Ask HN: Burnt out from big tech. What's next?
I figure I could take a sabbatical and explore some new areas, try to transition to contracting, or look for jobs outside of the big tech/web startup scene. Ideally I'd like something that requires rigor, with a focus on software architecture or algorithms/optimization. I'd also like to minimize the type of workplace politics I've experienced at FAANG. I'm open to suggestions that don't exclusively have to do with software. Part of me is tired of spending so much of my life in front of a computer.
Here are some disorganized ideas that might give a sense of my interests:
- Cryptography and security (not cryptocurrency/blockchain): I have a math background and I was always an algebra/discrete math person, so this seems a potential fit.
- Formal verification / theorem proving
- Open messaging standards (e.g., Matrix): I find the current state with siloed proprietary messengers a travesty
- Open repositories of knowledge (e.g., Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap)
- "User-empowering" software (e.g., Emacs, Ableton Live)
- Distributed systems
- Programming language development (compilers, libraries)
- Graphics (though the gaming industry isn't exactly the place to recover from burnout)
- Research in cognitive science, psychedelics (lots of hype here though), complex systems, physics
- Studying music composition or audio engineering
- Helping out with homelessness, loneliness, the elderly or disabled
181 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 234 ms ] threadMy complaints with FAANG have to do with perverse incentives that reward nonsensical decisions, poorly thought-out and over-engineered projects, grandiose documents, duplication of work, selective reporting of metrics, etc.
The few times I had a really good manager, a sane environment, and fulfilling work only lasted until the next reorg. It seems like most organizations are either stressful with a lot of adversarial behavior, or have almost nothing to do but depressing busywork. I also find the social aspect lackluster if not downright alienating. I feel at a dead end both in career growth and opportunities to learn on the technical side. I could roll the dice with another team change, but I'm not eager at the prospects.
Most of my work experience is in ML, but I don't want to box myself into that. I find the current hype around generative models insufferable, and the typical ML project today consists of somewhat sloppy Python and a lack of good engineering practices. I'm also tired of the increasingly long and opaque feedback loops (come up with an idea, wait for your giant model to retrain, hope that some metric goes up). I'm still passionate about some aspects (e.g., learning representations, knowledge grounding, sane ML workflows).
I hear that academia has similar issues (though again I mostly know about ML), and I imagine lots of industries have worse conditions than tech. I realize that sloppiness and politics are a fact of life, so I'm wary of falling into the "grass is greener" trap.
These companies are bad news, completely random management, dead end projects.
Worse yet, if you work there, you are dramatically disconnected from the startup market. And prevented from getting modern skills.
At least in startups in theory skills are mor transferable because the market is larger.
I found large companies deeply unfulfilling and do not see myself going back: they are recipes for total frustration.
I’m working on this with a dozen or so loosely connected, values-aligned people distributed across the globe. Matrix is a key part of the puzzle. You’re very welcome to just hang out and see if anything our collective is engaged in sparks your interest.
Take your sabbatical, do something crafty but not-at-all-software-related*. I chose ceramics.
When you reach the point where you start programming tools to help with your new avocation, it's time to go back to the job market.
Took me about 5 months. I made some beautiful (and ugly!) things, learned maybe the equivalent of an accelerated BFA with a minor in chemistry, have a new hobby ongoing, and am excited and enthusiastic about joining a new company shortly, doing something new and different, where my skills matter.
* Woodworking, machining, welding, weaving, sewing, painting, bricklaying, stone carving, raising livestock, growing bonsai or orchids, meditation, long distance running. Whatever it is, pick something physical, grounded, and engrossing, where you can put a bunch of time and effort in, to achieve a real change of pace.
What a legendary quote. And very true. You might find that 'crude' things are technical in their own way.
I don’t know if I will ever retire, but I’d rather be poor and retire by voluntary means then have to work at big companies doing hateful work dealing with hateful politics in exchange for my only remaining time on earth.
On the other hand, after you've dealt with your current state of mind, I'd love to have a chat with you because I see that we share some passions and I'm building something new in the AI space to help people build sane ML pipelines!
I came across an interesting legal concept a couple of jobs ago - "quit for cause". Among other things, changes in management structure can meet the requirements "for cause'.
If you've got the pull in negotiation, it might be worth looking into adding something a quit-b/c-reorg cushion.
(I don't expect it to help with many things here, but there's worth in setting things up so you don't need a situation to stay a certain way, because you're safe to exit)
The things you are going to regret not doing are things that you have interest in, but otherwise have no motivation to do because work is taking up your time/energy (both mental and physical). You aren't going to regret working at more "boring" job if it gives you the ability to do those things.
if it sounds like this might fuel you rather than consume you, email me: dbreggs22@gmail.com
Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss further.
(Cruise, for example - have a friend who works there)
As a reminder, what you are passionate about and what you do for work does not have to be the same. I would say it's best to keep it separate. Keeping it separate helped ground myself and care less about my career. At the end of the day, I can't say the last 10 years of my career was something I am proud of sharing with my friends and family. No one cares that you built a dashboard that saved the organization a million dollars; I certainly don't. People care about your passions and what drives you, and I care about working on something that I can be proud of.
My suggestion would be to just pick anything you are interested in and just go with the flow. When you get to a point where you are no longer interested, next.
Let yourself be and you'll see.
Would be more than happy to give you my perspective and what it's been like as a small, moderately successfuly SaaS founder. Ping me at scottmas@altmails.com
I left my job 2022 February to not sit in meetings and mostly be a preventer of bad engineering rather than a builder of good stuff. On a good day, I told people how they were wrong - on a bad day, I told them how they were wrong, again.
If you have the option of taking a sabbatical, I would recommend taking one out of your own choice rather than being an unemployment statistic due to your own lack of motivation.
I quit rather than a sabbatical, because I could hand-pick my successors for the roles I occupied and it was better to kick about 3 people into core roles & get them promoted for it, than have them do the work only for me to show up 8 weeks later to hand it all back in for no benefit to their careers.
Took me 3 months before I didn't feel the need to "accomplish something today" to feel good about my day and mostly I went through my Netflix list, read through a ton of books that I've always meant to read and went for walks to the coffee shop instead of driving.
This isn't the first break of my life and it's technically possible to double your summer break in a year, because we've got options for winter.
The biggest thing that has always helped me in these situations is to head to the other side of the planet, because being in a cold place with short days feels bad when you wake up and there's nothing to do immediately on your mind.
I just got back from a trip to Patagonia and the only reason I haven't headed back to New Zealand again, is because I'm now interviewing again for jobs (also kids, kids need to be in school).
If you are talented, with a significant experience going back years, the fact that you took a break from your career to do something else for a bit isn't going to matter to a single employer. Oddly enough, I also spent enough time away to be out of the no-competes for a few work related systems, so my open areas expanded because of a break.
If you're tired of work, don't find another job - you probably need to remember who you are outside of work, before you can go back in to do something else.
You sound like a great guy to work with with all this modesty and open mindedness.
Your job isn't to say no, it's to say: "This doesn't work, but how about this?".
Engineering isn't about being a prick that shoots down ideas and be the "smartest person in the room", it's to make those ideas become reality as closely as possible while working within the constraints of what's feasible.
Some examples that you may be unfamiliar with:
* Working with a manager who is a former dev that likes to micromanage the decisions that their team makes.
* Working on a team that is driven / owned by a product owner who doesn't understand as much engineering as they think that they do.
Neither of these situations are examples of healthy functioning organisations, but they do occur. They are not an exclusive list either, just some random examples from personal experience.
Shooting down ideas may be a symptom of somebody being a prick, or it may indicate that they know why the idea will break the system (even if it closes a ticket or gets a particular feature finished). The ability to propose an alternative can be restricted by just how batshit insane the demand is.
It's not that you are wrong when you say that an engineer should respond "This doesn't work, but how about this?". But that characterization is incomplete - sure it works in theory, but there are many places where it does not work in practice.
If you have a passion and want to share it, see if you can contribute to home assistant, there's a project to add a chat gpt like to it although it looks more like a decision tree.
I left my job a few months ago as the burnout got so bad I wasn’t able to conjure up the motivation to tackle the simplest of tasks.
First couple months I didn’t feel any better and I was getting worried. But I’m _just_ starting to feel better now. I’m finding myself more positive and less stressed.
So what am I doing? I’m living out of my car travelling around NZ, doing a crazy amount of hiking, and a tiny amount of freelancing.
That sounds completely reasonable and not absolutely, in any way, privileged or insane.
Being able to take off a year to recover from burnout, without dealing with the stress of having no income for a year, means you are probably post money if not close.
If that’s the case and the OP has interests like they listed, just start a company doing something you like. You won’t get validation from building someone else’s product.
On top of that it’s illegal to live out of your car in many jurisdictions in the US.
Whether or not it would solve burnout and whether it’s legal in the US are different and new arguments.
I’m justifying my original position that living within meager means isn’t “insane” or “privileged”. If you are only able to take off 8 months after saving for years, that has nothing to do with my ability to live frugally. I don’t gain privilege just because other people choose to take on excessive amounts of debt and/or live more expensive lifestyles than me.
(Obviously the great-grandparent comment that first used "privilege" is completely off, as are most statements involving the word in the wild)
The same for the cancer's cure. It is not a solution for a lot people.
The parent claimed living out of a car is “insane” and “privileged”. Focus on that and let it sink in for a moment.
If you're open to a, maybe severe, change in lifestyle, you'll see that you don't need much to live. To those that are interested, I recommend reading "Vagabonding" by Rolf Potts and watching "Minimalism" documentary by The Minimalists as a start point.
It is not “trivially easy” to take a year off. It’s reckless.
Let's just do some back-of-napkin math to prove my point. The average American software engineer makes $110,944 / year [1]. The median salary in the US is $54,132 / year [2]. That's less than half an average software engineer. In other words, most Americans—even if they spend every penny they earn—live on less than half of what an average software engineer makes.
So yes. On average, a software engineer should be able to save half their income and take off a year. Or hell, save 33% of their income, and take a year off after working two!
[1] https://www.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries
[2] https://www.firstrepublic.com/insights-education/how-much-do...
The mistake is when those same people then claim that someone making the same money without the same responsibilities is privileged.
It is a very odd position to hold. I’m not privileged just because someone else decided to take on the maximum amount of debt that was available to them.
If you can’t take a year off work because you have a mortgage, debts, and a family to feed, that’s a problem you need to solve. However, assuming that I’m privileged because I don’t have those things in nonsensical. I live out of a very cheap car and my expenses are virtually zero. That is not a privileged position.
That depends on if it’s caused by poverty, or a choice you made despite having the means for a better situation.
Being able to take a year off work and not end up homeless is incredibly privileged, but by your own admission you’re already homeless, possibly by choice. Most people don’t want to live in a car.
There is a certain cost to living out of a car which is the same for everyone living out of a car. It is very cheap and attainable for almost everyone. This, by definition, makes it _not_ a privilege.
> you’re already homeless, possibly by choice. Most people don’t want to live in a car.
Absolutely, I’m homeless by choice, and you’re right it’s not for everyone. However, whether other people want to live in a car or not is irrelevant; if it’s attainable to almost anyone it’s not a privilege.
Which part exactly of this is privileged?
Not sure if sophisticated troll but either way it’s hilarious.
Owning things really sucks. I would love to live in a camper van. That would be awesome.
I’ve been daydreaming about this for years and now that I’m doing it, it is actually as good as I hoped. The cold showers, few possessions, no idea where I’m sleeping tonight, it’s all way better than killing myself to make someone else rich. I feel like I lost the past 5 years of my life. Now my life feels like it’s mine again. I’m in control. And if that means I have to pinch pennies, I’m happy to oblige. It’s a price worth paying.
I hope you get to follow your dreams one day too.
It may not immediately reveal what the best option is. But you won’t regret traveling, and this sounds like the perfect time to do it.
The faster this tech bubble bursts and people stop flocking to engineering the better.
if you are not someone who is already trained at this field, it's inefficient to start on your own. You'd be giving up your expertise and productivity in tech, in return for mediocre output in the research.
Much better option is to keep working in tech, earn as much money as is feasible, and then funnel the excess funds into companies that _do_ longetivity research.
THat's a good idea. But I think an even better strategy would be to start a cryptocurrency hedge fund and later start an associated exchange.
This will allow us to maximize the amount of money we earn, so we can have the greatest impact on companies that do longevity research.
> ???
> profit
> This will allow us to maximize the amount of money we earn
So if you could fill in the ??? on how to profit, then yes, this is a good way too. Note that it needs to be legal.
I'm not particularly concerned about partially starting over in a new field - I'm not that old so my skillset is not particularly tremendous. If anything, I feel coming from outside the traditional system and already having financial freedom is a positive. When I was in academia (not CS) I didn't feel the standard of the people there was particularly great and my trust in top-down organizations is generally quite low.
If the cause of burnout is disillusionment - aka, you are such a small cog and your work doesn't seem to matter, despite how hard you actually worked - then moving to a different, but still big company, will not change that. Startups, imho, is where to move to, in order to feel impacts.
If the cause of burnout is project-based - aka, you just don't enjoy or feel the project is worthwhile - switching companies might work (a different project).
There's many other causes of burnout, and each will require individual solutions - there's no one size fits all.
either you're doing too much work, or everybody else is doing too little. Cut back.
As for promotions, if you intend to do 4 days, prepare to face zero career progression in the same company - unless you're extraordinary and indispensable. But this is the price you pay for a 4 day at this point.
My friends at Amazon are killing themselves.
The ones at Google, well... I'm impressed by how little they can do.
I guess it's also heavily management dependant. If some middle manager doesn't give a crap and somehow can get away with it those below can slack as much.
The top companies are political nightmares because the pressure and competition levels make them insane.
I got YouTube Premium, unsubscribed from all the "funny stuff" and subscribed to makers, builders, creators, electronic, aviation, etc. channels only. I am AMAZED at what you can build right now in your own home. I am building an electromagnetic jet engine from scratch. It sounds crazy when you say it out loud but it's the 2023 equivalent of assembling model gliders from balsa wood decades ago.
Here are a few channels that inspired and helped me the most:
Fantastic explanation of how electricity/circuits/elements work:
https://www.youtube.com/@ELECTRONOOBS
https://www.youtube.com/@greatscottlab
These guys are into aviation and actually iterate on their projects:
https://www.youtube.com/@rctestflight
https://www.youtube.com/@TomStantonEngineering
These two are wizards of explaining physics and engineering:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheActionLab
https://www.youtube.com/@Nighthawkinlight
I can't even comprehend the level of engineering this guy does in his garage:
https://www.youtube.com/@StuffMadeHere
PS. If you're getting into electronics from programming it's really, I mean really easy, to do the programming bits which most makers struggle with (because they are pros in circuits and other things). A lot of the learning curve is stuff like "what is a compiler" or "how to install an IDE" which you got covered.
https://youtube.com/@AndreasSpiess
He has also a second channel for HAM radio.
https://www.youtube.com/@rctestflight
with lots of autonomous vehicles, solar driven power etc.
You list complex systems research. What about looking for marine research adjacent jobs? They are trying to understand complex interconnected systems and need help integrating so many different projects across many universities. Not sure if MBARI or UCSC have something interesting where you could go on a boat out to sea but back in the late 90s there some really cool jobs relating to that that would have recharged me. Improve the world's knowledge, on a boat out at sea, and maybe a little scuba. Heck yeah!
Michael and Dalton touch on this on a recent video where they compare modern FAANG with Goldman Sachs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7IKW0yuG0
The founder culture is so full of kool-aid that it can be tough to find those people there, too, but I found overall that that was the best place for me. Interestingly, I found the older and more successful people to be much more sane, and super happy to meet smart sane young people. I have a lot of older friends now; many are founders of large companies who are just glad to have normal conversations - the kind of people that as a FAANG middle manager would be status contacts to brag about but now are just nice folks to grab a pint with.
The good people in tech still exist, and they’re often at key positions. But at Goldman Sachs I mean FAANG you’ll have a tough time fighting through middle management. And BOY was that FAANG culture bad for my mental health…
I hope this makes some sense. Watch the video, I think it will cheer you up big time:).
Only thing I'd say about that video is they don't mention privilege. Joining an early stage startup in the US was only really possible if you were coming from a place of privilege imo, even when it was "uncool". At least that's what stopped me - I had 80k in student loans to pay off with a 10% interest rate, so I couldn't really take risks at that point in my life.
You sound like you’re going to have to trade your labour for money (ie you don’t have enough to become independent yet) so if you accept that fact, perhaps you can find a non stressful job and discover meaning in the Real parts of your life. Good luck
Otherwise, I'd say if you have a musical bent, certainly any Ableton like project would be a bounty of "fun" (I've always wanted to see a drum programming rig that equal parts Ableton and Reason)
You will recover.
I'll grant that something like this is not a panacea - we need good solid media literacy. But I think a technical solution will help us out.
The issue will be once someone breaks the secure enclave in the CCD, all of the video they produce will now be trustworthy. CCDs are pretty lightweight in general as most of the heavy lifting is meant to be offloaded to the ISP—so the on-die processing for the CCD is generally very lightweight and wouldn’t have buffers large enough to sign each frame. Also there is no standardized way of creating a secured MIPI connection. You can do some clever things to mitigate for this, but it is far from what I’ll call “best practice” and more along the lines of a bespoke solution.