Ask HN: I want to leave tech: what do I do?

Written by a European.

Reality is - if you’re an American and got into tech and are working for well paying tech companies, you’re not leaving and there’s no escape unless you fatFIRE. This is why FIRE is so big among the Silicon Valley tech crowd. Everyone knows. What’s the alternative for an American tech worker (primarily the people who read HN) who wants to stay where they live, keep a similar quality of living, and not work in toxic faang-esque H1B factories? There ain’t one.

Emigration? It is really easy for Americans to move to Europe. If you are Russian, Pakistani or Kenian, that's another story.

(Un)fortunately, changing lifestyle is a painful and necessary prerequisite for leaving the bubble.

If by "keep a similar quality of living" you mean "keep FAANG-sized paychecks", there probably isn't an alternative. If you mean "keep upper-middle-class paychecks", well, there's more to "tech" than just web programming.

For instance, embedded systems is pretty good. Yeah, they don't pay FAANG levels, and they never will. They typically aren't a "toxic faang-esque HIB factory", though.

My point is more that you can’t afford a typical home in Silicon Valley or many other major cities in the US on a single non-faang income. If you happen to luck out and get a partner with a high income - congrats, not all of us are blessed like that.

This is like asking how you can keep drinking the blood of babies without the guilt of killing babies. The quality of living attributed to tech workers is on the condition that they participate in the system that extracts value from people and society. If you don't want to participate in that system of exploitation, you don't get the privileges that come with being an exploiter.

Honesty I don't think USA tech workers would fit with European workplace culture. Imagine some cali crypto bro refugee pulling out his Cheese wiz or bud light in a French startup's Canteen. There would be a riot and then dudes in tractors would be blocking the highways demanding "the government do something"

So look at places other than major cities.

Do we think that wages in non-major cities are competitive? They’re not.

Either way, you’re asking for people to leave the regions they’ve built their life.

Acting as if this is even remotely unique to tech workers is ridiculous.

This Maoist third worldism rhetoric has no place here.

Your choice. If you won't leave the region you've built your life in, then you're stuck with the life you get in that region.

Other regions don't have competitive pay? They also don't have Bay Area cost of living.

You sound like you don't like the situation you have. You also sound like you won't look elsewhere. Your choice, but realize that you're making one.

It's not exclusive to tech workers and it has nothing to do with Maoism. I'm not even leftist. It's just how our present economy works: since needs have long been satisfied, profit goes to who exploits better. Either the workers, nature, or the consumer. The more you exploit, the more you profit. Or do you think it's by chance that every major investment group, tech unicorn and military company does or enables unthinkable dystopic horrors?