12 ms·

Ask HN: Former software engineers, what are you doing now?

186 points by zffr 6y ago

I've been programming since middle school, and have been working as a software engineer for the last 5 years. The pay is great (FAANG-level comp), but I'm extremely bored and considering leaving software engineering altogether. I'd like to better understand what career options other software engineers have explored. If you are a former software engineer: 1. What are you doing now? 2. Why did you leave software engineering?

noahnoahnoah 6y ago
I wasn't quite a software engineer, but a data analyst/scientist/engineer/term-du-jour at a brand-ish name software company for ~8 years, so pretty close in terms of the day-to-day work and culture. 1) I'm a professional cartographer, sort of. I make wooden topographic maps. 2) A bunch of reasons. I was never "supposed" to work in software -- I went to school in mechanical engineering, and wanted to get closer to something like that. My side biz was becoming viable, I wanted to do something entrepreneurial, and even though I had a pretty good gig, no company is perfect if you're there long enough. I don't know if I'll go back to data or software some day. Things were great in the map business before the pandemic, they're ok now, and hopefully they'll be great again in the future. I still do a lot of data analysis and write a lot of software for my business, it's just interspersed with a lot more sweeping, sanding, etc.
- cheez 6y ago
  https://elevatedwoodworking.com/ https://elevatedwoodworking.com/
- mejakethomas 6y ago
  big fan of what you're doing @ elevated woodworking! gorgeous stuff
trevett 6y ago
1. Hiking the NW, thinking about next-steps. 2. Startup I was working for was acquired by FAANG co. Able to retire from FAANG after four years of plumbing / ops / politics / meetings. There was awful latency at all levels, from dev environment to deployment. I found it extremely boring compared to startup life. I would say don't judge software engineering by how it is practiced at the FAANG level (where you can seriously get away with just a handful of changes per half) and try to find a small scrappy team of smart high-energy folks.
- giantg2 6y ago
  Wow retired after 4 years. I'd work in hell for 4 years if it meant I could retire. You must of had a nice piece of equity in that startup. Congrats!
  - ghaff 6y ago
    He didn't necessarily say he was permanently retired. I read it as taking some time off. Which is still nice. I've taken month long vacations but never felt I was in a good position to take extended time off between jobs.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      Still, must be nice to make that kind of money.
vinni2 6y ago
1. University professor 2. Got bored
- zffr 6y ago
  What made you want to become a professor? Were you interested in research or teaching or both?
  - vinni2 6y ago
    Research mostly but now I like teaching too.
sbazerque 6y ago
Raising cattle, programming the dwebs, carpentry, sailing
- zffr 6y ago
  Aside from the programming, what interested you in the other jobs?
- hibbelig 6y ago
  What's a dweb? (No my mother language.)
  - akavel 6y ago
    distributed web, maybe? (i.e. likes of IPFS/Scuttlebutt/Hypercore)
    - sbazerque 6y ago
      Yeah, this is mine https://GitHub.com/hyperhyperspace https://GitHub.com/hyperhyperspace
bitcoin2010 6y ago
1. Full time parent 2. Reached FIRE
- pgt 6y ago
  What is FIRE? Is that a different acronym for FU Money?
mbrameld 6y ago
I got my helicopter CFI and CFII and started teaching in May of this year. I also interview for Karat so I'm not completely out of software but I'm not writing code or managing people anymore. I left because whether or not I was working my brain was. I get less actual time off now but I feel like my batteries get completely recharged. Plus I get paid to fly helicopters which is still unbelievable to me.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Flying helicopters for a living is the best job. You’re getting paid to pilot something constantly trying to tear itself apart.
- caprock 6y ago
  whether or not I was working my brain was Did you find you were thinking more about technical problems or about problems related to management of people?
  - mbrameld 6y ago
    Both, tbh.
- ccostes 6y ago
  That's awesome! Did you fly helicopters before starting on the instructor path? Helicopters seem like a blast, but the cost is on another level (and that's speaking as a fixed-wing pilot used to the crazy costs of GA generally).
  - mbrameld 6y ago
    No, I had no proper flying experience. I used GI Bill benefits to cover the cost.
- giantg2 6y ago
  You can also get paid to dry cherries with your rotor wash.
ciclista 6y ago
I was a full stack web dev and Linux sysadmin for about a decade. Switched to welding and machining - I wanted to make something tangible for a change. The work itself was awesome (legos for grownups) but the industry is fairly toxic IME. Right now I'm working on getting back into IT (Network security).
- JoelMcCracken 6y ago
  Interesting; toxic in what way?
  - ramtatatam 6y ago
    I guess fumes coming out when you do welding are toxic. I have done it myself a few times and remember thinking about smell and if it can indicate I will get cancer frim it..
    - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      Based on my experience with machinists I think they might mean on a personal level (although the fumes are toxic too). The machinists I've met have been pretty hard to deal with. I can imagine the work environment being unpleasant, especially if you aren't prepared for that.
      - cosmodisk 6y ago
        This is correct. Eventually people can be very nice, once you get to know them, but you either have to be a certain type or simply have guts to tell people to sod off, as then they would start showing respect:) I think this is very similar to construction and some other related industries.
        ciclista 6y ago
        Both actually. Employers are stingy with PPE and you're constantly surrounded by dust, fumes and potentially harmful chemicals. Keep in mind this wasn't some tiny shop that made fences, I was working on military prototypes and aerospace projects. I switch to the industry during the Obama administration, but after 2016 people were feeling a little too comfortable with their misogeny and racism. To final straw was my direct supervisor becoming more radicalized into the far right. Not a comfortable feeling when they guy you report too leaves a 9mm with hollow points on top of his toolbox every day. The guy hadn't read a book except for the bible in 20 years, got all his news from Facebook and Fox.
jcborro 6y ago
1. Opened a ski mountaineering shop (https://skimo.co/ https://skimo.co/). I backcountry ski most mornings in winter/spring before we open at a casual 11am; work on the site in the summer. 2a. Sick of pointless discussions about languages/frameworks/architectures, none of it matters to low-traffic/low-tech business. 2b. Sick of meetings/arguments to decide what to build. Making business and tech decisions simultaneously is amazingly efficient; e.g. no wasting time over-engineering for a requirement that may not even be important. 2c. Wanted to try and combine/balance my skill with my passion.
- starpilot 6y ago
  Wow I've ordered from you guys. I received some great advice on liners and replacing a screw on my bindings, and was pretty surprised to get such detailed responses to my questions. Your site was recommended to me by the guys at Evo (Seattle).
  - jcborro 6y ago
    The level of nerdiness required for software engineering translates well to tech bindings! I was an early importer/user of European gadgetry (they are way ahead of us due to the racing scene) so developed a fairly large mental repository of such minutiae. I personally answered all questions for the first several years and still do occasionally.
- cvhashim 6y ago
  How’s your business going to survive climate change?
  - jhloa2 6y ago
    Short-term, global warming is set to increase the amount of moisture in the air, meaning that high elevation places will likely see more snow until the warming hits a threshold where most of the moisture will fall as rain.
  - jcborro 6y ago
    Good question since we can see snow/rain lines slowly rise over the years. Certain ski resorts are in danger of losing a reliable snow pack. People will keep skiing, however, and our clientele puts in an incredible amount of effort to find snow to slide on.
hellonoko 6y ago
1. As absolutely little as possible. 2. Got FU money and was able to do nothing.
- H8crilA 6y ago
  How long have you been doing "nothing"? I tried it (sort of) for a year, and found it a little dull.
  - juniper_strong 6y ago
    That's where I'm at. Well not "FU" money, maybe "I would prefer not to" money, job off-shored so I did nothing for a while. I had this big list of all the things I wanted to do when I stopped working, and in six months, I didn't even start doing one of them. My girlfriend said, "You're still on the computer all day, you might as well get paid for it". I hate it when my girlfriend is right.
    - throwaway234101 6y ago
      > "You're still on the computer all day, you might as well get paid for it". I took a year off a while back and pretty much did the same thing. If I ever take that much time off again, I'm going to go someplace that has no internet.
    - hardeeparty 6y ago
      Same - I was doing a bit of contract work on the side when I quit. Did some traveling (briefly) and then ended up making those gigs my job. Haven't even touched my FU/1-year-savings money yet after almost a year...
  - hellonoko 6y ago
    About 12 years I believe.
    - dencodev 6y ago
      Do you not feel compelled to do something? There isn't any particular cause you want to work towards? Something political, community oriented, non-profit? I feel like there's so many causes I care about that I would love to organize if I had FU money.
dvxvd 6y ago
In the priority order: 1. Climbing mountains, hiking. 2. Have a goal to learn something new everyday.. thats how i measuring quality of the day.. zero learning = bad day 3. From time to time short term works to earn some money. Usually companies very surprised then i tell them that i prefer short term projects. Shorter = better So far so good ;) (approx 10 years) Good luck
- mrfusion 6y ago
  What have you learned this week?
  - dvxvd 6y ago
    1. Found few very interesting thougts from this very long article: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1zao_AyBhNb8TPWrQqgXn5NzNAgfEqzTIaFYos7wdqGI/mobilebasic https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1zao_AyBhNb8TPWrQqgXn... 2. Learned tested and implemented for fun few visuals from this link: https://datavizcatalogue.com/index.html https://datavizcatalogue.com/index.html 3. Learned and tested two diferent frameworks for the web scraping.. nice, interesting what will be our role at the time when one machine prepare information and another machine will consume it.. 4. Found interesting analysis at: https://www.vox.com/a/maps-explain-the-middle-east https://www.vox.com/a/maps-explain-the-middle-east 5. Checked what are the main advantages of timescaledb and how can i benefit from it: https://www.timescale.com https://www.timescale.com 6. Learned and tested how it works css data attributes https://css-tricks.com/a-complete-guide-to-data-attributes/?ref=colorsandfonts https://css-tricks.com/a-complete-guide-to-data-attributes/?... 7. Read 20+ long and detailed wikipedia articles to find out definitions and origins of various terms and subjects Read anothe hundred or more of posts and newspaper artivles, but i think it was wasting of time, because so many authors writing to get click but not tell something important/interesting.. subjective. I do agree.. problem is that i always hope that maybe at the end i will find some briliant mind or conclusion. so, im reading whole article.. need to change this bad habit.. Not bad week.. but always can be better..;) thing what im missing is - continuity.. but thats probably something what need to fix by myself..;) ... This werk i also climbed 3 peaks with prominance grater than 1000 meters and elevation 2300-2700m... on commercial side i implemented two small automation improvements. Changes will benefit client company and at the end - myself..
ziffusion 6y ago
I mostly dodder around trying to remember where my pants are, and wondering if it was worth it for whoever named the creat() system call to leave the "e" out.
- tomcam 6y ago
  Between the wall and the hamper, and no.
  - ziffusion 6y ago
    goddamnit
victorkab 6y ago
1. CTO, is that cheating? 2. It's not so much leaving Software Engineering, it's reframing it. Software Engineer when done well is about creative thinking and problem solving. If you feel that you are in a rut, try going to an organization that's not just about coding. If you are really not interested about Software Engineering as a discipline, I'd start by taking a break then reassessing.
poulsbohemian 6y ago
1. Selling real estate, raising kids, planning for various future investments and opportunities. 2. I was in software for 20+ years. It was all I had ever wanted to do from the time I was 13. In hindsight, I’d say you have a phase of the moon in which to make your money and get out. It’s a brutal industry and you will likely face burn out at some point and you need to be prepared for that moment. I was in many different roles and responsibilities over that time, but the bottom line was I hit a point where none of it was fun, the clients were a pain in the ass, and it was just time to do something else that better fit my life. If a young person came to me and asked for career advice, I’d be very direct about what to do and not do in a tech related field.
- dclusin 6y ago
  What should we not do? Not new just curious about your reflections on the industry job functions.
- ilyas121 6y ago
  Same, graduating in a year and interested in advice.
  - dencodev 6y ago
    As a long time senior dev who's desperate to get out of development right now because I'm sick of it, my overwhelming advice is to be sure you're working at places where you can grow. I job hopped from one consultancy to another, getting great pay jumps each time but doing the same thing. And the places I've worked are small - there's literally no job opening to move into, or any way to make a new job. It's really hard right now to transition to something new while also seeking out a new employer. They see my years of a senior software engineer and probably bin my resume because they probably think my salary expectations are too high or I'm poorly suited to something closer to project management, despite having a lot of PM experience and listing it on my resume. It's just never been a job title. Transitioning to something different, or more niche, is much much easier when done internally and the people there know you.
    - 6y ago
mattl 6y ago
Sysadmin
KorfmannArno 6y ago
Studying data science - https://247reading.group https://247reading.group
- KorfmannArno 6y ago
  2: because I was also bored with it. Want to contribute to automation (as in automating non-digital jobs)
ericgong 6y ago
1. Started a recruiting agency https://www.ericgong.com https://www.ericgong.com 2. Everyone hates the recruiting industry so it's ripe for disruption with an actual technical recruiter.
- jameshush 6y ago
  I've looked into doing this. At the moment I've been connecting friends with employment opportunities for free for years (especially my friends in Canada who don't want to leave with remote friendly opportunities in Los Angeles). To get you first paying client, is it as simple as finding a payment agreement online (something like "If the employee stays at company for 90 days company shall pay %x fee")? Did you start the agency while still working as a VP of Engineering and slowly switch over?
  - ericgong 6y ago
    I left my job a few months ago and just started this business a couple weeks ago. I have some consultants and recruiters in my network so was able to figure out the contracts from that. I'm early in the journey to find my first client!
- superhuzza 6y ago
  Your logo is almost identical to the International School of Geneva's. It doesn't really matter I guess, just something I noticed. https://www.ecolint.ch/sites/default/files/logo_eig_bleu.png https://www.ecolint.ch/sites/default/files/logo_eig_bleu.png
  - ericgong 6y ago
    Wow, didn't know that. I hired a designer to create the logo. Still happy with it, thanks for pointing it out though.
markc 6y ago
1. Traveling the US by RV (for the last year) 2. After 20 times through the product cycle and I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm any more. Having enough $$ to stop made my attitude go downhill faster. Being able to finally ignore/defy a truly terrible boss made it all come to a head even though I was walking away from almost 300k/y. Bye bye, zero regrets.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  Do you tow a car or drive the rv around town?
  - markc 6y ago
    Drive the (26’ motorhome) RV. Somewhat limiting in cities, but the rest of the time it’s so much easier not towing. And there are tricks for dealing with cities, like parking on the edge and biking in. Or finding RV friendly lots using google maps satellite images. Lately cities have far less to offer (no museums, galleries, restaurants, etc.) so it’s hike and bike and enjoy the beautiful country.
    - blackrock 6y ago
      That sounds incredible. You should just randomly blog about your travels. Take majestic pictures and bring your subject into focus with the beautiful bokeh blur. And put ads on it, just to see how much traffic it will generate. And try to sell the rights to your photographs.
MattPalmer1086 6y ago
I'm now a security architect. I get to work on a wider set of problems over the entire business, not just software. I left mostly because I became fascinated by security, while I was being asked to secure software. I realised I had no real idea how to do this, and the deeper I dug, the more interesting it seemed. I was also becoming bored by the relentless cyclic churn in software development methodologies and frameworks, and how fashion led the whole thing seemed to be.
- giantg2 6y ago
  I'm an ASC. I find my security related work much more interesting than my development work.
jhwhite 6y ago
1. I'm a Scrum Master. 2. I really wasn't great at it. I loved it, only did it professionally for 2 years, but did side projects for years before I took an official job. I wish I was good enough to be productive in a professional environment.
- zoomablemind 6y ago
  > I'm a Scrum Master. It's a the job title? I always considered Scrum Master more like an additional (sometimes rotating) responsibility of a team member, be it a dev or PM. On the other hand, Scrum Coach is more like a job, or rather a contracting gig.
  - Traubenfuchs 6y ago
    Some companies of a surprisingly small size even have fulltime agile coaches. I am yet to be convinced those roles are anything besides "management padding". I saw them spend all their time to create reports no one consumed and do "illusion of activity" kind of stuff. They did retrospectives that never led to change, had to justify why development was behind schedule and find new and creative ways to make burn down charts look better than reality.
- dencodev 6y ago
  I'm an experience senior dev trying to transition to project management but it's difficult to find jobs right now that are entry level and software focused. Any suggestions? I feel like they just see my senior software engineering titles and think "no way this guy wants to be a PM for $60k a year"
timkam 6y ago
No longer a Software Engineer, but still in "IT" in the broader sense. * Left SE job for a PhD in CS, roughly 50% of a good SE salary here in Northern Europe * Do some Product Management/Innovation advisory on the side I left SE because I found the type of programming one typically does, as well as the Jira ticket-pushing, uninspiring. I still write code, but (almost) only because I enjoy it (a PhD in CS does not necessarily involve much, or any, programming).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
brtkdotse 6y ago
Starting this autumn I’ve cut client hours to 25 per week and will use the remaining 15 to try and get a physical print shop going. I’ll be printing stickers, tshirts and banners. Currently toying around which niche to serve.
- lukejduncan 6y ago
  Election season in the US seems promise if brief
claudiulodro 6y ago
On a related note for all the financially independent people I see posting here, how did you get enough money to just peace out? Was it just the tried-and-true strategy of work at FAANG for like 10 years?
- ghaff 6y ago
  It really depends what age people are--as well as family etc. I do know people who have either done the FAANG thing, the investment bank thing, or beat the odds and won the startup lottery thing who have retired genuinely early because they weren't doing what they actually wanted to be doing--which could include traveling and kicking back. But retiring 5-10 years earlier than the norm doesn't require much more than having had a string of reasonably well-paying jobs, being sensible with money, and being fortunate enough to avoid financial disasters.
- firethrow 6y ago
  I'm in my early 30s and never had more than a 100k income. We save 100% of my wife's income (~60-70k) and I also fully do a roth (6k) and my 401k match (4k). We currently have around 1.5m saved. We also live in a low cost of living area and have no kids. The house will be paid off and we'll have a bit over 3m saved by the time we're in our early 40s.
treeman79 6y ago
Knew a guy that quit to be a painter. After 2 years he’s happy to be back in air conditioning.
paledot 6y ago
I'm in the same place as you are, not FAANG salary but my wife has a FAANG job and we have enough savings to both retire now (early 30s) if we wanted to. I'm trying to figure out what I'd do if I "retired". Tentatively full-time parent part-time tinkerer, maybe put some of my back burner projects on the front burner and see if I can get a bit of passive income out of them. Mostly I'm feeling the lack of time and energy to build things (material and immaterial) for myself. But, while work isn't a source of joy for me, it is a source of structure. I'm still trying to figure out if my life would be better without it.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  What kind of tinkering would you do? Have you thought of switching to a low paying but more fulfilling job?
  - paledot 6y ago
    Right now, woodworking and gardening. Later, who knows. Probably I'll circle back around to programming, but building things for myself instead of for other people. I'm not really sure what I'd find more fulfilling in the day-to-day of salaried employment. In an abstract sense, sure, I could build websites to help orphaned puppies find forever homes instead of to help people find mattresses or whatever. However, if overall impact is my objective, I'm better off keeping the highest-paying job I can (consistent with my values) and donating my salary to charity.
    - mrfusion 6y ago
      What kind of woodworking? Feel free to email if we’re getting too offtopic.
- Zucburger 6y ago
  @paledot Where did you first meet each other? The lack of energy may be due to a lack of a pushing force, such as a boss. Currently doing something on that topic if you want to discuss more.
shahinrostami 6y ago
1. UK university academic (on sabbatical, consulting and adapting!) 2. Wanted to try something different... last software engineer post was 2010. I became very interested in Evolutionary Computation, so I went for a sponsored PhD position.
- zffr 6y ago
  Did you have a background in research before doing the PhD program?
  - shahinrostami 6y ago
    No real research experience until the PhD programme. I did run a blog where I posted about papers I found interesting in the domain, but I hadn't published!
- plumeria 6y ago
  Is a sponsored PhD like an industrial PhD?
  - shahinrostami 6y ago
    Sorry, lacking sleep and wasn't clear! I didn't mean an industry-sponsored PhD - I meant a fully funded PhD, e.g.: These add a non-repayable, tax-free maintenance grant known as a 'stipend'. In 2018/19 this is worth a minimum of £14,777 and it can be used towards living costs. https://www.prospects.ac.uk/postgraduate-study/phd-study/phd-studentships
Mountain_Skies 6y ago
1. Hiking as much as is legal under current conditions and trying to decide what to do next. I've been looking into indie games, creating various productivity tools or maybe plug-ins for popular software. Nothing so far looks like it is a good bet for making a living. 2. After close to thirty years, I'm tried of all of the administrative overhead and attempts to make me part of it. Every job for the past decade and a half has tried to push me into management despite my clear statements that I don't want to manage people. When I've refused, the responsibilities were still handed to me, just without the title I turned down. Simple tasks like getting a $20 coding tool approved could take months to go through the purchasing process and then through the approval process for the software itself. Buying it out of pocket at my last company was considered a major disciplinary offense. Weekly HR tasks for endless non-technical trainings, status reports and "check-ins" with managers and co-workers even though I have daily contact with my manager and co-workers. These reports weren't for consumption by anyone in my management chain of command but for HR who demanded to be part of the internal processes everywhere. It's administrative overhead gone mad and seems to be growing pretty much everywhere. I never made FAANG type money but also am not a big spender so I have plenty of time, a couple of years, before I have to start making money again. I'm not necessarily against doing software development but can't go back to the corporate world. The way it operates is just too far removed from how I'd like to develop software. At least by quitting during a major unemployment event, should I ever need to return to the corporate world, the resume gap won't be a red flag.
superkitty 6y ago
Started building the houses for needy folks!
Yetanfou 6y ago
Buy a farm, preferably one with enough forest to keep the place warm and build a barn or 2. Start small by growing something or other for your own use while building or renovating the run-down house on the property. Maybe you can help out on a neighbouring farm, say that one where the farmer nearly cut off his hand due to a bit of stupidity with a large angled grinder without a protective cover. Keep at it, get some animals if you want, maybe some sheep, maybe a few cows. Your wife and children are probably going to get some horses so be prepared for that eventuality , you'll end up building not one but several stables, shelters, feeders and more of such. Once you've been doing this for a number of years you'll have a good grasp of what you could do to improve life on the farm so you start developing hard- and software to make things happen. A wood-gas powered CHP system might be a good start? That way those farmers who heat their house and water (for cleaning the stables, milking equipment, etc - lots of hot water...) using wood chips get both heat and electricity for the same amount of fuel, all the long Swedish winter long. Those PV panels don't do that much when the sun hardly shows itself after all... This is where I am now, more or less.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  This sounds really nice, congratulations. I'm hoping to do something similar in a few more years.
expiredusername 6y ago
1. I am now decaying slowly underground in the dark. 2. I died.
expiredusername 6y ago
1. Now I am decaying slowly underground in the dark. 2. I died.
juancn 6y ago
At one point, a few years ago, I was in your place. Really bored and completely miserable. I got tired of huge companies (one in particular) and went to a "goldilocks zone" startup. By this I mean the ones were they have enough money to pay you well and a reasonable product/business with a high chance of success, but they're still small enough for you to have an impact in the organization (we were under a 100 people when I jumped in). Really smart people and a culture that fits my personal beliefs. The first year was tricky, switching from the slowness of the large company to the constant change and challenges of the startup. Once you get your bearing and feel that you're pulling your own weight is fantastic, been there for the past 8 years or so. My point is, there may not be a need to change careers completely, maybe just find the right group of people to work with.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Been there. It was wonderful... and then pretty good... and then it got kind of boring. (I'm at 11 years.) It doesn't stay goldilocks forever. While it's good, though, it can be really good. Enjoy it while it's good, because it won't be forever. Things change. People change. Businesses change. Good situations become not so good, sometimes very quickly. If you're in a good situation, value it.
  - juancn 6y ago
    I know that. I'm still loving it, once I stop loving it, I'll start looking for the next great group of people to work with (probably, or start one, who knows!). The point is that if you found it once, it's likely that you can find it again. So far I've been on two such magical teams. Maybe there's a third one.
spfzero 6y ago
1.) Run a small part-time electronics business. I do still write software separately when I think of a fun project, though. Programming is a creative outlet, as is circuit design, mechanical design etc. So I still spend a lot of my time in those pursuits. Some outdoor adventuring, hiking, climbing, off-roading, etc. 2.) Got really sick of the way SE is managed at modern companies now, and it was getting worse and worse. To be honest, it was a business where software wasn't their product, and thus the people in charge weren't technical people. Should have changed to a more purely technical company like I had worked at earlier in my career, but the money was too good. More meetings, more HR directed policies, new politics-heavy boss. More projects to satisfy someone's curiosity 10 levels above me. Fortunately I was frugal and saved a lot over a lot of years, and didn't need the job anymore.
adyer07 6y ago
1. I did a year long bike tour with my partner. When I came home, I went back to undergrad to study art (illustration + painting). So now I’m mostly a student, also working on my own art and doing some part-time work. 2. Boredom which became kind of existential. I had reached a new career high, and suddenly didn’t have anything to strive for - at the time, I didn’t have the insight to try and ask for more impactful work, and I really leaned out of my job instead. The dream of doing a bike tour kept getting bigger and bigger. I couldn’t get the bike tour out of my head, and decided it was the perfect time in my life to jump on it.
- JuanJakobo 6y ago
  Your art looks quite cool! The bicycle paintings reflect somehow the amount of freedom I feel driving it.
deanmoriarty 6y ago
I would like to leave because the stress of keeping up to date with frameworks and the competition is just brutal. Everything is just so complex to implement these days. I still love troubleshooting systems and doing hands on work that doesn’t involve writing code with other SWEs, so I’m considering what options I have. I basically don’t want to be part of a code review or design discussion ever again.
- k0t0n0 6y ago
  You are mostly looking into sys admin or cloude guru role.
- kewpiedoll99 6y ago
  Or ProServ - it's a lot of debugging/diagnostics work. There's a whole wide world of need for good diagnosticians who are thin on the ground, my friend.
dave333 6y ago
Solvent boredom beats insolvent doing what you love. Keep the day job and do what you love as a hobby. If you don't know what you love keep looking while still employed. I went from SW eng - > unemployed (dot com bust) -> self employed as web entrepreneur (https://samurai-sudoku.com https://samurai-sudoku.com 2005) -> UI lead (massive relief to be earning a wage again) -> flipping a house as a hobby (broke even but a ton of fun) -> retired (finally unable to keep up with new javascript frameworks every 18 months).
mcaravey 6y ago
1. About to open a bakery next month: https://www.pearlbakery.com https://www.pearlbakery.com I operate the place as well as being the head baker, and the skills required are vastly different. There is some overlap with soft skills, managing others, attention to details, and so on. 2. Still involved in software, but I discovered years ago that I can’t accomplish much while I write the code myself. The bakery is a family endeavor, but I’m using it as a way to collect as much business experience and capital as possible to be able start my next big thing. But I must say, having time away from a screen is nice too.
itsmejeff 6y ago
When I got bored with software engineering, I decided to invest in developing leadership skills and to try to build teams. Many people (myself included) are motivated by the impact their career can have. The impact of a great leader is exponentially larger than that of a direct contributor (based on the number people they can typically influence, and the amount of resources at their disposal to pursue “bigger” ideas). A great engineer who is also a great leader will garner more respect from their team, and will be more effective than a great leader who was not a great engineer. I’m currently a Director of Engineering, and have a goal of becoming a CEO. This is something I never remotely considered, and even scoffed at early in my career. The transition has been difficult and exciting. I considered myself to be an excellent engineer, so transitioning to a role where the new challenge is how to convince other brilliant (but possibly less honed) technical minds to do things has been extremely fulfilling. It forces me to think harder about my habits as an engineer and why they are important and how I can communicate that — it also forces me to have humility and admit that some of my habits may not have been as good as some things other folks are doing. It’s been extremely fulfilling, and I’m much more excited about my future than I was during the last few years I was a software engineer.
- Zucburger 6y ago
  @itsmejeff What were the critical skills that you made yourself learn for the transition?
  - itsmejeff 6y ago
    Truthfully — the biggest thing has been leaning into my gut more as opposed to trying to reason through everything thoroughly. The decisions are many and the time is short. Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” is a great read, and when working in engineering management, the conclusion to be drawn from it is that your gut (aka system 1) is actually really good at summing all of your past experience and telling you what you should do. There is definitely more in the domain of human psychology that I have studied as well. In addition, I’ve been forced to continue to hone my technical skills, but more in the domain of “why” instead of “how”. I was able to be an effective engineer by mastering the “how” (which of course required some non-zero knowledge of “why”). However, the types of minds that exist in engineering (or at least the types I want on my team), are not satisfied with a boss telling them “how” to do something. The reasoning must be sound. Engineers want to see the work. If you can’t provide compelling arguments for why a new policy or decision exists, then you quickly lose credibility.
phekunde 6y ago
I think software engineers should get together(online) and first start bouncing ideas together to help make the world a better place and then form various groups to work on those ideas. That will help start new businesses.
codingdave 6y ago
I moved into Product Management - partially because I wanted to stop coding, partially because after our SaaS got bought, I'm the last man standing from the original team - everyone else quit, so my knowledge is more valuable than my code... which means I have more impact as a product guy. But I expect this job will end within 6 months anyway (if it was going well, the rest of the team would not have quit), so I'm going to be doing consulting when this is over. I'm working on the materials and workshops now, focusing on leadership and team dynamics, because I want to try to help other teams fix the problems that make software professionals miserable.
kevinslin 6y ago
1. just launched a local-first, markdown based, hierarchical note-taking tool - https://dendron.so https://dendron.so 2. wanted to start a business building a solution to a problem i cared deeply about (information overload)
immnn 6y ago
I did not really forced myself leaving software engineering. I took the chance to be CTO at a startup. However, one of the CEOs was quite a critical person who yelled at female workers, thus I decided to quit. Fortunately, I always kept a strong relationship to my former employer who wanted me to be their co-CEO. Nowadays I do not really find time to write software. However, I still give directions and choose technology to use. I’m still thinking, that currently I’m not where I want to be. So I find this discussion quite interesting.
LocalMan 6y ago
1. Retired. Mostly I read and surf the web. Take care of my health. 2. I left because I got old. Twelve hours of concentration just isn't worth it any more.