Ask HN: Should I Leave Software?

As an oldie who has lived through multiple hype cycles - Don't take the "retire early" crowd seriously.

Over the decades, I have seen too many friends who have fallen for this story, 'hit their numbers' and loose their minds after 'retiring'. This is because the mind just unravels(unable to find meaning), if it doesn't have daily structure and purpose.

You are ready to retire, not just when you are financially independent but when you have settled into a pattern that is sustainable long term, of daily 'meaning formation'.

AI will create problems too. Anything that grows in complexity also generates more issues. Never less issues. Don't believe the hype. Tune it out. Focus on problems. Not tools.

Another thing I learnt is - Balance the work "has to feel good" story with whatever responsibilities you have or will have in life. So if people depend on you or will depend on you in future, don't make the decision purely on I want work to feel like play. It's easier to keep work and play separate than to try and merge them. Both are required though for 'meaning formation' but balance it out. So look for both in separate areas.

Try looking for work with teams that are multi-disciplinary. If you head back to Uni don't just roam the comp sci dept. Go look depts and ask them if they need you skills. This is where the most "fun" happens imho. But people head where the money is and end up doing a lot more boring stuff. Software is everywhere so you can get involved with whatever you want - chemistry, biology, astrophysics etc etc if you just go look. All the best!

> Over the decades, I have seen too many friends who have fallen for this story, 'hit their numbers' and loose their minds after 'retiring'. This is because the mind just unravels(unable to find meaning), if it doesn't have daily structure and purpose.

What specifically happened to them? I am one of those who cannot wait to quit my job (career altogether really) and I reached a good financial number, but don't have a clear future direction.

I spent the last half of my day today trying to have AI write some boilerplate for me, to basically port something I already wrote to a different platform. I tried 3 different models and it fell on its face repeatedly. I probably would have made more progress if I didn’t use it at all. That will probably be the path I go tomorrow.

I think you’re falling for some of the hype. I’m not feeling the magic others often talk about.

AI's capabilities are very unevenly distributed. If there is a wealth of quality information on the internet about something, then it usually comes up with a solid answer. But where information is scarce it often just bullshits its way. Two examples:

Trying to get some JS code to work for a GUI - mostly correct, but I did cross-check with MDN.

Tried to debug PXE booting Raspberry Pi from Haiku-OS as a server. A mixture of good information on PXE as per the standards, but sketchy when it comes to Raspberry Pi's non-standard implementation. Failed to solve problems arising from Haiku-OS beta5 state.

As career advice: skate to where the puck will be! Get proficient at solving domain specific and edge case scenarios. Fixing AI created monsters is going to be like tattoo removal clinics erasing regrets of past bad choices.

This is the big issue with AI in the real world. It does great in tech demos, I got it to one shot a password generator site with some customizations I wanted that most don’t have. However, when it comes to my actual job it’s almost always weird stuff done in a weird way that there isn’t much information out there for. I have to assume a lot of companies are this way. Enterprise apps tend not to have a bunch of code examples out on GitHub for AI to train on.

A couple years ago we got some professional services from a well known vendor that makes the platform we were running. What they developed was basically something you’d see in a blog post, it was useless. If that’s what AI is going to do, it’s not helpful. We ended up throwing away all their code and doing our own thing so that it would scale and not be a pain to use.

As far as I can tell this will be a weakness of AI for some time to come.

Seen the news recently? People have been discovering that the LLMs are snake oil lately. I think we are only starting to see how truly bad they are in reality. "AI takes all our jobs someday" almost certainly. It's not today, and I'm pretty sure LLMs aren't gonna get us there.

If you're tired of working for the kind of idiot that sees "AI will replace everyone in your company for cheap" and starts drooling I don't blame you. I'm pretty sick of the industry too.

But I don't think AI is a good reason to quit.

> Seen the news recently? People have been discovering that the LLMs are snake oil lately.

Sources? That would cheer me up for sure, haha.

> If you're tired of working for the kind of idiot that sees "AI will replace everyone in your company for cheap" and starts drooling I don't blame you. I'm pretty sick of the industry too.

Yeah you're probably right and I suppose this is more a factor than AI itself.

The company I work for has been stack ranking for about a year and a half. It's exhausting and, combined with the onslaught of AI hype, it's pretty easy to slip into a pattern of thought where I feel I contribute no value.

So AI might just be the proverbial straw.

It also doesn't help that the engineering landscape in Australia is a bit lacklustre when it comes to anything more complicated than web/app development. Would love to work on operating systems or crazy hardware projects like piloting software or robotics.

https://aicodinghorrors.com/ - the database deletion one was how I found out this site exists.

https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o... - somewhat controversial because measuring different tasks. But nobody can measure dev tasks anyway.

https://venturebeat.com/ai/stack-overflow-data-reveals-the-h... - Saw this very recently, haven't dug in to the sources.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Talks a LOT about the AI hype bubble in general.

The landscape here in the US sucks too. Layoffs and offshoring are still going strong. Everything new is some stupid AI startup. I kinda thought I was done too until I got laid off and started working on my own projects to stay sharp.

Realized I still love making stuff. Just hate the corporate games.

Two perennial opportunities in Australia IT are fixing up outsourced systems and building workarounds for enterprise shovelware.

Job ads tend to be for Java/C# coding and project managers willing to harangue techies to deliver improbable results to impossible schedules with meagre budgets

One element that can come into play is having a career where all you need is a decent job and you are OK.

No doubt this has drifted out-of-reach for more people across-the-board, but if you are in an area where a decent job alone is not enough and you are actually completely dependent on a decent job market in addition, that may be an unrecognized disadvantage.

Whether you are still young or not, if that's the kind of situation you've been involved in your whole life it may not be easy to realize there are still many other options out there. Not that you withdraw from market dependency completely, but it really can be overbearing if it acts as a dominating force.

I think coding manually is like doing wood work manually, its going away. I am planning my exit, expecting it to take a few years for me to fully leave the field. But I want out, and this is coming from someone with a ton of FAANG experience.

> But I want out, and this is coming from someone with a ton of FAANG experience.

But where do you go? Retraining is too expensive for decent paying fields to be worth it and there a very few careers otherwise that won’t be a steep lifestyle regression.

If he has "a ton of FAANG experience," he probably made FAANG money and can live off that.

Maybe move to being a program manager or something? If you truly enjoy coding, don't stop, but try to make it a hobby?

I never enjoyed coding, it was a means to an end -- I was interested in systems administration and learned about infosec along the way, trying to protect my machine in an age when hard drive space was scarce and virtual machines weren't a thing -- you burned a CD and spun up Knoppix if you had decent ram...

Anyways, the things AI are doing is more "software carpentry" than "software engineering".

AI is not finding zero days. AI is not writing tight C to speed up I/O intensive processes.

OTOH, I don't have a career -- I bounced from UX research to policy to pentesting to being a SOC analyst, trying to find just... stability, respect, and a challenging environment.

When you're young it can be tempting to chase the perfect job but if you have one now, I'd try to get into a management position where you have a good work life balance. Find people you can trust to work under you, and treat them well. That isn't always a money thing -- letting them use their PTO, not screaming throwing things or hitting them, not forcing them to conduct every communication over email as if interactions that don't occur in writing are fair game to be manipulative...

Anyways I think the things AI will "solve" are stuff like when you're tweaking some code to parse a CSV or automating the standing up of a wordpress site.

As for trades? My dad was a carpenter. If things aren't being built, there's no work. It can be very boom or bust. Same goes for other trades -- having a salary and an office are big perks that a lot of folks take for granted.

One thing I didn't see mentioned is uni -- especially in AUS where it's lower cost, I'd do that if you have the chance. I struggled in high school, but when I got to pick my major, pick my classes, and be surrounded by others who actually enjoy learning I found I really enjoyed school. You'll get a chance to learn to write well, in a literary way. You can also dive deep on math and coding concepts you might struggle to teach yourself.

Try to find someplace that keeps your brain engaged, has good work life balance, and yes save aggressively... but your brain is still forming. You might not be the same person in ten years, in terms of ideas or tastes -- I used to be an XTREME dew chugging edgelord... now I listen to classical and drink tea.

Anyways, sorry to kind of ramble but it's annoying, seeing young folks like you buy into this AI hype.

It's not going to replace skilled coders, full stop -- and I'd focus on stuff like assembly, C, and other "bare metal" skills if you're truly concerned about that.