salesman that exclusively uses bitcoin payday loans financing".
At the same time, some of the more promising alternatives that crop up at local IT watering holes are floor tiling, plumbing, roofing, ... All honest work, good pay, visible results, and zero bullshit.
Agree with your points about public institutions and NGOs. Where I live, having NGO projects on your CV could even work against you (in case you were looking for a government job, down the line).
> floor tiling, plumbing, roofing, ... All honest work, good pay, visible results, and zero bullshit
I'm not sure. First, you need to be good at it. "Leaving tech" does not necessarily imply "good at trades". Second, you need to be very flexible in the quality vs. delivery time tradeoff (and personally I find that really difficult). Third, I'm not keen on talking with clients directly. Fourth, even if there's a general contractor, representatives of the different trades always blame each other, when things go wrong, or the schedule slips.
Might I suggest working on chronic pain?
I know of two cases where people quit tech to become physiotherapists. I think if you own your own practice it might pay fairly well.
lol
The title is a bit clickbait because it's not really about leaving tech, it's about leaving the bullshit behind. If you don't want to work for FAANG actively ruining the world then you have options. In addition to what is posted here, the best advice I can give is to work at a company that isn't a tech company. More regular companies than you think employ software engineers.
I worked the majority of my career at an optical equipment manufacturer. It was technical, but in a very old-fashioned sense (sometimes, too "old-fashioned").
One of the reasons that I stayed there, was because I was satisfied that most applications of our products were for artistic, creative, or scientific purposes. I felt decent about working there.
Also, the culture was very focused on delivering the very best to our end-users. Unlike almost every tech company in existence, these days, the company was not interested in selling itself.
This is what I mean. Thanks for giving an example. There are very normal not sexy companies that need engineers.
What was the company? Sounds cool!
I don't usually mention the name in public, but it is one of the top Japanese camera manufacturers (Starts with "N").
They weren't always peaceful, though. Their Nishi-Oi factory had a rail and mount system for submarine periscopes.
Oh, very cool! I’m also a photographer, so that sounds like a dream job. Any advice on breaking into this space as a software developer?
Many of the top manufacturers are non-American, and have a very "staid" corporate culture. The best are German or Japanese, so learning about those cultures is helpful.
In my case, I had done a lot of "extracurricular" learning and work, which was attractive to the people that interviewed me. Like I said in another post, on another thread, I have always enjoyed doing tech, and spend most of my free time, working on software.
I also come from a hardware background. My experience in connecting software to hardware was important. I should mention that most hardware companies treat software rather casually. I hope that's starting to change.
The job market, these days, is drastically different from what it was, but I suspect that these companies may be more "traditional" than a lot of tech companies.
That is all very helpful—thank you! And your comment about how hardware companies approach software 100% matches what I've observed in consulting. The idea of combining my love of photography and my software skillset at a more traditional company is actually very appealing to me at the moment. Thanks for the inspiration!
I wish you the very best. Photography, video, and image processing are all very exciting fields, right now.
Yep, there are so many options one couldn't list them all. I spent the first 10 years of my career in defense contracting and got out because I didn't want to contribute at all to that. Since then I've worked for companies whose products are tangible and needed by everyone. The downside is, not being tech companies per se, you're not working on anything that will change the world. The upside is, your work generally helps the company provide needed products more efficiently.
Agreed, personally I work for a university now (not in the US) - I’m still a software dev, but it’s the best job I’ve ever had because the people/work/purpose is all good.
I think the title implies "tech industry", as in companies producing digital technology for profit. Working for an union as a developer is not working "in tech" imho.
Seems like the majority of arguments against the articles premise are the inability to sacrifice exorbitant living standards. I left big tech in 2022 and much happier living on a tiny fraction. It's called sacrifice. I personally don't understand why people need so much money. A family of 3 can easily live on $150k even in a HCOL area.
> I personally don't understand why people need so much money
- healthcare (where I live, we have public health care, i.e., my salary is taxed to oblivion, but if you want good for yourself and your family, you'll pay a second time, and seek out private practices / clinics)
- housing crisis, with unpreditable and unreliable rental market: you really want your children to start their own lives in small apartments that are owned by the family. And in the opposite generational direction: at some point your parents (or in-laws) will start dying, and the widow(er)s may have to be moved to different towns, apartments, assisted living facilities.
- healthcare#2: food supplements, therapy, gym, sports -- requires both a lot of money and a lot of time. No time for side jobs.
- home maintenance, car maintenance, etc.
In short, there's never enough money. If you don't spend your income all at once -- and you really should not spend it at once --, you will definitely spend it later, on valid things.
I guess it depends on how you view the world. Trustworthy and reliable? Then less money is fine, and the "sacrifice" that you mention only seems to apply to "exorbitant living standards". But if you view the world as hostile, unfair, at best indifferent and uncaring, then money equals safety, and you'll never feel you have enough of it -- even though you could be a responsible and frugal person already.
Considering the scale and frequency of layoffs across the board and the difficulty of finding a new job for many, you could just...run out the clock and wait for the inevitable?
Sitting on death row is psychologically devastating.
To summarize the article,
Problem: How to leave tech. Solution: Enter tech!
I want to leave tech as well. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to replace my income (yet). I'm working on a VERY niche SaaS offering, that has some novel growth areas. But getting time to work on it is slow going. Maybe it will some day be enough to replace my income, and I can bail on the FTE thing.
I’m thinking what I could offer for the world if there was no computers or even electricity. I don’t have too many ideas and this article didn’t help.
To continue working without coding, while still making use of coding skills and experience, I suppose roles like CTO or technical project lead might be suitable?
Interesting. I had just mentioned reading this article (2015): https://eev.ee/blog/2015/06/09/i-quit-the-tech-industry/
Kinda related.
Almost every complaint I see about working in tech is 90% applicable to any industry. The problem in every company is other people. Some are greedy, selfish, dishonest. Some mean well but market forces demand unsavory practices. You won't escape it by trading a keyboard for a hammer or a pastry bag or whatever.
You have to either have a specific target in mind. Like you actually love doing some other thing and want it to be your career. Or, as the article lays out, just keep doing tech someplace more fulfilling.
Having spent time in tech in both government and nonprofit space, I can tell you the organizations are not very different from corporate ones. Day-to-day frustrations are very similar. You have to just take heart in doing something constructive for the public good.
Starting a security focused Co-op was the path that made me happy. I can make a living open sourcing everything I do and working on what I want. YMMV.
Techno-political hustler sounds fun tbh. Sounds like you need to have a fundraising network though, which often means coming from a well-off background. A shame.
Consider public service software/IT engineering.
Contrary to popular belief, in the US there are state/federal government software jobs.
They don’t pay as well as the private sector, but it’s only a few steps down, not “get used to earning 20% as much”.
Is the bullshit rate in many of those jobs incredibly high? Absolutely. But can a talented generalist from the private sector make huge improvements for real people? You bet. So much of government IT is crippled by dated approaches and over-reliance on contractors (and the lack of knowledge of best practices that comes from very few folks transitioning from the private sector—those few steps down in salary are not a road often travelled).
As a result, someone with talent and familiarity with how much better things can be (and a willingness to push on broken rules/processes) can have a huge impact. You’ll have to do a lot of “here is a prototype nobody asked for built in a way nobody here is currently allowed to build it”-type performing in the first year or two, but at the right government agency folks who do that get to deliver massive benefits to real people every day.
There are enough sub components of government (agencies, sub-agencies, state, municipal) that you can easily find work you agree with. It’s frustrating to apply, but truly: once in the door, talented folks can achieve a huge amount.
This article is a version of selling shovels I didn't consider. Nice one.
Moving to a much cheaper country is probably the way if you have money saved up or can sell a house.
Not sure how much I vibe with the conclusions but the intro captures my feelings perfectly
>> the public sector offers more relaxed environments and more meaningful problems to work on
The public sector may provide more relaxed environments but it isn't clear that you will work on more meaningful problems.
Public workers are more positively impactful to the operation of society than many engineers working in digital widget factories. Bureaucracy limits potential, for good reason, but doing something is still more than nothing.
Except that the public sector workers are being paid for by the engineers working in the digital widget factories. So the core of the "positive" impact is coming from private industry. Maybe it is morally superior in the end to work at a digital widget factory so that others can chill and work in the public sector.
Written by a European.
Reality is - if you’re an American and got into tech and are working for well paying tech companies, you’re not leaving and there’s no escape unless you fatFIRE. This is why FIRE is so big among the Silicon Valley tech crowd. Everyone knows. What’s the alternative for an American tech worker (primarily the people who read HN) who wants to stay where they live, keep a similar quality of living, and not work in toxic faang-esque H1B factories? There ain’t one.
If by "keep a similar quality of living" you mean "keep FAANG-sized paychecks", there probably isn't an alternative. If you mean "keep upper-middle-class paychecks", well, there's more to "tech" than just web programming.
For instance, embedded systems is pretty good. Yeah, they don't pay FAANG levels, and they never will. They typically aren't a "toxic faang-esque HIB factory", though.
My point is more that you can’t afford a typical home in Silicon Valley or many other major cities in the US on a single non-faang income. If you happen to luck out and get a partner with a high income - congrats, not all of us are blessed like that.
So look at places other than major cities.
Do we think that wages in non-major cities are competitive? They’re not.
Either way, you’re asking for people to leave the regions they’ve built their life.
Your choice. If you won't leave the region you've built your life in, then you're stuck with the life you get in that region.
Other regions don't have competitive pay? They also don't have Bay Area cost of living.
You sound like you don't like the situation you have. You also sound like you won't look elsewhere. Your choice, but realize that you're making one.
This is like asking how you can keep drinking the blood of babies without the guilt of killing babies. The quality of living attributed to tech workers is on the condition that they participate in the system that extracts value from people and society. If you don't want to participate in that system of exploitation, you don't get the privileges that come with being an exploiter.
Acting as if this is even remotely unique to tech workers is ridiculous.
This Maoist third worldism rhetoric has no place here.
It's not exclusive to tech workers and it has nothing to do with Maoism. I'm not even leftist. It's just how our present economy works: since needs have long been satisfied, profit goes to who exploits better. Either the workers, nature, or the consumer. The more you exploit, the more you profit. Or do you think it's by chance that every major investment group, tech unicorn and military company does or enables unthinkable dystopic horrors?
> Written by a European.
Well, I live in Central-Eastern Europe, and even though I 100% agree with the problem statement, the proposed solutions sound unrealistic to me as well ;)
(Un)fortunately, changing lifestyle is a painful and necessary prerequisite for leaving the bubble.
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Emigration? It is really easy for Americans to move to Europe. If you are Russian, Pakistani or Kenian, that's another story.
Honesty I don't think USA tech workers would fit with European workplace culture. Imagine some cali crypto bro refugee pulling out his Cheese wiz or bud light in a French startup's Canteen. There would be a riot and then dudes in tractors would be blocking the highways demanding "the government do something"
tech to med school pipeline, don't recommend it but I'm happy
What age did you start med school? Probably not feasible for those of us who didn’t have stellar academic records. (Regardless of professional accomplishment)
go out and touch grass, feed the birbs
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