I went and did a masters on Middle East studies, focusing on Shia rituals in Iraq. I moved to Baghdad (and south Iraq) for a year, wrote up my research here: <a href="http://malloc.dog/karbala/" rel="nofollow">http://malloc.dog/karbala/</a>, <a href="http://malloc.dog/field/iraq/" rel="nofollow">http://malloc.dog/field/iraq/</a><p>My day job was writing cpp and elixir, although I kept my job and returned to it. I've been thinking about leaving software completely though.
I suffered burn out from the Y2K and dot-com bubble. Left CS and worked at a winery for a year and a half. I went to grad school for Chemistry and then did a post doc in Cancer Biology... 20-some years later, somehow that all looped back around to Data Science. I guess I left CS, but not really STEM fields.
Not me but a friend. PhD in Physics and programming, he did a ton of modeling with R. He had/has chronic health issues, so used that to get a teaching job in a country with socialized medicine.<p>Once he got citizenship he'd had enough of the academia and coding... dude changed to cheese making. Like, he is a full-time cheese consultant now, and travels around the world to assist in cheese making efforts, setting up cheese caves, etc. Does a bit of other culinary stuff too, occasional pop-up restaurants, etc.<p>I think about that a lot, especially when I have to sit through change control meetings that go nowhere...
Several years back I left software for about 3 years to achieve required professional military education for an officer and two military deployments. Being deployed in the middle of the Covid lockdowns was not fun and the combination of these events were too much time away from the family.<p>I have already abandoned a software development career for data science and enterprise API management, which is much better. I still super enjoy writing JavaScript, but not for work. In the corporate world of JavaScript your leadership is often shit and your peers are entitled children drowning in insecurity looking out for themselves on a sinking raft. After my next my next military promotion my children will be out of the house and I will make just as much in the military as I do as a senior developer. Something to think about.
I went for a Master's in Education and became a teacher. Teaching computer science and math so still STEM adjacent. I'm still teaching a decade later and I've moved abroad to teach at international schools, currently in Bangkok.
If I ever win the lottery I'm dropping software engineering to do music somehow. I play guitar and learn music theory as a hobby, but only at a beginner/intermediate level with not enough time to practice and get to the next level.
I did not leave SE (yet), but I'm currently studying sustainability / waste management / etc. It's going great so far, I can recommend going a different or additional route, if you are able to.
I left STEM (non-CS/software) and became a firefighter-paramedic in 2006. I spent 14 years and left in 2020 when Covid was the rage. From 2010-2015 I got a masters in CS as a back up plan in case I got hurt or sick and couldn't do FF/PM. After I graduated in 2015 I worked a couple of remote part time jobs and then went full time developer in 2020 when I left the fire department.
Not yet, but I can't see my life behind a computer forever so I'm leaning into car maintenance or agriculture.<p>But those are all FIRE-like activities, I don't see any realistic way to maintain my income in another field unless I go into extremes.
I'm a data scientist, but it's becoming more uninteresting to me - not ml itself, but ml in companies. I've been thinking about studying cognitive psychology or cognitive neuroscience, but most classes are in person. :/
I started the career transition away from tech to therapy: <a href="http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/" rel="nofollow">http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/</a>
Does the answer count if I was never a full-time software professional?<p>Computers have been a hobby all my life. I well remember the epiphany I felt while learning Logo in elementary school, at the moment I understood what recursion is. I don't think the fact that the language I have mostly written code in in recent years is Emacs Lisp is unrelated to the above moment.<p>Yet I have never desired to work as a professional software developer. I majored in history and Spanish at Columbia while working for the university's Unix systems group. Before graduation I interviewed and got offers (including one explicitly as a developer) at various tech startups. Of my offers I chose an investment banking job where I worked with tech companies; my manager was looking for a CS major but I was able to convince her that I had the equivalent thereof. Thank goodness for that; I got to participate in the dotcom bubble without being directly swept up in its popping, and saw the Valley immediately post-bubble collapse. <<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34732772">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34732772</a>><p>I'm glad, for the sake of civilizational and economic progress, that others are able and willing to program for pay. Meanwhile I will continue to putter around with Elisp at home.
Not me, but a friend... She was nearly 10 years into a career, most of it at a FAANG and the rest FAANG-adjacent. All as an ML engineer. Her spouse is also a software engineer.<p>She left her engineering job ~18 months ago to study music on the way to a music career (she had studied a lot of music during her earlier school years and has been composing for years). The music program involved everything from the physics of sound to composition, production, engineering, performance, etc. It was a deeply intensive one year program that she has now completed.<p>She keeps getting offers to do software around music (effects, workflow management, etc.) as there aren't enough well qualified software/ML engineers around that deeply understand the composition / production / engineering process. But she wants to be more on the music side. She has taken one such gig to pick up a mentor who composed the scores for several prominent video games, an area she's interested in.<p>She still has more than a year of runway, so she's taking 2024 to generate a portfolio of her own music and sort of build a brand (my words, not hers).<p>So, she's finished the school part, but hasn't completed a career transition. It's exceedingly unlikely that she'll ever replace her tech comp, but that was never the goal. It's been great for her mental health. Part of that is that she's been very actively working on her mental health through all of this. This new journey has required its own kind of resiliency because the path is far from clear and requires a lot of reflection and a lot of strategy planning about how to proceed. A supportive spouse has been a huge plus.
I took a sabbatical that led me to pursue a coaching certification from a university across the country in Washington D.C. It was a wonderful experience and I connected with some great people, many of whom I still keep in close touch with today. I've met great people in tech too, but it was a breath of fresh air to work with people who are energized around helping individuals improve their lives.<p>I'm back in tech now, working for an AI services startup, but I leveraged my experience to create a role where I can bring coaching within the organization and to our clients through change management coaching.<p>I was inspired by my mindfulness practice and by Chade-Meng Tan's work at Google, where he used his 20% time to create mindfulness courses within the company. Especially as technological advancement continues to accelerate, there will be a huge need for personal growth initiatives to help people lean into the kinds of skills that AI can't replace: social/emotional intelligence, empathy, creativity, for example.
I've been a software engineer since the late 90's and left to get a clinical psychology doctorate from 2014-2020. That was partly from looking for a change but mostly because there are Virtually no well paying software jobs here in Alaska. Around the same time that I graduated, Covid opened up the national remote market here and now I'm back to software.<p>My interest in human behavior was fueled by family systems theory which really lens itself to engineering thinking about predictable patterns and human systems. It is by far the most objective set of concepts I've seen that explain about human behavior. I still participate in that professional network and have an app for diagramming automatic versus deliberate behavior in a family system over time. Now I just have to figure out how to make it my job still planning for retirement.
I dabbled with the idea. that's how I created/chose this username - for that specific topic ad asked here. I realised pretty much nothing else pays, at least not in my corner of the world and I could not afford to take a gigantic loan to go elsewhere to study after working and being financially independent for few years. Even the tuition was not free anywhere, exorbitant fees and no scholarship of course (and it was obvious). Also, if I had to keep a day or night job to support whatever else I worked or studied full time I figured that whatever wasn't really worth it. Some kind folks offered to guide but over the time it was drilled down into me that in the end it's about the money. I made peace with it.
I studied psychology, almost did a double degree. Then some post-grad work in psychotherapy. After a couple of years of STEM maths, rats and stats was easy. The biggest gain was that I was better equipped to handle negotiations, etc in my tech / business work.
I left to study for a masters in philosophy. Found it incredibly meaningful and enjoyable. I am however back in tech now as a product manager; I haven't yet been able to chart/imagine a reasonably stable career related to or within philosophy.
I am a linux administrator/software developer. I left IT in 2016, went back to school nearly got a PhD in History before returning to IT in 2022. I enjoy being a Linux admin and missed that, but I also missed the income that I can get in IT. If I started right out of High School I could have probably made History work over the long haul, but starting later in life I just couldn't afford the deep cuts it entails.
I left CS for a non tech degree and then ended up back in software development years later as a career pivot. I don’t regret anything and the timing worked out.
I worked for a few years as a SWE and really enjoyed it. But the opportunity to do a paid masters in urban studies while traveling Europe came so I hopped on it. I miss software a bit and still do open source stuff but I'm not sure what's next for me. Right now I think I'd like to be more on the policy side of technology and write code in my free time but who knows.
I did it the other way for whatever it's worth. I have a degree in film and 3 Emmy awards before I switched to tech. Got burnt out on the film industry, tech is way more chill by comparison.
When I decide to quit software engineering (after I've made enough money I guess), I'm interested to look into microbiology, because mushrooms and fungi are really cool.
I bought a farm and quit tech, but I was management scum, not a SWE (though I did have some under me a couple jobs ago). There's a lot to learn. I'm not really doing this for the money, rather as my contribution to the community and environment, but it would be chill to make some anyway as a further validation of my process.
I left a nice job as a developer to pursue a PhD in English literature. It was the best decision I ever made. I spent eight years reading novels and poems for a living, writing fun things about them, and teaching them. I got to deeply explore literature, philosophy, and linguistics, to read some of the greatest books of the Western canon, and to think deeply about what makes us human. Humanistic disciplines are often considered "impractical," but education is really about satisfying your curiosity, rather than preparing for a job. Incidentally, I have a much better job now. I recommend everyone take some courses in the humanities.
I wish I could do something similar. I'll probably pursue Cosmology and Occult study -- they look pretty similar :)<p>But the money in software is pretty good and I need it. So maybe when I'm 50 years old after 10 years.