23 ms·

I quit the tech industry

• jimwalsh 11y ago
  Work-Life-Balance, such a great lesson many 20 somethings should make an effort to learn before they destroy the passion they have for whatever it is they are passionate about. I'd never tell someone to not work hard or to strive for things they want to accomplish. But be able to step back and look at the big picture. Life is too short. Don't forget to enjoy it while you can.
  • neverartful 11y ago
    Well stated. It applies to all age groups. I recently forced myself to 'stop and smell the flowers' (or however that phrase goes). I discovered something that had been around me my whole life that I had never noticed. I noticed the beautiful singing of the cardinal (the little red bird). Since then I listen for them and hear them often. It's a beautiful sound and it's a reminder to not take work life so seriously and enjoy the beauty of nature.
  • steve-howard 11y ago
    When you fall down the rabbit hole of burnout, there's not much help for you. Work sucks, but then you come home from work and you're exhausted and you don't have time to go work on a side project or nurture a non-tech hobby or really do much of anything but stay up way too late because, as the author said, you're not ready to wake up and have it be tomorrow again.
• Jimmy 11y ago
  Having a traditional job is such a terrible experience. At the very least, it's terrible if you're not 100% in love with whatever company project you're working on. I think there are some personality types that are suited to traditional jobs though, since most people don't share my concerns when I tell them how terrible it is to have a job. Because of this, I think more people like the author of this post should pursue non-traditional lines of work without feeling guilty. Perhaps our current economic set-up doesn't allow everyone to be happy, but more people could be happy than they currently are.
  • kayoone 11y ago
    While i feel similar in that i don't think i could go back to a "normal" job, i also realize how incredibly lucky i am to have this choice. So many people have to do much more grueling work that is not even remotely their passion and earn much less doing so. It's not even a question of education really, imo it comes down to luck in where you were born and some choices that made you end up in an industry that allows all of this. I also know that there are always people that aren't as lucky and privileged and that it shouldn't be the argument to end all arguments because otherwise no progress will ever be possible.
    • 72deluxe 11y ago
      This is very true - we are fortunate and should not forget that. It could be worse (like it is for others).
  • morganvachon 11y ago
    Exactly, this is why it's called "The Grind". My wife works 40 hours per week at a local government facility, and I work the same schedule at a private company. We have maybe three hours of time together each evening, and that time is taken by household chores, cooking (which I mostly do), eating dinner, then we usually each have something we wanted to do separately. By the time we're ready to spend time together, it's bedtime. It's been a drain on both of us mentally and emotionally, and if we weren't so amazingly compatible it would be an issue in our marriage. As it is, I'm planning on going back to government work myself on a rotating 12 hour shift so I have days off during the week, and can take care of those household chores that take away a lot of our free time together. It will also allow me to get back to my writing, which is difficult to do after a mentally exhausting nine-to-five day of fixing other people's issues.
  • mcdougle 11y ago
    I'd actually argue that 80% to 90%* of people are suited to traditional jobs, simply because the majority of people don't have the motivation, ambition, or discipline to do what it takes otherwise. I don't mean that as a negative criticism to those people in any way, either. Most of my friends openly admit that this is the case for them -- they can't even work from home (when given the option) because they don't have the discipline to actually get their work done unless they have a boss telling them when to work and what to work on. It's just the way some people are wired, and it doesn't help that it's the way society and schools try to raise us to be. I, personally, hate it, though. I don't know why anyone would feel guilty about that. I mean, maybe if all you wanted to do was sit around and do nothing all day -- but that's not me. I enjoy working, as long as it's meaningful and under my control (at least to an extent). There's nothing wrong with building up side streams of income (through things like real estate investments or online businesses) with the intention of ultimately going full time on them. * Ok, 80% to 90% might be a bit high. I just threw out a big number. But I'm sure it's the overwhelming majority of people.
• tmaly 11y ago
  well written post!
• nine_k 11y ago
  > I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to sit at this desk and I’m going to work on whatever the hell I feel like working on. > I don’t know how to turn this into dollars yet. Hopefully I’ll figure that out. Well, good luck. I'm just afraid the reality will kick in soon. Tech industry is by far not the worst way to get some food for fifty picnics; many others are much more soul-crushing, with less chance to retire early.
  • harkyns_castle 11y ago
    Very much agreed. It sounds like OP is a bit burnt out, and I had much the same thing - I said to myself I'll do my own thing, I've done the hard yards, I'll just sit down to think of something, got a few good ideas... time keeps ticking though, and unless you have endless cash, the bills will keep rolling in. Discipline and focus I guess is pretty important to doing the solo thing. It's easy to forget the plethora of shit jobs out there once you've been doing software development/ops/IT for a while. Sure, its painful, and some companies more than others, but I agree with another poster that often it's more what you put on yourself versus what's forced on you (at least in my case I think that was often true). I guess it's vital to look for that work/life balance and a company that will offer that (not just lip service); or do your own thing, but that can be pretty hard work too - it's not just coding then, it's all the roles, even the ones you hate. If there were an easy answer, we'd all be doing it. [edit] added bit.
• imaginenore 11y ago
  I did that. I stopped working full time. I started working on my own projects, which I have like 10 of, all very different. 3 of the ones I launched are already making okay money, paying half of our rent. The mental change is tremendous - I don't have a manager harassing me, I do everything on my own schedule. I can switch between whatever projects I want, whenever I want. The only thing that I miss is working with the people who are smarter than me.
  • ExpiredLink 11y ago
    IOW, you switched your dependencies.
• cianchette 11y ago
  After reading on HN about the miners in England yesterday, it's difficult to generate too much sympathy for your situation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677863 I hope that you translate your passion into using technology to truly help make the world a better place.
  • noir_lord 11y ago
    The guy is clearly burnt out and your best response is "well at least you don't work in a coal mine". You could argue "well at least those coal miners didn't live in Ethiopia or Rwanda" There is exactly one person on this planet at any time who has it worse than everyone else, everything else is just relative.
  • adenot 11y ago
    I thought the same thing... first world problems in its essence.
    • ZenoArrow 11y ago
      So just because someone has it worse you have to enjoy your job? Doesn't work like that. What the OP realised is that money is no good if chasing it wrecks your time. Is he lucky to be able to choose another way? Yes, but that doesn't make his decision any less valid.
      • adenot 11y ago
        Sure he has his reasons but it's most because he is making a decision that he believes is the right to do, not because his employer did something wrong. I am in the exact same situation as him (without the equity large enough to cover my mortgage), but I recognize my last employer was actually good to me, my unhappiness was not their fault.
    • heidar 11y ago
      Also typical in the first world: ignoring and belittling mental problems like they are inferior to physical ones. Both suck but just in different ways.
• beachstartup 11y ago
  i find it impressive he resisted using the word 'fuck' until about 2/3rds of the way through. he may have a future yet. the irony of course, is that anger and humiliation and frustration drive you to start your own company, but if you succeed, you will basically deal with new instantiations of the same old problems, except this time it's all your fault and they still need to be fixed. now 'that guy' is you. congratulations! you've made it. technical debt, constant stressful fire-drills, ludicrously overloaded schedules, demands on your time and patience, inane re-inventions of established technology, etc. plus a whole host of others ('unknown unknowns') that you can't even begin to fathom as someone who was paid handsomely to care only about the technical problems in an organization. but, of course, you will be king shit sittin' pretty at the top of the whole shit-heap by then, and see the entire heap of shit from a new, exciting, gilded perspective. and this is, in and of itself, worth something. in fact, it can be worth a shitload. they don't call it an exit strategy for nothing!
• jnsaff2 11y ago
  This sounds very much like the article I read yesterday: http://mashable.com/2015/06/09/post-hipster-yuccie/ http://mashable.com/2015/06/09/post-hipster-yuccie/
• mavdi 11y ago
  I couldn't believe what I was reading. I have the exact same feeling about current state of the tech industry. No one pushes barriers anymore. Rarely anyone makes anyones life better by doing things radically different. We keep reinventing the same wheel again and again. I've been paid handsomely in the last 5 years by doing pretty much the exact same things, using different frameworks for different (and at times the same) companies.
  • 72deluxe 11y ago
    Well done for being paid handsomely! I think we are deluding ourselves if we think anything really new is coming along. A lot of the development on microcomputers and mobiles is just rehashing the client/server model of the 70s, but with different technologies every 5 years. Web apps are just the database interfaces of the 90s, and layers over CRUD. They are just more accessible. I think if we realise this and become comfortable with it, it'd be good for income (if perhaps not soul destroying creatively).
  • stevejones 11y ago
    If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. -- Isaac Newton In computer science, we stand on each other's feet. -- Brian K. Reid
  • neverartful 11y ago
    This may sound harsh and insensitive, but it's not meant that way. "No one pushes barriers anymore". No one that you may have seen. Look around, folks do it all the time. Examples abound. "Rarely anyone makes anyones life better...". Become a teacher, a nurse, a social worker, a friend, a good neighbor, volunteer to work with the poor, etc. etc. "...by doing things radically different". This is one of my biggest beefs with our tech culture. We're arrogant. We need to step back and realize that a great deal was invented and accomplished before we were born. Many billions of people have passed through life on Earth before us. Some did "radically different" things, but more likely, most did not. What makes you or I so special to think that it's something we're entitled to. Of course we should strive to do our very best and have high goals, but our expectations really should be tempered by reality (not our ego). "I've been paid handsomely in the last 5 years by doing pretty much the exact same things...". How do you think these roles think about doing the exact same things? Painters, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, bus driver, accountant, sales executive, restaurant owner, sales clerk, etc. 2 parting thoughts: (1) count your blessings, not your problems, and (2) if you're as smart and talented as you think you are, you should be able to improve the situation for yourself and others.
• yc1010 11y ago
  I have been working for myself for last 8 years after completing my masters, in hindsight financially I did not do too badly (tho there was some great and ups and incredible downs!) and it is NICE working from home and watching your kid grow (tho there are quite a lot of distractions!!! says he who is procrastinating reading HN :D ) BUT if I was offered a job with guaranteed employment and steady wages and (gaaasp pension!) like being a teacher I would go for it. Having kids changes your perspective. I would have been financially much better of if it wasn't for punitive taxes in Ireland, here you reach ~53% high tax rate with only about ~$35K in income. And then there are new property/water taxes they brought in now as well as 23% VAT :( All of these taxes really make you ask yourself "why bother work harder and longer" and really kill any incentive to work. And no we do not get free healthcare here still need to pay for medical insurance out of aftertax earnings. And as a business owner I do not qualify for the full welfare if things go to shit, despite paying high rate of social taxes. edit: Now that I read my rant in second half of my past, no wonder no good startups come from here, the atmosphere is toxic to entrepreneurship.
  • rblstr 11y ago
    Well, you've just convinced me never to return to Ireland until I retire, thanks!
    • yc1010 11y ago
      Yeh me and my kids will be paying for a long time for the worlds biggest banking (per capita) debacle and the destruction of the economy in the 00s by various governments. With kids its sort of hard to leave :( Tho' it is a nice place to live despite all the carry on. But hey look over there at the news yet another multinational setting up to launder/funnel money onto somewhere warmer and seems like a housing bubble is re-inflating again. -------- edit: last year i arranged my salary to remain under the high tax rate band Gross: €32.6 K Net (after PAYE,PRSI,USC): €25 K The accountant said that above this €32K line i would have lost about ~53 cents in taxes for each €1.00 earned by ending up in the highest tax band... So I left the extra money in company (corporation tax 12.5%) and will spread out my wages over few years, tho is risky practice if the company gets sued and loses the money. There is an option to pay into a pension but with the pension funds being so mismanaged and the government actively robbing all pensions and destroying the pension reserve that would be downright stupid.
• shabinesh 11y ago
  I am in a similar phase, just two more days left in my current job. After that I shall start working on my own projects and freelance and build MVPs for startups to keep me afloat, which I also enjoy for the fulfilling responsibility. But I am only experimenting it for next few months and if it doesn't work out I shall fall-back. Good luck for your next steps.
• outsidetheparty 11y ago
  Yep, job burnout is the pits.
• probablyfiction 11y ago
  This is what burnout looks like. Unless Yelp has a toxic work culture, it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard. After several months, the author will probably start thinking about work again, and begin the job search once more. Not to say that the author's points are invalid; it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she may find themselves drawn toward entrepreneurship. There's nothing quite like working on your own idea...especially if that idea is going to make you cash. Office culture is draining. Some people aren't cut out for it. Additionally, programmers tend to push themselves too hard for too long out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to the company. They're being paid huge sums and sometimes feel that they need to work extremely hard to deserve what they're being paid. They don't see that the work they do is extremely valuable in and of itself. Employment is a business arrangement; a coder doesn't owe the company anything more than their agreed-upon hours of work. If/when the author does return to work, it's likely they will be much more likely to put themselves first and the company second. They'll likely have a plan to escape working for someone else ever again.
  • aaggarwal 11y ago
    I am going to start working soon. This makes me think if full-time work is really worth it. Wouldn't multiple short-term contracts with regular breaks be able to cut it in today's world? Isn't there people with experience on working on short-term contracts and still living well-off?
    • probablyfiction 11y ago
      Full-time work can be worth it. Financial stability goes a long way towards contributing to happiness. You ultimately have to ask yourself what your goals are, and why you're working. A job should be a tool to help you get what you really want out of life.
      • aaggarwal 11y ago
        Yeah, as obvious as it is, one always tends to forget what are the ultimate goals one is working for? As long as there is motivation, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
• lohengramm 11y ago
  This post expresses exactly how I feel. I am currently under a 30 days vacation and it has been incredibly good. In only three weeks I have studied lots of things that were postponed for months or years, worked on a personal project, exercised my body, slept well, read books, disassembled every old electronic device that was lurking for years to clean and fix it, went to a medical doctor to fix health issues that were also postponed and now I still have an infinite list of things to learn, books to read and projects to do. Now I am really thinking on leaving my full-time job, because the vacation is coming to an end. But how to make money? If I could have a stable but low income without wasting too much time, it would be great. Mainly if that income came from a source with which I care about. It sucks. Life, I mean.
  • saiya-jin 11y ago
    Posts like these make me a bit sad, how far some people get detached from reality of this world as a whole. I would hate it since i am part of this industry, byt maybe we really need some dev crysis, meaning 50% of software engineers unemployed, salaries plunge say to construction engineers level. Those fortunate to keep the job would be glad to be creative with what they have and maybe, but just MAYBE these pathetic rants won't surface as much. As for you, simple advice - sort out your life, you know better than anybody else what you want, and you're the only one who can do it. it's quite easy, just that some decisions require sturdy balls, not moaning on internet forums :)
    • lohengramm 11y ago
      I respect your point of view, but I don't want to believe that people should feel "awarded" to have a job. This might be how it always worked and how it still works for the majority, but it is, for me, a defect of the economic system, not a virtue. Maybe we (as humanity) actually never get to that utopic society where mundane tasks are all automated and people are completely educated and free from the burden of wage labor (instead of bow down and thank for the "opportunity to waste your life"), but we must set some goals in order to progress, and the "perfect" economic system seems like a praiseworthy one. As for my salary, unfortunately, software workers here in Brazil are actually earning way less than some construction engineers. In fact, if I had had a degree in Civil Engineering I would be way better off than with my current Computer Science major. Again, I see you have a point, but internet forums are here for that exactly: discussing -- with moanings included.
• smcl 11y ago
  Anyone know what's with the black "x" characters which appear through the article?
  • niels_bom 11y ago
    I saw some emoticons interspersed, I guess your setup can't show them.
  • Macha 11y ago
    Not happening here on Firefox for android. Maybe a web font issue of some sort?
  • mavroprovato 11y ago
    I think it is this Unicode Character: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4b8/index.htm http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4b8/index.htm
  • eevee 11y ago
    I used a couple emoji. Snag Symbola: http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/Symbola.zip http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/Symbola.zip
• TheGunner 11y ago
  Good for him, I'd be surprised if he didn't end up back in the tech industry at some point in the future but the guy obviously needs a break/change of scene. Hope it works out for him
• jkot 11y ago
  Perhaps it is just working environment? Since I quit cubicle my productivity skyrocketed and I actually enjoy it. Banging your head against a wall on unsolvable problem? Lets take kids for lunch, some swimming on beach. I will resume head banging at evening, but problem is usually cracked before that.
  • technomancy 11y ago
    I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think it would help in this case as he says he was already working remotely.
• stkni 11y ago
  This is interesting mostly because it echoes my feelings of dissonance with the employers I've worked for. My conclusion was that I needed to be more in tune with the/a business that I'm ultimately trying to serve, and therefore to be closer too it. Because until then it all seems like pointless bit shifting.
• davidgerard 11y ago
  Eevee's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/eevee https://www.patreon.com/eevee
• jahnu 11y ago
  "I had stock options, and I cashed them all in last week. I net enough to pay off the mortgage, so I’m doing that, which will leave the entire household debt-free and cut our expenses drastically." I'm happy for you. Even a tiny bit jealous. But it does in the end make the whole post sound like a humblebrag to me.
  • Mahn 11y ago
    But that's how all posts like these go, HN loves to upvote them for some reason but they all boil down to "I'm quitting because I have enough money to do it".
    • sosuke 11y ago
      Oh man, I can't believe I'm biting on this. You're both right of course, and then some of them turn around and say "it isn't about money" or "don't make it about money". Sigh, it isn't unique to tech at all by the way.
    • serve_yay 11y ago
      Boy oh boy, that really puts a different spin on this post, doesn't it. I wish I had the cash to throw this kind of tantrum.
      • sosuke 11y ago
        That's what it looks like from the outside doesn't it? His pain is real certainly, and like all experience relative to his situation. When you look at it from a perspective of responsibility without an option to stop working, or the fear of not finding work with which you can fulfill your responsibilities his position is a lot tougher to identify with. I hope I can work hard enough to someday be able to have the luxury of that choice and that I'll remember my current perspective at that time.
        • cafebeen 11y ago
          Reminds of the idea of the hedonic treadmill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
• hias 11y ago
  so he did not quit the tech industry at all but decided to create his own business :-)
  • chris_wot 11y ago
    Worst. Plan. Evar.
• CrLf 11y ago
  "I’ve worked remotely my whole career" I wonder how much of a role does this play in (not) caring about your employer's problems... As much as I can understand the benefits of working remotely on occasion, doing it all the time will cause a kind of disconnect all by itself. You see the problems as your employer's problems, instead of your team's problems. Your are fixing your employer instead of helping your teammates.
  • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    That's a social problem we'll have to address as remote working becomes ubiquitous. It helps if the remote environment is more immersive, with the team aware of each others' presence and activity even when they're not directly communicating. Keeps your head in the space, so to speak.
    • CrLf 11y ago
      I think you just described somewhat of a dystopian future... :) Most work is a group effort. Group efforts require the feeling of belonging to a group to be effective. You just cannot get that if you work remotely. Real human interaction cannot be faked or successfully replaced by electronic means. Working remotely a couple of days a week is probably beneficial. It alleviates the pressure of constant interactions preventing some tasks from being accomplished. Especially for us technical folk, where the dominant personality is not one that draws energy from other people. We still need to interact though.
      • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Periodic face time is important. But even in the same building I rarely speak face-to-face with everybody. A message or call or video share is normal even for 'local workers'. Remote workers can be very effective with the right tools. Hundreds of companies are switching as we speak. I work at Sococo, and we enable it! Some of our clients have actually closed their offices and gone entirely remote, and they love it.
      • plinkplonk 11y ago
• billpaetzke 11y ago
  > I've worked remotely my entire career Perhaps some of the angst stems from this bias. I wonder how well Yelp handles remote workers.
  • spiritplumber 11y ago
    I either work remotely, or work in my home workshop (which is open to the public, if anyone needs to borrow a laser cutter for an hour). Most of "the basics" in my life are automated; bills are on autopay, I send my stuff to the post office by drone truck, and so on. It can be very alienating - there are days that I don't see a human being or speak a word with anyone. The solution is to make sure you actually try to be around people on weekends.... and you MAKE yourself do it. It's way too easy to turtle up.
• shalmanese 11y ago
  It's sad to me that the industry is pushing out so many great people because they feel so disenfranchised by it. I believe technology is one of the most potent forces of good in the world but for that to sustain, a culture has to develop around it with a deep desire to solve serious, large problems. I attended my first (and last) Hackathon a couple of weeks ago because it was immigration themed and so I thought I could meet some smart, thoughtful people. The pitches were mostly terrible with a few more decent ones sprinkled through as you would expect from a Hackathon. One of the pitches that was made though, was "Greendir", a Tinder for Green Card marriages. Now, I fully support the guy's desire to pitch whatever idea he chooses but it was depressing to me that Greendir turned out to be the most popular app on the pitch board and the one the most people indicated they wanted to work on. It just seemed to me to be the epitome of the "we're in it for ourselves", move fast and break things, easy X-meets-Y description, get rich quick schemes attitude that is increasingly gaining mindshare in the tech industry. It really made me wonder, what did these people come to this weekend to do? Why were they giving up their precious time? Because they wanted to be entertained and have a laugh? Or because they believed their powers could be meaningfully leveraged to solve hard problems that have the potential to fundamentally alter people's lives? Furthermore, what impression does it give to the newly entering workers in the tech field who use events like hackathons to get connected into a community of peers and who subconsciously absorb the value of those peers? Fortunately, I'm seeing the other side of the picture too. I'm in the process of building a startup right now with a serious social mission (we want to get people excited about donating to charity by doing for charity what Whole Foods did for organic foods). I reach out to my network and I see my friends who came up 5 - 20 years ago in tech having the same frustrations by the triviality that's morphed the industry over the last couple of years. The outpouring of support has exceeded, by an order of magnitude, that of any previous startup I've worked on and I think it's precisely because there's a real yearning to see entrepreneurs solving hard problems with large impacts.
  • Delmania 11y ago
    > I believe technology is one of the most potent forces of good in the world but for that to sustain, a culture has to develop around it with a deep desire to solve serious, large problems. Idealism > It just seemed to me to be the epitome of the "we're in it for ourselves", move fast and break things, easy X-meets-Y description, get rich quick schemes attitude that is increasingly gaining mindshare in the tech industry. Reality. While I can definitely understand the belief that given incredible evolution of technology in the past few decades will be a force for good and change, always remember technology is just a tool. People have not fundamentally changed in a very long time.
• DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  In a way, this is a good argument for contracting, as long as you do it right. If you know useful stuff, people will always offer you a bag of money to help them out. It is extremely rare that you get the bag of money and you get to do exactly what your passion is. Heck, most of us just have some vague idea of what our passion is anyway. So it's always some sort of compromise. But with contracting, you should be looking at a fixed amount of time working, then a fixed amount of "downtime", then back to the market again. You should ask for enough money in the bag (or adjust your expenses) so that both the uptime and downtime is included in the payout. Otherwise you become a prisoner of your own lifestyle -- which is a godawful place to be.
  • kedean 11y ago
    Working for a consulting company can also be a good middle ground. They provide a corporate support network for you, but you aren't tied to one kind of project for years. Most consulting projects are greenfield, too, because the other party doesn't usually want to give you their own hard-earned code, so maintenance hell isn't usually an issue.
• renegadedev 11y ago
  I feel his pain but it's easy to quit when you can cash in your stock options and pay off your mortgage
  • a3n 11y ago
    Yes, that's how you do it. If he was burned out and asking how to do it, the answers would be variations on this. He did it.
• makeitsuckless 11y ago
  "I’ve worked remotely my whole career" Regardless of all the perfectly valid reasons for being unhappy in what most people consider a cushy job (the author seems perfectly aware of that), this could possibly be an important factor here. Working remotely means you only get a small slice of what most people get out of their job. Again, this is perfectly fine if you're not "most people", but if you've never known anything else than that may play a considerable role in being dissatisfied with having a job.
  • eevee 11y ago
    I'm not exactly a social butterfly, so from my perspective I've been getting much more out of my job by not having to work in an office.
• thrillgore 11y ago
  It sounds to me that the OP simply got tired of confronting an endless sea of technical debt. It happens to the best of us.
• jrochkind1 11y ago
  Of course a full-time job sucks. Most people need one anyway in order to pay the rent. If you have the luxury of getting away without it, of course why wouldn't you? I have the luxury of working a 4/5ths time (four days a week job). I'm still a programmer. At a university. That also allows me to work reasonable hours on that 4/5th time job, take personal days for personal business, etc. And most of what I write is open source, which is very nice. It's definitely still a trade-off, it's a very frustrating place to work sometimes, I don't always get to work on interesting problems (but sometimes do, in some periods often), I don't have enough colleagues to work on the _really_ cool stuff that would take more IT resources than my employer is willing to devote to what I think would be the really cool stuff. Etc. My impression is that trying to start your own business will end up taking _more_ of your time than a 'full time job', not less. But if you end up finding that time more rewarding to spend, then, great.
  • bottled_poe 11y ago
    Your last sentence is certainly true, but the difference is being able to choose what is worth doing and being fully invested in the outcome.
    • mcdougle 11y ago
      Also control over your time. There's a huge difference between "9 to 5 every day" and "40ish hours a week, pick the times that are most convenient, and have some flexibility in that number based on how much actually gets done"
• ivan_ah 11y ago
  This post reminded me of another I-quit-the-industry blog post from a while back: http://mashable.com/2014/04/30/programming-sucks/ http://mashable.com/2014/04/30/programming-sucks/
  • georgefrick 11y ago
    The Mashable post was much better actually. It was a bit sarcastic, but more interesting in that he tries to point out some of the day to day problems instead of just throwing his hands in the air. Thanks for the link.
• mvanvoorden 11y ago
  We're not meant to do jobs, this is just some modern made up concept to keep people busy so they don't see they are actually analogous to cattle. So that you don't care about the virtual problems you solve for virtual company X, is perfectly normal and healthy. They are not your problems, they are not even remotely life-threatening, and so they are not relevant for survival. Jobs are just created to keep us busy, as I said before. If we imagine a world without money (realistic or not), about 90% (educated guess) of jobs would not even exist anymore, as those are just jobs that do some money-related thing: Banking, insurance, financial advice, most lawyers, any administration department at any organisation. Indirectly even more jobs would disappear, because there is no need to compete financially, which means for example all R&D in a specific field can be brought together, as no one has to invent their (still unpatented) version of their wheel anymore. We would be in a world where only work is done that is needed, that is directly involved with our survival, curiosity or entertainment, and no 'need' is created by some virtual dependencies. We would live in a world where everybody has the time and freedom to pursue their own dreams, without having to be afraid they will get in trouble later (because no pension built up etc). We would also able to always pursue the most efficient and sustainable way to do something, as money is out of the equation. No more fraud, no more oil leaking in the oceans, no more rainforests cut down, and with all the empty offices due to disappeared redundant jobs, the demand for resources will be down and we wouldn't have to build any new houses or shelter for many years to come. So yes, wake up and stop working and go exploring. Travel the world, find a skill that is directly useful to people, as helping out people will make you happy and you will get food/shelter in return even without asking for that. See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7SVLaDdvDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7SVLaDdvDY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCFe2KnBuJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCFe2KnBuJ0 Anyway, don't worry about financials. I went travelling in 2013, through Europe and Canary Islands, and spent about 5000 euro's in 18 months. With what I've learned now, I could spend twice the amount of time travelling with the same money. At the moment I'm (unfortunately) working in IT again, because I haven't found the way yet to earn bread on the road. When I started travelling I knew nothing, now I know what to do and so this will be the last time I will spend many hours a day in an office, as my salary will buy me all the gear I need to make a(n easier) transition. Anyway, whatever you do, don't lock yourself up in a stone prison for the rest of your life. Become your own boss. Don't spend your life realizing other people's dreams and wealth, because you WILL regret it when you are a pensioner, as then you find out you forgot to live your own life and there's no energy left for it now.
• kohanz 11y ago
  I’m just thoroughly exhausted. I have so much I want to do, yet I’m selling half of my waking hours every weekday to someone else, for the sake of cleaning up their legacy messes. By the end of the day I’m already worn out, and now I have to squeeze in whatever I wanted to do alongside relaxing and doing chores and maintaining this fleshsack. Weekends are nice, but become a mad dash to get fifty things done, meaning none of them get done. And then add kids to the equation! I left my full-time job for part-time contracting (ahem consulting!) just over a year ago. I work about 60% of the hours that I previously did, make about 80% of what I did, and spend the rest of the time with the family and catching up on "life". Not sure if it's a longterm solution, but I'm enjoying watching my family grow.
• Kiro 11y ago
  I definitely don't agree with everyone screaming "burnout" in this thread. I feel exactly the same and I'm far from burnt out. Some people are just not fit to be employed.
• mrgriscom 11y ago
  I don't understand the desire to pay off the mortgage after a big windfall, especially with interest rates so low. I suppose you get a vague sense of security, as in "the bank can never take my house away now", but you just took a big chunk of liquid money that could have been used to pay any kind of expense, and you put it into very illiquid home equity that was being loaned to you at a long-term locked-in rate barely above the historical rate of inflation.
  • eevee 11y ago
    I understand the math, but I feel like debt is a huge weight on my shoulders. I grew up with parents who were constantly in more debt than they could handle and constantly reminding me of it. I would rather not be anywhere near that situation again, even if keeping moderate debt would've worked out a little better in the long run.
    • OneOneOneOne 11y ago
      Thumbs up. Too many people take on unnecessary debt (big house, new cars, toys, ...) It seems like many are at peace with their debt. Going into debt for anything more than a modest house (rather than paying rent) doesn't make sense to me.
      • eclipxe 11y ago
        Nothing wrong with debt and being at peace with it. Why doesn't it make sense to you? (I genuinely want to know your opinion)
        • OneOneOneOne 11y ago
          Being in debt limits your freedom. We all need to provide for our well being but why take on more than is necessary?
          • eclipxe 11y ago
            Who determines what is "necessary"? Why does it limit freedom?
• jliptzin 11y ago
  You don't have to justify yourself for quitting your boring full-time job. Most people don't have that option and you're in a fortunate position. I wish I knew more people like you with the courage to actually quit once you're able. I have too many friends who continue to slave away, complaining about their jobs, yet have banked 7 digits+, all because they think that they'd feel out of place and without things to do if they quit, or just want to continue accumulating more money. I don't see a reason to accumulate money if you have no time to spend it.
• smhg 11y ago
  There are quite a few different topics in this post. I just take one: the fact that people keep reinventing the wheel (libraries/systems/platforms) and the frustration that triggers. Humans aren't really "built" to cooperate, right? I think almost all could accomplish far more if it would be easier/more obvious to work together. We call competition healthy, and it might be, but it also takes the focus away from cooperation. It takes a lot of effort to make others (peers, customers, managers,...) work together. And if some don't (which is often the case), the amount of effort required grows exponentially. Although the satisfaction is huge, it's easy to think the cost is greater than the benefit. Just a guess of course, but maybe this is what the author lacks in his/her career? Too little cooperative efforts on the tasks he/she performed?
• mikecmpbll 11y ago
  You got burnt out, no need to turn it into a sob story or a bitter industry rant. You couldn't manage your time effectively. By all means if you're unhappy change your lifestyle -- and pronto -- if you can eek out an existence in a more fulfilling way then get to it, but don't try telling everyone they work in a "stupid, backwards, fledgling industry" because you didn't like your job. Just another "woe betide me"-disaffected-techie rant.
• vuyani 11y ago
  I think OP really was burning out. I have a daily job but manage to get solid side projects shipped. 8-5(Till 5 is the important part! no overtime). I get home. rest or gym till about 7pm then get cracking. Usually sleep around 1am. Im a heavy sleeper so i dont do it every day. but its enough to get things done.
• JDiculous 11y ago
  The author's rant is not specific to the tech industry at all, it's the case for practically all full-time jobs. Full-time jobs generally suck. Spending the bulk of every weekday in an office doing what you're told is not fun. If it was, then people would do it for free. Day to day work is generally unglamorous and boring. I think part of the blame is that tech employers permeate this notion that one must "love" their work. So we feel guilty for not enjoying cleaning up somebody else's legacy code, fixing that tracking bug, or god forbid solving an IE8 bug. I totally agree with the author that the tickets we're assigned are all puzzles that I could lose myself in and inevitably get some feeling of satisfaction when I figure it out. But in the grand scheme of things, most of us aren't working on problems of real significance (eg. curing cancer, creating a more efficient battery). Most of us are just reinventing some form of wheel. And most of the problems we solve as implementors don't pertain to us. Rarely do we capture any of the fruits of our labor aside from a "great job!" and a 10% pay bump at the end of the year if we're lucky. We as employees need to change the culture of employment. Nobody should have to pretend to enjoy grunt work. Work should be about the output you produce, not face time or tracking hours. Being in an office 8 hrs/day and never seeing the sun is depressing, and it's time we acknowledge that and fight to improve the situation. We can start by demanding that remote work be accepted by our employers. That immediately gives us back our entire commutes (even just one hour a day is huge when you spend the majority of your waking hours in an office and thus only have 6 hours of real free time). And we can demand the freedom to work on our own schedules rather than being confined to 9-5, which we all know for most people is bullshit because we're not on an assembly line and our most productive work doesn't necessarily follow a 9-5 schedule.
  • johnward 11y ago
    "We can start by demanding that remote work be accepted by our employers." I used to commute somewhere between 3-4 hours on average each day. Then I started doing part time remote. Now I'm full time remote. I get 4 hours of my day back. Sometimes those for hours end up still being working hours but I guess that's better than being stuck in traffic with the rest of the drones. I still have to travel so I end up with 60 hours weeks when I do but going remote has helped me get a little chunk of my life back. Not enough to make me enjoy what I do but I hate it a very tiny bit less.
• mark_l_watson 11y ago
  I think he did the right thing paying off his mortgage. He does not have to create a successful startup as money runs out: he could switch to part time consulting, which is what I did about 18 years ago. Back then we became debt free and except for short jobs at Google and Webmind Corporation, I consulted for probably an average of 15 to 20 hours a week, remotely. The trick is reducing living costs (we live in the mountains in Central Arizona).
• ianstallings 11y ago
  He sounds like an entrepreneur that wants to do his own thing, and he's using his anger at the industry for motivation. We all find our power somewhere.
• flipped_bit 11y ago
  Understand the author's (Clintonesque) pain, as I am going through a similar problem, but don't have it all figured neatly to disengage from the industry yet. My own views are that the software industry has reduced its 'professional quotient' a lot, to probably near zero, and hence all this chaos. I used to work in 'well-run and large companies' prior to the internet days, and in some sense we are a victim of the post-internet (mid-90s' post-Netscape) runaway success. There is no professionalism in the industry anymore, and paradoxically it could be due to the 'open source model'. Don't get me wrong, I like open-source with all that emphasis to openness, freedom etc.. but it has led to the ruin of the small developer. It is forcing a lot of us to jump into the 'entrepreneur/solopreneur' bandwagon. The openness part described above also includes anyone to jump into the industry (unlike say the medical, or civil-engineering profession; after all do you want a 'hacker heart surgeon' or a 'hacker bridge builder?'). The professionalism is completely mocked at, and all this hero-worshiping of start-up culture etc.. has ruined it. OTOH, I am not arguing in favor of high-barriers of entry etc... Honestly I don't the answer on how to fix it....
• some_furry 11y ago
  Poor Eevee. :( I hope he finds happiness from his new path in life. Goodness knows he wasn't finding it in his previous one.
• peter303 11y ago
  I've been in it 43 years! Still as fun as when I started.
• thebouv 11y ago
  Some days I dream about this and going out on my own, or pursuing that startup idea that's been itching the back of my head for so long. I couldn't leave the tech industry per se, but at least changing what I'm doing in it. But then I realize I've been doing the day-to-day for so long that I have accumulated the trappings thereof: mortgage on a house, two cars, a "comfortable" lifestyle. To leave puts it at risk. I fear not being able to make it solo. The startup idea will take too long or fail if I bootstrap it. We'll have to move. Downsize. Change our lifestyle. Affect the kids. And a downward spiral of thoughts like that. So I'm back at my cubicle today. Wishing I was working from home to watch the new baby grow while I code.
• muraiki 11y ago
  "Do you have any internal libraries or systems or platforms at your company? Do you think no one else has ever had the same idea and built the same thing?" Isn't this one of the reasons behind the FOSS movement? That we as programmers are often repeating the same uninteresting tasks, so perhaps we should just freely share what we've done so that we can all work on something more interesting. And in the Libre sense of Free -- in the GNU sense (and perhaps I've interpreted it wrongly here) -- this is why GNU is not just "something to make our lives better". It is rather a moral responsibility towards your fellow users, which includes programmers who use your code, not just end users. Because if people don't share, you end up with people like the author of this article: burnt out on writing something that's been written before. Of course how this meshes with the real world of capitalism is a whole other story. I'm not saying it's not viable: Stallman of course mentions selling support in the GNU Manifesto, and the article also mentions Patreon. Note that I'm not saying GNU is the One True Way, but rather trying to stimulate a discussion about something I don't fully understand but have been thinking about lately and which I believe touches upon one of the core issues that prompted the author's action.
• kev009 11y ago
  Find some group of people and cause bound by something other than simply being coworkers working on bubble-ish webapps or boring corporate software. For me, this is FreeBSD -- the problems are interesting personally from running my laptop to scaling the Internet in my day job, the work and skills will transcend any one job I ever have, and the people are the best I've ever met.
• scolfax 11y ago
  Well said. I checked the article, and apparently I didn't write it.
• sbisker 11y ago
  >I net enough to pay off the mortgage, so I’m doing that, which will leave the entire household debt-free and cut our expenses drastically The lead seems buried here. This isn't someone quitting, this is someone in a position of incredible privilege, essentially retiring (or at least going on "funemployment" for a little while). There are far darker ways to make far less money, that are far more worthy of dramatic storm cloud drawings. Maybe once they see past their burnout they'll realize how incredibly privileged they were to even accomplish what they were able to (working remotely no less!) in the first place. Burnout really is a sad and scary thing.
  • eevee 11y ago
    I'm fully aware how lucky I am to be able to pull this off. (I don't have nearly enough saved to actually retire on, though.) Knowing that other people have it worse — or even that I used to have it worse — doesn't make it any better.
• mrgriscom 11y ago
  I'd like to plug going part-time as a good way to temper burnout and provide a soft landing for if/when you eventually decide to leave. You still get some money coming in -- proportionally more due to progressive taxation. You still have benefits, which the company may or may not still cover as if you were full-time. You avoid abrupt life change while getting a four-day weekend every week. If your company values you they will probably be more open to this arrangement than you may think.
• notNow 11y ago
  words of advice to the author of this piece: Just take a vacation and go somewhere new and interesting and then unwind for some time and after you clear up your mind, re-evaluate your decision and see what's good for you going forward and I'm sure you will manage to sort all of this out. Best wishes
• fotoblur 11y ago
  Unfortunately the world is a cruel place, and this guy wants freedom from it. I know, I took the 3-4 months off after quitting a job to do my own thing. I did earn a few dollars but nothing like what a business was willing to pay for my skills. We'd all like to be free to do what we want to do, but in all honesty only a fraction of 1% ever get to. And even those people serve a master. Did I ever find the answer, no. I think what its going to take is a huge leap in what we call work.
  • mavdi 11y ago
    It's great that you at least tried it. Takes guts to do so. It's something I've always wanted to do, but been waiting for that next level of financial security before I do so. Problem is, every time I reach the target, I'm not satisfied with it and want to make a bit more money before I can back off. It's a vicious circle into an ever looming burn out.
    • fotoblur 11y ago
      You can do anything you want to do.
  • thorin 11y ago
    I've taken at least 12 months off since 2000. 4 months, 3 months, 4 months and a month as 2 sabbaticals, one time between jobs and one as parental leave. I also take around 6-8 weeks holiday a year. I could do with the extra money but it's not essential and life feels good if you have time to pursue other interests. I enjoy technical work but I also enjoy the outdoors, sports, travel and spending time with my family. We're in an industry which has a good demand for work and pays well. It's important to take advantage of that when you can.
• ChuckMcM 11y ago
  I think it is great for the author that their career has allowed them to pay off their mortgage and sit back and examine what it is they are really passionate about. But this was a challenging comment for me from the article: "I’ve only worked for two tech companies, in radically different fields. The only things they have in common are that their main products are websites with tertiary features that let you buy things. Yet both of them ended up scrambling to write their own payment platforms from scratch. What the fuck is going on?" I'm currently working at a tech company that is trying to increase the survival rate for cancer patients. Others are working at companies that are providing medicine or support for folks who have no access to medical facilities. The point being that the experience of two tech companies is insufficient to evaluate the entire industry. And the bigger point is that how you spend your time is your choice. Take the fact that you are getting burned out in your current job to inform your decision on your next one. That is the key to not getting completely burned out.
• dataker 11y ago
  Instead of quitting the tech industry, why not move to an existing smaller company, whose size gives you more freedom? Wait and sit for a profitable idea doesn't look like a very good idea. I'd go to AngelList and join an existing startup, rather than going on my own.
• jgwynn2901 11y ago
  boo friken hoo!
  • devonoel 11y ago
    Very constructive.
• fecak 11y ago
  I fail to see how this is quitting the tech industry. This is quitting Yelp, but the listing of the Patreon account is all "tech industry" work, just without having a boss or company to be accountable to. The post doesn't seem to insinuate that the author will quit writing software - "Eventually it would be nice to make a thing that actually makes money on its own." Someone who codes and makes money off that product is still in the industry, no? The author isn't quitting the industry. He is basically going independent, with an undetermined business model.
  • eevee 11y ago
    Is it really "the industry" if I'm not running a business?
    • fecak 11y ago
      That is the question I guess. If you are trying to make money from what you do, are you not "running a business"? It might not be a traditional business, but seeking individuals to support you financially for the work you do would qualify as a business to me anyway. Even if you created multiple revenue streams - write a book, produce a game, Patreon, etc. - which appears to be your intent, you essentially are the business at that point, no? At least that's how I'd view it.
    • yellowapple 11y ago
      Technically yes. In the computing world, "industry" is a pretty grey area; instead of a hard line between "hobbyist" and "professional" like in most white-collar industries, it's more of a gentle gradient.
• bipin_nag 11y ago
  I empathize with the OP. I wanted to post a reply to probablyfiction explaining to him. Instead I will list the reasons why burnout could have happened to him. Point 1 "unless X has a toxic work culture,it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard." An overstatement unless you know what he faced. You were hired for your problem-solving ability where pushing hard can be expected at times. In reality this could be he's not pushing too hard so much as the existing environment which leeches effort and adds burden to every step. Toxic culture is somewhat unlikely but what if he inherited a huge technical debt, this happens a lot. Point 2 it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she may find themselves drawn toward entrepreneurship Wrong. IMO you can either work as a product engineer role building something new (hopefully) or as support role integrating products/fixing glaring bugs crappy code/migrating systems. The latter is not exciting. A developer MUST be capable of both and SHOULD be given at least an opportunity for both. It does not have to be in your own startup. I maybe a coder but I am not a horseshit shoveler. Point 3 Office culture is draining. Some people aren't cut out for it. Why ? It doesn't have to be. Even then why assume work culture is the culprit here and he is not cut for it. Point 4 Additionally, programmers tend to push themselves too hard for too long out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to the company. They don't see that the work they do is extremely valuable in and of itself. Translation the coder has to see the fine line of enthusiasm between "working already" and overzealous. Seems like a hypothetical problem unless you tell why is it relevant here. About the "work" you say, you should tell what "work" is. It is not just the stationary lines of code lying on repository, but the amount of effort that went to write it, debug it and will go to maintain it. A badly written project demands higher effort to keep it running than what you could imagine. Point 5 a coder doesn't owe the company anything more than their agreed-upon hours of work. I know that is the agreement. But I don’t know if you have seen places where boss wants work in a deadline and not hours a coder spends and wants it done. You should remind him that then.
• TheCapn 11y ago
  Not to knock on the industry at large but the day I gave up wanting to program "services" (for the lack of a better term -- things that work the data to produce an outcome that although convenient, is not a necessity of our lives) and apply my skills to tangible, real world problems I became immensely happier in my day to day. I went from loathing the next day of work and counting the clock hours until I ran out the door to happily thinking of the problems, looking forward to the next project. I think a lot of people in software could benefit from taking the time to take a hands-on hobby of sorts where you create physical output, a useful craft with purpose. There's a chunk of our lives that logic and algorithms cannot fulfill in the same way that a craft can. It seems like hokum re-reading that last paragraph. I wish I was better with words to portray what I'm trying to get across but its just something that's been on my mind in the last month or so. I feel into another slump similar to what our article's author describes. You get caught in a cycle of "I'm tired because tomorrow will suck" and don't use that time to regenerate and recover. When my car hit the tipping point last week and I was forced to get my hands dirty it broke that cycle. I came out from under with a true sense of accomplishment; beaming with pride for what I had done and suddenly Monday's problems were on the wayside. To swing back to what I tried saying originally though; having a job where I produce factories, networks, systems that clients look, touch, and interact with just gives the same feeling of pride that I never achieved when building services for IPTV products, billing software features or other data applications. I'm certain there's a whole host of people that drool at some of those domains but if that's not your "thing" then you'll never be happy. I wasn't, the author likely wasn't but that's not to say she can't find happiness anywhere in tech. And to believe that leaving it all behind for a mystery won't solve those same problems that put her where she is now. "The Grass is Always Greener" will wane and she'll miss being among peers and those who she can share her problems with. A girlfriend in the medical industry just can't converse on the same level as other tech's can, its where I reach out to coworkers, peers, friends to blow off some steam. I wish her the best, I just hope she figures out where the true problems lie or where her true calling is before she regrets distancing herself from an industry that she has obvious passion for.
• mikemarsh 11y ago
  "I hate dread. What a completely useless emotion." Funny you should say that, since the sense of dread seemed to motivate this decision pretty heavily. Seems like the emotion was pretty useful as a sort of "burnout immune system".
  • eevee 11y ago
    Ah, interesting! Useless in the same way pain is useless, then — not very helpful in the moment, but it sure teaches you what to avoid in the long run.
• lcfcjs1 11y ago
  cry cry burn out cry cry
• ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  "I don’t know how to turn this into dollars yet. Hopefully I’ll figure that out." This just oozes privilege and naivete. If only most people scraping along had this kind of safety net.
  • eevee 11y ago
    I am definitely hecka privileged. What would you have me do? Keep working a job I don't enjoy, out of guilt that other people have to do the same?
    • ryanx435 11y ago
      I hate the word privileged, especially when used in the context op did. so you're successful, and an unquantifiable amount of that success was an accident of which family and socioeconomic background you were born into, and op wants you to feel shame because of that? that's ridiculous. it's a free country: do what you want and don't worry about the haters.
    • peu4000 11y ago
      You should definitely do what makes you happy. However, the blog post seems a bit braggy. A lot of us experience the same things, but we don't have a safety net(other than the gubmit I guess), it breeds jealousy. If I were in the same situation I would have left off the part about cashing out and paying the mortgage and not created a patreon without something to back it up immediately. It would have been better if it just listed the reasons you're leaving and maybe some insight into how you might fix some problems.
      • ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
        Well said.
      • eevee 11y ago
        I wrote it because it was what I wanted to write, not as a formal teardown of the tech industry. You may notice that I didn't submit it to HN.
• rvdm 11y ago
  I've been a tech consultant since my late teens but got out and passed all my clients on to a close friend so that I could focus on my own work about a year ago. It was a leap of faith for sure, but where there's a will there's a way. During my decade of consulting I set up some automatic income through a few different routes ( never put all your eggs in one basket! ). I entertain the thought of selling what I'm working on some day for a big payout, but that's a completely optional scenario for me. Because of the simple fact that I've never been happier in my life. I feel like my work I do now actually matters. And even if it never makes me a dollar, it brings me joy. And that's what life's all about in the end ( to me at least ). I wish you all the best and in my opinion you certainly made the right choice. One note: getting the combination of automatic income right was a learning curve, if you ever want to know what works for me, feel free to reach out.
  • ralmeida 11y ago
    I'm interested in what you have to say about your automatic income. What can you tell us about it?
  • jliptzin 11y ago
    What do you do now if you care to share?
  • rvdm 11y ago
    I'm playing around with AI trying to improve our everyday productivity with it, so that more people would eventually have more time to live their lives and spend time with those near and dear to them. Very early, we'll see how it goes. My automatic income combo in rough outlines is: 1. Invest, make sure you diversify. At least 10% return should be possible with a smart combination of stocks, ETF, etc. This should be considered your rainy day fund that hopefully you never need. 2. Open an online shop. A lot of us engineers are so good at 'the internet' that finding a product or category of products where the e-commerce offering can be improved on. You'll never beat Amazon in price, so you have to beat them in curation. Just sell whatever gets you excited. That usually works best. I have 2 online stores that I have automated and staffed to the point they basically run on auto pilot. 3. Aside from selling someone else's products also make something yourself and sell it. Physical products or anything that requires too much support is probably not the best idea here. For me building and selling in app apps, themes, add-ons to products that come with their own audience and market works really well here. If you want details, I've added contact info in my about.
• udev 11y ago
  This type of misery is common. The author decided he needs a change in his life, there is no arguing there. But what makes the author so confident that quitting the job is the solution?
• conjugate 11y ago
  seems like a lot of people are quitting their jobs in favour for asking for dontains through patreon. heh
• pla3rhat3r 11y ago
  Finding a balance is the best way to manage stress. And just like anything else, people have different levels in which they believe things are stressing them out. What may be stressful to one person may not be a big deal to another. I feel this every day being in the tech industry and as a Navy Vet I almost giggle when I hear what stresses people out. I'm sure the Navy prepared me better for dealing with stressful situations but unless there's a gun pointed in my direction I rarely find anything about the tech industry, my work load, or stuff I'm working towards as stressful. Again, it's all about finding balance and being able to put things into perspective. If you have no context about what is really stressful, than everything becomes stressful.
• meritt 11y ago
  The guy cashed out enough to pay off his entire mortgage and is acting like that's a tough decision. Millions of Americans would love to have that "problem". Millions of people hate their jobs. They don't have the opportunity to just walk away from it, as they often have a family to support. And then he has the gall to ask for donations? Seriously? Can this post be laden with slightly more privilege?
  • danws6 11y ago
    Reality Web TV idea: Follow a few kids who have only worked one or two jobs right out of school in the Bay Area as they move to smaller industries throughout the country. Watch as the struggle with day to day activities like understanding why they need to pay for their own lunch or why they can't get a brand new macbook every year.
  • thomas943 11y ago
    > Can this post be laden with slightly more privilege? Sadly, it probably was laden with even more obnoxious privilege and what we are reading is the edited version. I'm in my late twenties and I am constantly amazed by how pathetic, obnoxious, and truly useless the younger generations have made themselves. This person wants donations to play with pokemons after letting us know they paid off their mortgage. My only hope is that this blog post prevents this person from ever being hired again.
    • dang 11y ago
      > My only hope is that this blog post prevents this person from ever being hired again. Please don't use HN this way. You're more than welcome to make substantive comments, but pouring vitriol in response to something annoying harms the discourse here. We all have the temptation, but it's important to resist it. Otherwise—long experience shows—the community becomes toxic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      • thomas943 11y ago
        Labeling my comment as vitriol is a pretty insubstantial exaggeration. For all either one of us knows, the author has not given any thought to how their knee-jerk blog post will affect them years from now, when they've tired of playing with their pokemons and need to figure out how to pay their bills again. With any luck, my comment will induce a moment of self-reflection and allow them to consider whether their short lived catharsis from publicly humblebragging about quitting a high-paying, 100% remote job with stock options will negatively affect them in the future.
• cstross 11y ago
  > The only things they have in common are that their main products are websites with tertiary features that let you buy things. Yet both of them ended up scrambling to write their own payment platforms from scratch. What the fuck is going on? * Raises hand * I was the first dev hire at Datacash and wrote their back-end servers. Datacash only came into existence because an earlier (circa 1995-96) startup trying to sell stuff via the web couldn't handle payments without a card reader and a dialup connection. Handling payments properly is hard, especially as if you do it right (and your business grows) you turn into a juicy big target for black hats everywhere. I also resemble the OC's burnout, except fifteen years down the line and mostly recovered ... by not working in tech any more. I'm a novelist and I set up and do my own projects more or less in my own time and (as a much earlier tech burnout case said, in Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine") I try not to deal with any time frame shorter than a season. Yes, there is life after you quit your last high pressure tech sector job. And yes, you can find things to invest your personal interest in that don't chew you up and spit you out and which earn you a living. The problem is with the way corporations are internally constituted -- especially with hierarchies of control and command where the people at the top don't have any deep understanding of the problems the people at the bottom are engaged with.
  • dempseye 11y ago
    Hilarious. I just finished reading your memoir of that period.
  • bwanab 11y ago
    Sorry to say, I'm glad you burned out - otherwise no "Halting State",....
  • eevee 11y ago
    This is inspiring and encouraging, thank you :)
• jorgeleo 11y ago
  http://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/morpheus.jpg http://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/morpheus.jpg
• mcgrootz 11y ago
  A lot of the work we do as programmers is for a meaningless product. If we worked on things that we believed in, maybe something that helped people live better lives, especially those who really need the help like the poor and disenfranchised, I believe programmers would be happier people. There just isn't a lot of opportunity out there right now to do meaningful work with code. It's a shame.
  • mcgrootz 11y ago
    Additionally, I don't think the answer is to work less and have more leisure time. I don't think that really solves the issue. I think you can spend an enormous amount of energy and time on something you love, and be very fulfilled by it. Coders have a lot of power in this day and age. Let's start using it to help people and do good work in the world. I'm so tired of meaningless tech achievements, one after another. Elon Musk may get us to Mars, he may help us reduce our energy usage, but we'll still be the same depressed people if we don't work on improving the system.
• omouse 11y ago
  This is precisely why Google had 20% time and why other companies have hackathons; that ramp-up time to get anything done is definitely required. It's also burnout; the dude is sick of working on something that he doesn't particularly care about anymore. I bet if Yelp offered him a few days a week or 1 week per month to work on whatever he wants he'd be happier and wouldn't be burnt out.
  • thwarted 11y ago
    I worked at Yelp for five years and was there when Yelp engineering first started doing "hackathons". People worked on some interesting stuff during them, but very little of it was meant to be production ready and useful (vs toy) projects saw little exposure outside of the company or the engineering department itself. Lots of things were meant only to scratch our own developer itches or impress co-workers, like internal engineering tools (which have their own value). I attribute this to "yelp the public facing product/service" having a master plan that is determined outside of engineering proper—nothing wrong with that, it is what it is. So if you had some cool idea to, for example, revamp the UI/UX of the business photos page, you could work on that during the hackathon, but it was only a hackathon project. This encouraged people to work on throwaway toy projects or experiment with deep backend stuff during hackathons to blow off steam vs something that someone could point to publicly. Not to say that no hackathon projects ever were exposed non-internally, but it was a very small percentage. Some people used hackathons to catch up on regular work while many other people were working on hackathon projects. Maybe it's changed since I left. "Hackathons" are not a silver bullet solution to trying to get people to have ownership over the solutions to problems they are solving for themselves, their department, and the company.
• discardorama 11y ago
  I was wondering what this person's situation was. Then I read this in her(his?) blog: > I currently work for Yelp from the comfort of my home in Las Vegas. I live with my ridiculous cat, my partner, her three cats, her husband, his dog, and our boyfriend. Now it makes more sense. In my limited experience, when you're working remotely, you feel disconnected from the mothership. To this, add some work stress, and it's easy to get disenchanted. PS: I don't really know how to parse that sentence. No wonder NLP is so hard! ;-D
• jcroll 11y ago
  Not everyone can work on passion projects, someone has to be the employee, the economy just doesn't work without it. Unless maybe if you run a company like Valve where everyone is technically an "owner". Bottom line large value projects require economies of scale and the mobilization of large labour forces, it's just not realistic for every business in our industry to be a company with two founders who are in love with their project. And work should not be something we "love", work is something we do to bring value to our society and wealth to our families. There's no easy answers here but stick to providing value to those you work with, or for, or for your customers, and I hope in the long term it should work out for you.
• omouse 11y ago
  A separate comment I want to make is that the cute puzzles talked about in the article are pretty much the same everywhere: deal with politics, deal with poor performing code, deal with random idiotic UI decisions. The more interesting thing is to work on your own code or company where you have users and customers and they can guide you toward a good design or to work on harder research-y things, things that fall under computer science or software engineering. I was re-reading one of Paul Graham's earlier essays, the ones I read while at the tail end of high school and beginning college and it basically says give the hackers direct access to user feedback and they'll do the right thing. I don't know what happens but along the way all these companies that started out like that have just introduced layers and layers of people between the user and the hacker so much so that the hackers opinions about what's the right thing to work on right now are ignored. Maybe it's just time to get back to that and take that exit strategy; just work on a small cool product that you own where you get user feedback immediately where you decide the priority.
• rasur 11y ago
  > I stay up hours later than I mean to, not even doing anything, just trying to put off sleeping — because the next thing I experience will be waking up and going back to work. Shit, I get this and I'm not even in a particularly toxic work-place. Hell, I'd even go as far as to say it's the best place I've ever worked at (and it had some stiff competition, over the years). That sentence resonated with me, i'm sad to say. Not a good sign. EDIT: After having stewed on it for a few moments, I'm not sure me saying 'Not a good sign' is actually correct.
• CyberpunkDad 11y ago
  Congrats to the author, if this refills the battery good for him. That being said, be thankful you didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn and commute like most of the world. Working at home only seems like a burden to those who don't have to commute.
• CodeSheikh 11y ago
  First world problems.
  • bbcbasic 11y ago
    How are he rant on a full stomach with a roof over his head.
• CodeSheikh 11y ago
  First world problems.
• zxcvvcxz 11y ago
  An interesting comment I saw in this thread is the suggestion to take medication [presumably to make working a job easier / more manageable]. To this I say -- are you fucking kidding? Working like we do is already fairly unnatural. Taking medication to allow yourself to continue doing something unnatural, which you don't even like, has to be the one of the most dehumanizing things I can think of. That's modern day, self-induced slavery if you ask me. And yes, I have experience with this. In college, I met with a psychiatrist about depression-related symptoms. I described my life circumstances (school, work, relationship, etc), and after just one 45-minute session he prescribed me SSRIs. They did nothing, except creates horrific withdrawals as I started coming off them. Then I made the real changes: I ended my toxic relationship, quit my cubicle job, and used my savings to have an enjoyable life for about a year. Then I finished school. The OP seems to have had a pretty sweet set-up (remote, high-paying job, etc) but misery is still misery. Another comment mentioned burn-out. In my experience burn-out rarely has to do with the volume of work, but rather the mental anguish experienced. I've been burned out working 9 to 5; and energized beyond belief working 12 hour days on my own business. Here's some advice worth considering for those in similar situations. Quit your job, or figure out how to go part time. Your company won't mind, you're quite replaceable most likely. Really cut down on your expenses; get roommates if you have to (this can be more than a financial improvement -- socializing and having good friends improves your quality of life). And my god, quit consumer culture. That thing you think you need to buy with your next paycheck? You probably don't. What you need is: a roof over your head, food, laptop/phone, and a gym membership. What's the grand total of all this, maybe $1K/mo? (Depends where you live I suppose.) I'm assuming you're a single mid-late 20s male if you're reading this. What else would do you really need to be happy and spend your time working on your own tech projects? Best of luck to the OP and anyone else doing something similar.
  • infinitone 11y ago
    > What you need is: a roof over your head, food, laptop/phone, and a gym membership. Erm... what about I don't know the most human thing before all that... some companionship? Frankly, i find thats actually the real reason for most of these burnouts/crashes. Humans are the most social creatures in the world and this trait is diminished by our tech culture.
• dbg31415 11y ago
  Ok, so... I agree with the author on a lot of points, but from what I've seen devs are the most pampered of all professions. Cut the most slack. Given the most pay. Extended the most deadlines. And rightfully so. But if you can't take it now... when things are "good" -- wow, I'd hate to be you in a down economy. Lots of truth to this, but look we all have mortgages and what comes across as "asshole" is the complaining. We all have a mortgage, why are you a special special snowflake?
• kzhahou 11y ago
  I resent the fact that so many people here are calling this BURNOUT. Can you not fathom the idea that Eevee simply saw and accepted the truth: that the job at Yelp was not personally meaningful?
• devonoel 11y ago
  I guess the real trick is to build your own business, but it keep it small enough that you don't end up exactly in the same place, but with yourself at the head of it. Find yourself a tiny niche, fill a need for just enough people that you can keep yourself gainfully employed doing something you care about, and not have to worry about hiring other people to work under you and all the other shit that comes with building a company. Stay small and lean. You won't get Facebook rich, but maybe you'll be happy.
• mooogs 11y ago
  Either you work for the man, or you are the man. The choice is up to you.
• rilita 11y ago
  Imagine that this article read as follows: "I used to have a great job working at Yelp. I was paid highly for it and accomplished a lot. I even got stock options. I've made it now though. Screw working hard, I'm through with that. I'm paying off my mortgage and gonna live the easy life now. Good luck to all you suckers still in the software industry. Bwwuahaha." Somehow I don't feel much sympathy for this person. Many of us have been working miserable software jobs for years, but we still give it our all and don't throw in the towel. Yeah it's great that this person made it through, but it's a crappy example for the rest of us.
• desireco42 11y ago
  This is not burnout, this is professional dead-end our industry became because... well he kind of explained it in his post. It is amazing that you have all this knowledge and you have to set it aside, because of all the same problems that are present everywhere. And I mean exactly the same legacy mistakes that are made in good faith supposedly and now you have to show professionalism and reason and as senior guy accept it and deal with it. The only thing I am sad, is that I can't do what he did.
  • chrismarlow9 11y ago
    Heh. I've thought about this a bunch and come to the conclusion that it's why a startup based purely on ability to execute succeeds so often. It takes the right group of people in every facet of the company (sales, technical, etc) that have seen these mistakes over and over and refuse to let the company repeat them. It's not often you get that group of guys together in the same room with a good idea and a VC, but when you do it's a fun thing to watch.
• johnthealy3 11y ago
  The article makes a number of points that resonate with me and were the initial reason I felt obligated to start my own company: * Corporate and management issues / misalignments * Uninteresting work content (e.g. fixing old bugs all the time) * Time and energy drain I've been reading the two books about Google culture recently (Work Rules! and How Google Works), both of which cover similar issues and (ostensibly) how Google has responded to them. I understand there must be a huge pool of people out there in similar situations, many of whom are the best of the best. It's also clear that a few large companies are trying to figure out how to appeal to this group, while most large companies continue to be consumed by egos and the day to day grind and fail at this. The most important benefit to having my own company has (by far) been the time management. I feel like I could have the proper amount of time and energy to devote to a child or two, which would have been unthinkable in previous jobs (mine were in consulting, but the same seems to apply to tech). However, I've also learned a lot about communication from my company, especially when it comes to things that would cause unhappiness or conflict (not agreeing with management, setting boundaries around time, etc). The biggest leap was realizing that if people react negatively, 1) you don't want to work with these people, and 2) there are a ton of people out there who want to work with you because of this. I hope the OP is able to find people who share his/her extremely positive traits to work with. (Incidentally, I've learned a lot about communication from the poly community as well, and I'm not at all surprised to read OP's about section after reading this post.)
• nicholas73 11y ago
  Half your day gone? Try having a baby! Then you can choose between getting 1-2 hours of "me" time at 6am or 10pm, both of which cut into your sleep time. Not trying to make comparisons here. I was exactly the same prior to fatherhood. But now I wonder how I let all the time go to waste before. Half a day available would be great!
• MyNameIsMK 11y ago
  This resonates with me.
• xacaxulu 11y ago
  "Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat." ~some smart person
• michaelvkpdx 11y ago
  This wouldn't be happening if we had a true estate tax in this country, and if we didn't allow corporations to sit on piles of money while laborers slave away. We in the USA are wealthy enough as a society that we all could thrive on 15 or so hours of work a week, if we didn't have to subsidize the fortunes of billionaires.
  • hodwik 11y ago
    HN is turning into Slashdot. Great.
• jclish 11y ago
  I wish you the best! At 52 I have cashed out the stock options and paid the mortgage twice. In the end 3 weeks or so is the most I can go without either wanting to help someone build a company or wanting to build a company. There is work life after burnout!
• tbolse 11y ago
  If you build some tech product/service to earn money you are in fact not quitting tech industry! You are tech industry - eventually. ;-)
• lectrick 11y ago
  Insist on reasonable work hours. Argue that it will maintain your performance long-term. Say it like you mean it, and don't settle for less. Be ready to leave if you must, in fact, and do not let the glitz/glamour of a well-known brand/company allow them to tread on you.
• anotheryou 11y ago
  I feel like this before even starting my career... I'm passionate about structuring knowledge, perception, society, art, sound. I'm good at creating concepts. As a programmer I'm mediocre (I can learn what I need quickly and on demand, but I'd not open-source a library anytime soon). Yet I still feel like this still is the easiest way to earn a living. My aim is to have the freedom of a digital nomad. Making money and tech (also as the execution of ideas and concepts) is just a necessity...
• snissn 11y ago
  .. hang on let me write a blog post about how i'm quiting the tech industry
• kadavy 11y ago
  A huge congratulations to OP! 7 years ago, I got fired (I should have quit, but didn't have the guts). I had enough money to not have to worry for at least a couple of years, and I couldn't find it in my being to work for anyone – not even freelance. For me, the first couple of weeks was just reminding myself that I still existed – that my "flesh sack" was still there, and would still be there despite the fact that I didn't have a job. Of course, all of the questions about "what will [I] do next?" didn't help this existential crisis. I gradually got over it. My main metric for my days was reconnecting with the sense of "flow." For enjoying what I was doing in the moment. Thankfully, for me, I could still find that in something that resembled work. I knew there was something in my brain that I had to discover, so after the first year, I fled SV, away from all of the noise. Two more years of experimentation later (finally supported by some freelance income), I scored a book deal on a topic that was a perfect amalgamation of my curiosities and interest. I hope you find a similar sense of satisfaction! Just find the joy in what you're doing, and don't let others' expectations create worry for you.
• reagency 11y ago
  >I don’t intend to look for another tech job. > Or another job at all. To me, this is a love letter to tech. What other industry pays you near-FU money for uncreative grunge work?
• coleifer 11y ago
  Fuck this guy and his narcissistic post. So you retired early, the hell do I care? Nothing interesting here beyond a guy with the financial means to leave, and who left. Only a narcissist would think this was something profound.
  • roblfrieburg 11y ago
    Guy complains that working for massive company X isn't very motivational, decides to leave. This isn't something unique it happens in every industry out there, especially tech. I don't get why this post has the amount of votes it has.
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• lww 11y ago
  Yeah, you've definitely had a tough life, not like this loser who was just trying to survive! http://goo.gl/xTXnsI http://goo.gl/xTXnsI YOU are why people outside the tech microcosm of self-centered entitlement despise us. I don't have a problem with you pursuing your dreams but I've about had it with self-important, self-centered tech professionals who believe they should never have to suffer through the struggle to achieve that EVERY generation preceding them has had to overcome. It's so sad for you that HALF your day is all grey and cloudy because you have to "WORK". You're AMAZINGLY lucky to be in a position where you can drop out of your 10:30a-4p job, toss off the shackles of your free catered meals and cash in a bunch of stock, that only has value because of that "crappy legacy code written by idiots", and pursue your trustfund-esque life of "cafe double mocha-lattes" infused with the knowledge that "you were meant for easier times". Be thankful that you have this opportunity and use it to make something amazing that can improve the world in some fundamental way. Try traveling somewhere that isn't burdened with the advantage of tech largesse. Somewhere on the Pacific Rim? Cambodia, Indonesia, Malayasia, the Philippines or Vietnam? South America maybe or Africa? See what real struggle looks like and use your skill to do something to improve the lives of those truly desperate. Otherwise, quit being a whiney little bitch and keep your self-centered, egotistical life to yourself and enjoy the life of a snotty Starbucks "barista".