Comment by sopresatta
12 hours ago
No.
But I live and breathe tech even in my spare time[1]. You gotta learn to roll with the sh-t and set boundaries. I hate to say it but turn off HN, this place a hype machine designed to make you feel bad. It's like "Roast and Toast" x 1000 on here, not reality. It's toxic in a very passive-aggressive way (rather than reddit toxic, which is just aggressive).
I've been at this since 1988. (Made a few personal bad choices so not retired, lol [2]) I've changed jobs every 5-7 years since the post-2000 implosion. Don't bother with the FAANGs, its all style over substance tossing-off investors: they don't care about you at all and their top level management just want to be centibillionaires (or trillionaires).
Find smaller companies, that's what I started doing 20 years ago. I started a new job as a senior director at a 5000 person company 3 years ago, most money I've ever made in my career, great people who enjoy their work, no pressure to move up the ladder unless you want to (not much ladder for me, but the younger devs are happy to stay put without the dumb pressure to give 150% every year). Our revenue is <10B, and it is a German company so there's minimal (unremarkable) equity, but the base salary is great.
Find a company that makes boring products that sell. Mine is a stable boring company, making real-ware silicon products and associated cloud services for medical and automotive industry. Look for a company trying to grow profits at a normal rate, not a FAANG rate. Avoid the hype. Be boring. Slow and steady.
[1] also, if you're only in tech because you think that's where you're supposed to be, and don't have a deep passion for it, you're gonna have a bad time.
[2] Oh, and don't accidentally get someone you don't like pregnant. Because then you're completely f--ked.
> Find smaller companies, that's what I started doing 20 years ago. I started a new job as a senior director at a 5000 person company 3 years ago
That's a smaller company?
The biggest company I've ever worked for was 400 people
The smallest was 4
> I hate to say it but turn off HN, this place a hype machine designed to make you feel bad. It's like "Roast and Toast" x 1000 on here, not reality. It's toxic in a very passive-aggressive way
I have a completely different experience of HN than you do. There are the stray toxic folks, sure, but overall, this is one of the best dev forums--actively moderated, generally filled with intelligent comments, and often offering good advice. Just look at the thoughtful and understanding answers to this very post.
Yeah, it's currently full of AI shovelware because that's what the hype bubble demands, but there's a lot more good stuff here than not.
But they also have only had an account for an hour and clearly didn't read the whole post so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯