If so I'm curious:
1. What pushed you to do it?
2. What will you be doing? (Even if nothing!)I’ll be joining a startup in a few months to hopefully find the joy in my profession again with a fresh start and more skin in the game.
I will say that the experience taught me a lot about working on a team and also the importance of understanding my own (and my coworkers) limits when it comes to actually implementing stuff. Very worthwhile even if I left with a bad taste in my mouth.
Got tired of having to talk to like five different people who barely spoke English to get anything done and the increasingly naked hostility from the c-suite about our value to the company.
I'm currently looking and I'm considering cutting my salary up to 50℅ to work for a company with a very interesting product that doesnt push AI and let us instead decide where to use it.
I'd rather lower my quality of life than put up with this bs and being forced to use a tool that I disagree so much on an ethical and moral pov. Let alone letting managera decide which tools I have to use on my engineering work
The first trend of AI was "use as much as you can! You must use AI!!!". Hence the rise of tokenmaxxing leaderboards and KPIs on token use.
The second wave, happening right now, is "use it, but control cost". All the cool kid CEOs are now talking cost-control, rate limiting, and metering. If your management is a "follower" they are bound to hop on the trend.
Point is it’s an apprenticeship that takes years and starts with helping a butcher do low value stuff. Grabbing half a cow and trying to cut it up probably isn’t the best entry point or test of aptitude.
Not saying you should be a butcher, but a week and no training is a difficult approach.
Of course, then I just grew up and you just get on with things...
I wake up every day wondering if I should quiet quit or go for a clean exit.
But nowadays, in the current environment, I am extremely glad that I get paid hourly. It's a different skillset. There's a lot of acting and sometimes drama involved but thankfully I'm good at both engineering and acting... Also, I kind of like drama. Anyone who cares about their work, in this economy, is delusional (probably had it easy) and it's a matter of time before reality gets to them as it did to me and many others.
I feel kind of bad for colleagues who take their job too seriously though. I can feel their pain but I can't tell them to relax because I have to also act my part and pretend to feel passionate.
However, my real passion these days is money hitting my bank account. Puts a smile on my face. The less hard I worked, the happier I am. And I'm paid by the hour. So logically I need to create situations to maximize my lock-in factor, above all else.
If you can keep up the pretense for 2 years, then that's enough to keep you employed perpetually. So engineers should focus more on acting skills and other soft skills and less on technical stuff.
Look at all the people in management roles who made big money, none of them have technical skills. It's all about acting. If they built their entire career out of bullshit, surely I can build the second half of mine out of bullshit also! By the time I retire, I'd still have contributed more value than them!
These are some I can think of or have witnessed since starting my dev career in 2010:
- 4GL business languages making developers redundant
- Big data
- Cloud computing
- DevOps
- LLMs
For those about to quit, I salute you.
In a similar story, AI makes sense for some stuff but not other stuff. The stuff where it does not make sense for is gonna do bad when the bubble pops.
> 1. What pushed you to do it?
The pursuit of curiosity, for the most part. That's what makes quitting a lot harder when you have a good job and nothing to complain about: you feel like you're making a huge mistake on a whim. Doubly so when you consider the state of the job market at this time.
That said, we don't live to work; we work to live. It's a lot of risk and uncertainty, but you should remember that while some unknown bad things can happen in the future, unknown good things can happen too! [1] When you own your time, you increase your luck surface considerably: you have more opportunities to travel, to wander, to play, to meet new people, to tinker, to discover.
So I've been thinking and reading about this a lot. The final push came from two books I read: "The Pathless Path" by Paul Millerd [2] and "The Inner Compass" by Lawrence Yeo [3]. I can't recommend them enough.
> 2. What will you be doing? (Even if nothing!)
I have a huge Steam backlog to beat... :) Besides that, I'll be studying computer science and maths. Programming language theory, compilers, and functional programming are particularly close to my heart.
But, most importantly, enjoying life!
I quit because like many here I was totally unfulfilled with what I was doing day-to-day. Feeling like I'm wasting my life away for a (not even great) paycheck.
I was thrilled with the freedom and agency it brought me, and had a long list of things I wanted to do. I went to see family and friends I hand't seen in a while, then took a multi-month trip in the mountains while reading, learning and programming whatever I wanted to.
Then had a baby, which wasn't planned, but turned into the most important and meaningful thing in my life. Time went by, the market went down, AI, etc. I started trying finding a job about a year in, and it's really tough. Even worse, everything I hated about work seems to be generally worse now everywhere.
Not sure what to do.
I found a little job in education (no tech at all) that pays $22k/yr. That'll float the bills while I use my spare time to build other things. Got a couple dev boards (one SBC, one for that cheap TI component that came across HN a few days ago) to toy around with some little hardware ideas I have that maybe I could productize.
Grabbing a PD analyzer and an older M1 or M2 Mac to explore Asahi Linux and maybe start contributing in a few months.
Sadly I'm tightly mortgaged and in a very high cost of living area in the US.
My plan is to move to Europe so I can cut my cost of living in half, not stress over health care, and eat real food instead of fake American chemicals. Need a few more years ..
However rent here is literally more than minimum wage after taxes so that is something to consider.
If you want the best healthcare in the EU go to The Netherlands. Though food is meh over there, over 70% is ultra processed.
http://www.foodwatch.org/nl/pers/persberichten/persberichten...
I don't really know what the right balance is now, but I'm having fun and generally much happier.
Trying to do something on my own now, maybe I'll reassess in the fall and ask for my job back or start looking around if this doesn't work. Its not really a "break" because I'm working a lot (maybe more than before) but I figured this is my window to try. Somewhat hoping big tech will always be there but if not i can make do with whatever I get as long its doesn't have a toxic culture.
Ive achieved everything I dreamt in my professional life: Got a PhD, got to be CTO, got to be Principal Engineer, got to build several products and companies from 0 to 1. I just want to be left alone.
Nowadays I enjoy being advisor of 3 or 4 early startups at a time. I love seeing the stamina and drive of the young 20+ folks that want to eat the world. I spent 25 years doing the same; but at 45, it's my priorities have changed a lot.
Also, I was still expected to produce work at stripe, the work was more like speculative or validation documents instead of building or maintaining systems. Of lot of work proposing things that never got built or adhoc supporting other teams. On top of that perf season was still tiring because i had to justify my existence even though I didn't really know what I was doing or how i was adding value. I got paid well while i was there and still hold my stripe stock but i wasn't really an engineer by the end of it.
I'm happy to retire at google when i have a few kids (if its still around) in like 10-15 years. Gotta shoot my shot while I have energy.
Founder of a deeptech/hardware startup in a difficult sector and we are struggling to get our tech validated (latest datapoint are no improvement over the current practice). While i believe with sufficient time it can be proven and improved, that crosses into the realm of academia and not entrepeneurship.
So yeah motivation is quite low at the moment, and im not sure if to push-on or accept failure and move on.
Any advice?
If it’s new tech or bust, build the most honest techno-economic model you can and use that to make your go/no-go decision.
Are you doing it because you want to bring something new into the world? Acknowledge that and keep going as long as it's healthy for you overall.
I will be taking a short break and polishing some of my OSS projects.
I'm actually excited about the future of software right now. Currently interested in the field of applied AI/automation/robotics though I have zero credentials. If you're looking for a T-shaped engineer with strong UI and UX experience, let's talk :)
Im definitely afraid of the state of the industry after 2 years of contracting work and breaking back in at my current salary (160k) since my goal is to retire early. The opportunity cost of a life well lived vs preparing myself to live a better life in 20+ years is a really difficult decision to make
What AI-first means for companies who are not actually AI companies is elevating staff with the right degree of _partiinost_ around AI and using vendor AI products to show how many Jira issues have been closed in pursuit of the latest exciting and important new transformation.
1. Leadership, culture, and (development) process changes; I've been looking casually for over a year and finally got something.
2. New company, same role, but should be much more amenable and stable.
To anyone reading this: don’t be afraid to make the move. It’s your life. It can feel scary before you do it, but once you finally quit, it’s not scary anymore.
I quit later, as it became increasingly clear to me that this guy knew nothing about technology, didn't care, but also had a fragile ego where he had to present himself to the company as being in charge, even though he was the worst person for the role. To top it all off, it also dawned on me over time that we basically had an absentee CEO who was working only ~15 hours a week at most. Then when I quit I found out there was a third co-founder who owned a huge stake of the company and I did not even know existed while I worked there.
When I first interviewed, the CTO seemed like a nice and friendly guy, I didn't immediately see red flags. This was my first startup experience. I'll try to research things better if I decide to join one again. I might also just not join unless I can myself be a co-founder. Fuck reporting to incompetent twats.
Currently taking a sabbatical. I decided to take the summer off. I'm working on personal projects. Lucky enough to have good savings from a previous job so I can afford to do this. I'm planning to take gradual steps towards returning to work near the end of the summer.
I hope you give startups another go if that sounds good to you, and as you say, it sounds like you will be able to see the things you dont want at least. Good luck.
This is so funny, because describes like the last four CEOs and companies I worked for :-) Is there an alternate reality I have yet to experience?
i quit after realising how ineffective it is to support a founder who stopped focusing on the product.
So, you people who are leaving without another job lined up, just chillin' at home: My admiration goes out to you. GL guys! You're braver than I.
Currently not doing anything IT related. Just went on a bike ride.
Lots of new bike tech, so depending on how old your “old” bike is. I would recommend going to stores and doing some test rides. Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQrgKBQrkag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xY2S-9gjHI
https://www.koga.com/en/enviolo-gear-hub
https://www.koga.com/en/bikes/e-bikes/evia-pro-automatic?fra...
It's a dream bike, optimized for comfort and city riding, but Koga is not available in the US, though.
Here's an American bike that has similar features (not as nice as the high-end Koga Evia Pro Automatic though), the Harley Davidson Rush/CTY (step through model is easiest to mount/unmount/ride):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SjN8RN9g7Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoX9S5UhETE
The Enviolo Automatic also come in a heavy duty version paired with high performance motors for bakfiets (cargo bikes), for 3-4 children, big dogs, and groceries:
https://batavus.com/en-nl/products/fier-3-bbfn3
https://www.dw.com/en/bosch-pays-90-million-euro-fine-over-d...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
Edit:
Fair, they're ideal for city bikes, stop-and-go traffic, and the flat Dutch landscape where they're produced, where the biggest "mountains" you encounter are the bridges over canals. Their city model has 310%, trekking 380%, and the new utility hub has 400% gear range, which you can use on a normal bike, bakfiets, or speed pedelec.
In my previous job I was working in a boring old app, and all my attempts to modernise it were rejected. So I felt like this is not my project anyways.
And everything was hair-rippingly slow, asking external developers to implement a simple button was a nightmare of bureaucracy with jira tickets and meetings and reviews ugh.
And I’m coming from the indy hacker scene, I have always moved quickly and avoided unnecessary overhead. At home I was working on side projects and adding buttons was not even in my effort-radar, bc its so quickly done!
Then with ai getting good at coding + my experience I was able to ship so many projects and features, the slow progress at work became unbearable. I was wasting my time so badly there.
TLDR:
Maybe this is a new phenomenon, but I quit bc I can do much more alone while vibe coding. The opportunity cost of staying there was just too high.
Also: the models work much better during unemployed hours and I do so much more sports now, I love it!
I don't have much savings on me, but I'd rather go frugal and downshift than be producing slop for a living.
It was already clear to me last summer that the agentic stuff was kind of the final nail in the coffin of a "normal" software dev shop. All the routine of typical SCRUM-based etc activity was degrading even further from ritual and theater into a pointless charade or comedy, or as you say, absurdity. Dueling LLMs on the code reviews, people sitting around a conference room on laptops counting fantasy story points, getting Claude to write their annual self-assessments.
Unfortunately I still need to make money. I've done a couple freelance gigs. Some is less absurd than others. I'm sporadically interviewing to go full time again but I'm being extremely picky.
Is that privilege? I consider it basic fiscal responsibility.
Maybe this time management will learn its lesson but probably not.
You can't avoid the bullshit unfortunately. Whatever company you join, it will be the same thing. If the company REALLY provided value, they would have gone bankrupt. There's no avoiding the bullshit. You must embrace it.
I’m working on my passion project, a mobility focused fitness app (bendy.fit), and searching for work that doesn’t feel morally repugnant!
Building software has become dramatically easier over the last year. The hard part is no longer creating products—it's getting people to discover and trust them.
I spend far more time thinking about distribution today than implementation. That's a shift I didn't expect.
"You can't fire me because I quit! Throw me in the fire and I won't throw a fit."
I did a crazy experiment: Built and shipped 25 projects in 25 weeks.
Several of those projects made it to the top of HN here. One went viral and ended up in TechCrunch and many other big-name sites: https://channelsurfer.tv
I wasn't _trying_ to make money. I just wanted to build a bunch of cool shit, rekindle my love for building websites, make the web more fun, and maybe figure out what I wanted to do next.
Now I'm trying to focus on making money. I'm kind of out of money, so I'll likely need to do some freelance work for a while.
Soon I'm going to release something to help others do the same thing. Ship high-quality stuff quicker.
Can you go back and monetize them if you haven’t already?
At least you now know what privilege feels like
People have to know that it's not about money
Cash is not the way to make your life sunny
There is no need if you've got the soul seed
Love life and peace it can only begin
When you know in your heart sun shines from within
Love all your brothers and love all your sisters
Love all your misses and love all your misters
Don't be shy when you're sharing your kisses
'Cause jealousy gets boos and hisses
Remember that there are people who never had the opportunity to study or lives in a precarious situation.