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Comment on I want to leave tech: what do I do?

While I liked the article, I can’t help but feel it was basically, “find your dream job” as the overarching message. It did give some pointers of where it could be, but finding those are going to be harder than just landing any job in the current landscape, which is already difficult.

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ITGuyLevi@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Overall I liked a couple things I hadn’t thought of (NGOs), but the end of the article… that just sounded like any other consultancy service to me. Perhaps that’s too harsh but it doesn’t feel like a new career field (just my opinion).

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brsrklf@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I did not read the full article, but the first advice is what I did, and I don’t regret it. I’ve been working in a public institution’s dev department for 3 years, after a dozen working as a contractor for big companies. It pays a fraction of what I could get elsewhere, but I got benefits I value way more than that.

A lot less stress, concrete work on services that have immediate and beneficial impact on people, colleagues that don’t consider everyone else is competition, and somewhat flexible hours with generous annual leave.

I am not sure that kind of job is available everywhere, so I got “lucky” I found this, I guess. But it’s not like I had to fight for it either. Our team had vacant positions for years because nobody was replying to the job offers. And I just had my contract renewed. I was the only candidate.

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chobeat@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Most people don’t know they are allowed to dream, let alone in which direction. While this might not connect with you, there are millions of tech workers who have zero perspective on what’s out there.

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sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

“find your dream job”

Which is what I did: working in tech. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to build things, but I also wanted to support a family. At first I wanted to be a carpenter, but the likelihood of making good money with that was small, so I learned to build websites and decided to make a career out of it (I actually thought about patent law, but realized SW patents don’t build, but prevent things from being built).

So yeah, I’m basically doing exactly what I want, and I’ve avoided working for companies I hate.

That said, I’ve been doing the same thing for many years now, so a change of pace would be welcome, but I still want to build things. Unfortunately, LLMs are trying to take the part of like (actually building things) and is trying to replace it with designing things. I guess I could pivot to that, but seeing something built doesn’t have the same satisfaction for me. If I had enough to retire, I’d probably start an indie game studio, and I’d hire a lead designer and work on the fun algorithms myself.

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