[senbrow]

I ultimately decided to leave tech when I realized I didn't care much about delivering value and actually just wanted to write beautiful code. The former was a nice bonus for me, but the latter was profoundly captivating.

I'd unfortunately tried to make that mismatch work for too long, and as a result I completely destroyed all of my programming interest via severe burnout.

If this resonates with whoever reads this: please take your passion seriously and protect it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to enjoy coding again, unfortunately.

[the_only_law]

Where did you go? I’ve wanted out for years. I recognized the mistake almost immediately after going professional, but I just don’t really see anything else that looks appealing without spending years of my life and a stupid amount of money “retraining” by going back to school.

[senbrow]

Currently in the process of figuring out my next way of making income that brings me real joy thanks to substantial savings from living frugally on FAANG comp.

Lately I've been getting very much into FPV drone videography and 3D printing/design, which are both incredibly gratifying in the way programming used to be for me, but somehow even more so because the process involves mastery of physical matter on top of navigating a high-dimensional abstraction space.

That being said: I don't plan on having kids and enjoy relatively low cost activities, so I don't need to make nearly as much as I did in software to support myself.