I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline(openpath.quest) |
I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline(openpath.quest) |
I've not a new 'retirement' plan to voluntarily be stuck in the '80s.
> 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.
Internet is nice, connectivity is good. We just need self control.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I jest, but not really. There were already a ton of reasons tech might burn someone out and AI was the cherry on top.
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 :-)
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.
Textbook FIRE strategy.
The worst position is working in a company with non-technical and AI psychosis management.
Finally some real talk for common folk. Godspeed, friend
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
if you work in company with lots of AI generated code, then you can't handle it without AI usage anymore..
Personally I’m happy that the backend and algorithmic side writes itself.
Yes if it's your own company or if you're self employed and can compete.
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.
They're getting outcompeted.
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.
Its liberating to have the experience to know that once you're done with something you won't miss it's absence.
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.
I will quite literally never write a line of code again... with any luck!
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.
Haven't touched code since I retired unfortunately. Just don't feel like it. Don't need it either.
Now, I just feel like I am transcribing a phonebook.
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.
I wish I still had my gittip penny, but I seem to have lost it in several moves since that time.
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
I ended up coming back as a contractor, but have repeated the cycle 3-4 times since then. It's a strange one.
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.
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.
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.
Amazing, really walking the talk at a level I've never seen before outside of novels or lives of the saints etc.
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."
Chances are, whatever it is won't be found in a regular residential property.
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
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.
Right now we are in a very unstable place but it might not be permanent!
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.
Also, how did he post this if he isn't using the Internet?
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1jgcfx9/pe...
<joke> I just hope he doesn't start mailing packages to people in the tech industry in the next few years.</joke>
But it's not responsive! Hadn't he heard of mobile-first? ;)
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.
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.
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.
The hardest part will be beating all the competition for the job.
Find something outside of your "work domain" space. I like to bike and made a conscious decision to not have "e-stuff" on my bikes... just mechanicals. I mean the thought of having to do a firmware update for a derailleur or shifter is rage-inducing to me. Or having to worry about the security of wireless communication being hijacked... gahh.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
So being financial independent even if undecided on what you want to build is still way better.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Or is this just everywhere now?