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

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136 points todsacerdoti | 13 comments | 04 Jul 25 13:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.664s | source | bottom
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Jcampuzano2 ◴[04 Jul 25 14:26 UTC] No.44464856[source]▶
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.

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benreesman ◴[04 Jul 25 14:50 UTC] No.44465062[source]▶
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.

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cjs_ac ◴[04 Jul 25 14:55 UTC] No.44465103[source]▶
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.

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pydry ◴[04 Jul 25 15:17 UTC] No.44465287[source]▶
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.

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1. nsingh2 ◴[04 Jul 25 15:36 UTC] No.44465447[source]▶
> As an example, I can think of one politician 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 always makes stupid mistakes.

Not sure whether you’re talking about the Orange Man, but calling him a systems thinker is a hard sell given the damage his tariffs, defunding, and other nonsense are causing.

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2. pydry ◴[04 Jul 25 15:43 UTC] No.44465506[source]▶
i have a feeling that he sometimes listened to advisors who were capable of it, especially during his election campaigns but as you correctly point out the tariff clusterfuck was probably the most poignant example in recent history of where systems thinking was so desperately needed and so obviously lacking.

But yea, definitely not him.

3. FirmwareBurner ◴[04 Jul 25 15:54 UTC] No.44465596[source]▶
>calling him a systems thinker is a hard sell

You have a man who was not part of the elite establishment and yet has managed to get wealthy by breaking the law and avoid getting caught, then managed to become president against all odds, twice.

Sure, he came from wealth, but plenty of other people came from even more wealth and had way more political connections and failed to become presidents.

Hate him all you want, but if achieving all that is not a form of intelligence and system knowledge, I don't know what is.

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4. nsingh2 ◴[04 Jul 25 16:12 UTC] No.44465753[source]▶
He’s definitely a good salesman. People already distrusted the elites and the `deep state` and he marketed himself as the outsider who’d fix things.

That still isn’t sufficient evidence in his favor, given everything happening now.

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5. samrus ◴[04 Jul 25 16:16 UTC] No.44465774[source]▶
Grifters are systems thinkers but in a limited short sighted way. Their answer to the prisoner dilemma is to betray their partner.

The morons who support them dont see why this is not the optimal strategy

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6. FirmwareBurner ◴[04 Jul 25 16:27 UTC] No.44465858{3}[source]▶
>People already distrusted the elites and the `deep state` and he marketed himself as the outsider who’d fix things.

Q: If this was such an obvious slam dunk on how to win the presidency, why didn't the Dems come up with such a candidate? Wouldn't that make them stupider than the Donald for such an obvious oversight of the electorate?

>That still isn’t sufficient evidence in his favor, given everything happening now.

Managing to become president twice is insuficient evidence?

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7. FirmwareBurner ◴[04 Jul 25 16:28 UTC] No.44465869{3}[source]▶
>Grifters are systems thinkers but in a limited short sighted way.

For the average voter, the grifts are irelevant since all candidates do it anyway, they just want a candidate that executes on their dissatisfactions with the system and that turned out to be the Donald.

Just follow the portfolios of those who funded the campaigns of the presidential winner, it doesn't matter if it's Clinton, Bush, Trump or Obama, all politicians are grifters, since once elected they need to pay back via grifts those who funded their campaigns as that's the main reason wealthy elites spent million for their candidate to win, to get into grifts with the government that make them even richer.

>The morons who support them dont see why this is not the optimal strategy

What IS the optimal strategy? I think MAGA base is getting what they voted for (mass deportations and shit) so for them IT IS the optimal strategy.

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8. nsingh2 ◴[04 Jul 25 17:05 UTC] No.44466157{4}[source]▶
> If this was such an obvious slam dunk on how to win the presidency, why didn't the Dems come up with such a candidate?

The Democratic party in it's current state is ineffective & incompetent in many ways.

> Managing to become president twice is insufficient evidence?

Yes. You are ignoring the damage he is doing now, which is direct evidence against him being a good “systems thinker”

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9. FirmwareBurner ◴[04 Jul 25 17:23 UTC] No.44466323{5}[source]▶
"Good system thinker" was obviously meant in a self serving way that benefits himself and his cronies. I assumed that was obvious since we're talking about world leaders here, not nurses. Presidents aren't there to make YOUR life better.

All world leaders are cut from the same self serving cloth as you don't get to become a presidential nominee if you're a genuine threat to the establishment.

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10. nsingh2 ◴[04 Jul 25 17:42 UTC] No.44466456{6}[source]▶
These kinds of selfish policies backfire when they cut the ground out from under you. Trump and his cronies live in the US and are predominantly invested there, and undermining the US in the long term also undermines them and their interests. The stability of the US correlates with the stability of their power, I would consider this to be basic systems-thinking on the scale of a nation.
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11. jghn ◴[04 Jul 25 18:15 UTC] No.44466725{4}[source]▶
> why didn't the Dems come up with such a candidate?

For one thing, the GOP have had a successful campaign over the last 50+ years to win the framing war. They're now able to present themselves as the plucky outsider who'll come in and fix things, even when they're not. Likewise, the Dems are *not* able to do this, even when they are.

Also the Dems are incompetent boobs.

12. benreesman ◴[05 Jul 25 03:47 UTC] No.44469960{4}[source]▶
Right. In 2019, I was like, I am worse off than 4 years ago, the Trump Presidency sucked. But in 2024, I was like, I'm worse off than 4 years ago, the Biden Administration sucked.

If you know both sides are going to leave you worse off, it's probably pretty understandable that I'm always mad at the last guy to take a strip off my ass.

13. FirmwareBurner ◴[05 Jul 25 10:05 UTC] No.44471548{7}[source]▶
>These kinds of selfish policies backfire when they cut the ground out from under you

How? They keep giving themselves more tax breaks. Sounds like their ground is just fine.