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

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164 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | 04 Jul 25 13:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.285s | source
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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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1. OjotCewIo ◴[06 Jul 25 11:57 UTC] No.44479951[source]▶
> 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

A thousand times, yes.

And even if you find ethical jobs (e.g., paid-for and ethically committed open source work), they are much-much more difficult to do well. Distrust and secrecy are absolutely rampant between you and your (inevitably proprietary) partners; reverse engineering plays a central role. It's a warzone -- and the constant fighting, battling, against measures put in place by other humans, just takes the will to live out of me.

It should be possible for well-paying, ethical, interesting, and co-operative jobs to exist. They only exist as exceptions.