Ask HN: Why did you leave the tech industry?
I love computers since I can remember, and started learning to code when I was still in basic school. This lead me to think that the tech industry was the obvious career for me. During my time in the industry, I felt miserable. I would say that the main reasons for that were:<p>* Meaninglessness. Most of the projects are simply not necessary, they do not help society in anyway, they just exist to make someone else wealthy.<p>* Tedium. The intellectual challenges aren&#x27;t there after a while. There are countless intellectual challenges in the field of computing &#x2F; computer science, but they are usually precisely the ones that industry has no interest on.<p>* Micromanagement. &quot;Agile&quot; and similar management practices (yes, I know, you&#x27;re not doing it right, blah blah blah) are downright humiliating and infantilizing. Almost no other highly skilled professional has to tolerate such level of intrusion on their day-to-day activities. I love deep thinking and creative expression. The modern corporate setting prevents this <i>by design</i>.<p>* Open-spaces. See above.<p>* Idealism. I was so excited about the possibilities that the Internet opened for humanity. Now we have ad-tech and horrible exploitation of &quot;gig-economy&quot;, warehouse workers and the like. This is definitely not what I have in mind when I started.<p>* Conformism. The tech industry is extremely conformist. Monetary consideration always wins. Deference to power always wins. &quot;Hacker&quot; used to mean something completely different. Almost opposite to the current definition.<p>I realized that what I always loved about computing was the endless creative and intellectual possibilities allowed by the medium. This is more or less the opposite of what the industry values, despite what they might advertise endlessly. There is nothing cool about it. It is stale and anti-intellectual.<p>I don&#x27;t need a lot of money to be happy. You probably don&#x27;t either. Time on this earth is the most valuable thing we have, and I would rather spend it waiting tables than enduring one more stand-up meeting.<p>I think creative nerds are the life-blood of the industry, but they tend to be shy and not assertive, so they have their life controlled by the &quot;business types&quot;. I honestly believe that if the nerds told them to fuck off and started spending their time working on things they think are relevant, the world would become much better quickly. This won&#x27;t happen, I know.