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by LaGrange 46 days ago
> I mean, that works for you since you're retiring. But for people still working in the industry, you adapt or die. As it's always been.

There are jobs outside of IT. They are harder, they have less benefits, they pay less. It's a whole project to switch your lifestyle so you can even afford them.

I know nobody who regrets making the jump. I hope to make it within this year. I'll be poor, but at least I won't work in IT.

> But understanding the optimal work flow for what to delegate and what to do yourself is difficult.

No it's not, you can learn it in less than a day. I've done it a few times while evaluating how much the agents have progressed (despite what people keep saying, not much).

> Understanding the need for precision in the language used, and learning how to elegantly phrase things that were previously just abstract thoughts is absolutely a talent that can be refined.

Some of us learned technical writing to communicate with _humans_ before, and we're sitting here alternating crying and laughing as y'all scramble to figure it out just to put all that into a hallucination machine.

1 comments

> I hope to make it within this year.

What's your plan?

Changing flats so it's cheaper (it's hard but still possible here), then go for an entry-level "barista" job.

It's gonna be very broke, but I'm not the first one in my friends circle to make the jump, so I have some support.

Edit: I probably will keep coding. Just... nobody else is ever going to see or use my code again.

Respect. I moved countries for lower cost of living, and I’m gonna become a starving artist, so to speak, trying to use my software skills to make myself useful and earn enough to buy food, in a field where human ingenuity still reign supreme.

And if I ever find money under the mattress, I’ll make a solar farm. Something useful for the world, for once.

Better content and poor than living in golden handcuffs.

Why jump now?

If your worry is that you won’t be able to “keep up” and you’ll be laid off, or fired, just wait for that to happen. Keep making a paycheck until then. Then you can start your barista job.

If the problem is that you hate the work, then fine. But why barista? Fine, if that’s what makes you happy. But there are a million jobs out there _if you are willing to relocate_.

Bluntly? Because working with y'all is becoming insufferable. Because I don't want to work in IT. Note this isn't "I don't want to program" or whatever. That's cool and fun. But the people in here? Oh gods.

Also I'm sick and tired of working on projects where the best social benefit from my work would be if I stopped. And IT has this talent of doing this to even most superficially useful projects. I worked on solar panel software that got turned into a scam by marketing. That takes a talent, of sort.

The best time to jump out of IT was to never get into it. The second best time is now.

As for why barista? People need food and drink and coffee is great.

> working with y'all is becoming insufferable.

It depends on where you land. Not all programmers (and their managers) are brain-amputated zombies. But I do admit that finding that rare pocket of sanity requires a good portion of luck.

That sounds quite expensive to start, to be honest. But if you can? Sounds fun.