I am retiring from tech to live offline

5/29/2026 at 4:26:29 PM

I have been at it for 20 years now and have started to feel my time is up as well

As a lot of comments here highlights, the issue is not so much the tech but the politics, constant perf reviews, re-orgs, nonsense BS that is pushed top-down. This industry is taking a toll on you.

My advice for anyone reading this that is starting your career: Live simply and save a lot. When I started my career I thought I would love doing this forever. I would never imagine I would get burned out in the long run. I would never imagine I would think about retiring early because tech was so fun to me.

The reality is that money and savings give you optionality. It allows you to work without worrying day to day. You never know when the next wave of AI or BS is going to hit. That's when having that optionality is really important.

I have seen so many of my peers making very high tech income but also living the American opulent life, spending everything they make to buy multi-million dollar houses in the bay area to impress their friends. Today they have no choice than continue working for another 30 years. Today I can have a simple life and retire almost anywhere in the world.

Decide what is important to you. I guarante that buying the multi-million dollar home is not worth the extra 30 years of grinding.

by siren2026

5/29/2026 at 5:12:39 PM

It comes down to perspective tbh. For someone who's worked hard labor throughout their life, the cushy tech job you get is actually worth doing forever. But for people who have never experienced that, I can see why retiring early makes sense, but honestly most of us get to work from home and do our jobs on the computer, which doesn't require much. It's still an amazing career to be in IMO

by saadn92

5/29/2026 at 5:22:06 PM

I've worked in food service, landscaping and factory jobs. You're right, the tech job does feel super cushy after gigs like that. But I'm about 25 years in on the tech industry now and I feel the same GP. At some point, you can't avoid the politics and corp BS and it wears you down. Everything is relative. Now that I have the means to say "I don't have to or want to do this anymore" I'll be checking out after this year. It's been a good run.

by throwfaraway4

5/29/2026 at 6:58:14 PM

I went from big tech to a team of four at a small org. To work uninhibited and with close to zero speed bumps from management has been life changing for me and my stress levels. We all have each other's backs and there is none of that "West Coast Nice" stuff going on.

I worked manufacturing in my younger days and also spent some time in the Marines, so I feel ya on the cushy tech jobs... But I'd just about rather go back to Iraq before I go back to corporate culture.

by Shocka1

5/29/2026 at 8:44:48 PM

Not to mention that with AI, the pleasure is going out of it, at least for me. I enjoy the crafting of code at least as much if not more than the actual results of the code. For almost 20 years, I’ve been declaring myself ready to leave tech behind and buy a chicken farm, but now I’m pretty much there emotionally and financially. I likely won’t actually raise chickens (maybe a couple backyard chickens for eggs), but I’ll be pretty much opting out of economic productivity and just doing things for the pleasure of them instead. Unless, of course, the economy crashes and my retirement savings turn to dust and I end up having to continue being a cog in the machinery of capitalism until I die.

by dhosek

5/29/2026 at 9:45:30 PM

Why a chicken farm? The medium to large scale ones I have seen videos of look like terrible places, for both the chickens and the human workers. I expect they smell even worse.

by hermitcrab

5/30/2026 at 5:27:57 AM

It’s more a rhetorical thing than a reality. The appeal to me of raising chickens for eggs is not having to slaughter them,¹ but reality is much uglier than that, of course.

⸻

1. Back in the 00s, I would buy our weekly supply of eggs from a woman who sold eggs at the Beverly Hills farmer’s market. She had photo albums of the chickens at the farm. One Sunday morning, I overslept and arrived towards the end of the market. The egg lady had no eggs, but was selling whole chickens out of a cooler. I was relieved to discover that she’d just sold out of eggs and the chickens she was selling as meat weren’t the hens who laid the eggs (although still, chickens were slaughtered to make meat). And yes, I’m the kind of urban hypocrite who is happy to eat meat as long as he doesn’t have to think about how it transformed from an animal into a food.

by dhosek

5/30/2026 at 8:23:41 AM

>The appeal to me of raising chickens for eggs is not having to slaughter them,

Doing that in your backyard with a few chickens sounds great.

>but reality is much uglier than that, of course.

Much uglier at any sort of commercial scale.

by hermitcrab

5/29/2026 at 11:48:48 PM

> I end up having to continue being a cog in the machinery of capitalism until I die.

Vs what exactly?

by socalgal2

5/30/2026 at 5:23:48 AM

Living off savings/investments and not having to do things because they will generate money.

by dhosek

5/29/2026 at 5:52:54 PM

You also don't need the politics and corp bs. I worked as a contractor for tiny little orgs doing good things for ~11 years - basically 2-5 people, almost no BS, good money, tons of time flexibility.

I shifted away to get more predictability and less accounting/biz management stuff. Maybe the party has ended, but I bet there's still some ability to freelance for small orgs? Alternatively working for small yet sustainable companies should be similarly lean.

I find the BS really ramps up with the size of the org. Small orgs obviously have their own problems (and often create problems that don't need to exist), but pick your poison.

I have this idea that AI might actually be a real enabler for small or 1-man teams if you find the right niche. I haven't acted on it yet, but I expect a lot of folks are doing that right now.

by switchbak

5/29/2026 at 6:03:49 PM

15 years in running a tiny micro agency (me and my wife), working with non profits. Still looking ok right now, and I still love it and my clients who are ace. I’m mainly a PM though with hacker-developer tendencies. Hoping my sector hold together for another 10 years. I’m 53 so that’ll do it. We’ve been relatively sensible over the years, good work / life balance and our children (now adult and left home) know who we are. So that’s the main job done :-)

by dmje

5/29/2026 at 6:13:03 PM

Agreed this is one way to go. But tbh, I'm not sure if I've lost the passion for tech as much as rather spend my time doing other things like be with my kids, travel, ect. Also, take better care of my health and be more active. We'll see if there's a desire to keep the sword sharp but I don't expect that for some time after I retire.

by throwfaraway4

5/29/2026 at 6:04:30 PM

I have had multiple years of good times like those. But eventually it always comes to an end from my experience. Usually because the business is not doing as well eventually.

I think you can get lucky and be in those good environments for longer (looks like you got lucky for 11 years) but by the nature of capitalism and competition those things never really last.

by siren2026

5/29/2026 at 6:13:44 PM

Oh it's definitely sink or swim, and you always have to be setting up the next thing while working on your current thing. It's a big part of why I got out - I'm much happier with a more stable situation. It's all about tradeoffs, how much you can stand the stink of corporate BS vs the downsides above.

And I will admit that the mid 2000's to roughly 2020 was a pretty good time to be in that mode. I haven't freelanced since 2019 so I might just be talking about good times that are gone now - it does seem like a tough world out there right now, but I bet there's still plenty of niches to be found.

by switchbak

5/29/2026 at 8:11:03 PM

Do you have a plan other than “wait for the money to evaporate”?

by sillysaurusx

5/29/2026 at 8:23:50 PM

Wait for the money to evaporate ... more slowly than your remaining lifespan (and dying happy in your own bed for example) is one definition of winning.

by DamonHD

5/31/2026 at 2:46:33 PM

Not entirely but looking forward to having the time to make one. Die with Zero helped a bit with perspective. At my NW and spend it will likely be much larger when I go.

by throwfaraway4

5/29/2026 at 5:35:09 PM

exactly! after a certain time, you get to a new normal and you want something new or better in life. nothing wrong with that though.

by saadn92

5/29/2026 at 5:45:15 PM

Why not check out now? Why after this year ? You supposedly have the means to do so now , so why not exit now?

You won’t exit after this year. You’ll keep pushing it out.

by reachableceo

5/29/2026 at 5:49:53 PM

Everyone always need twice as much as they have to retire. Most people will also never do it.

Reading the FIRE subreddit I have realized that most people like the fantasy of retiring more than actually retiring. A lot of them wouldn't actually know what to do without the daily societal pressure to grind. Life is tough when you are out of the beaten path and need to figure out how to fill your days apparently.

by siren2026

5/29/2026 at 6:23:09 PM

TBH I think most people's lives are on autopilot and I can't blame them. This is what late stage capitalism has endoctrinated into our culture. I was one of them until some events made me look critically at retirement. After crunching the numbers I could have retired years ago. Sticking it out a bit longer to squash the rest of the concerns my spouse has.

by throwfaraway4

5/29/2026 at 8:43:41 PM

> late stage capitalism

versus

> crunching the numbers I could have retired years ago

How do you reconcile the apparent hypocrisy of your wealthiness?

The stereotype is a boomer taking their winnings and then complaining about the system.

I've got just enough money to start worrying that my savings will mostly be taken by my government. Perhaps it is time for me to join the old white man complainer's club (is HN that?).

by robocat

5/30/2026 at 6:20:29 AM

> How do you reconcile the apparent hypocrisy of your wealthiness?

Does this specific category error have a name? I see it so frequently, it's ridiculous. Being genre-savvy/aware of the meta-game doesn't mean one can opt-out, or refuse to play. Recognizing how a game is rigged often allows one to play it better than the average person.

I'm not GP, but my acknowledgement that society is unequal, and that I sometimes benefit from the inequality doesn't mean I have to be dude under the bridge, nor is it immoral since I cannot opt out of humanity. All I can do is minimize my odds of falling into societal cracks, and I make no apologies for that.

by overfeed

5/30/2026 at 9:44:41 AM

For myself I usually call it "(not) playing to win", after David Sirlin's book (see also https://www.sirlin.net/ptw for the free web version). In it, he describes a phenomenon in competitive videogaming where some people try to forbid valid moves in an online game because they are "broken", like throws in fighting games or rush strategies in RTS games. Sirlin argues that because they recognize a powerful tool but refuse to use it, they needlessly handicap themselves. As such, they're not playing to win but playing to feel morally superior and consequently lose to those who do use all the tools the game provides.

In reasonably balanced games, it usually turns out the "overpowered" strategy is not all that overpowered and that they have huge downsides when played against people who know how to counter them. In real life, which has no requirement of being balanced, we can recognize that certain strategies ((explicitly legal and often even encouraged!) consistently work really well. Choosing not to use those strategies doesn't make one morally superior, just bad at playing the game of life.

That said, "minimizing your own odds of falling into societal cracks" often still includes caring for others around you. On a small scale, being rich but alone because everyone around you went bankrupt and/or became estranged to you is not much fun. On a bigger scale it's just good governance to make sure everyone has food, safety and entertainment, just to keep the pitchforks away.

by WJW

5/31/2026 at 2:50:20 PM

Sweet summer child. Two things can be true at once

by throwfaraway4

5/29/2026 at 10:49:57 PM

> How do you reconcile the apparent hypocrisy of your wealthiness?

I'm not sure this is full on hypocrisy.

In this case this is the game we are forced to play (late stage capitalism). Doesn't mean I need to like the game, but since I'm forced to play I will darn make sure to win as much as I can.

Hate the game, not the players

by siren2026

5/29/2026 at 6:18:46 PM

As you can imagine, it's a planning heavy decision. I came off parental leave earlier this year and prior to that my wife and I talked about me not going back. However, we decided to delay until my next vesting later this year and to see how the midterms play out with this clown car of an administration and the potential impacts on healthcare. Barring anything catastrophic, it's happening this year. Parental leave already gave me a taste of the life I'd rather have.

by throwfaraway4

5/29/2026 at 7:40:59 PM

Same boat, my son was born in October last year and have been back at work since February and I am already completely overwhelmed. Our plan is to wait for the second child and get another paternity leave and then I will fuck off from any corporate/enterprise job and try to do my own thing first and we'll live off menial jobs + the income from the couple of apartments we have on AirBnB.

I am not planning to stay out of tech altogether though, at least long term.

by throwaway-away

5/29/2026 at 10:01:54 PM

This was also my plan; hang in there for the next kid, wait for the next vest, etc. ultimately daycare is expensive, healthcare is expensive… I’m still stuck 6 years later waiting to quit but something always comes up and there’s always another vest around the corner.

by leoqa

5/30/2026 at 9:48:06 AM

Well obviously. Vesting schedules are explicitly designed the way they are to keep people around. That's their entire purpose.

Retirement is inherently a choice to earn less lifetime money and pour that time into family and other things you like doing. Waiting for the next vesting cliff is inherently a choice to earn more money and spend less time on your family.

by WJW

5/31/2026 at 5:47:37 PM

My point is that it being a choice starts to disappear with kids, rising costs etc. It was a choice I could make independently, now it’s a choice the entire family gets to participate in since we’d need to sell the house, move to a lower cost of living locale etc.

by leoqa

5/29/2026 at 7:45:32 PM

Happy journey friend. Enjoy those kiddos

by throwfaraway4

5/29/2026 at 10:25:02 PM

> potential impacts on healthcare

Healthcare is the item that most FIRE folks underestimate. It was actually pretty tenable when the Obamacare subsidies were more fully in effect. Now that those are mostly gone it's a much larger line item in the household budget. I've only got a couple of years until Medicare kicks in so I'm not too concerned - unless they mess that up too - but for folks thinking of FIRE'ing in their 40s & 50s with kids still at home it's probably not advisable now.

by UncleOxidant

5/29/2026 at 5:56:23 PM

I also worked hard labour at the start of my career.

They are not really comparable and are exhausting in a different way. Tech makes me mentally exhausted fighting things out of my control. Hard labour made me physically exhausted but I felt more in control of my life. I didn't need to do any performative tasks. Once the day was over, it was over.

Just different type of exhaustions. Grass is always greener on the other side I know

by siren2026

5/29/2026 at 5:35:21 PM

I worked 10 years in commercial fishing before getting into tech.

Although now sometimes I yearn for a solid day of physical labor out on the ocean.

But yeah, grass is definitely greener on this side. I can always go shovel dirt o a saturday.

by Rover222

5/30/2026 at 1:15:31 AM

If you're mid-career it's good. You can get jobs really easily, you have the networking time, you're in demand, they trust you're going to be learning shit quickly, you have the right stuff on your CV.

Late career is a different story. Tech is Up or Out. A lot of people here are off-the-grid contractor types living in LCOL areas, fully remote, with varying degrees of financial comfort. Those people in HCOL areas who got used to expensive lifestyles - sometimes because, let's face it, return to office meant living in a HCOL area, and eventually buying when the rents got tiringly highter - well some of us have choices to make. You can be not wealthy enough to retire, but still trapped in expenses, and seeing how you can pivot to continue the high.

Then the planning begins to where you'll live in a LCOL area.

Some others in early career are really suffering. People who were laid off are having issues at the moment. It's K-shaped.

So enjoy your mid-career bump. Or, you're in the lucky few late-career types with googleable reputations, you accumulated FANG money/shares, and then you're golden.

by mancerayder

5/29/2026 at 5:48:11 PM

It's an amazing career because of the pay, not because of how American workers are relating to their hours. Kids out of college joining startups may be working harder than... just about everyone in America, really.

by threatofrain

5/29/2026 at 8:50:23 PM

I had a taste of the other side for 2 weeks. I was building wood construction with my uncle who is doing this for 20 years.

I was digging 6 holes in full sun, 26 degree C, transporting 100 kg of dirt in 8 rounds, moved 600 kg of ceramic roof times, worked on rain and had sun burns which I treated 2 days with pain even sleeping

Everything for third of my normal salary

by edukite

5/29/2026 at 10:45:53 PM

the cushy tech job is built to debilitate you. steel sharpens steel. once the steering wheel is pried from your hands, it is all down hill!

by nahBro

5/29/2026 at 9:02:31 PM

I consider myself to be very privileged to be a SWE. Yeah maybe it's not as great as it used to be as our capitalistic overlords rain down ever increasing workloads on us in an era of almost limitless productivity.

That said, I would like to retire early, not because I dislike it, but because I like a lot of other things more than it. I'd probably still have a software hobby project or business, but it's nice to be able to choose to do so instead of having to do it because someone wants me to.

Plus I can choose how much AI to use.

by abustamam

5/29/2026 at 4:47:38 PM

I basically agree, just adding context.

As companies grow, it's the natural state of things, as any hope for goal alignment goes out the window. I am OK dealing with situations where the good for the company's long term might not be the same as my personal preferences. But we often see situations where what is decided isn't good for the company, or for most workers, but great for a decision maker, and we all know that at those layers, talking about the misalignment to the layer above is a great way to get canned. A decade or that, and the company is a zombie.

I've enjoyed tech in environments where there was alignment, and in a few cases it made me serious money, which is why I have said optionality myself. But nowadays AI has led to much higher capital costs to do innovative things, so the number of companies with the right size and potential has shrunk, and that makes fulfilling careers far less likely.

by hibikir

5/29/2026 at 4:55:12 PM

My bigger take here is that nothing is fine forever. We might have fun for a couple years but eventually a disruptor comes in and changes everything. This disruptor today is AI but it will be something else in 5 or 10 years.

Therefore save when you can. Don't be fooled thinking you make a ton of money today therefore you will make a ton in 20 years. Get the optionality today, that's the biggest win you can add to your life.

by siren2026

5/29/2026 at 5:19:12 PM

You know, I think the experiences you are describing are the norm for non-tech corporate jobs. Now with AI as an excuse, management is now subjecting the tech positions the same as the non-tech workers and it stings. Tech people were previously treated far better than the average corporate workers, and started after the tech hiring boom from Covid.

by vondur

5/29/2026 at 6:40:51 PM

Quite right. I bemoan shortsightedness of managerial types often, but too many fellow techies had assume that gravy ride will last forever. In eyes of management we have not the same leverage now.

by alwaysbeconsing

5/31/2026 at 12:12:22 PM

At my “first” job, Ramit Sethi came in to pitch “I will teach you to be rich,” which basically amounted to: every time you get a raise, have that amount automatically moved to savings/investment and keep living on the salary you had. Great was to avoid lifestyle creep (at least until kids!).

by derwiki

5/29/2026 at 6:59:35 PM

I feel the same way. I feel sad though that it's over and I never accomplished what I wanted to.

But for the last 20 years my priority has been my family. Pickups and Dropoffs to school, sports, activities, and doctor appointments.

At least I was able to give them a good life.

Living in the United States, my retirement plan is "MAID"

by HoldOnAMinute

5/29/2026 at 8:11:36 PM

MAID as in Medical Aid in Dying? Why would you do that?

by vostrocity

5/29/2026 at 9:49:03 PM

To be able to leave some assets to my loved ones

In my country, best we can hope for is a quick, painless death - many people are bankrupted by medical bills and end-of-life care

by HoldOnAMinute

5/30/2026 at 12:53:54 AM

Dude just leave the bay area, the literal most expensive place in the world, and you'll be fine. You'd rather actually kill yourself than move to, like, Boulder?

by eudamoniac

5/29/2026 at 7:23:34 PM

Some people need to touch fire to know the feeling of getting burned.

I was one of those people.

Excellent tech income; zero savings other than a 401(k) I barely contributed into.

After an amazing meal at a burger place several years ago, I asked my wife about upgrading to a Model S. She figuratively sat me down (after we literally sat into the seats of our Model 3) and was more straight-forward with me than she had ever been prior to that moment.

"How much do we have saved? Oh, _we_ have basically nothing? Yeah, so I'm not saying no, but you need to fix that before we discuss this again."

I took it defensively in the moment, but not for long because I knew she was right. Building that nest egg became priority #1 since that talk.

That was in 2023. I saved a lot since then. It felt VERY VERY GOOD to look at my savings and say "You know, I could fuck right off for six months if I wanted to. I won't, but I could!" It completely changed my priorities at work.

Now, I've had to drain my savings twice now: once to secure a down payment for our house, and again for a major repair of said home (b/c I am strongly against treating our home as a credit card). Regardless, I chip away a good amount into several savings accounts every two weeks and am expecting to regrow the account within the next year. I can't wait to feel that feeling again!

by nunez

5/29/2026 at 8:08:49 PM

As someone who took that time off, don’t. Not unless you have a solid re-entry plan. The money was nice for raising our daughter but I’m out of runway and no way to recover. Do well at your job and be thankful to live such a luxurious life.

by sillysaurusx

5/29/2026 at 10:54:49 PM

You are learning, but you haven't learned.

You didn't build a nest egg, you saved for a down payment.

You didn't rebuild your nest egg, you created a sinking fund for your home.

You praise yourself for not treating your home as a credit card, but your left hand is still borrowing money from yourself.

You've recognized there's an issue, but don't fool yourself into thinking you've done anything about it

by asdfasvea

5/31/2026 at 4:34:48 PM

Thanks for your opinion.

Yes, I have a ways to go.

You're also right that these aren't nest eggs. I spent them on what I saved for!

Regardless, it's a start, especially for someone who never had a habit of saving before.

by nunez

5/30/2026 at 2:26:01 PM

This was my take too.

GP built an emergency fund, which is important, but then drained it twice for non emergencies.

A nest egg is a much larger tax advantaged holding that you don’t want to withdrawal from because you’ll have a massive tax hit. It’s also far more than a down payment, hopefully. GP had some low interest “savings” account at his bank. Poor wife, no pun intended :(

by talon8635

5/31/2026 at 4:47:46 PM

Thanks for your opinion and for your concern for my wife. She is quite happy, actually!

I have a 401(k) that I contribute to. I intend on contributing the yearly max starting next year.

Should I have contributed the annual max when I started working? Yes. I chose instead to pay off our student loans instead and enjoy life. I'm not a frugal person.

by nunez

5/29/2026 at 8:20:08 PM

You've had to drain your savings twice since 2023?

by lazyasciiart

5/31/2026 at 4:36:00 PM

Yes. Yet, the point was that I started saving in a much bigger way than I did before.

by nunez

5/29/2026 at 6:48:04 PM

I'm coming up on 40 years with the last 17 at the same company. I'm so burnt out that I resemble a charcoal briquette.

by FuriouslyAdrift

5/31/2026 at 9:38:07 AM

i am 43 . years i have worked in restaurnt as chef and waitier. i ran it for a long time and tired. on ly 3 weeks ago i realised the coding was a language. though i know extreemely litttle what i realise it was more about he tech knowledge but more that exprience. i am enjoying building and breaking things. recently by mistake built a something that is i would have nevr in my life would be able to do it. so yeah if you are tired it might be good idea to enjoy life and watch it in anew perspective. and then may be th eth elife and code will come i to balance.

by mangomanai

5/30/2026 at 12:50:08 PM

> My advice for anyone reading this that is starting your career: Live simply and save a lot

This is such great advice and really what I would suggest to anyone young in any field. A terrible thing I'm seeing is folks living a life that requires them to stay within their high paying career in whatever field they're in. Modern day slavery except it's mostly self inflicted.

by barbazoo

5/29/2026 at 5:11:51 PM

I could and did live frugally before I had kids.

How can one continue living in a small apartment with lead and asbestos hazards is beyond me.

by drivebyhooting

5/29/2026 at 5:19:06 PM

There is surely a spectrum between small apartment with asbestos and 5m$ house.

I read on HN all the time that once you have kid it is unavoidable to spend 300k$ a year. But yet 99.9% of the world and the US manages to raise kids with a fraction of that income and they turn out mostly fine. (Before you ask, yes I have kids and yes we still live simply)

by siren2026

5/30/2026 at 2:03:43 PM

I have 2 kids and we have a single Kia soul and a little house I do most of the work. I pay for a good private school mostly out of fear of big schools and gun violence in the US and giving my kids multilingual education. I can assure the rich kids have a lot of problems and have a schedule like a company CEO, they go to our place and have a blast, free range fun. The kids need money thing is mostly a marketing thing the system puts into parents minds.

by codeadict

5/29/2026 at 5:41:08 PM

The mental gymnastics I've seen kids enable is Olympic level. Need to upgrade to a bigger house, need to upgrade the car to a SUV, need keep traveling 2-3 times a year, need to sign up for some crazy sports league and coach which means domestic flights and hotels every other week.

by GloriousKoji

5/29/2026 at 6:00:01 PM

Have seen that as well. Kids is the convenient excuse to go spending. Marketers have well understood that for multiple decades.

Meanwhile I would bet there is an inverse correlation between spending for the kids and kids happiness.

by siren2026

5/29/2026 at 7:12:53 PM

Friend had a baby.

She went out and bought a massive Cadillac Escalade.

To haul around a 10 pound infant.

by deadbabe

5/29/2026 at 8:22:11 PM

American trucks are an arms race. You need one to protect the occupants from the other trucks on the road, unless someone legislates to stop all of you from driving them.

by lazyasciiart

5/29/2026 at 10:01:19 PM

I feel we are engaged in the same race to the bottom in the UK, although it is not as extreme as it is in the US. One of the few constraining factors in the UK is that our car parking spaces are generally quite small and no-one wants to buy something they can't park anywhere.

by hermitcrab

5/30/2026 at 7:45:05 AM

I wonder how safe they look when you take into account the people running over their own kids in the driveway.

by tonyedgecombe

5/29/2026 at 6:46:22 PM

> There is surely a spectrum between small apartment with asbestos and 5m$ house.

That's exaggerating a bit, but some places near offices are kind of that way. (Why I love working remote, which absolutely increases the spectrum of choices.)

by gedy

5/29/2026 at 6:02:13 PM

Many of the homes in the world were built when lead and/or asbestos were in use. Asbestos isn't much of a concern if you don't disturb it - don't let your kids play in the attic or tear out the drywall, and you should be fine. Don't let them lick the paint, and you're probably good. Or paint over it / get it remediated - it doesn't have to be a deal killer.

I certainly agree that it'd be hard to have kids in a small space though, I definitely appreciate having more room - especially with a WFH setup.

by switchbak

5/29/2026 at 9:06:17 PM

Don’t let your kids do X Y Z. That means you need to have your eyes on them 100% of the time.

by drivebyhooting

5/29/2026 at 8:32:27 PM

I have asbestos in this modest[0] house: it's not any sort of a problem. (Lead only in my soldering kit in significant quantities so far as I know...)

I always have been fairly frugal and am in semi-retirement now from the residues of my last two small start-ups (to which COVID was unkind, so died simultaneously!).

My extended family has/had big houses, including one in which a famous film was set it seems, but I see those as mainly expensive liabilities. Never owned a car. Etc etc.

[0] As described by a visiting Secretary of State!

by DamonHD

5/29/2026 at 9:07:46 PM

Plenty of people grow up in apartments in cities and live great lives. Often, they enjoy greater autonomy as they age into adolescence. Suburbs are basically prisons for children these days.

The truth is you don’t need a home or an SUV or a front lawn to raise children. And it’s also not necessarily better for them. It might be more cushy, sure, but that doesn’t mean it materially improves their lives in any meaningful way.

by array_key_first

5/29/2026 at 10:45:32 PM

I agree with this. From my experience the more isolated and cushy early kid's life are, the less capable they end up being able to manage rough situation later in life. It's counterintuitive because as parents we feel like we need to build a golden prison in the suburbs for them.

by siren2026

5/29/2026 at 8:42:45 PM

I broadly agree, but expensive homes are an odd example because, like, you can just sell the house later. There might be some opportunity cost relative to investing in a broad market ETF or whatever, but that's not the sort of difference that makes or breaks your early retirement strategy.

It's a bit odd to get moralistic over saving/spending money in general, but that's especially true around expensive homes.

by tikhonj

5/29/2026 at 8:49:40 PM

Yeah I'm more worried for people spending all their income on high rent apartments or quickly depreciating cars.

by foobarchu

5/29/2026 at 10:39:47 PM

All projections currently show it is better to pay rent on an apartment than buying the similar apartment. Especially in tech cities. Do the math.

I agree the ideal thing to do is to probably rent a cheaper apartment to start with.

by siren2026

5/31/2026 at 11:50:56 AM

Is that with current interest rates or irregardless? Can you link to one of these projections?

by derwiki

5/29/2026 at 10:38:40 PM

why would it be especially true around expensive houses? When you own a house, you are still paying an implicit rent to live in it (the opportunity cost of the rent that someone else could pay you instead).

Given that in almost all locales it is so much better financially to rent than to buy right now, Buying a 5m$ house is probably one of the least financially responsible things you could do in the current climate (And especially in the Bay area where the buy-to-rent ratio is all time high)

by siren2026

5/29/2026 at 8:00:40 PM

This has been me as well. While I don't think my time is quite up, I have heard the call of the sea. Grey ships are waiting.

There have been times in the last decade where I wished I had chosen a profession that lets me stay offline more. Ironically, AI has given me more enthusiasm for tech than I've had in years, which seems opposite to most people's experience.

by madrox

5/30/2026 at 2:41:29 AM

"spending everything they make to buy multi-million dollar houses in the bay area" was very good financial decision, wasn't it? ;-)

by pbgcp2026

5/31/2026 at 11:52:17 AM

They will not be approved for a mortgage if it costs “everything they make.”

by derwiki

5/29/2026 at 7:10:05 PM

I feel like I could still endure this AI hype cycle a bit, that things will eventually stabilize to some point I’m comfortable with, agents already seem kinda cool after the psychosis wears off.

But the next big disruptive thing like this, that will probably be my last straw. Not sure what it will be, but when it comes, I’ll just know. Maybe it will be developers installing neuralink type devices or something into their brains to have some kind of “organic interface” or something using their thoughts to build prompts or whatever. You will have to have it just to stay competitive in the industry.

I will check out.

by deadbabe

5/30/2026 at 12:21:15 AM

I remember one of my first "tech job" interviews, probably around 1997. The interviewer liked me, and was basically trying to recruit me, telling me about all the perks of the job. One of the perks she kept talking about was the pension - if I "put in" 20 years, I could retire with a generous pension. She even broke down how the whole pension worked (I didn't even know what a pension was). I thought was crazy. Actually, no, I thought she was lazy. I was 26 at the time and took for granted all my energy and enthusiasm. I thought I was always gonna have that level of energy, and just couldn't grasp not working. I wanted to work until I died, and was proud of that.

Now in my mid-50s, I sometimes think about that interview and the energetic kid I was back then. I wish I would've understood that the future is gonna come, and I wasn't always gonna have that 26-year-old level of energy and enthusiasm for work. Plan for your exit, kid.

by jimt1234

5/29/2026 at 7:39:18 PM

Very good advice. I was at it for 40 years, actually did some MUMPS (for those of you who watched The Audacity), as well as every tech from the old days, even some hardware, and kept current and on the very edge up until the end. I also loved it and thought I would do it forever, I felt so grateful that my hobby and passion as also my career, and very well paying (eventually, back then no one thought it would be a career).

I retired 10 years ago when I had enough (money) and had enough (of the industry). Always lived below my means. I cannot imagine what it was like to be in the industry for the past 10 years.

As far as the nonsense that is pushed top down, it is not so simple. I was at/near the top. I know what was happening, what I was doing, but everyone has a boss, even the boss. The industry is too important, too big, too critical for it not to be run by human nature. So glad I got out when I did.

by whodidntante

5/29/2026 at 8:14:26 PM

I'm not sure it's human nature as much as it is a system that compresses everything into finance.

by vostrocity

5/29/2026 at 10:04:59 PM

And we've all seen what happened at Boeing when the MBAs and spreadsheet jockeys took over from the engineers.

by hermitcrab

5/29/2026 at 10:20:57 PM

Immense power and profits attracts certain behaviors. This has happened throughout history. Finance is a lot more efficient, flexible, and powerful than other mechanisms, and has become the modern choice.

by whodidntante

5/29/2026 at 6:25:21 PM

such a wonderful advice, this resonates a lot with me. I know i would ignore it when i needed to hear it though

by looshch

5/29/2026 at 5:35:49 PM

I would take this advice a bit further even -- I don't think savings alone is the key, because inflation and de-dollarization are exponentially eroding purchasing power. The key is ownership of income-producing assets. In late-stage capitalism, the vast majority of people who work in exchange for wages will be members of the debt class; workers who manage to escape debt will still be living on a knife's edge where you can be laid off at any moment regardless of how well your company is doing. The only people living with stability will be those whose lives are paid for by the assets they own, rather than by the hours they sell.

by kokanee

5/29/2026 at 6:00:09 PM

A society where the only people with stability are those who parasitize on a increasingly emaciated wealth-producing population surely doesn't seem like a stable society, nor one that would be pleasant to live in.

There's no true stability in the world, but if the only option for "safety" we see is to be one of the few who snatch self-perpetuating generational wealth, aren't we just speeding up the unraveling of the very system off of which we desire to subsist on?

by tananan

5/29/2026 at 6:08:43 PM

It sounds like a return to the way things have been for a long time. Our post-WWII abundance has been a bit of an aberration compared to most of our history.

I'm not saying it's good, I think it's very concerning and potentially very destabilizing. But it is the way things are right now. It's also possible to be on the wealth-producing side and not see your savings disappear into the ether while still providing things of value to people that appreciate it. "rent-seeking" is a real thing, and much of finance doesn't actually provide any real value to society, but this isn't a simple black and white dichotomy across the have's and have-nots.

We ought to find ways out of this mess, ideally something that doesn't involve communism and the typical humanitarian nightmares that usually come along with it.

by switchbak

5/29/2026 at 6:21:38 PM

> aren't we just speeding up the unraveling of the very system off of which we desire to subsist on

Self-perpetuating generational wealth is not a zero-sum game if said wealth is put to good work.

Having wealth morally obligates its holder to put it to use to benefit others. I think we all intuitively understand this; it's the impulse behind calls to "tax the rich!"

People the last 500 years who put wealth to good use, even in modest proportions, are part of the reason western culture is so rich. We would not have Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven today if someone hadn't employed them (though I do decry the relative poverty some composers lived in and some OSS maintainers currently live in - come on, people). And modern infrastructure wouldn't exist if capitalists hadn't at one time thought it worthwhile to invest in railroads.

by TimTheTinker

5/29/2026 at 7:02:03 PM

If OP said the important thing is to be appropriately generous with your blamelessly earned wealth as you safeguard it against future perils, I would not have replied.

by tananan

5/29/2026 at 5:39:08 PM

Easier said than done, no asset producing income will do so indefinitely without a lot work/investments.

by Nashooo

5/29/2026 at 7:02:33 PM

My S&P 500 fund has done this and will continue to do this without any work or investments of time.

by stephenbez

5/29/2026 at 9:12:29 PM

Passive investing is a fairly new phenomenon and we don’t actually know if it works long term. The premise of the stock market is that it’s a market. Blind and wide investment goes against the principles of how investment works. We could be accelerating bad outcomes because we are basically rewarding and punishing companies based purely on momentum, not performance.

Basically, I think it’s possible that passive investment only works when it’s a small slice of total investment. Essentially, then you ride off the expertise and decisions of others.

What happens when it’s the majority of investment? We don’t know.

by array_key_first

5/29/2026 at 6:04:15 PM

Did they say it was easy? It's still the right thing to aim for, even if it is a lot of work.

by switchbak

5/29/2026 at 5:49:39 PM

This really just sounds like a return to slavery via indentured servitude. If the working class is the debt class, someone owns that debt as an “income-producing asset”.

by mcmcmc

5/29/2026 at 9:12:59 PM

I bought a farm and ran away from tech. Euphoria! For a bit. Honeymoon period's well and fucking over. I did not enjoy chopping that cord of firewood, but I didn't hate it, either. I miss making impulsive, frivolous 4-figure purchases, and I miss not having to literally fucking conjure money out of soil. I don't miss the self-important corpo wankbags, "quick meetings," or the yearly cycle of having to pretend that someone who works for me is deserving of being compressed into the bad end of a bell curve because HR or some MD came back and said that we have too many high performers relative to another department. I've done more computing and written more code (and documentation!) for fun in the last few years than I did since about 2016, which is nice.

Don't run away from the desk job until you're really sure. If you're really sure, then don't let the door hit your ass.

by theodric

5/29/2026 at 5:24:59 PM

[dead]

by suwapat

5/29/2026 at 5:28:05 PM

[flagged]

by rambojohnson

5/29/2026 at 5:37:03 PM

This whole thing is eye-searingly performative. Whether or not he follows through and goes dark after this, this farewell is just so ridiculous.

Claims to have not used the internet or a phone since February, does all communication via USPS, declares that AI and social media make him hate himself... But somehow is continuing to post on Bluesky, continuing to update his blog, continuing to post YouTube videos, continuing to solicit donations on GoFundMe for personal matters. The account that posted this link to HN is brand new and this is the only submission -- hmm...

If you are serious about being done with tech and plan to go off-grid, you just go off grid.

Need to tie off some loose ends first? Write a paper letter to your IRL inner circle and/or business partners. Get it copied at Kinkos. Call people (use a land line if you need) and talk to them about it.

Just this last time (you swear!) you absolutely must announce this at internet scale? Then walk the walk and minimize the tech involved by typing out your farewell in plain text and posting it directly. Y'know, like we did pre-AI, pre-social media. Don't pull out a typewriter, write a sappy "Dear Internet" letter, add a bunch of likely-pre-planned "edits" in red pen, pull out your digital camera, take a photo, transfer it to your laptop, carefully adjust and crop, then finally combine it into a multimedia update that you go out of your way to promote across multiple social media channels. This announcement has obviously been tailored for maximum social media engagement -- supposedly the thing they are making a principled stand in opposition to.

by latkin

5/30/2026 at 3:07:51 AM

If you find a way to escape the Matrix... do you go back and help?

by andai

5/29/2026 at 6:03:51 PM

Chad is one of the most high-integrity persons I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. He is not fucking around for clicks in any shallow sense. I agree with the sibling comment that your cynicism is deeply misplaced imho.

I mean, you can be cynical for whatever reasons, but I just think you'd be assuming (and participating in and perpetuating) a game Chad isn't playing.

by patcon

5/29/2026 at 7:04:17 PM

> He is not fucking around for clicks in any shallow sense.

He is undeniably "fucking around for clicks." When you don't want clicks, you don't cross-post to YouTube, BlueSky, LinkedIn, your blog, etc. Clearly a lot of effort went into making this announcement social media friendly and click-worthy. He has analytics on his blog to track how many clicks he gets.

Whether it's in a "shallow sense" or not is subjective and there's no way to really argue against that. Do I think he's karma-obsessed and drooling over engagement dashboards? No. And maybe that's what you mean.

But you have to be willfully naive to deny the irony in deploying numerous completely unnecessary layers of tech, over numerous social media channels, to let everyone know that you no longer want tech and social media in your life.

by latkin

5/29/2026 at 9:19:48 PM

>He is undeniably "fucking around for clicks." When you don't want clicks, you don't cross-post to YouTube, BlueSky, LinkedIn, your blog, etc.

Is he? I realize your comment is 2 hours old at the time of my response, but go to his webpage now, and click through to Bluesky. Then do LinkedIn. Then Twitter. Those accounts all appear to have been nuked from orbit. The argument that someone's "fucking around for clicks" falls apart when there's nothing to click on.

If someone was a frequent blogger with a big following, I won't fault them all that much for saying, "I'm out," to their audience. It's easier to answer, "Where'd you go?" in a public fashion right up front than it is to, potentially, field that question in private more than you'd like to after you bail.

by jjulius

5/29/2026 at 10:07:15 PM

Indeed, it appears that he's now deleted his social profiles. Good on him! That is exactly the right thing to do at this point to follow through, so kudos to him.

TFA was published a day ago, the corresponding YT video was published 3 months ago. He had cross posted the blog (not sure about the YT) across multiple social media channels in that time, up until an hour ago (or thereabouts) when he finally deleted his socials. That was the state of things when I wrote my original comments and follow-ups. So I stand by the assertion that he was clearly interested in promoting the content, at least initially.

Unfortunately I can't edit any of those comments any longer.

by latkin

5/29/2026 at 7:11:31 PM

I don't really see the problem of proliferating a message one finds sufficiently important to as many places as one has reach.

by xantronix

5/29/2026 at 7:38:03 PM

It's a bit performative to say "x is my last day" when there is a ton of evidence to the contrary.

I agree with you, it's more that... it is performative in itself.

by cheeze

5/29/2026 at 8:22:56 PM

If you are somewhat of a public figure and working in a leadership role at a company, I think it's more sensible to put out a widely-seen public announcement about where you are going next, than to just disappear.

by vostrocity

5/29/2026 at 6:53:16 PM

Well, at least the way he handless the typewriter and scribbles seems somewhat performative. If it's just a draft version, he seems capable of handling the typing hammers very professionally, adding online corrections staying within margins.

Seems way more seasoned in typing, than most typist of those days. And yet, he can't find the time or patience to retype the piece without typos as a final version?

I don't know the man and don't doubt his sincerity. I even agree with most of what he's saying. But it's pretty obvious imo that this is all somewhat performative.

by repelsteeltje

5/30/2026 at 8:25:08 AM

Doing performative things is not in conflict with expressing ourselves publicly.

People create art and write in various ways and they are free to do so. If he wants to announce to the world that he's leaving the Internet (which is more of a meaningful expression than doing it quietly, for sure) then he can be creative about it without it invalidating his purpose. He could have even posted a photo or a poem along with the message and I don't think that would make it less meaningful.

I would hope that creative expression doesn't die just because we now have tools that lets us express ourselves flawlessly, if we choose to use those tool.

by timcambrant

5/30/2026 at 1:10:52 PM

That's also true

by repelsteeltje

5/29/2026 at 10:02:04 PM

"Hmmm I think Ill type something out, then edit it with red pen and scan it to put on my website"

Is about as fucking around for clicks as it gets

by potsandpans

5/29/2026 at 8:58:23 PM

Eh, everything these days is coated in a thick sheen of polish. I think maybe the thing that's off about this is the irony in someone announcing that they will no longer be announcing anything... but even then, I don't see how that's worth getting eye-searingly wound-up about.

There's people out there farming social media engagement for their wellness tiktok account by telling people to use their phone less. That has the potential to cause actual harm, rather than just pad an ego. Those folks actually sear my eyes.

by graypegg

5/29/2026 at 7:36:10 PM

so much conjecture in your post

> If you are serious about being done with tech and plan to go off-grid, you just go off grid.

says who? you?

by insane_dreamer

5/29/2026 at 7:49:00 PM

>says who? you?

Yes, says exactly them.

You have a problem with people's own opinions in their own comments? Should they somehow reflect your opinion instead?

by 0______0

5/29/2026 at 10:01:44 PM

I do not; but you didn't express it as just your opinion; instead your post was full of dogma that tech workers going offline are supposed to adhere to

by insane_dreamer

5/29/2026 at 10:56:08 PM

You're replying to someone other than the original commenter...

by shawn_w

5/29/2026 at 11:03:12 PM

oops, hadn't noticed the change in handle

by insane_dreamer

5/29/2026 at 6:47:06 PM

[flagged]

by witx

5/29/2026 at 5:48:01 PM

Your cynicism is misplaced, Chad has been a fixture on HN for well over a decade. He said he has been offline in his personal life since February, not his professional life. His BlueSky is professional. He quit his job and will be offline completely following the handover.

by fontain

5/29/2026 at 5:58:26 PM

> His BlueSky is professional.

It's plainly not.

https://bsky.app/profile/chadwhitacre.com/post/3mmvzmugfqk2g "my good friend Dana could really use some help paying for major dental work. <gofundme link>"

His latest YouTube post, from 2 weeks after the alleged go-dark date, is also all about his personal plan to walk away from tech. Needed to make sure there is a GoPro in his face while he talks about how low-tech he yearns to be. Needs to make sure everyone on the internet sees HD digital footage of him tapping on a typewriter, carving a stamp by hand, and switching to paper bank statements.

> Your cynicism is misplaced, Chad has been a fixture on HN for well over a decade

I don't doubt it. I also don't doubt the claims in other comments that he has made incredible contributions to open source, is a good, kind person, and so forth. He deserves immense credit for these things.

None of that negates the fact that this is an incredibly performative and hypocritical way to make this particular transition. Defending it by pointing out his other virtues is just a reverse ad hominem.

by latkin

5/29/2026 at 9:29:42 PM

>His latest YouTube post, from 2 weeks after the alleged go-dark date...

Did we want to stop and ask how it got posted? Are we sure he did it himself? Does it matter if his letter is off by a couple of weeks? Could it have been a typo and he posted that on his last day, forgetting to add the 9 in his letter? Or are we just flippantly reacting to this?

>None of that negates the fact that this is an incredibly performative and hypocritical way to make this particular transition.

Some people can rip the band-aid off and go cold-turkey. Others need a bit of a transition. This just seems to be the latter. You seem to be letting this ruffle your feathers more than it needs to.

by jjulius

5/29/2026 at 7:32:45 PM

You initially suggested that there was something suspicious about this being posted on HN. If you want to walk that back, okay, but doesn't that poorly judged initial sentiment undermine your cynicism?

Yes, of course this is "performative". Publishing is performance. Chad is, obviously, performing for his audience in sharing this, he wants to get his perspective out into the world.

Given Chad's decade plus of leading by example, embracing his ideals, it is important to know that he is a person of integrity when reading his words. Could this be a grand lie to some strange end? Sure, I guess, but everyone who knows Chad knows that he is exactly the type of person to mean everything in this letter in earnest.

His blog was part of his job. His job was an open source advocate, he was responsible for talking about open source. He posted on BlueSky in his role as an advocate for open source. Adding in a GoFundMe link that someone emailed to him on a post that got a bunch of attention doesn't undermine his point, at all.

A "hypocritical way to make this particular transition"? He's not advocating for you to make the same transition. He's not espousing moral superiority because he made this transition and you didn't. Life is messy, complicated, difficult, it's not "hypocritical" to... have a BlueSky account as part of your job while announcing you're stepping away from technology.

https://openpath.quest/2024/welcome-to-open-path/

"I work for Sentry, and my job requires me to be a “thought leader,” so I need a platform."

by fontain

5/29/2026 at 8:30:51 PM

I’ve noticed HN becoming a cynical black hole lately. Any contrarian opinion is pushed back with a lot of force and grayed out, like yours. I thought about upvoting you but I’ll just leave a comment agreeing with you. Fighting against people determined to see the worst in every situation is exhausting.

by sillysaurusx

5/29/2026 at 5:55:50 PM

We're IT people, we often work 14 hours a day. How does that not mix into your personal life?

by sgt

5/29/2026 at 6:26:19 PM

Working 14 hours a day isn't normal. From an IT person who works 8 hours a day.

by mike-cardwell

5/29/2026 at 7:05:28 PM

Think it might be normal for the HN crowd, founders etc.

by sgt

5/29/2026 at 5:51:15 PM

a distinction without a difference.

by socalgal2

5/29/2026 at 3:02:18 PM

I just retired after 40 years writing code.

The last year or so wasn’t fun - battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted.

For a long time, I thought I’d do a lot of hobby or open source coding when I retired.

I haven’t even tried. I’m not burned out, but find I’ve lost the passion for coding I once had.

Is that AI? Or is it me?

Maybe as my retirement progresses, I can rekindle that passion, but as of now, I don’t miss tech.

Sorry, got to go - my garden needs me :-)

by kamaitachi

5/29/2026 at 3:07:49 PM

I retired, after 30-some years. Actually, I was forced to retire, by folks that don't think us greyheads should be working. Fortunately, I had the means to retire. Those means had nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly, and stayed at a job for a couple of decades.

But I have been doubling down on my tech work. Once the knuckleheads were removed from the soup, the flavor improved markedly. I love this tech stuff.

Oh, and I have been using AI. It just helped me to find a nasty crashing problem, and I hope that it will help me to determine the best way to fix it.

by ChrisMarshallNY

5/29/2026 at 3:14:23 PM

Yeah, I've realized that the things I don't like in tech have everything to do with the culture and politics. When I've been able to work with a small team of people I really like and respect, I've generally been quite content.

by pyrophane

5/29/2026 at 3:49:00 PM

I've rekindled by passion by working for a startup again.

My previous employer (which I also joined as a startup) ended up in a situation where the head product manager became VP of engineering (it's a complicated story - don't ask). We also had a yes-man director of Eng and together they went all-in on very orthodox scrum, where they sat in the sprint planning/point meeting and overrode every decision of what to take off the backlog and enforcing "themes" of each sprint to ensure that only product work got done. It was very rare that any tech-debt work got dealt with, and security work was only done if it burned down CVEs or other "quantifiable" metrics that were contractually obligated.

I ended up ok as there was eventually an exit, but the core experienced engineering team all left within 6 months.

Now I'm not only allowed, but encouraged to take initiative and while of course I do product work, I can also take a step back before taking two steps forward again.

by hylaride

5/29/2026 at 4:02:15 PM

Good for you. It’s so exhausting dealing with these people who are constantly chasing a fantasy that through some process, or through sheer force of will, we can achieve a system where all the feature work gets done super quickly and we never have to pause or slow down to handle engineering concerns because they simply don’t exist.

by xp84

5/29/2026 at 4:35:44 PM

The only thing worse is when they expect you to do all the above after they cut your budget in half. I'm so sick of hearing "Do more with less."

"Yes we want you to build a faster-than-light spaceship. Your energy budget is this candle."

Why do we give managerial control to insane people?

by dreamcompiler

5/30/2026 at 12:42:26 AM

I think they get that control because they promise this nonsense to whoever hires them. Essentially, they're flim-flam men. They low-bid to get the contract and then try to make their underlings make good on the promises they made.

I'd never be hired as a CTO because I'd probably tell them "Yeah, you can have 95% less bugs, just stop trying to ship 100 features a quarter. Maybe do half that. Or you can ship twice as many features as you do now, just put up with way more bugs and instability! Instant "Strong No Hire."

by xp84

5/29/2026 at 7:58:32 PM

I think to paraphrase Plato's Republic, who else would want it?

by anonymars

5/30/2026 at 7:26:57 AM

The ERP field is filled with these people.

by nwhnwh

5/29/2026 at 4:06:03 PM

>> they went all-in on very orthodox scrum

do you mean "unorthodox"? What you describe sounds both terrible and not very scrum-like, at least ideally (I too have experienced when whatever terrible approach you use is labelled "agile" by leadership...)

by skeeter2020

5/29/2026 at 4:11:46 PM

I somewhat recently had a conversation about how we were going to start being more "strict" about how we do Agile (with a straight face). And they were right!

by ElevenLathe

5/29/2026 at 4:56:07 PM

Well, except for the fact that they took over the planning process, everything else was orthodox. From the fibonacci pointing system to the retrospectives where we had to go into detail about how the timelines didn't line up perfectly. But we were "working faster" because we were gradually getting more points into a sprint! (queue eye rolls)

What's worse is that I kept getting written up because my main role was DevOps, which meant I was highly interrupt driven...which isn't something you can point reliably.

by hylaride

5/29/2026 at 3:24:14 PM

Any tips on finding this again? I had a great situation turn sour in exactly this way once growth and leadership change came.

by SlightlyLeftPad

5/29/2026 at 4:12:47 PM

nothing tactical from me, but I've fostered a strategic approach over the years that's lead to a deep appreciation for the real-time experience. You can probably recognize when it's good (and bad) once you've worked for a while, and you really need to consciously pause and remark "If this isn't nice, what is?"^1 at those times when it is good.

A decade of consulting had me always ready to wrap my engagement at the end of any day, and (for better and worse) I carried this with me to future jobs. I always miss (at least some of) the people, but never the situation when it turns sour and I leave. The good news: you often get a chance to work with the good ones again (even if that's because you entice them away to your next gig).

^1 https://archive.org/details/ifthisisntnicewh0000vonn/mode/2u...

by skeeter2020

5/29/2026 at 10:37:47 PM

Same here, it has always been a state transition. There's always that snake showing up who forces everyone to watch their back and eventually disband. A tech coop seems like a good option, but it's almost exclusively web dev.

by simgt

5/29/2026 at 3:15:57 PM

> [...] nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly [...]

Textbook FIRE strategy.

by tasuki

5/29/2026 at 3:44:23 PM

I'd say it's missing the FI part and the RE part of the FIRE strategy. Even if they did retire early with financial independence, it's never been their goal and they never actively worked toward it. The reason regular saving and regular humble living look a lot like FIRE saving and FIRE humble living is that an average person can only do so much to increase their net worth, so the possible variance between any two people is very limited.

by Xirdus

5/29/2026 at 4:23:45 PM

> Even if they did retire early with financial independence, it's never been their goal and they never actively worked toward it.

He did work toward it by saving and living frugally.

by jimbokun

5/29/2026 at 10:04:22 PM

But not actively. At best, they passively worked toward it. They never consciously took any steps to ensure they have FI or can ever RE. It just happened to them while they were working on other goals.

by Xirdus

5/29/2026 at 3:45:59 PM

"Lived humbly" is vastly different from "reduce expenses and maximize savings" which FIRE is all about. I've basically always earned more than I could spend, although I thought nothing about saving money, does that mean I'm doing FIRE too, or just happened to be "living humbly"?

by embedding-shape

5/29/2026 at 4:31:49 PM

> "Lived humbly" is vastly different from "reduce expenses and maximize savings" which FIRE is all about.

As someone who has successfully FIREd, I would disagree. If you are fortunate to be in a successful tech career and have a like-minded spouse, you don't need to do anything extreme to be able to FIRE. We only own one home that is comfortable but not impressive; we take care of our cars and drive them 10+ years; we leaned into hobbies that are cheap or money-saving (cooking, gardening, hiking, biking) and didn't get into owning boats or taking trips with first-class airfare and all-inclusive resorts.

I would say we "live humbly" and therefore had savings that covered expenses well before the age of 65. Part of our motivation was early retirement, but you can be doing the same thing without intent to retire early.

If it gets you to the point that you could retire early, then you were following a FIRE strategy, even if you weren't doing it with that goal in mind.

by magneticnorth

5/29/2026 at 8:09:49 PM

Well, I'm also FIREd, and obviously I'd disagree with your disagreement :)

I do agree you don't need to do anything extreme, personally I basically stumbled upon financial independence, I was just doing what I thought was fun, turned out it was profitable as well, and here we are with 24/7 freetime for ~50 more years or whatever.

But when I talk with peers who are all into aiming for "FIRE", then that's very different from the experience I had actually achieving it, I haven't though about retirement a single time, and obviously don't relate at all to these people who think about "reduce expenses and maximize savings", but I'd still relate to "lived humbly", fwiw.

by embedding-shape

5/29/2026 at 4:09:14 PM

"reduce expenses and maximize savings" simply means spend less than you earn. Live below your means. We call that 'living humbly' in the modern world, when you're not buying the latest phone and watching the latest movie at $50 a pop.

by sph

5/29/2026 at 3:17:42 PM

The best position anyone can be in 2026 is having financial freedom so you can leverage AI to build whatever you want.

The worst position is working in a company with non-technical and AI psychosis management.

by aurareturn

5/29/2026 at 3:44:41 PM

Figuring out what you want to build isn't necessarily easy.

by chrisweekly

5/29/2026 at 3:57:52 PM

Being unemployed and unemployable with depleting savings is even less easy however.

So being financial independent even if undecided on what you want to build is still way better.

by coldtea

5/29/2026 at 4:24:24 PM

Which is why you need the financial freedom to spend time figuring it out.

by jimbokun

5/29/2026 at 3:45:43 PM

Absolutely. AI lets you prototype much faster and financial freedom gives you time.

by aurareturn

5/29/2026 at 4:40:36 PM

What does it even mean to say you want to build something but you don’t know what it is?

by jebarker

5/29/2026 at 5:52:21 PM

Building is fun, but deciding what to build can be difficult. "Maker ennui."

by VectorLock

5/29/2026 at 4:31:53 PM

[flagged]

by rootsudo

5/30/2026 at 7:36:24 AM

"non-technical and AI psychosis management" man, I am done... I am so much done.

by nwhnwh

5/29/2026 at 4:15:34 PM

I will admit, when it came to brainstorming sources of crashes with threads, AI has helped me find sources I hadn't considered (as a systems guy, multi threading real experience is something I am sprinting through)

by RobRivera

5/29/2026 at 5:00:15 PM

Basically, my app is a memory hog. I went all-in on performance, and neglected frugality. Lots of caches, local copies, and pass-by-value.

I suspect the best solution will be architectural, which promises to be a pain.

by ChrisMarshallNY

5/29/2026 at 8:57:02 PM

Yea, one cant go all in on performance, and then not co soder architecture.

A language choice is a starting point but you have to know the techniques of architecture learned.

by RobRivera

5/29/2026 at 9:24:50 PM

It looks like it wasn't too painful. I just kept a couple of array references too long. The LLM gave me some threaded crap, and I now need to make sure to let go, before another thread grabs the PC.

That's the issue with the new "memory is cheap" model. I cut my teeth with 256 BYTES (not KB or MB) of space for the program, the stack, and the scratch.

But I've gotten sloppy, over the years.

by ChrisMarshallNY

5/29/2026 at 6:00:09 PM

Man as a not (yet) greybeard, I wish we had more of them in the teams I've been on in the last ~10 years.

by junon

5/29/2026 at 3:33:48 PM

> Those means had nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly, and stayed at a job for a couple of decades.

Finally some real talk for common folk. Godspeed, friend

by dlev_pika

5/29/2026 at 5:36:52 PM

Fwiw we hired a "gray head" earlier this year and it was a huge mistake. guy has solid Linux knowledge but has absolutely zero motivation to get work done. If you don't constantly prod him on his progress he will just sit there and stare at the code. No longer am I going to be dazzled by someones 30 year tech resume.

by gosub100

5/29/2026 at 3:15:24 PM

The battling ai bit you mentioned. This is my life right. Ai is both amazing and shit. I feel like everyone else is running dark factories and producing millions of lines of code and having amazing lives. Meanwhile I am going insane with stress because I've burnt so much time trying to wrangle it on a team I've just joined. My productivity has not been good. I half feel like I am being gas lit by YouTubers and half feel "no I'm just doing it wrong"

by pipes

5/29/2026 at 4:09:14 PM

> I feel like everyone else is running dark factories and producing millions of lines of code

If they are, they aren't producing anything useful with it. Just look around - do you see a sudden increase in actually useful software alongside the AI boom?

What they are mostly doing is a snake-eating-it-own-tail million lines of code LLM harness to burn tokens faster to write more code... to write a 10 million lines of code LLM harness. Or endlessly bikeshedding the perfect LLM-powered bespoke personal knowledge base.

In normal software engineering jobs, we're debugging problems a bit quicker, we're writing boilerplate faster, we have a lot of questionable new test suites... but the game is more or less the same as it was before

by swiftcoder

5/29/2026 at 4:33:12 PM

My strong feeling is that the firms who get too deep into this and have lost the ability to engage deeply with their minds (necessary requirement for imagination) are long term fooked and will get destroyed by those who preserved the ability to imagine and create and recognise the subtleties, nuances etc of product development.

by 43fg

5/29/2026 at 6:20:49 PM

The AI cartel's hope is that the market will stay irrational longer than the naysayers can stay solvent both financially and intellectually.

Putting it a different way, it won't matter if the firms who went too deep at the very beginning are fucked if the rational are forced to succumb to the market pressures created by the irrational and thus are reluctantly pushed to adopt AI-first workflows for appearance's sake in order to survive anyway. Because then everybody will be likewise fucked and completely dependent on AI, despite it being a subpar development paradigm with respect to robustness of the systems under development. History has taught us that it is adoption dynamics not capability that determines the winning paradigm or technology (Betamax vs VHS is one historical example. Javascript vs everything else is another one).

(We know it's a subpar development paradigm with respect to robustness because the entire coding agent paradigm turns the most knowledgeable programmer into a person "who doesn't know what they don't know" because development speed far exceeds their ability to reason about the codebase and the underlying SOTA models that they depend on to fix the bugs that the model itself has introduced are at best unreliable narrators with no objective evidence of correctness or deterministic behavior.)

by sillyfluke

5/29/2026 at 3:29:45 PM

Don't compare your inside to other people's outside.

by ssfrr

5/29/2026 at 3:45:24 PM

great advice

by chrisweekly

5/29/2026 at 3:57:46 PM

I am not convinced that the "dark factory" / "gas town" people are actually shipping anything that isn't also part of the AI ecosystem. At least the noise/ship ratio is incredibly high.

by pjc50

5/29/2026 at 4:34:07 PM

What about shipping tweets and blog posts? Also team demos "how to use AI for basic imaginary hello-world scenarios".

by dude250711

5/29/2026 at 3:42:37 PM

The leading edge models are pretty good but we are still at the "rain man" stage so it's "jagged" intelligence.

It may be three years or so before the new compute-in-memory devices fully make it out of the lab and increase efficiency by about 100 times, allowing us to deploy models with human level complexity (100T vs current 10T SOTA) at scale.

by ilaksh

5/29/2026 at 3:34:33 PM

> I feel like everyone else is running dark factories and producing millions of lines of code and having amazing lives

That is when I realize I'm spending too much time on HN. Because it is really only here that this vibe is so strong. My impression is that there is a lot of motivated reasoning in the folks that frequent HN.

It may also be that I work a boring job. If I turned up our code output by 10x it would not improve anything about our product. People who are pumping out dramatically more code have to be in an entirely different world. Or, you know, they're full of shit.

by rootusrootus

5/29/2026 at 3:35:29 PM

You are not crazy.

by dlev_pika

5/29/2026 at 5:35:35 PM

I feel this so much. I woke up at 1am last night stressing about AI and my potential lack of productivity. 2am rolls around, and I could not get back to sleep so I worked till 4:30am. Slept fine till 7:00am. AI has been causing a lot of stress for me and many others lately. My biggest source of stress is what will AI transform the human work world into by the time my children need a job? Most of us live in a capitalist society so AI utopia is right off the table.

by mrinterweb

5/29/2026 at 3:08:54 PM

More and more I have realized it was not the coding that I enjoyed, but solving problems/puzzles. This fits into the beautiful code not really mattering to more than myself but the solution for people, but that is hard to let go of.

by beached_whale

5/29/2026 at 7:02:56 PM

We have long ago learned as an industry that code tends to live for a long time and so maintainable code is important. However for individuals your stance is just fine.

by bluGill

5/29/2026 at 9:28:58 PM

Some code definitely does, but it isn't the product. People, outside the devs making it, don't value how good the code is, but how well it solves the problem.

by beached_whale

5/29/2026 at 10:43:02 PM

But there is no dichotomy, is there? Good code is code that solves the problem well. Today and sustainably into the future. What else would "good code" even mean in general context?

by salutis

5/29/2026 at 3:41:35 PM

Father in law was a real estate agent from the 80s until maybe 5 years ago.

The day he retired was the day he absolutely positively suddenly wanted nothing to do with real estate anymore. He loved the career but it was interesting watching him just suddenly be done with it.

He found other hobbies and interests pretty quickly once he took an inventory of how he wanted to spend his time.

by sharkweek

5/29/2026 at 3:54:22 PM

Suddenly then all at once has been a common pattern for me too.

Its liberating to have the experience to know that once you're done with something you won't miss it's absence.

by XorNot

5/29/2026 at 3:12:19 PM

> battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted

What I am selfishly curious about is: is it possible to remain a software developer, and ignore AI? To write code the same way we did before 2022? I understand that there are many companies in which managers demand more of workforce — but are there still places where people are satisfied to not rush ahead and do business same way they did three or four years ago?

In other words, is it possible to not battle with AI trying to get it what we want? Were you forced to do this by your employer, or was this entirely self-inflicted?

Asking for a friend.

by azangru

5/29/2026 at 3:28:11 PM

Yes it is. You don't need to announce whether you are using AI or not. Just keep doing your job, use AI when it pleases you and keep building manual code when you think that's better.

That's what I do, I have never been asked if I use AI to write my code.

If it's dumb code I use AI. If it's something that I want to craft I don't

by gonzalohm

5/29/2026 at 4:52:04 PM

Where I work % of code written by AI and AI spend is tracked all the way down to the individual person.

It is obvious to me that this will be used in performance reviews in the future.

by aeyes

5/29/2026 at 5:38:03 PM

They started doing that tracking where I worked until last summer, stress so high, GERD kicked in worse than it'd ever been and that's going back to the 1980's. I retired, and I do thank God I was able to. I now just dabble every week or so in my personal side projects.

by newsoftheday

5/29/2026 at 5:07:53 PM

Garbage like this is why the tech industry desperately needs widespread unionization.

by anticorporate

5/29/2026 at 5:06:47 PM

That's so stupid. Let the agent write code that will never be used then and you focus on the important code

by gonzalohm

5/30/2026 at 2:00:13 AM

What's stupid in my opinion is this idea that the LLM can't be used to write good code. Like you use it for throwaway code.

I use LLMs heavily, bit it doesn't diminish the quality of my code at all. If anything it raises the quality. Because I keep it on a tight leash and make sure every like of code is what I want it to be. If you let the thing run wild for hours and barely glance at the result sure you'll be producing slop. But there's nothing stopping you from being more involved using it as a tool rather than a slave, and getting great results that way.

by sfn42

5/30/2026 at 2:35:11 AM

[dead]

by cindyllm

5/29/2026 at 4:07:05 PM

My personal situation is unusual, but I don't see my coworkers being forced into AI. They also don't seem to be ignoring it, but they're also not using it very much afaik.

Some do try feeding it log based mysteries, which sometimes spots problems but usually not the one that was being investigated.

So far, all their attempts to write code with AI don't seem to have been worth the time. Although there's one report of good unit tests being generated.

I don't get much feedback on my open source projects, because the audience is limited, but I did get an annoying report recently where the reporter was using AI instead of their brain. AI took them (and me) through a pretty wild goose chase over a very simple reported error (unused variables in a couple places). Just remove them and carry on.

by toast0

5/29/2026 at 4:11:29 PM

Yes: work for 90% of the world that isn't a purely tech company, but just need a working product delivered on time and at cost.

No one has asked me to use adopt LLMs in my consulting work, at least as of yet.

by sph

5/29/2026 at 3:15:57 PM

>is it possible to remain a software developer, and ignore AI? To write code the same way we did before 2022

Yes if it's your own company or if you're self employed and can compete.

by sevenzero

5/29/2026 at 3:53:15 PM

> In other words, is it possible to not battle with AI trying to get it what we want? Were you forced to do this by your employer, or was this entirely self-inflicted?

if you work in company with lots of AI generated code, then you can't handle it without AI usage anymore..

by andriy_koval

5/29/2026 at 3:42:28 PM

Working on my own product using Claude, I feel like front-end coding hasn’t changed much. It still requires a lot of manual tweaking and understanding users at a human level.

Personally I’m happy that the backend and algorithmic side writes itself.

by willtemperley

5/29/2026 at 3:50:44 PM

That's refreshing to read (frontend is my wheelhouse). I mostly agree. It seems like most people using AI treat FE as a solved problem, satisfied using tailwind and settling for "looks close enough".

by chrisweekly

5/29/2026 at 4:44:16 PM

I think there will always be space for good artisanal FE. This is a Ford Model T moment, the software production line has just been invented, but that didn’t stop smaller sports car manufacturers pushing the envelope.

by willtemperley

5/29/2026 at 3:28:28 PM

There are spots and niches where you can do this but I expect them to dry up within a year.

by varjag

5/29/2026 at 10:50:34 PM

Yes, in the same sense that it is still technically possible to ride a horse to work instead of using a car.

You can code in assembly instead of using a compiler, too.

by rdbl27

5/29/2026 at 3:20:04 PM

Yeah, of course. I’ve only ever been disappointed by ai, so I don’t use it.

I run my own shop, so I can do what I want, but I’m happy with my pace (which I’ve noticed is quite fast compared to folks I’ve worked with), and I don’t find “speed of writing code “ to be a bottleneck.

When and if it gets good, I’ll hop in. But for the time being I don’t get the sense that I’m missing out on anything.

by jasonkester

5/29/2026 at 9:28:47 PM

Same here. I am maintaining and enhancing several 100k of C++ I have written over 20 years. I use MS Copilot to write little snippets now and then. But I always modify them to fit my own style. It is challenging enough to navigate and understand all that code without letting an AI loose on it.

by hermitcrab

5/29/2026 at 3:33:37 PM

> are there still places where people are satisfied to not rush ahead and do business same way they did three or four years ago

They're getting outcompeted.

by dheera

5/29/2026 at 3:38:08 PM

Are they? Have any examples?

by runtime_terror

5/30/2026 at 1:44:54 AM

No, their competition thinks they're getting outcompeted, just have to wait 6 more months for the AI to really get going. Meanwhile no one is shipping anything good.

by eudamoniac

5/29/2026 at 9:37:26 PM

I'm less worried about being 'outcompeted' by clankers than the possibility that AI slop products become so numerous that it is almost impossible to get noticed.

by hermitcrab

5/29/2026 at 4:32:59 PM

You can always start your own practice and ignore AI, if you're serious enough.

by skeledrew

5/29/2026 at 3:59:41 PM

I'm curious, have you tried working seriously with claude code or gpt codex and which part of it did you not enjoy? What makes you wish to write code like 2022?

by hellohello2

5/29/2026 at 4:12:33 PM

Having watched people use these kinds of tools, it feels like trying to tell an intern to do a project.

Except with an intern, hopefully there's personal development and you only have to be very specific a few times. And the intern's manager gets good feels for helping someone grow, and maybe it's a hiring pipeline.

If I'm going to have to do that for everything, I would rather just do the work myself.

I have seen some sessions with let's call it over agressive autocomplete... That's mildly tempting, but I'm happy with my disintegrated development environment, and it doesn't have any way to do autocomplete at all, so that's not happening for me either.

by toast0

5/29/2026 at 4:19:51 PM

Current SOTA is far past "agressive autocomplete" at this point, more like ask for a PR for a small feature and its done... I guess for me the fun is you can build a lot yourself, without relying on others. I hear you for the social aspect though & thanks for sharing your pov.

by hellohello2

5/29/2026 at 4:01:59 PM

If you just like talking and some program comes out (aka "business problem solving") you might like it.

If you like coding (aka "problem solving"), it feels like crap.

And if you like still having an IT job in a couple of years, it feels like dangerous crap.

(Of course you can be hoping you'll be the one selected, out of millions laid off, to get to keep working on a higher level).

by coldtea

5/29/2026 at 4:16:20 PM

Perhaps its the apprehension/anxiety that makes it feel bad then? I like coding (building things) and couldn't care less about businesses, and am having a great time. In the current state of AI, mass layoffs probably won't happen. But I guess its a bit scary that we don't know how much more it will improve...

by hellohello2

5/29/2026 at 9:29:37 PM

>Perhaps its the apprehension/anxiety that makes it feel bad then?

It's a big part. But the erosion of what coding means is another big part for some.

>I like coding (building things) and couldn't care less about businesses

There are people who like coding, but they mean "building things" by it, and other who like coding and mean "coding" itself. The latter we aren't as pleased.

(I also like building things, but I like building them via coding, not thru vibing and getting them spit out).

by coldtea

5/29/2026 at 5:09:28 PM

> the current state of AI, mass layoffs probably won't happen.

I’m sorry, what? Have you been paying any attention at all to the state of the industry lately?

by jon-wood

5/29/2026 at 6:16:38 PM

I wasn't clear enough, I was replying to "you'll be the one selected, out of millions laid off," in context I meant "mass layoff" as in "95% of everyone is out of a job permanently".

by hellohello2

5/30/2026 at 8:12:07 AM

It will be somewhat ironic if the people losing out in this transition are the ones screaming about it’s benefits.

by tonyedgecombe

5/29/2026 at 4:20:04 PM

I’d probably let go of the employees who decline using agentic tools first, tbh. All things being equal.

by alchemism

5/29/2026 at 5:53:06 PM

And that's the problem.

The companies that agree with you will be at an interesting place when they have piles of AI slop code and no talented developers.

by claytongulick

5/29/2026 at 8:42:19 PM

I can’t say Claude Code is not a great product with solid market fit even though the code inside it is aesthetically garbage.

by alchemism

5/29/2026 at 5:12:28 PM

> have you tried working seriously with claude code or gpt codex and which part of it did you not enjoy?

I haven't. But I found myself, to my surprise, not particularly interested in trying; which makes me wonder what motivates other developers if not peer pressure or demands for more productivity. I find coding interesting and fulfilling enough to do it on my own. I do ask LLMs questions from time to time, but for that, even a chatgpt or a gemini in a browser tab is enough.

The best experience I had so far is with code reviews, when the models pointed out my mistakes. But I haven't yet gotten to the point where I would want them to write code for me.

by azangru

5/30/2026 at 11:24:11 PM

Just to share my perspective, I have not had this much fun programming as when I first learned to code. It's really something you have to try for yourself to actually understand. Its like a new form of programming, where code is "soft" instead of "hard"; on the whole feels similar, but also completely new.

The opinons on this site make me realize most people here are into programming for the money, rather than for the fun of building things. Which is completely fine, but it leads to most commenters being depressed rather than enthralled, which feels honestly confusing at times. Obviously socially things are looking pretty bleak but if you find coding fulfilling on its own, lets just say you can look forward to fulfillment lol

by hellohello2

5/29/2026 at 3:15:47 PM

Yeah go to a niche market C++ shop

by __lain__

5/29/2026 at 4:53:20 PM

What niche market? I work for a hardware company writing C++ code and my company literally has a dashboard for managers that shows employee's token usage. My manager warned me that my low usage will reflect poorly on me during performance reviews later this year.

by OnionBlender

5/29/2026 at 4:11:49 PM

I'm banking on this. I don't really know anyone younger than me at the moment that writes C++. Best-case scenario I'll be in-demand. Worst-case when my grandchildren visit me at my cardboard box I can tell them spooky bedtime stories about SFINAE.

by randusername

5/29/2026 at 3:56:16 PM

Sounds quite normal, honestly. Programming is in a dark place right now relative to how I used to enjoy it. I haven't touched a personal project in many months. You did something for four decades and whatever mystery may have been left there is probably gone with AI.

Try identifying what made it feel like a "passion." Was it problem solving and discovering new things on your own by piecing things together? Then yeah, AI probably has something to do with that in regard to software development - but there are many other avenues you can take to fulfill that whether it be unrelated hobbies or charity work, etc.

by sqircles

5/29/2026 at 4:00:16 PM

>Try identifying what made it feel like a "passion." Was it problem solving and discovering new things on your own by piecing things together? Then yeah, AI probably has something to do with that in regard to software development - but there are many other avenues you can take to fulfill that whether it be unrelated hobbies or charity work, etc.

If you had a passion for coding, then unrelated hobbies or charity work wont fulfill it.

And if you have no job or a shit job or a shit coding job because of AI, no much means or morale for hobbies and charity either...

by coldtea

5/29/2026 at 3:10:45 PM

Congratulations! Tech doesn't have to be the end goal. Personally I can't wait to shake this industry and find a new path in retirement.

by creaturemachine

5/29/2026 at 6:37:35 PM

Thanks! I’m one of the lucky ones who really loved my career. I was lucky enough to avoid roles or companies that would suck the life out of me:-)

5/5 would recommend :-)

by kamaitachi

5/29/2026 at 3:33:10 PM

I'm hoping to retire in the next 12 months (52 years old). When I do, I'll be buying a Chromebook. Any and all PC-related shit is being sold off.

I will quite literally never write a line of code again... with any luck!

by ItsBob

5/29/2026 at 4:28:33 PM

Just curious, what are you doing for healthcare. I can retire money wise soon, but healthcare is an issue. May have to work 10 more years just because of that.

by reylas

5/29/2026 at 7:10:55 PM

Yes, that's a concern for me too, I'd like to retire early but healthcare has me wondering about getting a job as a teacher or something just to make sure I can afford it if I get cancer at 55.

by floren

5/29/2026 at 4:54:11 PM

If you don't have much income, healthcare.gov plans are pretty cheap.

Some people will just risk doing without. Most will be fine; that's how insurance works.

by SoftTalker

5/29/2026 at 6:20:41 PM

if you're in the US, ACA is an option, but it'll be expensive if you don't qualify for any subsidies.

by sunsetSamurai

5/29/2026 at 6:14:12 PM

I live in the UK :-)

by ItsBob

5/29/2026 at 4:51:22 PM

I'm just a little bit older, and have to work a little longer due to some personal things.

But, as it stands today, I rarely touch any tech outside of work. Heck, I seldom ever bring my cell phone outside the home.

I long for the day, I can close my laptop lid and not open it again.

by zikduruqe

5/29/2026 at 3:37:37 PM

Same age, but I gotta hang on a little longer. I'm a little too anxious about sequence risk in the market environment we're in now. But otherwise I'm with you, when I retire I may well dump nearly all of my technology and go back to stone tablets, metaphorically speaking. Sometimes I get so tired of it. Ironically, though, my work environment is pretty good, it's everything we're doing in tech outside my office work that gets me down.

by rootusrootus

5/29/2026 at 3:26:05 PM

Man I really want to retire. I've gotten a couple stark reminders recently that life is fragile and short. I'm trapped by the golden handcuffs of the software industry, but I console myself by saying it's a means to an end (early retirement). I really hope that becomes possible in the near future, because whatever this is now is not sustainable.

by baggachipz

5/29/2026 at 6:43:23 PM

I also can't wait for the day I retire, I got laid off recently, so that sets things back for me for now, but as soon as I get another job, it's all about saving to escape this damn rat race. I hope you can retire soon too.

by sunsetSamurai

5/29/2026 at 4:22:02 PM

> battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted

I rubber duck with AI a lot, to go over my understand, my plan, etc. I get all the benefits of putting my thoughts to words, plus some feedback.

And sometimes, I let the AI write the code, too. It really depends on if I feel it understands the problem and solution well enough. And it's entirely possible that the answer is no, even if it helped me come up with the solution. But I always review the entire plan it puts forward and review the code it wrote. [1]

I don't "battle" with it, unless I'm experimenting with letting it do ALL The coding. And I've done that. And it sucks. It's downright painful. I don't do that for work.

[1] Unless it's a simple utility I'm doing for myself, like "write me a bookmarklet to find all the code in this page and open up a dialog with it formatted easy to read". Because, if it turns out it got that wrong, I can just change it later; it's for me anyways.

by RHSeeger

5/29/2026 at 3:20:12 PM

Retired as well. Hated that dealing with AI was a big part of my job. Hated how half my time was spend clicking through portals, scrum boards, devops tooling. I just wanted to code.

Haven't touched code since I retired unfortunately. Just don't feel like it. Don't need it either.

by retired

5/29/2026 at 3:08:59 PM

Honest question: if you didn't enjoy using AI, why not just write code without using AI?

by adamddev1

5/29/2026 at 4:16:53 PM

I can't speak for anyone else, but I find AI to be very effective. It can do nearly all coding tasks many OOMs faster than I can. And I'm able to get it to produce high-quality code in the process. Using AI, our codebase actually has less tech debt than any time I can remember. I would be less effective if I wasn't using AI and if I wasn't finding new ways to leverage it.

That doesn't mean I enjoy it using AI. I loved coding. I was really good at it! I spent decades honing my abilities, and while some of those skills are still applicable when working with AI, many are not.

I want my company to be successful, so I work as effectively as I can. Unfortunately, the most effective method of working no longer scratches the creative/craftsman itch that it used to.

Right now I'm mitigating it by taking up creative writing in the evenings. That's difficult and creative in a way that coding used to be. Identifying and solving character and story problems feels like debugging and designing used to. Learning to craft effective prose feels like it used to when I was picking up a new programming language and learning its idioms.

by gensym

5/29/2026 at 3:12:37 PM

At least in my work, this is sort of like asking "If you don't enjoy CI/CD or the cloud, why not do without it?" It's becoming integrated into every process at this point.

by yunwal

5/29/2026 at 3:21:26 PM

And many employers now require you to code faster, which is only possible with AI tooling. They don't understand that coding faster isn't always better.

by retired

5/29/2026 at 3:31:13 PM

Is this related to what business your employer is in? In other words, is their business producing code, or is code written to support some other business?

Or is this just everywhere now?

by amanaplanacanal

5/29/2026 at 3:58:34 PM

Everywhere. Normally adding an extra endpoint to the REST API would take a sprint. Now PM expects you to do two. Only way to get that done is a lot of vibe-coding and delivering sub-par results.

by retired

5/30/2026 at 2:56:03 AM

I am amazed that anyone ever needed a "sprint" to "add an endpoint".

It usually speaks to the approach you are taking, but I also believe sprint-based planning leads development teams to make work fit into it instead of needing natural time to do it.

Let's remember that all of have probably built full systems over a weekend. What organizational dysfunction has led to us needing a sprint is what needs fixing.

by necovek

5/29/2026 at 3:29:03 PM

How is that enforced though? At any normal workplace they will ask you "how long is this going to take"?

by gonzalohm

5/29/2026 at 3:34:35 PM

It depends on the management. Mine asks that, but others within my company get "this is going to be done by [DATE]".

by speff

5/29/2026 at 3:50:21 PM

And no one argues about unrealistic deadlines?

by gonzalohm

5/29/2026 at 6:34:03 PM

Of course they do. Generally the end result from this is bad - reduced in scope, buggy, and/or unstable. But that's an issue with communication/expectations/management. It'll keep happening either because of politics or the fact that a sub-par deliverable still meets the needs of the overall organization. Until it doesn't.

by speff

5/29/2026 at 4:06:04 PM

A few firings of those that do under this job market convince the rest not to.

by coldtea

5/29/2026 at 4:11:40 PM

Job market in Western Europe isn't doing so well right now. Better not make a big deal out of it.

by retired

5/30/2026 at 1:50:18 AM

"How will you be leveraging AI for this task? Why can't the AI do it faster than that?"

These managers literally believe, or are made to pretend, that AI is better than you and faster than you. Any argument to the contrary is a CLM.

by eudamoniac

5/29/2026 at 4:17:12 PM

While the tinkerer in me would love to, the pragmatic side of me cannot ignore the speed boost, specially for prototyping programs.

If I write everything by hand, I know I'm leaving velocity or quality on the table. If I use LLMs, I can eventually get good output from it, either by going faster with moderate quality, or by going slower and focusing on better code. But that makes me hate the whole development process. I enjoyed modeling a problem with types and, writing functions that work on these types. Automating that process (either the cognitive work itself, or the typing work to bring ideas to life) takes away most of my fun.

by Altern4tiveAcc

5/29/2026 at 6:41:31 PM

It was being pushed hard by mgmt. Constant pushing, emails with “league tables” of most active users, “why is this taking so long?”.

Hard to not use it

by kamaitachi

5/29/2026 at 8:15:34 PM

That's so sad. Presumably they won't also be asking, "why is this breaking so often?"

by adamddev1

5/29/2026 at 3:34:58 PM

As Eric Schluntz from Anthropic put it (not verbatim): If you're not using AI (I believe he was specifically referring to Vibe Coding), then you are the bottleneck.

by mikeyinternews

5/29/2026 at 3:38:52 PM

That sounds like a good reason not to listen to advice from someone who works for Anthropic.

by rootusrootus

5/30/2026 at 3:00:35 AM

That sounds like a good reason not to listen to Eric Schluntz, who both overestimates the ability of LLMs today, but also has a vested interest in it being so.

I am sure Anthropic is full of smart people who are making Claude work well for those who do not want to be vibe coding and who believe that's not productive either.

by necovek

5/29/2026 at 5:54:42 PM

But the boomer C-suites will listen with awe to these salesmen

by boelboel

5/29/2026 at 4:11:49 PM

Token seller saying you should buy more tokens.

by edu

5/29/2026 at 4:07:46 PM

Yeah, because someone who is trying to sell you something would NEVER try to convince you that you can't possibly hope to compete without buying their product. /s

by nocman

5/29/2026 at 3:48:28 PM

It’s both, IMO from your brief comment, LLMs made you think it’s all troublesome endeavor because it outputs spaghetti code. No one likes hunting through spaghetti code and fixing it. Nobody wants to fill their plate with seconds immediately.

Mess around with a poc and try not using the LLM to get started (use a project scaffolding tool/code generator instead if you must). Start with some appetizers and a first course. Stop working on it even if you feel satisfied.

I like to try and get my pocs to a publishable state someone else can download and compile even if it’s wonky. That helps me bookend my work even if I don’t accomplish all the goals.

I most recently made a poc with nuklear ui and libuvc make a small app that displays my camera feed. I pushed it up, the camera frames have some green flicker but it works. I did more research and found out there are better libraries than libuvc for this kind of thing. Now I have another prototype to make for my ideas. And a base to clone if I need some starter template.

by righthand

5/29/2026 at 3:15:31 PM

I have definitely found my enjoyment of coding in my spare time is lessened now that AI is on the scene. I know very few if any were going to use the code, but it felt like working on a classic car, the act of working on it was fun even if the final results seem like the effort could have been used more productively.

Now, I just feel like I am transcribing a phonebook.

by Devasta

5/29/2026 at 4:27:46 PM

> Is that AI? Or is it me?

It's you. And that's fine.

You can still code entirely without AI or AI influence, so that's primarily why I say it's you. It may also, in fact, be burnout. It sounds like it to me. And it's okay to get back into coding if you ever feel like it.

by runjake

5/29/2026 at 4:32:14 PM

Yeah, I was going to say this too.

I write code in my spare time for fun and hobby and personal skill development and I don't use AI at all. AI isn't ruining anything for me.

by SirMaster

5/29/2026 at 6:39:38 PM

You’re right - it’s me.

I used to code at home - chess engines mostly.

Maybe once the novelty of retirement wears off (and the autumn approaches), I’ll start coding again

by kamaitachi

5/29/2026 at 4:10:45 PM

I feel you. I've been coding for about 20 years and the last 2 years were an absolute downer, draining all the joy of programming by offloading the actuall puzzles to an ai third party thst i just navigate and correct. I am 20 times more productive but 20 times less happy

by cantalopes

5/29/2026 at 3:23:48 PM

I'm not near retirement, but I have found that the side projects I work on have diminished quite a bit since AI took over coding. It used to be that writing a library for something like parsing ICal files was something I could spend time on, write, build out, and then other people could use. But now anyone can throw together a working version of it in a little bit. That's a good thing, but also it removes the fun of spending the time implementing it and creating something for others.

by jjice

5/29/2026 at 6:25:54 PM

This makes me think of how boxed cake recipes decided to leave out the eggs because people liked to still feel like they were "cooking" for people.

by quinnjh

5/29/2026 at 3:07:38 PM

I made it 27 before I retired. I kind of wish I was older so I could have enjoyed more years of what was a fun career before it turned into... this.

by add-sub-mul-div

5/29/2026 at 3:12:01 PM

More and more I'm finding myself saying: "I got into this career because I liked technology, computers, programming, and so on. Not whatever this is!"

by ryandrake

5/29/2026 at 7:13:05 PM

From the flip side, 10 years in, I've been getting really into art.

It's not cheap, but it's easier to do my job with the thought that I have art this week and next week and maybe I'll get to teach it someday too.

It feels healthy to not let your work control your life after retirement. There's so much else out there to do.

by ian-g

5/29/2026 at 4:32:34 PM

> I haven’t even tried. I’m not burned out, but find I’ve lost the passion for coding I once had.

> Is that AI? Or is it me?

I had that shortly after ChatGPT came out, but as nobody was using it for work, I don't think it was caused by AI.

Personally, I blame all the CV-driven development.

Playing with AI coding models can even give me a bit of the good times back.

by ben_w

5/29/2026 at 4:34:18 PM

After 40+ years of coding, I couldn't be more happy about how AI has changed what I do. It got rid of the boring drudgery and grind and let me concentrate on the problem-solving, idea-generating parts.

Never been more productive and happy in my work than I am right now.

by qingcharles

5/29/2026 at 3:04:08 PM

It's not AI or you, it's this late stage capitalist marketing firehose of bullshit and enforced productivity. Hype is out of control, nothing is real, it's exhausting.

by CuriouslyC

5/29/2026 at 3:10:18 PM

I think you're getting unfairly downvoted. A lot of people, across all salary ranges, are just vaguely tired of constantly Providing Maximal Shareholder Value™ to their managers day in and day out, having that One Purpose dominate their lives, and at the end of each day looking up and seeing nothing tangible to show for what they've done.

by ryandrake

5/29/2026 at 3:17:27 PM

And being given an email and locked out of everything after a decade of doing so, on a whim, all because someone thought you were just an expense…

by reactordev

5/29/2026 at 3:48:41 PM

Its also the absolute assurance that we're all going to get screwed by a big crash circa 2028.

by XorNot

5/29/2026 at 3:16:24 PM

Yep, this is the right answer. Everything is max money always, and you can't have nice things any more, you can only have things that extract all the value they can out of you.

by stavros

5/29/2026 at 4:27:29 PM

Shhh no class consciousness on HN allowed

by Weebs

5/29/2026 at 4:15:36 PM

Ive paraphrased it before and i’ll paraphrase it again

“If you’re looking for the villain, it’s capitalism. It’s always capitalism”

- Brennan Lee Mulligan (and everyone else who’s tired of this shit).

by mekael

5/29/2026 at 3:57:17 PM

I think part of the problem is that source code is always in flux. So to think of the satisfaction of completing a project seems difficult to imagine.

Big corporations invent new “features” and then axe them, even if the products are delightful; venture capitalists obsessed with building to exit on profit alone; open source developers trying to make a name for themselves by building something in Rust to improve performance by 5%.

Compare that to something like architecture or woodworking, gardening, baking, painting—creating real tangible things.

My recommendation is combine the two: use arduinos and/or raspberry PI to automate water delivery in your garden. Stuff like that that you can experience the value at first-hand. :)

by kellogah

5/29/2026 at 8:18:06 PM

[flagged]

by daniel3303

5/29/2026 at 3:31:51 PM

For those scratching their heads asking who is this guy and why should I care?

He has been tackling the open source sustainability issue since launching gittip circa 2012. Since then millions of dollars have been raised for open source because of him. Sure it’s a drop in the bucket but he did it.

Chad is a friend of mine. You can’t find a nicer person in tech than him. I hope this is temporary because he can still make a huge impact. Either way I respect his decision and hope he finds peace offline. TBH I’m a little jealous.

by jdorfman

5/29/2026 at 4:10:19 PM

Chad taught me programming when I was a child, and introduced me to a professor I then went on to work for. Sadly I haven't kept up with him, but I second his impact: both big and small, he's a brilliant and caring guy.

by tenacious_tuna

5/29/2026 at 3:56:41 PM

I met Chad during the gittip years, and one of my life goals now is to go find him in the offline world some day and sit around an open fire at night to share stories. :)

I wish I still had my gittip penny, but I seem to have lost it in several moves since that time.

by japhyr

5/29/2026 at 5:41:18 PM

Thanks for sharing. It helps after seeing so many edgy "don't let the door hit you on the way out" type replies.

by kraquepype

5/29/2026 at 5:11:25 PM

yup, Chad is super authentic, WYSIWYG. Truly a loss for Open Source and tech in general.

I wish him well and I don't blame him at all. He already gave more of himself to advancing OSS sustainability than probably anyone else on the planet (might be room for debate, but I can't think of who else is even in the discussion).

by coloneltcb

5/29/2026 at 4:48:18 PM

This all makes me tremendously sad. I wish them well.

by arm32

5/29/2026 at 4:39:28 PM

Yep. Chad is great. Although, if anyone were to lead a cult, I figure it would be Chad, hopefully he doesn’t accidentally charisma himself into a cult leader situation.

by fontain

5/29/2026 at 5:11:15 PM

Well he does say in the letter he wants to be part of an offline-only community, and is starting a magazine centered around it combined with Orthodox Christianity... this after talking about a community in India that kills outsiders and wanting to be like the Amish. Seems cult-adjacent

by 0xbadcafebee

5/29/2026 at 7:24:36 PM

death to the machine? https://deathtothemachine.com

by processing

5/29/2026 at 5:39:15 PM

Eastern Orthodoxy is the oldest branch of Christianity. Which means it's the furthest thing from "cult-adjacent." You want to know what is actually "cult-adjacent"? People who are associated with Mormonism, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientology, Transcendental Meditation, or your local Church of Cosmic Vibrations.

by wyclif

5/29/2026 at 3:25:13 PM

Funny, if all goes well today is my last day as professional software engineer, after 20 years.

I have enough savings to buy a modest cottage and to last me a year or two being frugal. After that it’s anyone’s guess, but I am beyond excited not having to program for a living any more, just on what feels meaningful, in complete autonomy.

Projects lined up: a Erlang-like microkernel/runtime I have been designing for the past 4 years, a series of small games that I have been itching to work on, then, of course, the lifelong project of living in a rural house. Stretch goal if I win the lottery: build a solar farm.

Maybe I will be so lucky never to have had to use LLMs in my work. You guys have fun without me. :-P

by sph

5/29/2026 at 4:08:29 PM

> last me a year or two being frugal

Word of advice.

Get a part time job where you can keep your skills up-to-date because from personal experience personal projects on GitHub will not be enough to land a job in two years. Make sure for every penny you spend you are earning equal.

The two years are going to fly by.

EDIT: I'm not joking about taking this serious. You want to be working when people start losing their jobs to AI. Most likely this is going to end with society rethinking distribution but you are going to need to be able to survive the changes and 2 - 3 years is not enough wealth.

by dataviz1000

5/29/2026 at 4:25:14 PM

Seconded, though from a different angle. In my experience, it's surprisingly hard to live frugally when you don't have a job; my spending actually went up at first because I had all of this free time for activities I didn't have before. Started doing more hobbies, going for trips around town, generally participated in the economy more than I could when 8 hours of my day were spoken for. What I thought was a year of runway was probably closer to 3-6 months.

My solution was getting a part-time job (non tech) but also had to significantly change my spending habits which was not easy.

by lemoing

5/29/2026 at 5:51:00 PM

On the other end, I live very frugally and when I spent six months without work I calculated how much my savings would last with my no job level of spending and it was 21 years. So anyone who wants to learn to live frugally would be wise to start doing so while still working, because that's when it's the easiest.

by dandellion

5/29/2026 at 5:48:20 PM

It's very possible in 2 or 3 years there won't be much of a job market remaining and the best thing you can do now is something you own.

by postalrat

5/29/2026 at 5:56:17 PM

I imagine politically it will be like during the pandemic. The government goes full socialist to prevent riots and revolution -- they are going to print lots of money. It is going to be chaotic period. It is already starting and the best thing people can do is make sure they are employed, developing skills, and not spending savings. You want to make it to the other side of this.

I have a very niche set of skills so I could up until 6 months ago pick up contract work anytime I needed. Despite being one of the best in the world at what I did, I can't compete anyone with $400 in tokens using Codex or Claude Code. I'm pivoting quickly but the sentiment is "Oh, shit, this is coming fast and heavy!"

by dataviz1000

5/29/2026 at 3:32:22 PM

Nothing like retiring with only 3 years worth of savings and no plan on what to do after that.

by rob

5/29/2026 at 3:51:14 PM

If you don't need to support a family and are unhappy otherwise, why not?

Sure it's not 'the smart thing to do' but if it makes you happy and you're still not far worse of than most people...

by cybrox

5/29/2026 at 5:12:59 PM

Because if you are unhappy now, just wait until you are homeless

by cortesoft

5/30/2026 at 8:33:02 AM

He said he was quitting tech, not retiring from work forever. I would assume if you're fed up with tech you could instead do carpentry jobs, work part time at a store, be a tour guide or whatever. Is it fair to say that he has 2 years to find a way to earn $50,000 per year? Sounds like that would be doable if you're smart and ambitious, no?

by timcambrant

5/29/2026 at 5:36:56 PM

there are in fact plenty of ways to earn enough money to get by on a simple lifestyle

by Rover222

5/29/2026 at 5:53:29 PM

People in tech, especially from US, are so accustomed to spending $5,000/mo just to survive, that they cannot fathom one is able to live without having a tech job in San Francisco. It's a pretty sad state of affairs.

I live in a first-world European country where the average salary is about €25,000 per year. My mortgage estimate is less than €300/mo. I'm not that afraid of having to supplement my income if I need to. The world will still need cheap and experienced software engineers for a while.

by sph

5/29/2026 at 7:23:37 PM

> People in tech, especially from US, are so accustomed to spending $5,000/mo just to survive, that they cannot fathom one is able to live without having a tech job in San Francisco. It's a pretty sad state of affairs.

Quality of life in suburban America is incredibly high relative to a "first world" country with such a low average income. From what I have seen, most families in the "European periphery" still live in small Soviet-era apartment buildings, own one small car or no car at all, and are far from enjoying many other things taken for granted in America.

by drnick1

5/30/2026 at 11:07:40 AM

European here. Yes, houses are smaller, apartments can be comparatively tiny. Street parking can be a challenge.

However: I got stores, cinemas, cafes, restaurants within walking distance. My kids can roam around in the neighbourhood without someone calling social service on me. I can walk anywhere in the city at any hour day or night without someone robbing me. I can cheaply purchase free range eggs and organic vegetables. Tap water is fine, actually excellent. 30hour commute is considered too long. Coast is mere 3h away, people come from all over the planet to enjoy it, I spend 5 weeks a year there, just chillin and enjoying life. I get fast, cheap internet, and order groceries, do my taxes and doctors appointment online.

Tell me again how I’m suffering without poorly insulated detached houses, HSA, spam calls, an SUV to drive myself to the bakery, school shooting drills, healthcare bills, homeless people rejected by society, and that circus you have for a government right now?

by senko

5/31/2026 at 7:06:01 AM

Agree with you. Americans have been brainwashed in thinking they absolutely need a 3000 sqft house, 2 SUVs and pay for the absolute best private schools for kids. It's the ultimate rat race.

As someone that has lived in both Europe and America, the quality of life you get in America for the amount of money you spend is hilariously bad. It is easy to make money though.

In Europe the quality of life you get for cheap is by default excellent. It is so difficult to make money though,

by siren2026

5/31/2026 at 5:45:21 PM

> In Europe the quality of life you get for cheap is by default excellent.

I am been to Europe on many occasions and homes (actual homes, not cramped apartments) are not cheap at all relative to incomes. I am sure the peace of mind provided by universal healthcare and generous welfare programs is nice, but that's not how you build a strong economy. Incentives are distorted when you don't need a (good) job to live well enough. You get mediocrity, lacluster growth, poor customer service, and the other things Europe is known for. That's why you see people from all over the world come to America to build their businesses.

by drnick1

5/29/2026 at 11:08:53 PM

Living in a cookie-cutter suburb full of parking lots and strip malls is not, in fact, a higher standard of life than living in a small town in Europe. The fact that we've somehow convinced ourselves that it is says absolutely nothing good about American postwar culture.

by tikhonj

5/29/2026 at 10:28:27 PM

First time I heard Northern Italy compared to Soviet Russia, but my fault for discussing this stuff with Americans, trying to pass people as poor because they only have one car.

Did you know that life expectancy in US is 5-7 years lower than Western Europe? But sure, do go on about "first world" countries.

by sph

5/30/2026 at 5:28:15 AM

plenty of people in Prague living on that income without car, I would really like to see how is suburban America quality of life incredibly higher than Prague LOL

enjoy your museums, hospitals, free schools and playgrounds in walking distance, almost free public transport, tons of supermarkets in walking distance, etc. in suburban America

by Markoff

5/30/2026 at 8:12:35 AM

I do not own a car.

I (/we) own outright a small home.

I am happy that I do not need to own a car (in a London UK suburb).

I am happy that I do not need to heat or maintain a large building.

Our outgoings are low. One child is already at university and the other will be soon.

My perception of a common US notion of a 'good' life only intersects somewhat with mine, and I have spent a reasonable amount of time in various US locations from SF to NYC via the midwest, etc.

by DamonHD

5/30/2026 at 5:26:20 AM

25000€ a year is basically Czech average salary

I would really like to hear how is quality of life in suburban America incredibly higher ROFL

owning a car certainly isn't tied to income, quite the opposite, poorer the person more cars they own in their junkyard

by Markoff

5/30/2026 at 5:48:24 AM

It's quite simple really. In a place where $5,000+ monthly incomes are common, people can afford more things, and this generally means a higher quality of life. Granted, many necessities like housing are also more expensive in high income areas, but keep in mind that American homes are generally much larger than in Europe. And things like AC and clothes dryers are taken for granted.

by drnick1

5/30/2026 at 11:16:12 AM

> And things like AC and clothes dryers are taken for granted.

Not sure where you get your impression of Europe, but if you feel amenities like these are not standard, it’s a few decades out of date.

North Europeans traditionally didn’t need AC, but everywhere where it gets hot - which is everywhere now - they got them installed. Very few buildings with integrated HVAC systems for the entire buildings tho, mostly independent units.

by senko

5/30/2026 at 12:34:24 PM

yeah it's funny, actually in poor Bulgaria pretty much every apartment has AC, so AC is certainly not anything to brag about, even the poorest people have it

clothes dryers are just plain stupid waste of space, consume lot of energy/money, I've had washing machine with dryer, pretty much never used dryer after seeing how long it takes to dry the clothes while wasting electricity, new washing machine I bought without dryer

by Markoff

5/30/2026 at 6:53:13 AM

got it - for you quality of life = house full of useless things

for other people it's usually - lots of green, clean air, museums, cultural events, activities, accessible healthcare, accessible education, playgrounds/supermarkets/schools in walking distance, great public transport, no need to drive everywhere in empty metal box, etc.

I wonder why European cities are winning always charts of best places to live and not some generic US suburb??

by Markoff

5/29/2026 at 6:01:12 PM

Yeah, I was just living off $1k/month in Brazil just to see if it was possible. It definitely is. And was in a beautiful, safe area.

by Rover222

5/29/2026 at 7:11:11 PM

Of course you felt amazing living off US$1k/mo in Brazil - the average per capita household income in Brazil is less than US$450/mo and a salary of $700/mo puts you in the top 10% [0].

Basically, you enjoyed feeling rich in a country where the vast majority are getting screwed.

And this is what I as well as my SO's family (middle and working class Vietnamese in VN) hate about digital nomads - y'all don't realize that you end up perpetuating the same inequality you try to run away from, and feels deeply colonial in nature as the countries y'all end up in had histories of being colonized and stratified.

You get to travel everywhere because you have a strong passport. They don't because their passport is weak and their salaries are low.

You will always be promoted to the top of the social pecking order thanks to your passport. They will always be relegated to the bottom and attacked by politicans as "stealing jobs" or "changing demographics" thanks to their passport.

[0] - https://g1.globo.com/economia/noticia/2026/05/08/veja-quanto...

by alephnerd

5/30/2026 at 2:01:17 AM

Uh, ok, guess I'll keep my dirty American dollars out of poor economies. That should really help them out.

by eudamoniac

5/30/2026 at 2:12:06 AM

> That should really help them out

Yeah, it does if you're a tourist.

It's been documented [0] for [1] decades [2] how tourism induces a form of Dutch Disease [3].

Tourism dollars are inherently extractive, as that is foreign capital that is not redeployed into capacity building and also leads to premature inflation which prices out less extractive industries. Additonally, most tourist led economies lead to additonal economic stratification, as most countries tourism industries are deeply regulated and tend to be captured by pre-existing economic players (eg. Thailand, Brazil) which only exacerbates social stratification and economic inequality.

A great example of this is Thailand versus Malaysia and Vietnam - overtourism in Thailand led to an inflation in low skill services jobs associated with the tourism industry at the expense of manufacturing, which left for fellow ASEAN members Malaysia and Vietnam, both of which limited tourism and strategically targeted foreign capital to manufacturing and high value services (BPO, Software) despite Thailand historically being a peer and significantly more developed than Malaysia and Vietnam respectively.

No developing country has made the leap to becoming developed due to a tourism-led industrial policy, and the developed states that did adopt such a policy (eg. Puerto Rico, Portugal, Greece, Italy) only did so after their industrial growth spurts in the 1970s-2000s ended.

[0] - https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/lup/publication/1334498

[1] - https://wiiw.ac.at/tourism-and-economic-development-the-beac...

[2] - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3648158

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

by alephnerd

5/29/2026 at 10:44:48 PM

oh please, get over it. I supported a local old lady who airbnb'd out her guest house. I shopped at the local grocery store. and I left.

you would drop that buzzword 'colonial', as though Brazil isn't a former European colony, just like the US. And they... gasp... used slaves for much longer.

I was in the southern cone of the country, first world lifestyles there. Brazilians are proud, they'd be insulted by your savior attitude.

by Rover222

5/29/2026 at 11:07:51 PM

> I was in the southern cone of the country

Even in São Paulo the average household income is around $550/mo [0]. That said, I assume you live in Florianopolis but even then the average household income is around $520/mo [1].

> you would drop that buzzword 'colonial', as though Brazil isn't a former European colony, just like the US. And they... gasp... used slaves for much longer

I know. And clearly you're a bit thick in the head if you don't realize the ongoing political and social fissures in Brazil as a result of this.

There's a reason Lula retains such a cult following.

> I supported a local old lady who airbnb'd out her guest house

To even own a house that is Airbnb-able in a digital nomad hub in the south cone means they were better off socially and economically during the dictatorship and the messy transition back to democracy.

Nothing wrong with that, but assuming you are living a normal life there and not recognizing that your lifestyle is much better off than most people is douchey.

---

Alternatively, don't complain [2] when it's people like us or our parents who left, succeeded in the West, and are blamed for making life expensive for your types in America or Germany ;)

Being anti-immigrant yet being on an immigrant visa yourself (yes, a digital nomad is an immigrant), and while Brazilians are barred from getting a visa to the US.

Talk about hypocrisy.

[0] - https://www.metropoles.com/negocios/sp-tem-2a-maior-renda-do...

[1] - https://estado.sc.gov.br/noticias/renda-das-familias-de-sant...

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45158497

by alephnerd

5/29/2026 at 3:48:29 PM

Definitely not my first rodeo, but feel free to gloat.

by sph

5/29/2026 at 6:34:06 PM

I'm probably being overly charitable, but I would have said the same thing except in a positive context, because I've wanted to do the same thing at times.

by keeda

5/29/2026 at 4:53:58 PM

Feels like an unfair judgment of someone else's values, which have no obligation to match yours.

by staticshock

5/29/2026 at 5:34:46 PM

I think it's not a moral, but financial judgement. Unless an alternate income is achieved before that deadline, becoming destitute except for a small cottage is not a great prospect.

by ASalazarMX

5/29/2026 at 4:26:10 PM

They didn't say that they are retiring, just that they are ending their career as a software engineer.

by hobofan

5/29/2026 at 9:46:05 PM

Anyone willingly making that choice has a massive safety net protecting them (almost always family money)

by jLaForest

5/29/2026 at 4:28:09 PM

> a Erlang-like microkernel/runtime I have been designing for the past 4 years,

I don't want to step on your design process, but if you want to explore some microkernels to run beam, I can link you to mine and another one that I ran into recently. Asking before linking, because sometimes you'd rather not look.

by toast0

5/29/2026 at 5:42:43 PM

1. Please do link your microkernel, I'm very curious to learn from other people working in this space

2. I'm not exactly looking to recreate the BEAM. I'm building a message-passing microkernel built on my interpretation of capabilities: they replace PIDs in a way that they basically become akin to object pointers, with all the extensibility and security. It's a pretty wild prototype, with a ring-0 kernel that's less than 2k lines which only deals with paging and interrupts, and the userspace is one-scheduler-per-core and a stackless design on a linear address space. A design goal is MAXIMUM performance and simplicity: in most cases a sending a message to another capability is no heavier than a function call, unless the destination is currently busy.

Processes just export a

    void handle(void *cap_private_state, msg_t message)

entrypoint instead of a main function. I just want to see where I can take this idea.

by sph

5/29/2026 at 6:34:48 PM

Your idea sounds fun, too!

Here's my thing: Crazierl https://github.com/russor/crazierl/ demo (desktop recommended) at https://crazierl.org/demo/

Here's the other one: Tyn https://github.com/tyn-os/kernel

I haven't studied Tyn, I think from the high level we both have the same goals; enough kernel to run BEAM, and then BEAM does the rest. I wrote in C because learning Rust and bare metal OS stuff at the same time seemed like too much. Crazierl does much less in my kernel; my kernel handles time keeping, memory paging, interrupts, fallback console output, and a simple read only filesystem. Tyn includes device drivers and tcp/ip in the kernel as well. Crazierl runs BEAM compiled for FreeBSD and Tyn runs BEAM compiled for Linux (musl). Crazierl is x86 32-bit, Tyn is x86 64-bit.

IMHO, regardless of what your eventual target is, I would consider running on x86 with bios boot, because it means you can run in v86, which is handy for sending links to demos.

I think building a multiboot capable OS and relying on other people's loaders is a good step to reduce effort.

Starting with serial console also helps a little. VGA text isn't too bad, but UEFI (or other) framebuffer means you need a font renderer and all that. That might be fun and interesting, but it doesn't need to be in the critical path.

If you want to run on hardware, test frequently. Most of the emulators aren't super accurate in early boot, and let you get away with stuff that won't run on hardware. Serial console helps here, because on a pc, writing to the serial port is easy and your output will stay in the terminal even if the pc reboots.

Fully automated PXE boot is helpful too, if you get into a boot loop, it just keeps pulling the latest, and you can push a new binary and wait for the output without having to touch the device under test. Also handy once you get it working a bit... just reboot to pull in new code.

by toast0

5/29/2026 at 7:02:30 PM

I built an x86 kernel 25 years ago at this point, this time around I chose RISC-V because it's much simpler to get it running, and speed of iteration is paramount on a prototype. There's less documentation but much less cruft. I eventually would like to try porting it to x86, and also to run the same programs — unmodified — on Linux. My first prototype was on Linux actually, but trying to figure out how to fit userspace preemptive scheduling with async IO/io_uring and the complexities of signal handling was literally more complicated than just writing a kernel.

Thank you for the links! I'll have a look when I have a moment in the next weeks and I might send you an email to discuss this further

by sph

5/31/2026 at 7:10:30 AM

this impromptu discussion on a completely random thread is why i love HN.

by siren2026

5/29/2026 at 3:38:38 PM

Good luck to you. I did something similar, with a big list of projects on my backlog (including a game) and just burned out in a totally different way after 8 months. I found for me, I cannot do things in a vacuum, it has no meaning. There needs to be a deadline, an urgency, a customer problem... otherwise it all just felt pointless.

I ended up coming back as a contractor, but have repeated the cycle 3-4 times since then. It's a strange one.

by thesamethrowawa

5/29/2026 at 3:44:31 PM

Maybe I know what you mean: after burning out 6 years ago, I have managed to dedicate 3-4h per day to work, and I didn’t know what to do with all the free time I had. It was excruciating. It made my recovery longer than it had to be. After reading a lot of philosophy and being patient with myself, I have found a source of creativity within me that regular office hours had completely eradicated in my adult years.

All this to say, a person trained to work for someone else 40 hours a week for all their adult life is not able to self-direct and find meaning without a lot of introspection and readjusting.

by sph

5/29/2026 at 9:24:22 PM

Your last sentence resonates deeply with my current experience. Would you care to expand a bit more on what helped you find a way to self direct and find meaning within yourself?

by vankusss

5/29/2026 at 10:40:48 PM

I hoped no one asked because I'm not sure I have an easy answer. When I'm saying it's taken me 6 years to get out of burn out, I'm not joking. That, which includes 2 years sabbatical and as many years in therapy.

My only advice is: if you burn out, go through the entire process. You only get one chance to figure out what actually is meaningful to you, and the answer will most likely require you to upend you life (or you wouldn't have burned out in the first place). Read Carl Jung: he did a lot of research on midlife crises, and the enormous significance of middle age (the 30-40 years old range) in our quest for meaning.

In my very personal case, meaning was figuring out I'm meant to build things, on my own, at my own pace, and I owe the world to gift it with the vision that only I possess. Meaning for me happens to be one part about becoming a fully creative person, and one part about being selfless with my work, for I am not entitled to the result (see karma yoga). Your mileage might certainly vary.

Feel free to send me an email if you want to talk more about it.

by sph

5/29/2026 at 6:59:56 PM

Mad respect for his work. Love his writing. But no, i'm not buying the story of going offline, especially not with a trending hackernews post and a typewritten letter to the internet. When one is done with something, they're done. Cold turkey. like "Fck this sht, i'm out". If someone notices that you are missing, they'll ask, and you can give them your spiel about being AI-Amish or whatever.

Even if you ignore all that, I think you just need a break, rest, recover, find something else in life and move on. The whole thing about "life was better in the past" is just plain non-sense, simply because the past, for all we know, extends to infinity. Why 1980 and not 1890? or 1590? the inquisition? maybe the crusades? or maybe the pharohs? If you believe in biblical tales then how about being in the great flood? or being one of the pharoh soldiers that die after the sea moses split closes on them? or one of the skulls in gengis khan's tower of skulls?

You can read Steven Pinker's "Better angels of our nature" and get a good sense of how far along have we come.

by dbgrman

5/29/2026 at 7:05:13 PM

This was well written but it does sort of read as a guy bragging about his wealth and creativity. Good for him but when I leave tech I'm going to be a little less bombastic about it.

by asdfman123

5/29/2026 at 7:43:46 PM

100%. I get it -- I'm _also_ burned out on social media, AI, screens, the treadmill of the tech industry, etc.

But you can just stop doing those specific things. Delete your social media accounts. Put a screen time timer on your phone. Continue to work on your hobby projects or work projects without AI. There is a middle ground without going full "1980s tech Amish life conversion". Email, text messaging, Maps, basic websites, etc are all still super useful and generally non-harmful. You can still perfectly-well enjoy analog hobbies like typewriters, vinyl, film photography, etc _alongside_ common-sense modern tech.

And you look dumb to anyone paying attention when you launch a multi-pronged social media moment to tell the world that you don't think social media is worth using. It's kind of sad, like someone making a huge deal about "this is my L A S T cigarette everyone!", "this is my L A S T drink!" but all their friends are kind of cringing inside.

Also sad that he feels the need for online promotion of his paper zine about fully offline life.

by latkin

5/29/2026 at 3:32:34 PM

Impressive to take such a stand, doing something they believe is the right thing. The home depot line says a lot though. I guess tech has been good enough to provide some kind of economic cushion that you can retain a reasonable life style as home depot as your only source of income.

I would (genuinely) be interested in a follow up on how that works out for them. I've "threatened" to do this many times, but my partner points out that if I thought tech management was full of BS, wait until I am getting ordered about by retail industry management while working the shop floor, dead on my feet, penalised for taking too long a toilet break. I think reality could come down hard here.

by thesamethrowawa

5/29/2026 at 3:55:32 PM

From 2024-2025 I worked as a firefighter instructor while running my own tech business, and after two years I decided I was done instructing. I could not handle working on my feet in the pouring rain, getting endlessly hassled for doing a task by the book but not the way the lead instructor likes it done, and then having to spend my lunch break listening to sexist and racist "humor" from my coworkers. Also getting exposed to seriously toxic materials at a radioactive building. Coworkers who all had the thinnest skin and most sensitive egos I've ever seen. All to get paid less in an 8 hour day than I make an hour at my business. It just wasn't worth it, even though I loved being there for the students and helping them grow. When I realized I could make more growing organic veggies in my yard than I could at the training center, I made the call to quit.

by JackMorgan

5/29/2026 at 4:03:37 PM

> I think reality could come down hard here.

I have worked retail before, and to add onto the things you put it was the lack of problem solving for me that was absolutely mind numbing. Sure there were the little "problems" to solve of shelving, stock order, tidiness etc but it doesn't push the brain (and maybe they're done with that part, which is fair), but until you've experienced it I would be very surprised if this person finds retail better than tech.

by properbrew

5/29/2026 at 4:01:22 PM

Even just having to clock in on time is something many tech folk don't really have to bear.

But I don't think it's charitable to assume the author doesn't understand what he is getting himself into. I'd rather give him the benefit of the doubt and increase my admiration for his commitment accordingly.

by causal

5/29/2026 at 5:01:07 PM

>that you can retain a reasonable life style as home depot as your only source of income.

that's pretty presumptuous I think. He says in the piece he is an Orthodox Christian who wants to build a offline community in Pennsylvania where he lives. The average salary at HD is 70k, that's the household income in the state.

I know a bunch of Orthodox folks in the US and their idea of a reasonable lifestyle doesn't include two Teslas and three holidays, they do just fine on less than that without a tech cushion.

It does seem a bit tiring to me whenever seeing articles about people moving out of tech that some people seem convinced they cannot live 'reasonable lives' without earning more than 95% of the population.

by Barrin92

5/29/2026 at 5:17:21 PM

>It does seem a bit tiring to me whenever seeing articles about people moving out of tech that some people seem convinced they cannot live 'reasonable lives' without earning more than 95% of the population.

Fair, but another way of looking at it is - since the 1980s the income - cost of living gap has steadily increased, such that "median income" translates to a much more frugal lifestyle than the name implies, to put it euphemistically. Its not like people work multiple blue collar jobs because they want/love to.

by lbrito

5/29/2026 at 8:01:40 PM

> I know a bunch of Orthodox folks in the US and their idea of a reasonable lifestyle doesn't include two Teslas and three holidays, they do just fine on less than that without a tech cushion.

I'm not talking about Teslas and holidays. Where I am, an equivalent job would really be living on the edges in terms of the basics: rent, groceries, healthcare, energy, saving for retirement.

> It does seem a bit tiring to me whenever seeing articles about people moving out of tech...

It's tiring to me that tech workers really have no idea how well they live compared to people working retail full time - to the extend that it gets romanticised like this. It's incredibly patronising. Which is why I would be interested in a follow up on wether the reality matched the "dream".

by thesamethrowawa

5/29/2026 at 9:39:33 PM

I used to be a barber before I became a software developer, I figure I earned about as much as someone at a large retailer, this isn't patronizing, I'm speaking from experience. You can actually live a normal life on a regular salary, earning 18-20 bucks an hour in a middle of the pack or slightly below average cost of living state is not some horrific condition. That's just how regular people live.

That said a middle aged guy with college education and 10+ years as an engineering manager I very much suspect is not going to literally stack shelves anyway, and store managers at the big retailers earn a pretty handsome salary. Working what might be the most common, white collar middle class job is not some horror story in the making.

by Barrin92

5/29/2026 at 3:53:13 PM

> I guess tech has been good enough to provide some kind of economic cushion that you can retain a reasonable life style as home depot as your only source of income.

This is a nice understatement. What we see here is privilege at work and phrasing it in a likable manner. "Tech" folks appear to be particularly vulnerable to this type of framing.

by beernet

5/29/2026 at 3:22:09 PM

Hi Fellow HN tech community, I’ve had the honor to digitally interact with Chad Whitacre, and from the first exchange to the subsequent ones over the months, he’s a good human. Chad provided a healthy, human-first approach to the most fundamental areas of free software. He possesses a deep understanding of how we all do better together. He is a person to celebrate for all the ways he was and is. Chad made our online lives richer by his ways of being. Cheers to Chad and his continued living as a good human!

by rancar2

5/29/2026 at 4:07:58 PM

While I admire his commitment to his ideals, I find some of this veers into an uncomfortable fanaticism, especially the remarks praising the savage acts of violence committed by the Sentinelese (which I find particularly odd considering the author's professed religion). I doubt the Amish (who apply technology selectively and intelligently) would appreciate being compared to them either; the Sentinelese are not preserving a valuable way of life, they're primitive hunter-gathering barbarians, and anybody can "return" to that way of life any time they want by taking a one-way plane ticket and camping out somewhere where they cannot be found.

Additionally, the fact that this announcement is a scan of a typewritten letter, despite the fact that he has communicated in text-form on BlueSky since the letter's authoring, feels a tad performative to me.

by GaryBluto

5/29/2026 at 4:31:19 PM

>praising the savage acts of violence committed by the Sentinelese (which I find particularly odd considering the author's professed religion). I doubt the Amish (who apply technology selectively and intelligently) would appreciate being compared to them either

This feels like a purposeful misreading. The author is using hyperbole to vent about their feelings on where we are right now in tech. The idea being there will still be some vestiges of humanity left who can live without any of the advancements from the Industrial Revolution onward because it may all disappear in a calamity.

>taking a one-way plane ticket and camping out somewhere where they cannot be found.

Camping isn't building a sustainable human community. Trust me. We go camping in the White Mountains every summer and I can tell you based on the campground bathrooms alone that is not a society.

by tclancy

5/29/2026 at 4:36:03 PM

> Camping isn't building a sustainable human community. Trust me.

My point is that if the Sentinelese were gone, the primitive lifestyle would not forever be lost to time. If somebody finds enough people willing to join them, it would be possible to found an off-grid commune somewhere.

> We go camping in the White Mountains every summer and I can tell you based on the campground bathrooms alone that is not a society.

I doubt anybody going camping in the White Mountains intends to found a society.

by GaryBluto

5/29/2026 at 8:50:57 PM

May I introduce you to the Free State Project.

Also, I don’t think the Sentinelese intended to found a society, given they most likely lack the concept for the concept for that.

by tclancy

5/30/2026 at 3:10:20 AM

My reading was that the calamity is already in progress.

by andai

5/29/2026 at 4:20:54 PM

I took it as rhetorical, not a literal call for violence.

That said, I appreciate you noting their name as it gave me something to google/learn.

by elicash

5/29/2026 at 4:26:35 PM

Regardless whether or not it was rhetorical, I found it off-putting, especially when the Amish (a far superior example of the point he is trying to convey) are mentioned in the same article.

by GaryBluto

5/29/2026 at 4:57:31 PM

If I were more -- or even at all -- versed in the geopolitics of the Andaman Islands, I may have found it more off-putting than I did. That's a fair enough point. If you're offended by this, that's understandable and I don't blame you.

What I was speaking about was more the claim that the author had veered into fanaticism. That doesn't seem true. He's working at Home Depot not becoming a hunter-gatherer let alone murdering anybody.

by elicash

5/29/2026 at 7:06:57 PM

>barbarians

I didn't realize people still used this word to apply to human beings.

by djeastm

5/29/2026 at 8:06:18 PM

Can you think of an appropriate application of the word "barbarian" that doesn't refer to humans?

by GaryBluto

5/29/2026 at 8:06:58 PM

> friendly neighborhood murderers

by dilyevsky

5/29/2026 at 9:16:21 PM

What word would you use for parents who sell their own children? Or people who engage in cannibalism? Or people who practice infanticide? "Barbaric", perhaps? I'm not talking about the Sentinelese, I'm talking about other, well, barbarians.

by booleandilemma

5/29/2026 at 7:35:18 PM

despite the fact that he has communicated in text-form on BlueSky since the letter's authoring

Lol thanks, that answers my question. Whenever these "I'm leaving tech" posts come up I'm amused that the website is still online, they're still tweeting, and there's no indication that they've left anything at all. Our society rewards speaking out too much. It's especially difficult to stop if a big part of your existence is networking, and this guy seems to be all about networking.

Just look at all those socials:

https://chadwhitacre.com/

by booleandilemma

5/29/2026 at 3:19:14 PM

Software dev is so much infested with mediocre people who follow any line dictated by management and politics and force others to do it.

If CEOs were smart, they'd use the AI craze to identify the AI boosters and then fire them all. This will increase productivity and save them way more money than a Clown Code subscription.

by 34187asf

5/29/2026 at 3:01:23 PM

This resonates with me as well. For more reasons than one: with the rise of AI (Mythos is but a pale forerunner) digital security — and by extension, digital privacy — has ceased to exist. The bomber will always win. The only way to win is not to play.

by elliotbnvl

5/29/2026 at 3:33:01 PM

I don’t think is true - the endgame of software security is very secure atleast at the code level. I.e. fully clean supply chain, no memory safety issues, maybe even formally provable code.

Right now we are in a very unstable place but it might not be permanent!

by ianm218

5/29/2026 at 4:21:00 PM

As long as the costs (monetary and otherwise) of breaches are not (by and large) hitting shareholders and the C level, why would they pay for better security? And why would politicians depending on campaign contributions of tech companies force the mentioned groups to take on the full responsibility by regulating them?

by generic92034

5/29/2026 at 4:56:47 PM

So full disclosure I am working on this but my thought is basically this:

* Make Rust (or similar memory safe language) drop in replacements for C/C++ code

* the stick is Claude mythos and the like - scares CISO’s, shareholders, etc into urgency

* the carrot is - improve performance significantly where possible. Either through straight up better code OR through customizing hot paths for companies specific use cases

So for companies running large workloads it could be economical in two ways

by ianm218

5/29/2026 at 5:13:16 PM

I am not sure anything is scaring anyone into urgency as long as breaches are no great issue for the company (in contrast to their customers and/or affected third parties).

Also, more secure code might be performing better, it might also perform worse. I am not sure the concepts are completely orthogonal, but there is at least no clear causality.

by generic92034

5/29/2026 at 3:40:13 PM

That's an optimistic take I haven't heard before, love the idea a lot. Wake me up when we get there though...

by elliotbnvl

5/29/2026 at 4:58:12 PM

This end state isn’t guaranteed to be clear people need to go out and work on it.

by ianm218

5/30/2026 at 10:20:39 PM

I recently left my 25 year software career to attend violin making school. I am literally having the best time of my life (I was also extremely fortunate to have lived relatively cheaply the past 25 years so it's not hard for me to downshift my expenses).

I think the biggest thing I love about violin making is respect for expertise. Violin making is not a whole lot changed in the past 300 years, though we do use a lot more modern tools for evaluating acoustics and wood properties. In tech, things change so quickly that expertise is made obsolete very fast, and people are generally cast aside. I've heard a lot over my career that "any good software engineer can learn a new language in a week", and while that's partially true, real depth of expertise in any framework took much longer. All that depth of expertise has become incredibly devalued. And I've also heard a lot about how senior engineers are now more valuable with AI, as they are better able to orchestrate agents and detect hallucinations. That may be true, but I feel like the nature of the job has changed so drastically that it's just not something I would enjoy doing day to day.

I also think the thing that is fundamentally different about this paradigm shift is that it is younger people who are (unsurprisingly) most against it. E.g. when I started my career, web apps were just taking off, and a lot of older engineers at the time found the shift from native apps to be relatively daunting. While that may also be the case with AI, it's a lot of younger folks who are most against it, and that wasn't the case when the Internet really exploded in the late 90s.

by hn_throwaway_99

5/29/2026 at 4:02:24 PM

I overlapped a bit with Chad in 2015, as he was navigating a professional transition. I wasn't in an especially high role back then- just a guy in the back of the room.

In the times I saw him since, I consistently saw someone who thought hard every day about how to help others, and didn't lose sight of the human element. Sentry worked hard to create a viable business, without losing sight of open source goals. (you can see some of his efforts at https://blog.sentry.io/authors/chad-whitacre/ )

I tell my younger colleagues to do the best work they can sustainably do... but too often in this field, the big roles become too intense to be sustained forever. I hope his new role shows him the same warmth and support that he tried to put out there for others.

by abought

5/29/2026 at 3:04:54 PM

This reminds me of the movie Edge of Tomorrow where the main character decides he doesn't want to fight the aliens today and instead goes into town to get a drink at the pub. The aliens still get him.

Robots and stuff are going to start appearing everywhere soon. He's not going to like that. Hoodlums are probably going to start burglarizing his house with their robot accomplices. Then he won't be able to go outside because he doesn't have a robot bodyguard. His UBI would have paid him to stay inside and stare at the wall, but he won't sign up for that cause it requires a smartphone and an identity implant. Probably wind up homeless with a handwritten sign, "Destroy All Clankers! Anything (without an embedded microchip) helps."

by narrator

5/29/2026 at 3:28:24 PM

What a wild dystopic vision of the future you have.

by drakythe

5/29/2026 at 3:19:04 PM

If things get as much as 10% as chaotic as you predict, there will be massive turmoil and the "Destroy all Clankers" party will actually be the one in charge.

by lou1306

5/29/2026 at 3:20:43 PM

Yeah, except we'll be a colony of China and those T800s will be on every street corner cause we didn't want to build datacenters and couldn't find a place to do yucky unaesthetically pleasing stuff like refining rare earth minerals and other primary industries anywhere that wasn't China.

by narrator

5/29/2026 at 3:53:05 PM

Those industries have been reshoring for more than 5 years.

by lurk2

5/29/2026 at 3:27:48 PM

What's worth stealing, to a dude with a robot?

Chances are, whatever it is won't be found in a regular residential property.

by Earw0rm

5/29/2026 at 4:03:25 PM

A cheap drone makes casing burglary targets much easier

by mcmcmc

5/29/2026 at 4:15:44 PM

Wait till there are organ harvesting bots. Only half joking, I am afraid.

by generic92034

5/29/2026 at 3:32:52 PM

Funny you should mention robots burglars. I just read this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317093

by Hnrobert42

5/29/2026 at 3:49:23 PM

Ta da, this is the kind of future that will become the actual one, to everyone's surprise in the comment section.

by thomastraum

5/29/2026 at 3:29:46 PM

I'm with the Tal Shiar on this one

by abdulhaq

5/29/2026 at 4:09:12 PM

So exactly as we "modern" people are to the Amish, yet the Amish persist in its way of life.

by edgarvaldes

5/29/2026 at 3:31:34 PM

Violence is always an option. In many cases, it's the only real option.

by tilltheend

5/29/2026 at 3:52:04 PM

burglars generally don't need technology and this likely won't change soon

with tracking in laptops/phones/airtags/etc it's more likely to be the enemy than the tool or even the object of acquisition

even in 2026 the most sophisticated stuff we get are wifi jammers and keyfob intercepts and that's still like the top <1% of sophistication, most of petty theft is all the classic smash and grab because desperate people don't have the bandwidth for sophistication

relevant: https://xkcd.com/538/

I'm sure we'll get hackers trying to hack your home assistant bot to steal your credit card numbers though

by micromacrofoot

5/29/2026 at 4:18:54 PM

"Predictions are difficult. Especially about the future."

by HeyLaughingBoy

5/29/2026 at 3:18:44 PM

We have a choice right now on whether that world exists or not

by reactordev

5/29/2026 at 4:10:19 PM

Exactly. People make this technology with impunity. If they felt repercussions for working with the “bad guys”, it would give them pause before accepting a job with Flock, Andruil, Anthropic, etc.

by georgeburdell

5/29/2026 at 4:35:38 PM

I have 3 weeks left, but outside of work I've already been divorced from anything technological invented this century. I've been living in a log cabin in the woods for over a quarter century. This essay does hit home.

21 days left. I don't plan to look back.

by bregma

5/29/2026 at 6:56:24 PM

First of all, congratulations!

Second, I'm fascinated by this. If you don't mind my asking, what kind of work do you do in tech? And do you have a family (spouse, kids, etc)?

I'd just be curious to hear anything else you'd like to share about your lifestyle.

by senordevnyc

5/29/2026 at 3:12:34 PM

The ideal career path

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1jgcfx9/pe...

by fullshark

5/29/2026 at 3:57:29 PM

I've been smartphone free for over 5 years now. It's been liberating, but its just not enough. I still use my computer to doomscroll for an hour or 2 a day. It takes me hours of hiking alone in the woods afterwards too unwind all the stress and distraction that comes with being connected.

Ironically right around February I started to have similar thoughts as Chad, that perhaps I should become Neo Amish as he calls it. Like Chad, I like disconnected, non-AI technology just fine. But anything that spies on me or tries to modify my behavior needs to go.

Maybe I'll mail Chad a letter and see if he wants to be my penpal.

by webdoodle

5/29/2026 at 3:45:10 PM

I got into teaching several years ago, leaving industry behind. It's great! I had gotten a little bit tired of programming other people's stuff. It wasn't the programming itself that was dull, but I found most products that people wanted were actually kind of boring and formulaic. And none of them really worked for the betterment of humanity.

Teaching is a massive challenge. The stuff that I teach in computer science I find to be relatively easy after 20 years in industry, but figuring out how to teach it effectively? That's really, really difficult. Such a great challenge to be able to sink my teeth into—so rewarding. And it's for a good cause.

I'm not opposed to going back to industry work. I'd probably use genAI to get a bunch to get stuff done, too, even though I don't use it for my personal projects. But it would have to be some work that I believed in, that was doing some good in the world. I can imagine working for the county, say, or for a non-profit.

by beej71

5/29/2026 at 5:11:30 PM

How did you transition from tech to teaching?

by jebarker

5/29/2026 at 9:17:06 PM

It was a bunch of factors, some forced.

I had a company I'd co-founded with a friend of mine, and Google would feed us work (in advertising, of course). It was getting old, and then Google terminated the program we were working under. I just couldn't get enthusiastic about searching for more clients in that field, so I floated for a bit.

During that time, I started doing ad-hoc free classes as part of a local meetup. And I networked with people at the local community college and state university. Taught a couple one-off courses as an adjunct (they always want adjuncts).

In the meantime, someone who was working for a startup bootcamp found some of my writing and reached out asking if I wanted to work there. So I joined that as an instructor.

And that worked for a while, but then the school and I began to disagree on the direction the curriculum was taking. And I decided it was time to move on. I resigned the position and floated for a bit.

Then, fortuitously, a 9-month contract (with benefits) instructor position opened up at the state university, and I went for it. And got it! I've been there 4 years now.

As for how I do teaching, I write a lot of tutorials. Hundreds of thousands of words of practice. I try to come up with effective plans, and I reflect on what worked and what didn't. I watch other instructors and copy the good stuff. I read books on instruction. I interview past students. I talk to people in industry.

I like programming because I enjoy optimization problems. And teaching is still an optimization problem. "How do I get students to realize durable learning with minimum instruction?" It's just that now what we're "programming" are squishy, non-deterministic humans. They don't always get it immediately right. :) But I love working on how to be more effective as a teacher. I think about it all day, every day.

by beej71

5/29/2026 at 10:33:33 PM

Thanks for the great answer and practical steps involved in the transition.

by jebarker

5/29/2026 at 9:03:52 PM

And even more importantly, how do you make a living teaching?

by oleggromov

5/29/2026 at 9:55:02 PM

Like the OP, I lived well within my means my whole life, so I'm doing OK overall. Not enough to retire today, but enough to work for less than my capitalistic potential, and I'm happy to trade 3 months off during the summer for not getting paid at this point.

I was also lucky to buy this house near market minimum so my mortgage is low. We buy virtually everything used and rarely spring for expensive fun stuff (except travel). My car is 27 years old (purchased new), gets 37 MPG, and I do routine maintenance myself. I commute on a $200 bicycle.

And I'm lucky to be GenX so I was able to navigate a relative sane economy during the majority of my work years, and my college was 5x cheaper than it is now (inflation adjusted). (When I tell my students my junior college charged $6/unit when I went there, their brains simply reject that information out of hand.)

Also, CS instructors can often command a higher salary since they're looking at a MASSIVE paycut to move out of industry into a college salary scale. And it was really hard to recruit near the COVID peak when I was hired. So I get paid pretty well for an instructor, probably 45% of what I could earn in industry. :) Part of that is made up for with a pension, good health insurance, and unpaid summers off. (That's actually a double-edged sword. Your entire time-off schedule is set from above every year with zero flexibility. I accrue zero days of PTO annually.)

Working for private schools pays more, but the salad days of the online school are behind us, currently.

by beej71

5/29/2026 at 2:47:25 PM

thank you for this. what a sacred journey you're embarking on. i hope to follow you - talking with a close friend now about becoming an elevator mechanic. my wife is pregnant so i have to find a profession that comes reasonably close to tech salaries. i've been writing poetry by hand. i think the world you envision is possible, and closer.

by mrmarket

5/29/2026 at 3:06:17 PM

Do not do this until your youngest child is at least 4.

There is no profession better matching what women in western countries expect from a co-parent than tech. The money first and foremost, but the flexibility to work (more accurately, pretend to work) remotely, too.

Let me reiterate:

For your marriage, do not do this until your youngest child is at least 4.

by neutronicus

5/29/2026 at 3:11:03 PM

This would be ideal, but practically speaking, it will only become harder to switch careers and make up the income gap as I get older (i'm 30) and more people leave tech for less volatile industries. Plus, I don't think we'll be one and done re: kids. I don't think waiting is necessarily a smart long-term move given rising anti-tech sentiment among workers, even if it would be better to wait until the perfect age from a lifestyle perspective. This is just my opinion.

by mrmarket

5/29/2026 at 3:53:53 PM

I guess it depends on how the pay actually compares.

If the tech salary is more than the trade salary, every year you hold on is more runway for the eventual transition. Even if it takes you longer to get into the new thing because you were slow jumping ship, the extra runway might cover the difference.

Obviously I've had similar thoughts to the ones you're having. But this is a pretty cushy gig and I don't think leaving it before they make me is the right decision.

by neutronicus

5/29/2026 at 3:10:32 PM

As someone who changed careers as my youngest was born - hard agree.

by shigawire

5/29/2026 at 3:09:40 PM

Incel logic for relationships. This isn't how people actually work. Lost my job, considering career switch, marriage and baby are fine

by tayo42

5/29/2026 at 3:16:47 PM

Everyone has different situations and different level of risk.

If u lost your job already, u didn't choosingly give up a stable(don't know u, so guessing) job as the other person alludes (don't know their situation so people guessing here).

So if u had a stable good paying job, giving it up to start something new while having a new kid can be very hard .. but doable. Still I'll advised.

If u lost your job, based on job market, career switch makes total sense as you need to help provide and a career switch may provide a better or stable opp.

Many people have successful home life/family life with no financial stability or even a job altogether...

by sergers

5/29/2026 at 3:33:04 PM

> Everyone has different situations and different level of risk.

that's true, and also why it's prudent to not go around giving unsolicited family advice to strangers.

also it's why, when you're talking about one particular woman you've never met, you should keep the demographic insights you think you have about her to yourself.

by pasquinelli

5/29/2026 at 5:21:29 PM

If you start a post talking about what you think western women value and then continue with the idea that women just want to be taken care of by a man, their partner your world view is distorted by garbage information.

Healthy and stable relationships sre built on care and being good people, not what you're job provides.

by tayo42

5/29/2026 at 6:59:54 PM

> continue with the idea that women just want to be taken care of by a man

I don't think I took this position!

by neutronicus

5/29/2026 at 3:21:43 PM

important context for me is that layoffs keep eating my company every 6 months or so, meanwhile the due date is fast approaching. treading shark-infested waters

by mrmarket

5/29/2026 at 3:01:43 PM

> my wife is pregnant

You're just about to become much more dependent on a stable income.

> i have to find a profession that comes reasonably close to tech salaries. i've been writing poetry by hand.

These two sentences are completely independent of each other.

Sorry to be a downer, but once you have kids shit gets real and room for idealism shrinks fast.

by karmakurtisaani

5/29/2026 at 3:15:41 PM

> my wife is pregnant >> You're just about to become much more dependent on a stable income.

I would say your priorities and what you value are about to radically change. Parenthood is very instinctual, you'll work so much harder and struggle and worry so much more than you ever have but you'll find so much more joy than you ever thought existed at the same time. Once you hold your child for the first time the only thing that will matter will be your family and that will drive your decision making from there forward.

by chasd00

5/29/2026 at 3:04:22 PM

> you're just about to become much more dependent on a stable income

would you consider the 2026 SaaS market stable? Very naive take.

> These two sentences are completely independent of each other.

They are two separate thoughts. Two thoughts that are separate can exist in one comment. They are just next to each other. The profession that comes close to tech salaries is elevator mechanic. The poetry is for my heart, which is related to this guy's post, in which he talks about leaving tech for the sake of his heart.

Not only are you a downer, but you have a highly unusual approach to parsing information.

by mrmarket

5/29/2026 at 3:21:10 PM

Typically two sentences directly following one another are related. You are missing a paragraph to separate your completely unrelated thoughts. The person you are replying to has a normal way of passing information. You need to work on how you present your information.

by Carrok

5/29/2026 at 3:38:14 PM

Aren't they related in the sense that they're not tech/SaaS/software related? "I'm looking into being an elevator mechanic; I need the money because my wife is pregnant." and then "I'm writing poetry by hand." Like, their life is going in a non-tech direction?

by hatefulmoron

5/29/2026 at 3:41:26 PM

> would you consider the 2026 SaaS market stable? Very naive take.

There is lots of stable software work outside of SaaS. Not exciting but reliable and pays decently. That's what might take priority when you start a family.

by rootusrootus

5/29/2026 at 4:34:06 PM

>once you have kids shit gets real and room for idealism shrinks fast

I get what you mean, but if there's any part of me I want to pass onto my daughter, it's my idealism. What would be the point? "Hey, I would like to get involved in this 'Next Generation of Humanity' project because I love people and think we are wonderful and can do anything. Before I go having a kid though, let me actively forget all that!"

by tclancy

5/29/2026 at 3:10:31 PM

Why is it a sacred journey? They are quitting a job at Sentry and taking one a Home Depot. As much as I value the role that Home Depot plays in society I'd never use the word "sacred" to describe the work, nor the work at any other job.

by doug_durham

5/29/2026 at 3:16:15 PM

I guess it depends on what sacred means to you. i'm not a religious person, so my definition is entirely personal, but i consider honoring yourself even when it looks like a failure to others, or even when it doesnt give you money/power etc. to be a holy act.

by mrmarket

5/29/2026 at 4:36:21 PM

I am reminded of the lesson "Some say he is a holy man. Others say he is a shithead.", from the Principia Discordia.

https://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/12.php

by buildsjets

5/29/2026 at 4:01:59 PM

brother I've thought about the tech to blue collar transition too. for me, I would choose plumbing or electrical, but it seems like 4 years of low apprentice wages are unavoidable.

by JTbane

5/29/2026 at 3:49:58 PM

Left engineering & Google on my own accord in August 2020. WFH was the catalyst that helped push me over the edge, but it was a long time coming. The underlying feeling I always had when working on programming at work versus programming at school and graduate work: I am being paid to re-type out things that many people have typed out before. As I saw waves of layoffs both pre and post LLMs, it's funny how my gut intuition led me down the right road at the right time. Always trust your gut.

by enos_feedler

5/29/2026 at 7:06:27 PM

Note to readers: I had very bad results with trusting my gut.

by cubefox

5/29/2026 at 11:03:24 PM

Can you explain?

by enos_feedler

5/30/2026 at 8:31:10 AM

Let's say it like this: at least being on the "autism spectrum" impairs the reliability of various gut intuitions.

by cubefox

5/30/2026 at 10:34:47 AM

Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for participating in this thread! I couldn't have asked for a better "retirement party" haha. I followed along all day yesterday while wrapping up the last few things at Sentry. Right as I posted my final goodbye on Slack, a friend showed up unannounced (my latest godson, in fact). We had a wonderful visit, drinking fresh iced tea on the front porch in the sunshine. What a contrast ... and a confirmation. The evening rolled on. By the time I returned to check the Slack replies, the company 'top was locked. C'est fini.

I'm now posting this from the family laptop. (If you want to see the hand-written original, you'll have to visit. ;) I'll be using it to fulfill my obligations as an Open Source Endowment board member through August. I've turned off chadwhitacre.com, and deleted (or kicked off deletions for) Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Discord, and Reddit. I've deleted one Amazon account and am working on the other (I'm pretty sure my dad's last book and author page are associated with it). I've transferred the openpath.quest domain and repos to Vlad-Stefan Harbuz, who asked if he could preserve it. I also gave him softwarecommons.com, the Czarin font, and MP4s of the five Open Path episodes to reupload so I can finish deleting my YouTube channel. (Maybe I'll burn DVDs to watch offline. Can I make VHS?) My Google account will be around as long as I need email; zetaweb.com is my last domain on auto-renew. If anyone wants to buy xmin.org or gospeldesk.{com,org}, ping me on chad@ before August. That'll subsidize 10-year renewals for my dad's memorials, whitacregreek.com and singinghome.com. Those are hosted on GitHub pages, so I won't be deleting that account. I've archived my other repos. I'll lose access if someday I'm able to delete email, which won't be until I don't need Carta anymore, at least. There's probably some other stuff that will make it hard to delete email. Wish me luck. Dang's even harder, so, here, I'm stuck. ;^)

My hope with the magazine is to recover a more humane information technology, so even though I'm leaving the Internet, I'm not leaving public life. After all, all the world's a stage, to quote a sage. Whether your own performance here has been friendly or cynical, thank you for it. This whole thread is beautiful to me, and all its little details. I love you, as much as this meatstick-manipulated textarea in the virtual realm will allow, which is not much, but not none. Hopefully some day one of you, friend or foe, finds me in the physical realm where we can vibrate air instead. I would love that! Until then, keep being HN.

by whit537

5/29/2026 at 3:13:56 PM

Chad is one of the kindest souls I've ever met. Good luck off the grid!

Also, how did he post this if he isn't using the Internet?

by __mharrison__

5/29/2026 at 4:25:48 PM

If you are that pedantic you could also ask if he is living without a mobile phone, without a car and without any modern electrical appliance phoning home. So, probably him being offline is not to be taken quite so seriously.

by generic92034

5/30/2026 at 4:10:02 AM

I'm pedantic because I'm on a website called hacker news...

by __mharrison__

5/29/2026 at 3:22:15 PM

Probably had a friend do it for him

by sciencejerk

5/29/2026 at 3:31:28 PM

Do the Amish pay non-Amish to do forbidden things for them? Asking for a friend.

by yubblegum

5/29/2026 at 4:24:17 PM

I manage the Google Maps listings for two local Amish businesses, as well as send the occasional e-mail for them when a supplier or other business reason requires they use e-mail.

They offered to pay me for my time, but I refused as I'm happy to help my neighbors. They seemed pretty uncomfortable with me helping without anything in return, so they pay me back in discounted products or labor of their own.

by newt_slowly

5/29/2026 at 3:49:01 PM

I'm not sure about "forbidden" per se but they definitely make accommodations for various things, e.g. riding as passengers in cars for long trips.

by nomadygnt

5/29/2026 at 4:12:23 PM

I am not sure what is forbidden. There was a YT video about computer they were using for business. It was stripped down OS (windows xp?) that only had office apps, or something like that.

I am unable to find the video, but here is an interesting story: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/02/25/172886170/a-co...

by stanac

5/29/2026 at 3:52:12 PM

I'm not sure if payment is involved, but I've heard Orthodox Jews can and do seek non-Jewish help when they need e.g. light switches toggled on the Sabbath.

by antonyt

5/29/2026 at 4:00:37 PM

Shabbos goy. Pete Hamill was one, and tells a good story. Snow in August, I believe, is based on his experiences.

by kayo_20211030

5/29/2026 at 3:49:12 PM

Yes. They pay folks to drive them around.

by quietsegfault

5/29/2026 at 4:46:40 PM

A friend of mine encountered a wrecked buggy on the road and drove the Amish family inside it to the hospital and saved lives.

The entire local Amish community now comes and helps him tend his property, raised him a barn.

by alchemism

5/29/2026 at 6:50:34 PM

It’s like helping a crow by giving it some food, but way cooler.

by quietsegfault

5/29/2026 at 9:55:32 PM

Some Jews do! I've been asked to turn lights off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbos_goy

by esafak

5/29/2026 at 7:20:44 PM

I finally pulled the trigger after being in tech for 21 years. 10 years at a FAANG.

I simply can’t handle the performative Machiavellian culture anymore.

I could play that game for longer, but I don’t want to. All I want is to build cool and ambitious things without any of the theatrics.

I don’t want to go offline. I just want to live a normal, modern, and peaceful life. I would go nuts without all of the comfort of modern tech, especially the high speed broadband.

by didip

5/29/2026 at 3:21:16 PM

I think we're going to see a ton of this in the coming years. A return to the 60s/70s when people were going off the grid, moving to a farm, or just disconnecting

by tims33

5/29/2026 at 3:33:50 PM

People have always done this, and always will. I don't think we'll see a lot more of it. I haven't met a lot of people who are actually happy living a very simple frugal life for very long. Maybe it will be a fad for a while, or people will do it as a sabbatical type of thing to recharge but really committing to it forever?

Then the younger generation who have never known life without AI will be entering the workforce (whatever that looks like in 10 years time), and it will just be normal.

by SoftTalker

5/29/2026 at 4:13:32 PM

You should read the book "Walden". The guy is also leaves society to live closer to nature for more or less similar reasons. But then in 1845.

by Culiper

5/29/2026 at 5:50:56 PM

It's good to keep in mind while reading Walden that Thoreau was basically a trust fund baby.

by senderista

5/29/2026 at 6:03:24 PM

Yeah I know, and his mom did his dirty laundry. Still a comfy read!

by Culiper

5/29/2026 at 4:57:06 PM

Whether man belongs into the city or wilderness is a question as old as humanity. It was pondered 4,000 years ago in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

by stephbook

5/29/2026 at 4:17:34 PM

I'm trying to figure out where the best place to do this sort of thing is, looking a few years ahead. Currently feels like the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York hits a good combination of available farmland, affordable prices, acceptable weather (I went to school near there), and so on. I love the West Coast but it's all too damn expensive.

by floren

5/29/2026 at 4:47:28 PM

Seeing some of these retirement comments, as a 49 year old developer who has been doing this since the late 1990s, I'll be honest, I can't relate. I have no interest in retiring anytime soon.

I still see a ton of frontier to explore, and personally I love AI. I've always loved writing code, but was always frustrated at how it took at trudge through learning new languages and approaches, and all of the plumbing and boilerplate it took to actually build something. I've always enjoyed having extensive breadth about many languages in addition to the few that I had extreme depth in.

In other words, I don't feel AI has taken something I love away, but has removed barriers to finally build solutions in a way that maps perfectly with my brain.

by bdcravens

5/29/2026 at 6:53:36 PM

I feel the same.

I think it really does come down to a theory I've seen here a few times: if you were the kind of developer (code artisan) for whom the code was the point, AI sucks. If you were the kind of developer (problem solver), for whom the code was just the tool at hand to solve the problem, AI is awesome.

by senordevnyc

5/29/2026 at 9:22:16 PM

And if I may cynical for a moment, there's the third category, which is probably a subset of the first: the framework gluers/bunker sitters that really felt no reason to try to expand beyond their reasonably well-paid nest.

by bdcravens

5/29/2026 at 10:02:31 PM

Great point

by senordevnyc

5/29/2026 at 3:36:51 PM

Fair play to the chap, it was refreshing to read a scan of a letter typed from a typewriter.

<joke> I just hope he doesn't start mailing packages to people in the tech industry in the next few years.</joke>

by tomaytotomato

5/29/2026 at 3:48:28 PM

> refreshing to read a scan of a letter typed from a typewrite

But it's not responsive! Hadn't he heard of mobile-first? ;)

by beej71

5/29/2026 at 3:08:42 PM

I love my current job, but also part of me thinks a Garbage Man would provide a cool experience. (I'm ok with the stinkiness). I just think about careening through the city at the crack of dawn, exploring every nook of my city. That or group fitness instructor.

by runamuck

5/29/2026 at 5:52:00 PM

Only on HN would anyone romanticize garbage collection as a career.

by senderista

5/29/2026 at 4:11:40 PM

My uncle worked as a garbage man earlier in life. He said he quit the day the trash stopped smelling bad to him.

by wincy

5/29/2026 at 7:47:32 PM

I think it is fair to dog on this for being a bit performative, like announcing you are blocking someone or quiting XYZ social media by posting on that social media. I do give some grace for trying to make an offline magazine/newsletter because I'd like to see more of that in the world, especially passion projects in general. All that to say, I think the attempt to be offline or more disconnected from some of these services is ultimately a healthy habit and is noble self improvement goal in itself. In the same way, trying and failing to quit cigarettes is ultimately healthier than not trying to quit smoking cigarettes. (I am biased; I think the way he formatted the post is quite aesthetic for what it is and would enjoy more analog to mellow out my life)

by AnEro

5/31/2026 at 3:28:01 AM

Fascinating hearing from those at the end of their careers in this era. For me personally I’m excited for what the future holds, as uncertain and scary as it can be. Nothing is guaranteed and heck, AI could really turned pear shaped but all in all it feels like an amazing to build. I hope those wrapping it up can see this isn’t simply the end for the rest of us. Just change.

by huey77

5/29/2026 at 6:19:17 PM

I love the website design. I had considered at one point blogging in illuminated manuscript, and if I can figure a good way to format/compress page scans for my blog, I will follow in the OP's footsteps.

by Darthagnon

5/29/2026 at 3:10:32 PM

Then they came for the programmers but there were no one to come for because they all have taken up farming.

by keybored

5/29/2026 at 4:56:57 PM

I'm so offline I announce my offlineness to the internet.

by thisisauserid

5/29/2026 at 4:01:24 PM

While I share the sentiment, this feels like an extreme, nuclear reaction which might be irreversible. I understand the fatigue, and resentment, but if you are about to be a family, you are going to find that typewriters aren't the acceptable mode of communication nowadays, and that you need some money to raise children.

Even if you are already wealthy and don't actually need to work anymore, going off the grid completely is still the wrong move. There's a lot of ways to spend less time online, improve your privacy and reduce tracking, and still benefit from some of the actual, real advantages of tech.

And the last and maybe most important thing is, we are currently on a roller coaster of disruption and frankly some daunting prospects - but we don't know what's right around the next turn. What the development landscape might be like in a few years, or maybe what kind of new problems will emerge that are not yet clear.

The right move is to take some time off, clear your head and decide if you stopped liking tech altogether, or you just needed a break. If you still like problem solving, limit your AI use, stay effective and skillful, and find ways to enjoy your skill.

I've never met an engineer who actually stopped enjoying problem solving.

by magic_hamster

5/29/2026 at 6:30:38 PM

I feel all of these things too. I'm 42 and started working right out of high school. Unfortunately I was dumb, didn't save money or pursue high earnings until 6 years ago when I joined big tech. I live in HCOL area, and realistically have 10 or maybe even 20 years left before I can even start thinking about retirement.

Trying to figure out how to make this sustainable.

by locusofself

5/29/2026 at 7:13:50 PM

52-62 seems like a normal, or better than normal, retirement target, no?

by djeastm

5/29/2026 at 6:49:52 PM

I think I was lucky enough to start out in the 80’s.

But seriously, didn’t really start making big money until about 25 years ago, and bailed heavily into my pension fund.

The tech industry is constant change, but the change in the last 10 years or so has been fairly shitty to be frank.

Hopefully, this AI bubble bursts and maybe there’s a few years of sanity in the tech industry.

by kamaitachi

5/29/2026 at 4:57:13 PM

This really resonates. I'm a dev/sysadmin/whatever with 15+ years of experience and I've been seriously considering applying for a job at my local Tractor Supply.

I've been having trouble finding consistent work for the last year but was recently accepted into a recruitment network. Almost every posting on the network's job board is for AI/agentic bullshit (many of them in defense contexts) and I just can't bring myself to apply for any of them. I won't be able to fake the required enthusiasm. I've been through 4/5/6? hype cycles over the course of my career and I'm just over it all. Maybe the AI bubble will burst? Maybe it won't? Either way, it takes the fun out of what I've enjoyed doing -- even if it's because it's all anyone wants to talk about. Layer all of the surveillance* and age verification crap on top of that and ... I want off this train.

*Anecdote: I was a chaperone on an elementary school field tried yesterday and there were >8 cameras on the bus. This amount of surveillance and accompanying normalization of it hasn't prevented or even helped rectify multiple incidents my child has had while riding on school buses. So, all of the downsides and no upsides.

by ethagnawl

5/29/2026 at 5:11:43 PM

I fell off the OSS ideological wagon around the same time, and probably for the same reason.

When he was running Gittip (which was actually working to pay indie OSS developers), there was a horde of political extremists that were fighting each other and boycotting Gittip because Chad wouldn't de-platform people that didn't like each other. The result is that a bunch of people got a political mass hysteria going, which scared contributors into withdrawing their donations, and that caused a lot of indie developers to lose a critical part of their funding and support. A lot of people became disillusioned around that time and stopped contributing to OSS projects, some from lack of funds but more from being fearful to stick their neck out. Substack of the NodeJS fame was the top paid developer on Gittip and I do wonder if he would have been an OSS developer still if he had not lost his primary source of income at that time.

Can you blame them for leaving? They were giving up their time to make things for a community that was guilting developers into receiving money for the work, while the same people rudely asked for unpaid features and harassed them into implementing weird and legally unsound Code of Conducts at risk of being publicly shamed if they had a different opinion about it. When there's no monetary incentive, eroding autonomy -and- no clout, there's almost no benefit to doing OSS work, and people that aren't into self harming ultimately quit.

That whole fiasco damaged OSS in a way that I think people don't understand today, and we're still dealing with the fallout. The result of that short-sighted OSS cannibalization has put a lot of the OSS community on life support, and what's left are giant OSS projects run by corporations like Facebook instead of teams of indie developers. What will fill that vacuum is AI code written by less experienced developers. We're all worse for it.

by throwaway323929

5/29/2026 at 3:12:50 PM

Lol, had to tell the internet on his way out huh. He'll be back of course as he clearly values the internet and makes it part of his ego.

by leesec

5/29/2026 at 4:25:34 PM

A lot of these "I'm leaving, everybody, see? I'm really going now, OK. Did you hear that? I'm really leaving" posts are just a form of virtue signalling or likes-farming, viz. the flood of such posts on what used to be Twitter when Musk took over. The majority of those who claimed to leave were back within a few weeks to months to get their fix. Most of these posts are characterised by the poster not having any positive plans for the future beyond whatever they claim to leave behind, just complaints about whatever caused them to write those posts.

This post here does not seem to be like that. I suspect he's really planning on taking a hiatus from the 'net, something like a sabbatical at least. I do think he'll eventually return to the 'net in some form and he might even become active in whatever the free software world has morphed into by then but he does seem to have positive plans for the future. He's starting a magazine centred around an Orthodox Christian community, something which can provide the same type of fulfilment as working on free software projects can.

by Mallory_Ringess

5/29/2026 at 4:15:32 PM

As an open source maintainer, it was important not to just drop off the planet and have people think he died or something. He's got torches to pass.

by bigfishrunning

5/29/2026 at 4:22:57 PM

I'd retire yesterday if I could afford it. Maybe in 10-15 years. Have a once-a-day NNCP feed rather than total disconnection.

by NoGravitas

5/29/2026 at 3:30:01 PM

I retired to the country, where any friends are 50 miles away, and most don't even reply to emails and messages.

I still want to utilize some free wikis and such to help share ideas.

There are simple things that can improve life for people, especially seniors, that are very low tech, and that's the rub.

Low tech things mean taking action, getting away from the screen, where SO WE THINK, magic happens when we create some new fantabulous code gizmo.

Maybe just bringing a pizza to someone, inventing some gadget to read invisible labels and expiry dates on food, or making an exoskeleton for someone with back pain will do more good than some AI that writes exciting posts on social media, or better, counters some other AI that is coming for your money and creative mind.

We are all overthinking everything, when simple, human problems are neglected in some race to an unknown "endpoint" that is illusory and ever-moving.

by k310

5/29/2026 at 4:49:42 PM

I am very lucky to be ensconced right now within a team and a company that views the current LLM mania with a similar level of disdain as myself. I'm not sure there's a place for me anywhere else in the industry right now. I wish I had the resources to wander off like this.

by jordemort

5/29/2026 at 3:08:27 PM

> 1980. Neo-Amish.

I've not a new 'retirement' plan to voluntarily be stuck in the '80s.

by karmakaze

5/29/2026 at 7:15:32 PM

I'd say that it's very natural to want to retire after 40 years of doing anything. You reach your various ceilings. You have most of your enthusiasm spent, most tasty bits of your area of expertise picked and consumed, seen many sad things repeating over and over, etc, etc. And any major new development may be disheartening, whatever it may be.

I think this is fine. A person, having worked for so long and successfully on something, has every right to call it quits and switch to something else. Something fresh and different. Godspeed!

by nine_k

5/29/2026 at 3:27:04 PM

Echoes of _The Soul of a New Machine_

>I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.

If memory serves, the note left by a burnt-out engineer on their workstation when they left abruptly.

by WillAdams

5/29/2026 at 3:39:26 PM

I dream of being the Zamboni driver for my town's arena. I have a plan I'm successfully executing to get to be that before I'm 50.

The hardest part will be beating all the competition for the job.

by Waterluvian

5/29/2026 at 3:47:20 PM

There's no such thing as a zomboni roomba?

by ern_ave

5/29/2026 at 5:08:33 PM

I f*** hope not.

People want to drive the Zamboni. It’s one of the coolest jobs out there.

by qsxfthnkp2322

5/30/2026 at 5:40:33 AM

people are expensive compared to robotic Zamboni, good business idea though

by Markoff

5/29/2026 at 3:47:01 PM

It is amusing and depressing to see so many people exit tech. I remember this happened in similar “vibes/strides around 08 and then for Covid, which ironically doubled down on remote work. And now for AI.

It really paints a projection on how much time we all really have in this world and this segment of work.

At best I wonder, do “I” have another 10 - 15 years left in tech?

Do you?

Agreed with the other comments on financial freedom. It does feel that tech is one of the last bastions remaining where you can really solidify being an autodidact to have an exit of your choosing.

by rootsudo

5/29/2026 at 4:03:38 PM

I read somewhere that the average developer only has 7 years of experience. This should be a fairly sobering warning to anyone getting into tech that you should be saving every penny and planning your next career move. I know so many people who have burned out, gotten so stale they can't find work, or both. I've been in the industry for 19 years now and so few of my former coworkers are still in the field. I never planned I'd make it this far, so I'm making hay while the sun shines.

by JackMorgan

5/29/2026 at 4:41:14 PM

The problem isn't tech, it's the management/executive layer behind the firehose of VC bullshit and the consultant class of MBAs allowing decision making without consequence. We need to step up and kick all of these idiots out of the industry - not step or shy away. They're expecting techies to be soft and not to confront them using word games. Be as elitist and forward as you need to survive - but I plan on spending the next decade fiercely attacking the cancer... "Show me the money - or shut the fuck up". I can easily act more impatient than they can.

by officialchicken

5/29/2026 at 4:59:46 PM

You’re not wrong, but an MBA helped me understand management better and “bridge the gap” between tech and management.

There is often a disconnect between both sides.

While anyone can learn the language of business, an MBA helps in understand their side, by teaching how executives think, evaluate risk, and make decisions.

A respected MBA also provides credibility, making it easier to translate technical ideas into business outcomes and gain support from leadership, etc etc etc.

The real value isn’t the mba itself, but learning to operate in both worlds. There is so much gray and fun things to can do once you see and can communicate both sides.

Tech-management arbitrage. That layer you describe is just talking another language, that most people in tech just don’t know. They also control the money.

by rootsudo

5/29/2026 at 3:08:00 PM

I'll never give up tech. It's a passion I've had since childhood, and a large part of what keeps me going in society is seeing the lights of the eyes brighten when someone discovers something new with technology that genuinely makes their life that much better than it was a moment ago. Not merely the flame of some dopamine hit of something shiny, but that genuine, "Thank you for helping me save an hour of my time/cross this chore off my list forever/give me back time, to live my life" sense.

The fact so many of us are burning out so hard, so fast, so thoroughly despite tech being a passion genuinely worries me. These are otherwise brilliant people, well-read, modest intellectuals that are just sick of this anti-human society we've built, with the constant braying by Capitalist and Industrialist leaders that this thing is necessary or you will be left behind, in lieu of natural discovery and adoption and integration into our lives. We bought into it initially and for so long, even as time after time after time it proved to be empty, or shallow, or vapid, or hollow. Never life-changing, never society-changing, always enriching those with far too much by taking from those with far too little.

I wish the OP well. I think we all need more offline time, if just to remind ourselves what the role of technology was always meant to be within it.

by stego-tech

5/29/2026 at 7:07:29 PM

This reminded me of a fellow SRE that I met on my first day of onboarding at Google.

I don't remember which team he got matched with, but he was definitely going on to do hardcore SRE stuff.

He didn't have a smartphone. Just a little dumb flip-phone that's so difficult to come by these days.

This was in 2015. That blew my mind.

He absolutely knew what was coming. Just like the author of this really nice letter.

I wish him the best of luck in his new lo-fi life. Don't forget to get a rifle to shoot your printer with!

by nunez

5/29/2026 at 4:16:18 PM

Damn, I am a beginner in my coding journey, and even I fell the fatigue - the fear that no matter what I do , it can be easily replicated with AI, I now have to think extra hard to make sure that a new project I am embarking on cannot be easily vibe coded in a weekend, it exhausting - I feel the spirit of coding, building together is dying as everyone wants to monetize and sell to PE firms, everyone wants a million or billion $ valuation, is open source and community dead ?

by METANOIA-ANDRIO

5/30/2026 at 2:16:30 PM

Maybe not go live life completely offline. Just throw out the bad parts and keep the good. There's plenty of better things to do instead of doomscrolling, like taking a walk through nature.

by whimbyte

5/29/2026 at 9:42:42 PM

I've been programming for ~50 years and I still like it. When I retire I will probably do some recreational programming.

I was planning to write a book about how to start and run a small software business (which I have been doing for 20 years), but things are changing so fast recently that I am starting to feel a bit of a dinosaur and I'm not sure anyone would be interested.

by hermitcrab

5/30/2026 at 2:46:22 AM

I've been in this industry for 30+ years. I still don't understand how I can retire from my hobby that I have been having a passion for since I was 17 and still enjoy? Yes, I have been paid for it (handsomely!) but that was _never_ the goal. I just liked playing with computers ...

by pbgcp2026

5/29/2026 at 3:08:36 PM

i got 9.5 years. 9.5 years and then I'm finally climbing off the stage, picking up my tips, and my dancing days are over. i'm counting it down.

by chasd00

5/29/2026 at 5:46:22 PM

It would be hard to give up on tech as I genuinely enjoy building, watching systems come alive, figuring out the puzzles through when they break. I do like the term Neo-Amish though and definitely relate.

I do recommend people get outside activities to balance things out - just walking my dog 1-2 miles a day is like therapy for me (and a good way to get unblocked and energized with a new idea).

by siliconc0w

5/29/2026 at 3:07:15 PM

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48315784

by ChrisArchitect

5/29/2026 at 2:54:33 PM

Been thinking the same lately…

by ismaelyws

5/29/2026 at 3:14:01 PM

I am clearly in the minority in these parts.

I find it intellectually alarming (but not surprising) that someone would say something like "[the north sentinelese tribe] are doing the rest of us a favor by preserving a way of life we may need again someday".

"way of life" is doing a lot of obscuring here.

It took centuries of hard work to leave that behind.

by eej71

5/29/2026 at 3:35:10 PM

It's insurance. The same way you don't want to go too far with germline editing. There are genetic variations that you might need to save your species some day. The cost of that is people suffer.

We may need a close connection to that way of life again and not have to relearn it from scratch.

This strikes me more as one of those things that is shocking to hear but not incorrect. People get more upset that someone said it without actually having a counterargument.

He's not saying that we _should_ live that way but that we might need to.

by busterarm

5/29/2026 at 5:31:29 PM

I understand the value of things like a seed bank.

But in no way is "their knowledge" (which I think is an overly generous use of that term) - acting in the role of a knowledge seed bank.

by eej71

5/29/2026 at 7:10:13 PM

I think you're underestimating how much we simply don't know about how to live that primitively. Maybe you could do it in small groups of people. Maybe up to a dozen. Most experiments at this fail hilariously early by the way.

Can you do it and sustain hundreds of people? I doubt it. At least they're here to be potentially observed. You don't have to _totally_ wing it. People living like that through history had bigger day to day survival concerns than documenting the finer details of sustaining their continued existence to us.

The last closest analog we have to them would be the Hadza people and they've had agriculture since 500 CE...

by busterarm

5/29/2026 at 4:00:24 PM

It has been said that hunter gatherers spend a lot less time working and a lot more time just hanging out and socializing than agriculturalists. It would be nice if we could use all of our modern technology to get back to that kind of work/life balance.

Not to mention all the time they spent in nature which is impossible now.

by amanaplanacanal

5/29/2026 at 8:23:03 PM

Huh. I never thought so many people would be against work/life balance and spending time in nature

by amanaplanacanal

5/29/2026 at 3:54:01 PM

I was about to comment something like "happy for OP, he's very fortunate to have enough to be able to simply retire" when I read the bit about Home Depot.

Amazing, really walking the talk at a level I've never seen before outside of novels or lives of the saints etc.

by lbrito

5/30/2026 at 9:39:05 PM

It was like 30 years for me.

A couple months ago I got a text in our dev channel around 4 PM on a Friday afternoon asking me to take a look at a 4,000 line AI generated PR. The guy said he was told it needed to be in production by the end of the day. So I'm supposed to look at 4,000 lines of garbage code at 4 PM on a Friday? Alright. Approved. Ship it. I'm retired now, obviously. They were giving out buyouts to old people and they made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

There's like this retirement advice that tells you you need to retire TO something. That hasn't been my experience. I didn't do that. I work out, I go for walks, I do self care. That takes all the time that using AI to write the AI prompts for our AI integration with our product used to take.

I don't miss it. I mostly don't remember their names. Except Kumar. Fuck you Kumar.

I don't even hate AI. I have software that I wrote that I use every single day, like personal software that I use for myself, I use AI for it. But I haven't written a single line of code since I retired. I need to, this is my software and I use it for things in my life, but I don't have time. Too busy going for walks and working in the garden.

To summarize, fuck you Kumar. Just fuck you.

by klatchex_too

5/29/2026 at 4:10:15 PM

I love learning about computers, programming, and math so much. I actually got into tech as a career pretty late. For many years I worked as a art fabricator/carpenter in the art world.

I only got good enough at programming to get a job in tech because I became obsessed with the Curry-Howard Correspondence as a backdoor into learning math.

I've always had a wide array of interests. I live on a half acre property with a giant garden and a shop that is bigger then my actual house. I've always split my free time between exploring and learning about computers, gardening, radios, and carpentry, fixing old machines, etc.

The shift in my lived work experience with AI has substantially demotivated me from programming and computers in my free time. A million times over I would rather pull weeds or clean my Bridgeport mill.

I've always wished I could go back to a 1990s experience where the computer lived in the den, the internet was only somewhat monetized, the future was utopian.

OP's plan to fallback to 1980s era technology is appealing but also somewhat depressing. Not only do I really like and enjoy learning about computers, but also making this kind of individualistic decision doesn't really get us to a better place as a society.

I wish we had heeded the warnings of researchers like Sherry Turkle who identified the impacts of technology on the individual as far back as the 1980s.

by solomonb

5/29/2026 at 4:07:59 PM

I would go offline but never retire from tech, I would miss music terribly. I would also move all my ebooks over to an e-reader and that's it. If I can live somewhere offline with my music player and e-reader that's fine.

by aquir

5/29/2026 at 4:06:28 PM

"maneuver my body into close proximity and vibrate air with my throat." XD

by elmean

5/30/2026 at 3:08:59 PM

I have been using 4.8 and I have noticed this particular word being used a lot.

"differentia"

Others please confirm.

by Npovview

5/30/2026 at 9:54:17 PM

It's nice that some people have the option to do this.

by monkey26

5/29/2026 at 3:52:18 PM

I am very fatigued by tech and AI too.

I do find occasional pleasure in personal projects, creating exotic programming languages that are not text-based, compilers and stuff like that, but otherwise coding work makes me wanna puke.

by epolanski

5/29/2026 at 5:17:22 PM

This is great. I’ve been thinking to set up an HF radio rig to talk to friends and strangers that are real people. Maybe the LLMs flood the internet with enough trash and we go back to more voice comms

by stereosteve

5/29/2026 at 9:35:52 PM

I have come online to announce that I will no longer be online

by nylon4831

5/29/2026 at 7:09:26 PM

It's a poignant piece, but I feel that HN should have some stories of soaring enthusiasm, optimism, and visions of a spectacular future, to counterbalance the doom and gloom.

by d_burfoot

5/29/2026 at 7:15:52 PM

You can ask your favourite LLM to write all the fiction you desire.

by sph

5/29/2026 at 5:13:04 PM

60/yo and still loving it. I get burned out every couple of years but new technology always refreshes my admiration for the field I chose. It never ceases to amaze me the capacity to reinvent itself, from the early days of dbase and clipper, it came the dial up internet, the craze of FrontPage and webmasters, the move to client/server, Python, Ruby, Go, then mobile apps, Swift, Java, Kotlin, then back to basics with Node and PostgreSQL, painful deviations like React, Tailwinds, NextJS, I've learned them all. And now we're finally here, in front of us, the promised land, AI, the final frontier, one of the most beautiful pieces of technology my wrinkled eyes have ever seen. I am more excited than ever.

See, through the years I've left behind an immense graveyard of dead projects I never had the time to finish and now they're all rising from the dead at the same time, like a really bad zombies movie, like MJ's thriller video, all dancing to the tune of AI, all coming alive in minutes because of AI.

This is it, Valhalla, Elysium, Paradise, here we are, I am already dead and I don't know it, but I love it.

by Kuyawa

5/29/2026 at 3:50:39 PM

If this is viral marketing for a typewriter company, it's genius.

by ern_ave

5/29/2026 at 5:08:14 PM

Last manufacturer closed shop late-2010s (Indian).

But if you haven't ever composed on the OG desktop, you should give it a type.

by ProllyInfamous

5/29/2026 at 5:41:21 PM

Best of luck to him, I hope he finds what he's looking for!

What's not completely clear from the post is what he dislikes with AI / technology. Does someone know?

by procaryote

5/29/2026 at 4:29:07 PM

I would follow him if I could. Most of my colleagues as well.

by demorro

5/29/2026 at 3:00:12 PM

Text inside images is not a11y. That's a paddlin'.

I jest, but not really. There were already a ton of reasons tech might burn someone out and AI was the cherry on top.

by sublinear

5/29/2026 at 3:26:20 PM

Yup, I was interested what he has to say, but when I saw the scan I've lost my interest.

by Markoff

5/29/2026 at 4:03:58 PM

Same. The format was a big turn off.

by icedchai

5/29/2026 at 3:37:27 PM

Even good ideas can be ridiculous if you take it 100% radically literal.

Internet is nice, connectivity is good. We just need self control.

by juleiie

5/29/2026 at 3:10:40 PM

I think about this a lot but I also kind of feel like I'll never truly be able to retire in a way that matters.

by ryanmcbride

5/29/2026 at 5:40:29 PM

To the OP...

Best wishes. You are an inspiration.

by Ccecil

5/29/2026 at 3:51:48 PM

While I definitely respect the choice to live an offline life, as someone that grew up orthodox christian in an orthodox country I can't shake off the vibe this dude gives: very LARPy and sounds like an evangelical. Orthodox never tell you that they're sinners and to pray for their sins. That's an americanism.

by mmmgge3

5/30/2026 at 5:01:02 AM

Have you ever hung out with deacons or seminarians? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Prayer

by keane

5/30/2026 at 4:07:50 PM

Yeah, we do ask for forgiveness for our sins during prayer too, but not in casual conversation. If you do that where I'm from everyone will look at you like you're some weirdo. And pretty much everyone's an orthodox christian there.

by mmmgge3

5/30/2026 at 11:23:46 PM

I know that about the laity. But no matter the country you’ll see language like this used in letters and writings by those serving in or discerning non-lay/ordained vocations (I would imagine).

by keane

5/29/2026 at 4:17:33 PM

Every convert to Orthodoxy I've seen in the US is like this. Converts to Catholicism, too, but definitely not cradle Catholics.

by NoGravitas

5/30/2026 at 4:09:07 PM

Yeah, converts to orthodoxy have been the weirdest people I've encountered yet. They all have this very evangelical way of talking. We don't do any of that. We live orthodoxy not only as religion but as culture too and it comes in many forms, whereas converts all seem to live it as this very narrowly defined thing where they all sound and act the same.

by mmmgge3

5/29/2026 at 4:39:50 PM

[dead]

by threwrfaway

5/29/2026 at 4:28:44 PM

I plan to do the same eventually. I want to buy a shop and become a mechanic, primarily flipping cars, and doing actual repairs for a fair price. I need to get to the point where the business venture only needs to do a bit better than break even, and I'll quit this industry. After more than 20 years in tech, I've done a lot of cool things with smart people, but almost none of what I built still exists (every tech stack is a Ship of Theseus) and AI is just making working in corporate miserable.

I personally like using AI tools and experimenting with local models, but I hate being subjected to the output of AI from other people. There's such a large competency gap that exists in the human operators, and AI does not ameliorate it, it makes it worse, but so many have drank the koolaid that it solves everything and eliminates that gap. I won't become a luddite, I will still build technical things at home, but I miss being able to see the tangible fruits of my labor and getting an honest thank you from another human being I've helped out through my work. I miss the permanence of physical things. I'm also tired of arguing with people who think their incompetence + AI outranks my competence and expertise.

by tristor

5/29/2026 at 5:39:36 PM

my wife wants to open a used book store and I want to open a coffee shop inside of it in some nice college town somewhere. That's one of our options once we're empty nesters and the retirements are funded (~9 years hopefully). We would only need to operate at cost so it wouldn't really be a business, more like a hobby.

by chasd00

5/29/2026 at 3:47:26 PM

This isn't an airport, you don't need to announce your departure.

by quietsegfault

5/29/2026 at 8:56:09 PM

burnout at tech companies is a real thing. my previous manager was very high up in tech and quit one day to pursue her passion—something i am very envious of.

by flw_0311

5/29/2026 at 4:11:05 PM

Chad has been one of the strongest voices in the open source community for the past few years. When we were building tools for OSS developers we valued his opinion highly.

This is the final nail for me, that something is rotten in the state of open source.

There's the "old guard" of open source, who seem to spend most of their time arguing about semantics, governance, and the nth kubernetes telemetry solution.

So where is the "new guard"? There's been a lot of interesting work in open source AI, but it seems to me like a championed effort cannot exist without a new paradigm around collaboration and monetization. More and more, we see the new guard question or outright deny new contributors due to AI slop PRs and issues continue to pile up.

There desperately needs to be a sexy revitalization of open source, starting with young developers. I thought it would be from the YC-esque startups of the world, who use open source as a way to garner legitimacy, good will, and a top-of-funnel upselling motion.

"Trad" open source is greying - and the new wave is more of a ripple. It has no shared identity, and no champion.

by OG_BME

5/29/2026 at 3:33:06 PM

Very nice performative piece.

The reason he, and others, are "retiring" from tech now is because they have the wealth to do it, in big part due to being at the right place at the right time in life. That’s it.

AI has nothing to do with it, they just want a small ego stroke.

by moralestapia

5/29/2026 at 4:05:11 PM

Nah, I think AI has fundamentally changed the perception of the value of most tech labour in the eyes of the people running the show.

The end result of it is that the average dev position becomes seen as dispensable, competition goes up, workload goes up, compensation stagnates.

Being able to escape the rat race and retire is a privilege though. The rest of the rats gotta keep running faster and faster just to stay in the same place.

by ungovernableCat

5/29/2026 at 4:34:06 PM

I retired due to not only AI, but other reasons this industry has become something I don't like.

I'm fortunate with regards to the timing and being able to do it, but if I could have a job like the one I had ten years ago I'd still be working.

by gdulli

5/29/2026 at 4:16:36 PM

Having the ability to "retire" has nothing to do with AI. *Wanting* to retire has a lot to do with AI.

by bigfishrunning

5/29/2026 at 3:53:23 PM

It can be both.

by antonyt

5/29/2026 at 3:22:33 PM

I'm curious about one thing thouhg:

Or profession is very young and what annoys me the most: i can do my job only on a computer and i'm very good in knowing how to use it and i also use it for everything.

Privat and work has merged into being in front of a screen.

The joke of starting a bakery or doing other manual labor jobs is quite common.

It might just be time for this to transform.

I would retire yesterday if i could afford it though.

by Gomotono

5/29/2026 at 3:23:43 PM

This is a great choice

by ginkgotree

5/29/2026 at 7:23:16 PM

You, sir, are a fish. Good luck on the path!

by html5cat

5/29/2026 at 3:12:49 PM

Must be nice.

by thatmf

5/29/2026 at 4:05:10 PM

did Chad, or whoever posted this for him, post this as a jpg with no alt text? wow, thought Chad was a bit better than that (I can't even read this thing easily and im not considered to be visually impaired)

"but it's a real typewritten letter! you dont understand!"

yeah but you didn't snail mail it to all of us, you or someone put it on the internet on a webpage. if you can scan a letter as a JPG and scp it to a server, you can run an OCR and put alt text in.

by zzzeek

5/29/2026 at 4:41:25 PM

Folks might find the following beautiful framework from Indian Philosophy very useful here.

One's Life is structured w.r.t. three axes;

1) The Goals of Life aka Purusartha - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puru%E1%B9%A3%C4%81rtha They are;

    - Artha: All sorts of wealth including material and non-material like friends, health etc. Needed for a good life.

    - Dharma: Rules/Regulations/Laws/Ethics/Morals which make coexistence in a society possible.

    - Kama: All sorts of pleasures that one seeks for enjoyment. Many equate only this to the goal of life.

    - Moksa (optional): Cultivating a mindset which supersedes and transcends the above three thus "freeing oneself" from the unending "wheel of life".

2) The Stages of Life aka Asrama - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80%C5%9Brama_(stage) They are;

    - Brahmacharya: From Childhood to Adulthood (before puberty) which is the Student stage. During this stage you focus on studying and learning various subjects/arts. Since both mind and body are still developing, self-control and discipline w.r.t. various harmful external influences are emphasized. The goal is the development of a healthy mind and body.

    - Grihastha: The married Householder stage with Wife and Children. The Grihastha is considered the central pillar of society since everything else depends on him. He generates wealth, enjoys all sorts of pleasures and lives within a social law framework for peaceful coexistence. 

    - Vanaprastha: The retired householder stage who has successfully raised his children i.e. put them through brahmacharya and into grihastha stage. He now removes himself from much active duty in society thus making room for the next generation to step-in and develop. He curbs his desires/wants (since both body and mind are ageing) and acts mostly as an adviser to the next generation.

    - Sannyasa (optional): This is a completely different stage/way of life whose only goal is Moksa. A person can move to this stage from any of the above stages. Most of the ordinary rules/laws/practices of society are not applicable here.

3) Finally, your "duty" aka Karma in Society. In today's world, we generally equate this with work which enables us to earn our livelihoods. This should be in harmony with the Goals and Stages of Life i.e. at each stage the mix of goals and emphasis on them are different.

Understand your current stage in life, Manage/Control your goals w.r.t. that stage and Adjust your duty accordingly for a Happy and Fulfilled Life.

by rramadass

5/29/2026 at 3:26:53 PM

I wish I could do the same.

by YcYc10

5/29/2026 at 3:28:44 PM

Legend

by mikeyinternews

5/29/2026 at 3:13:34 PM

Godspeed.

by manesioz

5/29/2026 at 3:29:01 PM

I wish I could retire...

by segmondy

5/30/2026 at 10:26:08 AM

Whatever you think of the way this was announced (seems there’s as much commentary on the form as the content), what I take from it and other announcements like it is the very clear pattern that this is only happening to the good ones. The people who actually try to do good and be good and are good are the ones getting burned out and calling it quits, the hacks who do it for personal profit remain and more are coming.

It does not bode well for the future.

by latexr

5/29/2026 at 7:58:17 PM

This is so camp.

by ossicones

5/30/2026 at 12:50:17 AM

I remember Chad Whitacre primarily as the proponent of Fair Source, a putative solution to the open-source free-rider problem and probably the best solution I've seen so far aside from just making your software proprietary which comes with disadvantages of its own.

To be honest, retiring completely from tech is something I wish I could do as well...

by bitwize

5/29/2026 at 10:39:59 PM

I am planning this next, not entirely, I would still do my own techie stuff, offline, because I love tech. But career wise, I am just getting at the fed up point, with so much added shenanigans, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze any more, and the fun exciting part was killed by big corps and greed. The issue is what other career alternatives, I was thinking becoming a pilot, but the regulations around that and lifestyle probably will kill the joy, or maybe a carpenter, living off grid, in the woods, and every once in a while you take whatever you did and sell it, chill and joyful, who knows!

by tamimio

5/30/2026 at 3:07:11 AM

Revert to last known good configuration.

by andai

5/29/2026 at 3:10:02 PM

Good luck with what you're doing. It feels like everyone's shipping more but thinking less and with open source you really feel it with the PRs and issues. All the best!

by mubaarakhassan

5/29/2026 at 6:37:15 PM

Reminds me the Three Body Problem book and the scientists suddenly killing themselves because they cannot see any point to doing science any longer.

by poszlem

5/29/2026 at 3:41:01 PM

wait home depot is hiring??

by tantalor

5/29/2026 at 5:37:17 PM

I feel like there's honestly a space for "Greybeards Inc".

Maybe a consultancy of people who have seen and done it all before - Very selective of their clients.

by Grosvenor

5/30/2026 at 4:53:00 AM

im right behind you

by bibimsz

5/29/2026 at 6:24:55 PM

I mean, were phones in 1980 considered dystopian?

by selimthegrim

5/29/2026 at 7:31:33 PM

I feel this

update after reading the comments: a good portion of the HN community is so f*ing judgmental

by insane_dreamer

5/29/2026 at 3:29:44 PM

what's the point in posting scan (?) of paper online instead of just publishing it normal way, so people can adjust font and actually read it? especially since you are anyway at computer and posting it on website and bsky

by Markoff

5/29/2026 at 3:43:17 PM

and why announce to the world your noble cause. why not just do it.

by natsucks

5/29/2026 at 11:03:57 PM

> ... where the indigenous population kills any outsider...

Ah yes. Romanticizing the noble savage. It's as old as, I don't know what exactly (I could ask a LLM but fuck it).

Why stop at killing outsiders? We can do better...

We could also romanticize cannibalism that was all alive and well when europeans discovered the americas (yup, both in north and south america there was cannibalism).

What about we forget about the enlightenment and the great philosophers and just take a shortcut: why don't we start writing articles about how we should we should start eating each other? Yup, just eating. Because, you know, the myth of the noble savage. So why not?

And let me one-up that: what about torturing kids as much as possible (which was a thing in southern america before it got conquered), to extract as many tears as humanly possible? What about we venere the noble savages who were doing just precisely that. Oh but it was "contextual". Yeah: explain me the concept, please.

Wait: I can one-up that. Cannibalism? Wanna me to romanticize slitting the throat of your enemies and then raping and then turning into slaves their wives and daughters?

Oh wait I've got an even better idea: combine that with eating their boys. Rape the daughters, eat the boys. Not many lost calories.

Rape and enslave the daugthers and wives, torture the boys so that they cry as much as possible, then eat them (alive, because why not).

Such noble savages.

Very connection to nature.

Much simplicity.

Deep down all of us (well, you mostly really) aren't we (well, you mostly really) deeply connected to these wonderful noble savages?

/s (just in case it is isn't clear that this is sarcasm... I wouldn't want to end up in trouble)

by TacticalCoder

5/29/2026 at 8:56:17 PM

As an AI hater, I sympathize. I really don't enjoy the engineering world since LLMs. I fully concede their value is immense, I just don't like it. Unlike Chad, I've put in enough years that I can step back and kinda do nothing. I don't want to actually do nothing, nothing. I have absolutely zero respect for the foolish notion of returning to a fully pre-modern lifestyle. It sounds he's accepting electricity, but rejecting the internet which feels arbitrary. Maybe an attempt to return to the world of his childhood which was scary and new for people who born 30 years before him. It's fine and even laudable to want to be more connected to humans and to reject the toxic parts of the online world, but it's another to stick your head in the sand.

by tootie

5/29/2026 at 5:48:42 PM

weird boomer flex but okay

by gyanchawdhary

5/29/2026 at 8:17:41 PM

[dead]

by BLACKCRAB

5/29/2026 at 5:00:40 PM

[dead]

by paol_taja

5/29/2026 at 10:37:42 PM

[dead]

by pseudopolous

5/29/2026 at 6:26:21 PM

[dead]

by lezojeda

5/29/2026 at 6:49:23 PM

[dead]

by GoodJokes

5/29/2026 at 3:16:48 PM

[dead]

by huflungdung

5/29/2026 at 3:45:12 PM

[dead]

by throwaway613746

5/29/2026 at 4:20:37 PM

[dead]

by jasonmp85

5/29/2026 at 3:44:20 PM

Am I the only person in this thread who thought this might be a joke? The job at Home Depot in particular, and this bit:

> I haven't used a phone or the Internet in my personal life since February 6. To communicate, I use the USPS, or maneuver my body into close proximity and vibrate air with my throat. I love it. I want to be part of a society of people likewise inclined.

I'm not at all certain though. Chad posted it on LinkedIn and Bluesky, so if it is a joke he's definitely committing to the bit.

Here's Vlad-Stefan Harbuz, the person Chad names as taking over the Open Source Pledge, posting about it - https://bsky.app/profile/vlad.website/post/3mmw3jigagk2q - which makes it seem more real.

Update: more evidence in-favor of "not a joke" is this 19th Feb 2026 video from Chad's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCC76jmmzkc - at 16:22

> I don't not want to be someone who helps lay the groundwork for the remnant. I'm going to call it the remnant, a remnant of humanity that doesn't take the bargain. I have no idea what's next. Alright, we're starting Gift magazine. Whoa. I went to Penguin Bookstore. I got an address book, and I got a ridiculous planner. And we got our P.O. Box. Box 200. Oh, and I also switched to paper billing. Paper bank statements at Dollar Bank. Puzzle gaming. Figuring out the offline.

Update 2: here's a blog entry from 19th Feb that accompanied that video: https://openpath.quest/2026/spitting-out-the-agentic-kool-ai...

> Long story short, I’ve decided to dial back my engagement with mainstream technology, and to launch a print magazine called Gift to network with like-minded individuals.

So I'm sold, there's humor in the presentation, but it's a real decision.

by simonw

5/29/2026 at 4:02:32 PM

Have you ever met Chad? I have no doubt this is sincere.

by japhyr

5/29/2026 at 4:05:41 PM

I have, and he struck me as someone with a quirky sense of humor.

Hence my uncertainty - I'm not saying "this is obviously a joke", I'm saying "is there a chance this could be a joke?"

(See updates to my original comment, I now suspect it is not a joke having watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCC76jmmzkc )

by simonw