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.
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.
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.
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.