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

The title is a bit clickbait because it's not really about leaving tech, it's about leaving the bullshit behind. If you don't want to work for FAANG actively ruining the world then you have options. In addition to what is posted here, the best advice I can give is to work at a company that isn't a tech company. More regular companies than you think employ software engineers.

I worked the majority of my career at an optical equipment manufacturer. It was technical, but in a very old-fashioned sense (sometimes, too "old-fashioned").

One of the reasons that I stayed there, was because I was satisfied that most applications of our products were for artistic, creative, or scientific purposes. I felt decent about working there.

Also, the culture was very focused on delivering the very best to our end-users. Unlike almost every tech company in existence, these days, the company was not interested in selling itself.

What was the company? Sounds cool!

I don't usually mention the name in public, but it is one of the top Japanese camera manufacturers (Starts with "N").

They weren't always peaceful, though. Their Nishi-Oi factory had a rail and mount system for submarine periscopes.

Oh, very cool! I’m also a photographer, so that sounds like a dream job. Any advice on breaking into this space as a software developer?

Many of the top manufacturers are non-American, and have a very "staid" corporate culture. The best are German or Japanese, so learning about those cultures is helpful.

In my case, I had done a lot of "extracurricular" learning and work, which was attractive to the people that interviewed me. Like I said in another post, on another thread, I have always enjoyed doing tech, and spend most of my free time, working on software.

I also come from a hardware background. My experience in connecting software to hardware was important. I should mention that most hardware companies treat software rather casually. I hope that's starting to change.

The job market, these days, is drastically different from what it was, but I suspect that these companies may be more "traditional" than a lot of tech companies.

That is all very helpful—thank you! And your comment about how hardware companies approach software 100% matches what I've observed in consulting. The idea of combining my love of photography and my software skillset at a more traditional company is actually very appealing to me at the moment. Thanks for the inspiration!