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Comment by thesamethrowawa | Hacker News Reader

Impressive to take such a stand, doing something they believe is the right thing. The home depot line says a lot though. I guess tech has been good enough to provide some kind of economic cushion that you can retain a reasonable life style as home depot as your only source of income.

I would (genuinely) be interested in a follow up on how that works out for them. I've "threatened" to do this many times, but my partner points out that if I thought tech management was full of BS, wait until I am getting ordered about by retail industry management while working the shop floor, dead on my feet, penalised for taking too long a toilet break. I think reality could come down hard here.

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From 2024-2025 I worked as a firefighter instructor while running my own tech business, and after two years I decided I was done instructing. I could not handle working on my feet in the pouring rain, getting endlessly hassled for doing a task by the book but not the way the lead instructor likes it done, and then having to spend my lunch break listening to sexist and racist "humor" from my coworkers. Also getting exposed to seriously toxic materials at a radioactive building. Coworkers who all had the thinnest skin and most sensitive egos I've ever seen. All to get paid less in an 8 hour day than I make an hour at my business. It just wasn't worth it, even though I loved being there for the students and helping them grow. When I realized I could make more growing organic veggies in my yard than I could at the training center, I made the call to quit.

> I think reality could come down hard here.

I have worked retail before, and to add onto the things you put it was the lack of problem solving for me that was absolutely mind numbing. Sure there were the little "problems" to solve of shelving, stock order, tidiness etc but it doesn't push the brain (and maybe they're done with that part, which is fair), but until you've experienced it I would be very surprised if this person finds retail better than tech.

Even just having to clock in on time is something many tech folk don't really have to bear.

But I don't think it's charitable to assume the author doesn't understand what he is getting himself into. I'd rather give him the benefit of the doubt and increase my admiration for his commitment accordingly.

>that you can retain a reasonable life style as home depot as your only source of income.

that's pretty presumptuous I think. He says in the piece he is an Orthodox Christian who wants to build a offline community in Pennsylvania where he lives. The average salary at HD is 70k, that's the household income in the state.

I know a bunch of Orthodox folks in the US and their idea of a reasonable lifestyle doesn't include two Teslas and three holidays, they do just fine on less than that without a tech cushion.

It does seem a bit tiring to me whenever seeing articles about people moving out of tech that some people seem convinced they cannot live 'reasonable lives' without earning more than 95% of the population.

>It does seem a bit tiring to me whenever seeing articles about people moving out of tech that some people seem convinced they cannot live 'reasonable lives' without earning more than 95% of the population.

Fair, but another way of looking at it is - since the 1980s the income - cost of living gap has steadily increased, such that "median income" translates to a much more frugal lifestyle than the name implies, to put it euphemistically. Its not like people work multiple blue collar jobs because they want/love to.

> I know a bunch of Orthodox folks in the US and their idea of a reasonable lifestyle doesn't include two Teslas and three holidays, they do just fine on less than that without a tech cushion.

I'm not talking about Teslas and holidays. Where I am, an equivalent job would really be living on the edges in terms of the basics: rent, groceries, healthcare, energy, saving for retirement.

> It does seem a bit tiring to me whenever seeing articles about people moving out of tech...

It's tiring to me that tech workers really have no idea how well they live compared to people working retail full time - to the extend that it gets romanticised like this. It's incredibly patronising. Which is why I would be interested in a follow up on wether the reality matched the "dream".

I used to be a barber before I became a software developer, I figure I earned about as much as someone at a large retailer, this isn't patronizing, I'm speaking from experience. You can actually live a normal life on a regular salary, earning 18-20 bucks an hour in a middle of the pack or slightly below average cost of living state is not some horrific condition. That's just how regular people live.

That said a middle aged guy with college education and 10+ years as an engineering manager I very much suspect is not going to literally stack shelves anyway, and store managers at the big retailers earn a pretty handsome salary. Working what might be the most common, white collar middle class job is not some horror story in the making.

> I guess tech has been good enough to provide some kind of economic cushion that you can retain a reasonable life style as home depot as your only source of income.

It certainly has. There are other instances of former tech workers who subtely brag online about "moving to the countryside" to "raise chickens," "write poetry," or another performative lifestyle using profits from the industry they're quitting.

> I guess tech has been good enough to provide some kind of economic cushion that you can retain a reasonable life style as home depot as your only source of income.

This is a nice understatement. What we see here is privilege at work and phrasing it in a likable manner. "Tech" folks appear to be particularly vulnerable to this type of framing.

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