[anexprogrammer]

This has come up a few times!...

I left because I was utterly sick of churn, NIH, and the endless succession of this week's magic (javascript framework etc) bullet. OK. It's different. It's almost never better.

Also felt most of my efforts were NOT making the world a better place but tech was contributing HARD to the throwaway world we need to cease, not increase.

I now work maintaining and restoring an early Elizabethan estate. Some of the things I do might outlast me, and it seems a worthwile contribution to the world. Some of the work done will count in a century or two all being well.

Do I regret leaving? Hell no. Best decision I ever made.

Still read HN because I am still interested in tech, but mostly not the 80% that the world seems to have settled on. I am extremely agin many of the uses, decisions and techs that give us the modern world. Exponentially increasing throwaway hardware on a finite planet? Surveillance? IoT? Security? Everything as a data slurping webapp? Disrupting perfectly sensible things that work nicely? Meh ^ 200.

I'd be glad to get involved in a project that I could believe made a significant substantive difference. Like if a Mr Musk phoned (not terribly likely) about alternative energy, climate change or some such...

[riffraff]

> I now work maintaining and restoring an early Elizabethan estate

how did you pick up the necessary skills to be able to do this? It looks like something that would take years of focused effort, rather than an easy jump.

[anexprogrammer]

Well the luck of finding a place that can deal with a middle-aged apprentice means I'll be collecting those skills for a while yet! I came across the opportunity whilst looking for options and directions for degrees to drive the career change. Well, that and deciding quite what other field I wanted to land in. Opportunity arose, I leapt. :)

Sometimes I'm glorified handyman, sometimes more significant, almost alwats learning more about old methods and tech, or previous centuries' restorations. I'm still collecting pieces of paper, including for some required modern things like electrics, that usually feel like basic commmon sense, until you see the folks in the class who are barely grasping it.

There's opportunities for specialising more as I go on.

Europe is littered with old sites, some owned by the large conservation charities are pretty formal in recruitment and role. Some of the individual estates and smaller organisations are more flexible probably because some of the niche skills are needed only more rarely. So I'd probably have never got near the National Trust without a 5 year run up.