I want to leave tech: what do I do?
136 comments
·July 4, 2025Jcampuzano2
benreesman
This is the most important comment I've read in a while. It has become really easy to feel trapped in software as a trade even though I love working on software as much or more than ever in the details of the work. I'm fortunate that my current gig doesn't involve doing anything that I find directly objectionable in a Hippocratic Oath sense (though some might, its trading stuff which I long ago decided is about a 1.01 out of Meta on a scale of 1 to OpenAI).
The thing is that the software business has discovered its Three Big Lies:
- Everything is Exponential (Sigmoids are For The Small Thinkers)
- Breaking The Law is Progress if You Do It With a Computer
- Computer People Know What's Best
Other industries that have become tentacled over the years have had similar Big Lies (High Finance has Price Movements are Gaussian Distributed for example, and Bailouts are The Business Cycle).
I'm at the age both in life and career terms where its like, this could be a cyclic thing and these assholes are going to get thrown out soon, or it could be I came of age in an aberrant exceptionally good time, this is how it always ends up.
What I do know is that that software is an effective tool for mitigating the damage of malware, excellent computers are cheap now, and so it might be possible to fund an effective resistance doing rewarding work for the greater good with frugality and some creativity about paying the bills, I'm still figuring out the details.
somenameforme
Everything that exists to make money, gradually takes it to an extreme as it becomes more difficult to make money on the up and up. Everything that doesn't exist to make money ends up existing to make money once it reaches a sufficient size - this includes nonprofits and charities.
This is one of the many reasons I tend to be vehemently in favor of decentralization. A lot of these problems are just because organizations become too large. It also feels kind of dystopic, or sterile at least, how you can be a thousand miles away and have a main street that looks largely indistinguishable from the one you just came from.
benreesman
I don't really disagree with anything you've said, other than a vague sort of discomfort around practicality. I dislike market failures very much, I war-crime dislike engineered market failures (the two co-occur with alarming frequency).
But markets are effectively part of the natural world: if you engineer the most oppressive, regimented, panopticon nightmare prison available to human deviousness you will succeed in creating a black market, not in eliminating markets.
So any solution has to be about preventing market failures, not eliminating markets. If North Korea can't effectively inhibit markets from forming, it's a pretty convincing demonstration that no acceptable amount of anti-market intervention is going to be okay.
cjs_ac
Insightful comment.
I think there's a dividing line in society between those who understand systems and those who don't. The systems people look at the non-systems people as stupid; the non-systems people look at the systems people as evil.
TeMPOraL
Some of those insights are overused cliches at this point.
My pet peeve is the "S-curve argument":
> Everything is Exponential (Sigmoids are For The Small Thinkers)
Yes, that's technically true because universe is finite, yadda yadda, but in practice where you are on the curve and your time horizon matters. Plenty of things are still effectively exponential[0], and I feel some people bring up sigmoids specifically because they you squint hard enough, it seems nicely and comfortably linear. But it isn't.
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[0] - Random example from a recent HN discussion: total amount of all written text to date. It's obviously going to be a sigmoid (or worse, if disaster strikes), but right now, we're still before the inflection point, so I wouldn't short the stock of storage providers just yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44442770
pydry
Having systems thinking is a bit like being Cassandra: doomed to know the future yet doomed never to be believed.
What's odd is that you'd think tribal thinkers would respond to a track record of being proven correct but they emphatically do not. Moreover they're invariably convinced that you too think tribally.
As an example, I can think of one politician (edit: not trump) who is definitely a systems thinker (who is not nice, but is successful and generally outplays his opponents because of it) and ~80% of Hacker News is convinced beyond the shadow of any doubt that he's an evil idiot loser who invariably makes stupid mistakes.
benreesman
I think that my understanding of how systems work has had very differing degrees of effectively translating into other regimes. Math and the hard sciences? Very effective, doing stuff in biotech or something has always been a fruitful two way street.
But for human systems? Eh... Yeah I struggle with agreeing there. I think much harm has come from trying to think about human systems like computer systems both in the small of my own immediate life and in larger regimes. No matter how you feel about Elon Musk and DOGE? That didn't look like it went great for either side of that equation to mention one recent high-profile exanple. That looked pretty lose/lose.
catlover76
[dead]
pseudocomposer
How “high paying” a job do you need though? My last three companies, I’ve worked on products that don’t involve marketing or data mining of any sort that I’d consider unethical. While they have certainly involved automating away jobs (car sales/bank loan people, pathologists, and now accountants, respectively), they were all software designed to benefit humanity.
And they all paid $180k+, the last two $200k+, in salary alone, plus benefits and equity. I only work over 40 hours if I’m working on something I’m passionate about. I realize FAANGs can go into the $400k+ range, but… do you really need that? Is it worth it? For the stress, the rat race, the pressure and all that?
Granted, they’ve been remote roles, and I live in North Carolina, not one of the HCOL metros (I don’t see how anyone can justify living in NYC, SF, or LA, honestly).
But like… this just seems untrue. There are plenty of good-paying, ethical roles to be had. Moreover, I’d say if you spend some time actively seeking out ethical, fairly (not excessively) compensated roles… they’ll find you, without you having to search for them.
hn_throwaway_99
Glad this was the top comment. It is extremely easy to "leave tech" (or, as you point out, leave "big tech") - you just have to accept that you will most likely make substantially less money and that your "standard of living" will have to adjust accordingly.
I put "standard of living" in scare quotes because I strongly believe that, after a certain point in the US, people are conditioned by society and marketing to spend gobs of money on shit that doesn't make them happier and often actively makes them feel worse. I'm going through the process of moving and downsizing, and I can't even begin to go through the gobs of crap in my house that I'm throwing or giving away. Even home ownership itself is something that I feel is a bad lie - you're signing up to spend huge amounts of money to live in a box where you'll also need to spend huge amounts of money to slow its inevitable decay.
But I digress. The main point is that leaving (or changing) tech is easy, but you just have to have an honest conversation with yourself about how much you, your family and your self image requires a lot of money.
deadbabe
What do you do with kids when you want to downsize? Give them away?
hn_throwaway_99
Of course, because that's obviously the only option.
spacemadness
It blows my mind people feeling mistreated at X FAANG company just to go to Y FAANG company and expect any better treatment. They are all the same at this point. At least the unhinged career ladder climbers on Blind aren’t kidding themselves.
navi0
A corollary to this is that “tech” is simply the method of accomplishing a business’ goals/objectives. At this point, all companies employ lots of hardware and software in their operations. No one working in a modern company can “leave tech,” but OP’s comment about “big tech” stands.
pydry
one of the reasons I find it hard to leave a high paying job is because "underpaid" has always been the best predictor of job toxicity.
In general (with a few exceptions like finance that are generally up front about what they are), the chillest, sanest jobs with the most accomodating environments tended to pay the best and vice versa.
I also have too many friends who tried sacrificing pay for better working conditions and more meaningful work and ended up bitter because they were sold a hollow dream.
parpfish
A few years back I left “big tech” for a much lower paying tech-ish job that had a meaningful mission.
I was fine having a lower paying job, but what I didn’t expect was that the lower pay meant that the skill level for my colleagues was also much much lower. Years of the “Dead Sea effect” [0] had turned it into an environment where the blind were leading the blind and they weren’t even aware of how bad things were.
So high pay also means “better coworkers”
[0] http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...
karaterobot
> one of the reasons I find it hard to leave a high paying job is because "underpaid" has always been the best predictor of job toxicity.
Being 'underpaid' is different than being paid less, though. Describing a job as underpaid is, almost by definition, assuming a company is exploiting its workforce. It's not hard to believe such a company would also be a toxic environment in other ways. But if two companies pay different amounts, but they're both paying a fair salary, it doesn't necessarily imply anything about the company that pays less.
hamandcheese
Strong agree. It takes very little effort to pay someone a few more dollars, whereas all the other intangibles are a lot harder to offer. So it is exceptionally rare to find one without the other.
PoshBreeze
Working in smaller tech companies with worse pay is worse than working these tech jobs.
Most of your co-workers you cannot trust to do anything e.g. Today I was investigating an issue (screen for X not updating). I open the dashboard and there was a sea of read over my console. They hadn't even checked the terminal for errors.
> Tech itself is not the issue here - tech being filled with high paying jobs where you effectively work on issues that directly damage humanity is the issue.
That is a matter of point of view. I've worked in industries that most consider amoral. I've had the most job satisfaction from working in those industries. I actually got to do interesting work. Every other job has me over-engineering basic web apps because they are a <Azure/Sitecore/AWS/Google Cloud> partner.
The worst job was working for a large charity, do you know why? They literally pissed money away on bullshit, while collecting large sums of via unpaid volunteers. That sickened me and so I left.
antithesizer
Wow! Tech people have a really difficult time figuring out normal people's diction!
mathiaspoint
Buy rural land and live on investments while you start a small business. That's what I'm doing.
I think we need a monthly "who wants to be fired" thread where we share our progress on this.
gdbsjjdn
What kind of business? Most of the dream ones people envision are capital-intensive and failure-prone (speaking as someone who started a capital intensive business that failed)
sigmoid10
I think the problem is the "dream ones" part. Yes, everyone would love to make tons of money with very little work. But that almost guarantees high risks or very high capital exposure. There are countless small business opportunities that you could operate from home with almost no risk or exposure if you have a car and can afford some basic tools. But you won't get rich - or at least you'll have to work your ass off for a while.
temp0826
This is pretty far out of reach for most people, unfathomable if you have debt and/or living paycheck to paycheck.
skwee357
^ this.
Even if you don’t live paycheck to paycheck, the life style of owning a place AND living off your investments, is extremely hard to pull off.
You most likely need to be single (or couple both in tech), no kids, making FAANG salary, living frugally (no travel, no expenses outside of food, shelter and necessities). Or you need to use geo arbitrage, which again means probably no kids, while being able to secure a high paying remote job in the US.
I wish it was more affordable, but it’s not. Therefor advice like “buy a house and live off your investments” are equivalent to filling a winning lottery ticket.
hn_throwaway_99
You don't need the "buy the house" part, which is actually bad advice now - renting is now half the cost of home ownership in many areas of the US.
But I strongly believe you're making this out to be much more difficult than it is if you are making decent (not "FAANG level") tech-type salaries. Where I live tech jobs generally pay at about double the amount of people in trades, for example. E.g. a mid-level software engineer is making at least 160-180k, while a trades person (plumber, etc.) with similar experience is making 80-90k.
So obviously if you can live at the level of these trades people, you can save up enough to be able to live without a salary for some time.
The problem is that most people just get used to their standard of living and find it hard to downsize. That's fine, but it's still very much a choice.
rozap
One weird trick: try being rich.
My wife and I moved to a rural area after covid. You're not magically saving money by doing so. And there is a shit load more work in terms of maintenance. I like it but this is such a strange recommendation.
hn_throwaway_99
That is true, but it's not out of reach for "most people" who have been paid professional software engineer-level salaries in mid-to-large cities in the US for a few years or more, which I'd guess is a substantial portion of the readership of this site.
hn_throwaway_99
What you're describing is essentially the whole FIRE movement (financial independence, retire early). While I find adherents to that movement can be "culty"/extreme around the edges, the general advice of living below your means so that you can then have at least some number of years where you can engage in a more meaningful use of your time (doesn't have to be "retire") is good advice.
spacemadness
That’s not FIRE. FIRE is keep your tech job, live very frugaly, invest, maybe make some other passive income, then actually retire. OP is rather focusing on getting out of tech to do something else but it is still going to be work. Maybe a lot of work. They’re downsizing lifestyle because they’re also downsizing their pay.
hn_throwaway_99
I don't think it's worth it to "No True Scotsman" this, but there are plenty of people who go by FIRE principles, which are generally to live below your means so you can be more financially independent later (which is exactly what OP was focusing on), without actually retiring completely. In fact, most people don't retire completely because they find they get bored as hell.
benreesman
How to life well as an independently wealthy computer person is an important question to address and I encourage you to continue addressing it because it sounds like you'd give better advice than most.
You might find the messaging more effective if it was declared in more direct terms though, its a pretty different problem than still needing to make a living when computers are your stock in trade.
drf1
Please keep us up-to-date on how that goes. It sounds like you are having progress.
Most of the smart and talented people I know that dropped out to create companies abandoned them and ended in someone else’s company later. The two exceptions were salesmen who ended up becoming rich after selling their companies.
ilyazub
Cool, congrats and wishing you good luck and success!
> monthly "who wants to be fired" thread Reminds me of Mad Fientist blog.
the_real_cher
love this!
atemerev
If you already have enough investments to not work, why would anyone even work in tech?
Leaving the grind when you already kind or rich is easy mode. Leaving it when your net worth is negative is another story.
thih9
Off topic, I started working in tech because I enjoyed it. That it was also well paid was a nice coincidence. You can be in the grind and be unaware of that.
Of course people like this still suffer due to overexposure to work and js frameworks; and many eventually grow to dislike tech jobs and want to leave.
AnimalMuppet
Why would anyone work in tech? Because making something that didn't exist before is kind of a thrill. (No, that is not the same as cranking through Jira tickets...)
TeMPOraL
Right. That's what got me into tech, too. Turned out to be mostly a lie - most jobs aren't making anything exciting or new (except maybe for the wealthy in the financial sense), and those that do tend to limit your autonomy.
Now I stay in tech for the same reason most people stay in their careers - it's comfortable and pays well, but because that's mostly a function of "time served"[0], it also means that I'm trapped now. I can't just switch fields anymore - at this stage of life, switching is a major multi-year project!
(Also I question whether it would help. Working in some field never looks much like you imagine while being outside of it.)
--
[0] - Tech has an unusually large multiplier here, but the trend is the same as with any other job.
codingdave
That thrill is present in any creative endeavor. If you like tech and enjoy that thrill, yeah, work in tech. At the same time, if you are tired of tech and want that thrill, go make something else. I'm a collector of hobbies at this point, having at least dabbled (if not more) in woodworking, stone carving, jewelry making, furniture upholstery, fused glass, painting, drawing, sculpture, clothing design, and creating nature trails in our forest. They all give that thrill.
Tech pays better, though - so I work in tech to pay the bills, then spend the money on tools to get that creative thrill somewhere else.
thih9
Note that this joy is not unique to tech. Carpenters, farmers, painters, etc, all make things that didn’t exist before. Some of them haven’t heard about Jira.
tekla
May I introduce you to all of blue collar work.
atemerev
Sure, that's what Github is for. Working in corporate environments is another story.
jghn
First thing to do is get used to a much lower salary. Mostly kidding but channeling how often I see sentiments online of people saying they want to leave tech and then balk at the salaries normal people have.
parpfish
When I left big tech for doing tech at a nonprofit, I had to keep reminding myself that even though I took a 66% pay cut I was still making ~double the median wage. By all accounts the job I had with a pay cut was still seen as a “good, high-paying job” in the community
jghn
In a past life I worked at a nonprofit. In an attempt to woo higher quality engineers we bumped our salaries as high as we possibly could. It worked to an extent, more mission driven people would come from Big Tech to join us. But despite them taking a huge paycut they were still getting paid a lot more than engineers in other areas of our company. And that, as you point out, was still a fantastic wage in the grand scheme of things relative to the rest of the country.
spacemadness
Well a lot of those folks got themselves trapped in a mortgage possibly with a family. I see it all the time here in the Bay. People think they’re on top of the world, buy a house, then start to have second thoughts. Then they’re trapped and will lose out by selling and downsizing. They don’t want to do that, so complain and stick with their job fearing layoffs and hating life.
micromacrofoot
that's the hard part for me, I'd have to change every aspect of my life because any other job would probably start me at 25% of what I make now
sell my house, put my kids in a different school district, be terrified about health insurance
if I fail I'd have to go back into tech and would have uprooted everything in a way that's probably irreversible
bdangubic
I’ve heard this argument many times; some of those times it came out of my own mouth.
the thing is… if you and your spouse get a 25% bump in salary right now, a year or so from now it is likely you’d write the exact same comment as this one above even though a year ago you were in the same boat and obviously managed beautifully without the extra 25%… :)
Everdred2dx
Not to discount your overall point, but you're comparing a 25% increase with a 75% decrease here. Not quite the same thing
TeMPOraL
It's easier to move in one direction than the other :). People have goals, getting a bump in salary lets them achieve those goals faster; getting a 75% cut on the salary means undoing all that and then some.
Not to mention, costs of everything also go up, and our bodies are not getting younger and healthier either. If you're to give up your current salary for the one you had 5 years ago, you wouldn't afford the kind of life you had 5 years ago.
gorjusborg
Paraphrasing to bring clarity to the point:
> I want to significant change, but not to my income!
I realize that life is expensive, but if you feel stuck, not needing a high salary gives you more options. It's often easier to control spending than income.
null
micromacrofoot
unfortunately a bunch of it are healthcare expenses
hliyan
One of the happiest periods of my life was when I was working for a non-profit tech company building software for humanitarian work (human rights documentation, labour law compliance, election monitoring etc), after working a full decade in capital markets trading systems. Half the salary for 2 years, did a number on my savings, but it recharged me enough to return to the industry, with expertise in a new tech stack. It was in fact during this period I became a regular reader/contributor to HN.
I understand that this option may not be available to all. I suppose my point is that you may not actually need to leave the industry permanently. Just long enough for you to recharge and find a way to repel the BS without psychological trauma (and without causing psychological trauma to others).
gdbsjjdn
If you want to leave tech you should save up for 4-5 years of expenses to accomodate for under-employment, downsize your lifestyle to fit a household income under 80k, and then reskill in another field.
I have tried to move away incrementally from the tech industry by working less and consulting, and it is not effective. There's simply nothing else you can do that pays as well for so little effort. It draws you back in like a tarpit because there's always more work to do. Committing to a clean break and immersing yourself in a new field seems like the better approach.
jschveibinz
Uncle J. here, sitting in my rocking chair...
There are so many problems to solve. I always like to post these lists when an article like this is posted on HN and the discussion ensues about what feels good to work on. There are so many problems that need your help to solve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_global_issues
My father always told me: "you will have a vocation, and an avocation. They are separate activities." What he was telling me is that I should find a job, and a hobby. And they should be separate.
I believe that there has been a severe injustice done to students over the past 30-40 years by instructing them to find a job that is their passion. That's putting too much pressure on a person; and it’s largely unachievable.
It's okay to make money doing one thing, and enjoy yourself by accomplishing something great doing another.
throw10920
The meme with all of the buzzwords around Shinji suggests that the author doesn't really understand that that stifing environment is due to bureaucracy rather than working in tech.
You can be in a large non-tech company (or government agency, technical or not - source: I survived one) and have the same miserable experience. You can work in a small tech company and get very little of it.
The idea that you'll escape by "Working for a public institution" is goofy.
robertclaus
It feels like this is missing the mid sized company that isn't looking to grow and IPO. There are plenty of companies that just have a product and sell it to make payroll. They're just overlooked in the hustle.
pydry
these are usually worse, especially if IT is treated as a cost center and the SME is run by people with autocratic tendencies.
half of the questions on /r/cscareerquestions are about how to deal with working in this type of company ("why does the boss always defer to his nephew who cant code his way out of a paper bag?") or how to get out ("where are all the jobs paying over $100k?").
kadushka
The article is about staying in tech.
fullshark
Correct, it's about leaving the private sector corporate / startup grind
teiferer
[dead]
mmarian
Techno-political hustler sounds fun tbh. Sounds like you need to have a fundraising network though, which often means coming from a well-off background. A shame.
senko
This is "grass is greener" type article:
> Working for a public institution
This may vary from country to country, but in my part of the world, public institutions are mostly dysfunctional, political, nepotistic, filled with cronies and people with negative productivity. And then there's one bright eyed idealist who actually does most of the work until they realize they're being taken advantage of, learn their lesson and starts behaving the same (or leave for private sector).
> Joining a tech co-operative
ie. become a freelancer or start/join a consultancy; sure, but after a couple dozen projects, it starts feeling the same as a corpo job.
> Joining a tech NGO
Again, may vary from country to country. Here NGOs are incredibly political things and desperately dependent on continous outside funding (the two are interconnected). You'll switch office politics for NGO politics.
> Working for a union or a party
Politicians and union representatives are some of the last people I'd ever want to socialize with.
> Becoming a mentor or a teacher
That's nice, but can you live on that salary?
> Becoming a techno-political hustler
For an article that starts with one's quest to find a more meaningful job, this is about as far removed from it as "used car salesman that exclusively uses bitcoin payday loans financing".
At the same time, some of the more promising alternatives that crop up at local IT watering holes are floor tiling, plumbing, roofing, ... All honest work, good pay, visible results, and zero bullshit.
null
nyarlathotep_
Considering the scale and frequency of layoffs across the board and the difficulty of finding a new job for many, you could just...run out the clock and wait for the inevitable?
This article is not a "I want to leave tech" article. It is an "I want to have more ownership of the nature of my work" article.
Practically every recommendation is also a tech job, its just not "big tech" where you have very little real decision making power.
Tech itself is not the issue here - tech being filled with high paying jobs where you effectively work on issues that directly damage humanity is the issue. And after you have a high paying job its hard to justify leaving it, and every other similarly paying job is basically the same thing in a different package.