Changing Directions
I have two important announcements:
I’m leaving the tech industry. Hopefully “for good”; if not, at least “for now”.
As such, the content on this blog is going to shift, perhaps dramatically. I’m going to be writing about a broader range of topics that interest me (projects around my hobby farm, wilderness trips, emergency medicine) – more writing for me, less writing for some imagined audience. (I’ll probably still end up writing about some of the same topics as I’ve been covering since 2020, just less often.)
I’m writing this post mostly to give myself permission to make that change, and to give readers the opportunity to unsubscribe/unfollow if they’re not interested.
If you’re interested in more details about why I’m leaving the industry and what’s next for me and this blog, read on.
Leaving the tech industry
I left what I hope will be my last tech job in October. In many ways it was the perfect job: work I enjoyed, great clients, co-workers I loved (and still miss), at a company whose mission and ethics I aligned with. And despite all that I found myself increasingly burnt out. I started telling people that “I love my job, but I hate my career.”
I’ve been working in tech more or less non-stop for more than 25 years, and in that time my feeling about the industry has changed dramatically. When I began, I held straightforwardly techno-utopian ideas: I believed that technology was an unalloyed force for Good, that the computer revolution would bring about a more just and equitable society. I thought the industry was going to create a Star Trek-esque post-scarcity society.
I cringe at past-Jacob’s naiveté. It’s been incredibly demoralizing to discover what the tech industry actually did was to invent surveillance capitalism, create exploitative “gig economy” business models, create a new generation of robber barons, enable the rise of global fascism, facilitate genocide, and I could go on but Christ I’m exhausted.
I’ve been thinking about leaving the industry since at least 2016, but haven’t been brave enough to do so. This career pays really well for easy work (physically, at least), and it’s all I’m good at. Doing something different is terrifying. But I’m able to afford a change in direction, despite the massive pay cut, so I’m doing it.
I want to be super-clear about this: I’m in no way criticizing anyone who makes a different decision. Leaving a good tech career is a terrible financial decision, and I absolutely won’t criticize people who’re unable or unwilling to make such a bad decision. This is about me: I’m able to make this move, so I’m going to. There’s no judgement of anyone else here, explicit or implied.
I still find computers themselves incredibly exciting. When I first learn to program, being able to make a computer do whatever I wanted felt like a superpower – and it still does! I’m not planning a total exit from anything computer related; I don’t think I could. I plan on continuing to be involved in the Django community and with the Django Software Foundation. I’m continuing on as an advisor to a couple of small companies I’ve been working with (with a change: I’ll step down if/when those companies do a traditional VC raise). I’m remaining open to limited advising/consulting work – though, I’m going to be pretty picky about who it’s for. And I’m sure I’ll always write software, it’s just too fun and useful a skill.
My plan is to go into emergency medicine: I’ll be training as an EMT this fall, and I’m starting to volunteer with our local county Search and Rescue team. I plan to work as a EMT for a year or so, and then perhaps work towards becoming a Paramedic.
I don’t know if this’ll work out. It might not. But I’m giving it a shot.
Changing the focus of my writing
I’ve been writing here since 2005. At first, this was a typical early-2000s personal blog: I wrote whatever I wanted – technical posts, recipes, live updates, whatever. Then there a long fallow period starting around 2010 when I wrote sporadically, just a few posts a year.
In 2020 I rebooted the blog, with a very specific editorial focus: tech leadership, focused on software engineering and security. I wrote with a fairly specific audience in mind: engineering managers and technical leads, working in software development and information security. Mostly the theme was: things I wish someone had told me before I messed it all up. I put a concerted effort into building an audience for this content, and I think I’ve been pretty successful at it. I’m happy with the results, at least. I’m sure I’ll keep writing about these topics – I remain fascinated by risk decisions, and will almost certainly continue my Thinking About Risk series.
But as I step away from tech, I find the things I’ve been writing about since 2020 less and less interesting. I’ve been wanting to write about a broader range of topics for well over a year, but have felt constrained by my own editorial choices. So a large part of writing this post is just to give myself permission to stop writing for this imagined audience, and go back to writing more for myself, for the pleasure of writing itself.
The editor in my head is telling me that I need an effective ending to this piece, and that I shouldn’t publish it without one. But that’s the same guy telling me to stay in my lane, so…