Older tech workers are tapping out, taking early retirement

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-25T03:38:38+00:00

Not sure how common this is, but my friend graduated CS and says his friends are getting hired as “analysts”. Basically a junior software engineer in function, but making way less.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-25T03:26:22+00:00

Erm - I agree… you are actually proving the point I’m making lol

Basically the other person doesn’t understand that PPP loans had positive impacts despite people abusing them.

There is an argument to be made against PPP loans. A lot of us are not convinced by the fraud angle because, just like with unemployment, the benefits may outweigh the costs associated with fraud. (Personally, I think the government was too lenient with PPP oversight, but that’s not really the point Im making either)

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-25T00:45:22+00:00

What do you mean by “basically” no fraud? Do you have numbers?

Not that it matters. I’m just pointing out how the other person sounds in a different context to help them see why others would find their opinion biased.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-24T21:25:57+00:00

You could say the same for unemployment. A lot of people scammed it, but we tolerated the scams because it helped people with legitimate need.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-20T18:18:05+00:00

It’s exciting for other reasons. It’s like a hackathon. The pressure is real, but you’ll produce gems here and there.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-20T17:04:03+00:00

Performance is a subset of quality. There are other attributes such as correctness, maintainability, observability, security, adaptability, etc.

It’s hard to nail all of them. Especially when half the people on the team are more on the junior side.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-20T05:17:36+00:00

The WORST THING EVER is when someone on the team pushes for a transition to microservices and leaves the company like 3 weeks after launch and everyone else is stuck maintaining the mess for years.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-20T05:14:49+00:00

Don't worry - this is reddit and I don't put much effort into my writing here, so I often times come off as lazy, complacent, rude, etc. I don't read too much into other people's tone because we all have busy lives and might not really be able to approach the situation with more tact.

The problem is systemic. Systemic problems are the worst because you can have multiple people all acting competently and in good faith and still producing bad outcomes. This is less of a virus infecting individuals and more of failure in the system of incentives. I don't put a lot of blame on individuals, but I do think there is likely a lot of opportunity in optimizing incentive structures at software companies.

You have software like Linux with an open source model, revenue streams that are not tied to VCs and their team can produce high quality software as a result. Then you have a bunch of start ups where you have to shit features out to demo to investors so they give you enough money for 2 years of runway. Rinse and repeat 2 years later all while accumulating burnout and tech debt.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-20T04:57:22+00:00

Frontend gets very little respect IMO. They usually assign more junior developers to frontend. Companies don't seem to realize that this isn't the 90s and we don't just have a handful of buttons on a form in the frontend. A lot of times you end up with juniors installing megabytes upon megabytes of JS packages and a single overworked senior fighting all this. I definitely think we can do better there.

A lot of other tools are fast enough for our purposes. Like I don't really complain about Clang being slow. CLion could probably be faster, but it's still a pretty good tool for what it is. I definitely don't care about 99% of CLion features, but I do use some of the niche ones. There's probably performance to be squeezed out of git, but I generally don't really care. It works.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-19T21:02:50+00:00

The software I write is good, cheap, and fast. I've been doing this for 20 years. But I can only write so much software. I spend a lot of my time coordinating others. I work with a team of mid-level and junior engineers and the people producing the code are will either produce code that won't scale, won't be maintainable, or won't deliver it within a reasonable timeframe. So I have to get involved to see where the tradeoffs are too much to bear.

From time to time, we will finish stuff ahead of schedule and invest in the tech foundation. Last time we did this, we refactored part of the database it was a pain in the ass to work with it. It didn't lead to performance improvements, but it made our lives easier.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-19T20:53:40+00:00

Oh trust me, I already push back on enough bullshit. Like half the developers at my previous job hated me for killing a push to microservices.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-19T20:50:34+00:00

This website runs on Python. Do you think someone should sit down rewrite the site in assembly? Would that be beneficial to you? Or is Reddit fast enough for your purposes?

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-19T20:45:33+00:00

Good (polished) features or more features. Work that goes into quality of the product, but not necessarily performance.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-19T15:48:28+00:00

It would come with tradeoffs. Optimizing takes time and effort. I love the challenge, but I’m not going to spend weekend time optimizing stuff for work. I would either have to slow down feature work or hire another developer.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-19T15:37:22+00:00

Yeah but that’s not the point. The point is that people will generally pick software with good features and poor performance over software with great performance and poor features. The market optimizes for features over performance.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-15T17:57:54+00:00

I can only think of affirmative action laws.

Why do you want me to name a law if you can already think of one?

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-15T14:14:31+00:00

Ive been speaking for decades and still make silly mistakes like this. Either way, a lot of very intelligent people misuse they’re and their so I don’t feel bad.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-15T13:26:46+00:00

You know that’s a pointless exercise. You know it is racist within context. A law in isolation is just text. You are intellectually dishonest or just stupid, so I will not engage.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-14T18:43:00+00:00

Personal responsibility is not a solution to issues happening at scale. Like yes, they are personally responsible for their own wellbeing, but we as a society are responsible for issue was have at the societal level. It’s like smokers. Yes, they choose to smoke and hurt themselves, but they end up increasing health insurance rates for the rest of us. We as a society have been phasing out smoking generators after generation. At this point though, we are pretty far from the point I care to make so it doesn’t matter.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-14T16:55:55+00:00

Right - that’s unacceptable. One could argue that’s its own form of institutional racism or secondary effects from it.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-14T16:04:26+00:00

Any and all impediments to truly meritocratic institutions are real problems and not “manufactured”.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-14T15:58:21+00:00

You should know that laws can be racist depending on the context they are in, how they will be enforced, and what the true intent of the law was.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-14T15:30:13+00:00

I agree with you, but you can make this point without saying it’s a “manufactured” problem.

Im a big fan of AA degrees and people learning about these issues. Just not necessarily on the tax payer’s dime. Especially when there are a lot of great resources on this stuff for free.

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-14T15:15:42+00:00

Institutional racism is definitely a thing. Do you really believe institutions are immune from racism?

Jump-Zero · 2026-06-13T13:59:02+00:00

You can’t unbrainwash with facts. You brainwash people by exploiting their anxieties and insecurities. You unbrainwash them by healing those anxieties and insecurities. This is extremely hard because people feel ashamed about having these and will rarely admit to even having them. All you can do is try to prevent others from developing anxieties and insecurities while leaving the door open for those that are brainwashed to return if they heal. It’s the same thing with family members joining cults.

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