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Comments (482)

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  siren2026
  I have been at it for 20 years now and have started to feel my time is up as wellAs a lot of comments here highlights, the issue is not so much the tech but the politics, constant perf reviews, re-orgs, nonsense BS that is pushed top-down. This industry is taking a toll on you.My advice for anyone reading this that is starting your career: Live simply and save a lot. When I started my career I thought I would love doing this forever. I would never imagine I would get burned out in the long run. I would never imagine I would think about retiring early because tech was so fun to me.The reality is that money and savings give you optionality. It allows you to work without worrying day to day. You never know when the next wave of AI or BS is going to hit. That's when having that optionality is really important.I have seen so many of my peers making very high tech income but also living the American opulent life, spending everything they make to buy multi-million dollar houses in the bay area to impress their friends. Today they have no choice than continue working for another 30 years. Today I can have a simple life and retire almost anywhere in the world.Decide what is important to you. I guarante that buying the multi-million dollar home is not worth the extra 30 years of grinding.
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  latkin
  This whole thing is eye-searingly performative. Whether or not he follows through and goes dark after this, this farewell is just so ridiculous.Claims to have not used the internet or a phone since February, does all communication via USPS, declares that AI and social media make him hate himself... But somehow is continuing to post on Bluesky, continuing to update his blog, continuing to post YouTube videos, continuing to solicit donations on GoFundMe for personal matters. The account that posted this link to HN is brand new and this is the only submission -- hmm...If you are serious about being done with tech and plan to go off-grid, you just go off grid.Need to tie off some loose ends first? Write a paper letter to your IRL inner circle and/or business partners. Get it copied at Kinkos. Call people (use a land line if you need) and talk to them about it.Just this last time (you swear!) you absolutely must announce this at internet scale? Then walk the walk and minimize the tech involved by typing out your farewell in plain text and posting it directly. Y'know, like we did pre-AI, pre-social media. Don't pull out a typewriter, write a sappy "Dear Internet" letter, add a bunch of likely-pre-planned "edits" in red pen, pull out your digital camera, take a photo, transfer it to your laptop, carefully adjust and crop, then finally combine it into a multimedia update that you go out of your way to promote across multiple social media channels. This announcement has obviously been tailored for maximum social media engagement -- supposedly the thing they are making a principled stand in opposition to.
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  kamaitachi
  I just retired after 40 years writing code.The last year or so wasn’t fun - battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted.For a long time, I thought I’d do a lot of hobby or open source coding when I retired.I haven’t even tried. I’m not burned out, but find I’ve lost the passion for coding I once had.Is that AI? Or is it me?Maybe as my retirement progresses, I can rekindle that passion, but as of now, I don’t miss tech.Sorry, got to go - my garden needs me :-)
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  jdorfman
  For those scratching their heads asking who is this guy and why should I care?He has been tackling the open source sustainability issue since launching gittip circa 2012. Since then millions of dollars have been raised for open source because of him. Sure it’s a drop in the bucket but he did it.Chad is a friend of mine. You can’t find a nicer person in tech than him. I hope this is temporary because he can still make a huge impact. Either way I respect his decision and hope he finds peace offline. TBH I’m a little jealous.
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  dbgrman
  Mad respect for his work. Love his writing. But no, i'm not buying the story of going offline, especially not with a trending hackernews post and a typewritten letter to the internet. When one is done with something, they're done. Cold turkey. like "Fck this sht, i'm out". If someone notices that you are missing, they'll ask, and you can give them your spiel about being AI-Amish or whatever.Even if you ignore all that, I think you just need a break, rest, recover, find something else in life and move on. The whole thing about "life was better in the past" is just plain non-sense, simply because the past, for all we know, extends to infinity. Why 1980 and not 1890? or 1590? the inquisition? maybe the crusades? or maybe the pharohs? If you believe in biblical tales then how about being in the great flood? or being one of the pharoh soldiers that die after the sea moses split closes on them? or one of the skulls in gengis khan's tower of skulls?You can read Steven Pinker's "Better angels of our nature" and get a good sense of how far along have we come.
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  sph
  Funny, if all goes well today is my last day as professional software engineer, after 20 years.I have enough savings to buy a modest cottage and to last me a year or two being frugal. After that it’s anyone’s guess, but I am beyond excited not having to program for a living any more, just on what feels meaningful, in complete autonomy.Projects lined up: a Erlang-like microkernel/runtime I have been designing for the past 4 years, a series of small games that I have been itching to work on, then, of course, the lifelong project of living in a rural house. Stretch goal if I win the lottery: build a solar farm.Maybe I will be so lucky never to have had to use LLMs in my work. You guys have fun without me. :-P
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  thesamethrowawa
  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.
• rancar2
  Hi Fellow HN tech community, I’ve had the honor to digitally interact with Chad Whitacre, and from the first exchange to the subsequent ones over the months, he’s a good human. Chad provided a healthy, human-first approach to the most fundamental areas of free software. He possesses a deep understanding of how we all do better together. He is a person to celebrate for all the ways he was and is. Chad made our online lives richer by his ways of being. Cheers to Chad and his continued living as a good human!
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  GaryBluto
  While I admire his commitment to his ideals, I find some of this veers into an uncomfortable fanaticism, especially the remarks praising the savage acts of violence committed by the Sentinelese (which I find particularly odd considering the author's professed religion). I doubt the Amish (who apply technology selectively and intelligently) would appreciate being compared to them either; the Sentinelese are not preserving a valuable way of life, they're primitive hunter-gathering barbarians, and anybody can "return" to that way of life any time they want by taking a one-way plane ticket and camping out somewhere where they cannot be found.Additionally, the fact that this announcement is a scan of a typewritten letter, despite the fact that he has communicated in text-form on BlueSky since the letter's authoring, feels a tad performative to me.
• hermitcrab
  I've been programming for ~50 years and I still like it. When I retire I will probably do some recreational programming.I was planning to write a book about how to start and run a small software business (which I have been doing for 20 years), but things are changing so fast recently that I am starting to feel a bit of a dinosaur and I'm not sure anyone would be interested.
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  elliotbnvl
  This resonates with me as well. For more reasons than one: with the rise of AI (Mythos is but a pale forerunner) digital security — and by extension, digital privacy — has ceased to exist. The bomber will always win. The only way to win is not to play.
• fullshark
  The ideal career pathhttps://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1jgcfx9/pe...
• AnEro
  I think it is fair to dog on this for being a bit performative, like announcing you are blocking someone or quiting XYZ social media by posting on that social media. I do give some grace for trying to make an offline magazine/newsletter because I'd like to see more of that in the world, especially passion projects in general. All that to say, I think the attempt to be offline or more disconnected from some of these services is ultimately a healthy habit and is noble self improvement goal in itself. In the same way, trying and failing to quit cigarettes is ultimately healthier than not trying to quit smoking cigarettes. (I am biased; I think the way he formatted the post is quite aesthetic for what it is and would enjoy more analog to mellow out my life)
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  narrator
  This reminds me of the movie Edge of Tomorrow where the main character decides he doesn't want to fight the aliens today and instead goes into town to get a drink at the pub. The aliens still get him.Robots and stuff are going to start appearing everywhere soon. He's not going to like that. Hoodlums are probably going to start burglarizing his house with their robot accomplices. Then he won't be able to go outside because he doesn't have a robot bodyguard. His UBI would have paid him to stay inside and stare at the wall, but he won't sign up for that cause it requires a smartphone and an identity implant. Probably wind up homeless with a handwritten sign, "Destroy All Clankers! Anything (without an embedded microchip) helps."
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  mrmarket
  thank you for this. what a sacred journey you're embarking on. i hope to follow you - talking with a close friend now about becoming an elevator mechanic. my wife is pregnant so i have to find a profession that comes reasonably close to tech salaries. i've been writing poetry by hand. i think the world you envision is possible, and closer.
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  beej71
  I got into teaching several years ago, leaving industry behind. It's great! I had gotten a little bit tired of programming other people's stuff. It wasn't the programming itself that was dull, but I found most products that people wanted were actually kind of boring and formulaic. And none of them really worked for the betterment of humanity.Teaching is a massive challenge. The stuff that I teach in computer science I find to be relatively easy after 20 years in industry, but figuring out how to teach it effectively? That's really, really difficult. Such a great challenge to be able to sink my teeth into—so rewarding. And it's for a good cause.I'm not opposed to going back to industry work. I'd probably use genAI to get a bunch to get stuff done, too, even though I don't use it for my personal projects. But it would have to be some work that I believed in, that was doing some good in the world. I can imagine working for the county, say, or for a non-profit.
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  bdcravens
  Seeing some of these retirement comments, as a 49 year old developer who has been doing this since the late 1990s, I'll be honest, I can't relate. I have no interest in retiring anytime soon.I still see a ton of frontier to explore, and personally I love AI. I've always loved writing code, but was always frustrated at how it took at trudge through learning new languages and approaches, and all of the plumbing and boilerplate it took to actually build something. I've always enjoyed having extensive breadth about many languages in addition to the few that I had extreme depth in.In other words, I don't feel AI has taken something I love away, but has removed barriers to finally build solutions in a way that maps perfectly with my brain.
• abought
  I overlapped a bit with Chad in 2015, as he was navigating a professional transition. I wasn't in an especially high role back then- just a guy in the back of the room.In the times I saw him since, I consistently saw someone who thought hard every day about how to help others, and didn't lose sight of the human element. Sentry worked hard to create a viable business, without losing sight of open source goals. (you can see some of his efforts at https://blog.sentry.io/authors/chad-whitacre/ )I tell my younger colleagues to do the best work they can sustainably do... but too often in this field, the big roles become too intense to be sustained forever. I hope his new role shows him the same warmth and support that he tried to put out there for others.
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  enos_feedler
  Left engineering & Google on my own accord in August 2020. WFH was the catalyst that helped push me over the edge, but it was a long time coming. The underlying feeling I always had when working on programming at work versus programming at school and graduate work: I am being paid to re-type out things that many people have typed out before. As I saw waves of layoffs both pre and post LLMs, it's funny how my gut intuition led me down the right road at the right time. Always trust your gut.
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  bregma
  I have 3 weeks left, but outside of work I've already been divorced from anything technological invented this century. I've been living in a log cabin in the woods for over a quarter century. This essay does hit home.21 days left. I don't plan to look back.
• inoffensivename
  I've been working at a big tech company for the last 20 years, and I'm thoroughly sick of it. I'm planning to step away from programming/tech in general and get by as an airline pilot. It's nice to have a place where every single interaction between people, from hallway conversations to chat rooms with colleagues I've met over the years, isn't a constant stream of AI-related nonsense.
• 34187asf
  Software dev is so much infested with mediocre people who follow any line dictated by management and politics and force others to do it.If CEOs were smart, they'd use the AI craze to identify the AI boosters and then fire them all. This will increase productivity and save them way more money than a Clown Code subscription.
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  tims33
  I think we're going to see a ton of this in the coming years. A return to the 60s/70s when people were going off the grid, moving to a farm, or just disconnecting
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  tomaytotomato
  Fair play to the chap, it was refreshing to read a scan of a letter typed from a typewriter.<joke> I just hope he doesn't start mailing packages to people in the tech industry in the next few years.</joke>
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  __mharrison__
  Chad is one of the kindest souls I've ever met. Good luck off the grid!Also, how did he post this if he isn't using the Internet?
• didip
  I finally pulled the trigger after being in tech for 21 years. 10 years at a FAANG.I simply can’t handle the performative Machiavellian culture anymore.I could play that game for longer, but I don’t want to. All I want is to build cool and ambitious things without any of the theatrics.I don’t want to go offline. I just want to live a normal, modern, and peaceful life. I would go nuts without all of the comfort of modern tech, especially the high speed broadband.
• nylon4831
  I have come online to announce that I will no longer be online
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  runamuck
  I love my current job, but also part of me thinks a Garbage Man would provide a cool experience. (I'm ok with the stinkiness). I just think about careening through the city at the crack of dawn, exploring every nook of my city. That or group fitness instructor.
• nine_k
  I'd say that it's very natural to want to retire after 40 years of doing anything. You reach your various ceilings. You have most of your enthusiasm spent, most tasty bits of your area of expertise picked and consumed, seen many sad things repeating over and over, etc, etc. And any major new development may be disheartening, whatever it may be.I think this is fine. A person, having worked for so long and successfully on something, has every right to call it quits and switch to something else. Something fresh and different. Godspeed!
• thisisauserid
  I'm so offline I announce my offlineness to the internet.
• throwaway323929
  I fell off the OSS ideological wagon around the same time, and probably for the same reason.When he was running Gittip (which was actually working to pay indie OSS developers), there was a horde of political extremists that were fighting each other and boycotting Gittip because Chad wouldn't de-platform people that didn't like each other. The result is that a bunch of people got a political mass hysteria going, which scared contributors into withdrawing their donations, and that caused a lot of indie developers to lose a critical part of their funding and support. A lot of people became disillusioned around that time and stopped contributing to OSS projects, some from lack of funds but more from being fearful to stick their neck out. Substack of the NodeJS fame was the top paid developer on Gittip and I do wonder if he would have been an OSS developer still if he had not lost his primary source of income at that time.Can you blame them for leaving? They were giving up their time to make things for a community that was guilting developers into receiving money for the work, while the same people rudely asked for unpaid features and harassed them into implementing weird and legally unsound Code of Conducts at risk of being publicly shamed if they had a different opinion about it. When there's no monetary incentive, eroding autonomy -and- no clout, there's almost no benefit to doing OSS work, and people that aren't into self harming ultimately quit.That whole fiasco damaged OSS in a way that I think people don't understand today, and we're still dealing with the fallout. The result of that short-sighted OSS cannibalization has put a lot of the OSS community on life support, and what's left are giant OSS projects run by corporations like Facebook instead of teams of indie developers. What will fill that vacuum is AI code written by less experienced developers. We're all worse for it.
• nunez
  This reminded me of a fellow SRE that I met on my first day of onboarding at Google.I don't remember which team he got matched with, but he was definitely going on to do hardcore SRE stuff.He didn't have a smartphone. Just a little dumb flip-phone that's so difficult to come by these days.This was in 2015. That blew my mind.He absolutely knew what was coming. Just like the author of this really nice letter.I wish him the best of luck in his new lo-fi life. Don't forget to get a rifle to shoot your printer with!
• Darthagnon
  I love the website design. I had considered at one point blogging in illuminated manuscript, and if I can figure a good way to format/compress page scans for my blog, I will follow in the OP's footsteps.
• NoGravitas
  I'd retire yesterday if I could afford it. Maybe in 10-15 years. Have a once-a-day NNCP feed rather than total disconnection.
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  leesec
  Lol, had to tell the internet on his way out huh. He'll be back of course as he clearly values the internet and makes it part of his ego.
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  locusofself
  I feel all of these things too. I'm 42 and started working right out of high school. Unfortunately I was dumb, didn't save money or pursue high earnings until 6 years ago when I joined big tech. I live in HCOL area, and realistically have 10 or maybe even 20 years left before I can even start thinking about retirement.Trying to figure out how to make this sustainable.
• k310
  I retired to the country, where any friends are 50 miles away, and most don't even reply to emails and messages.I still want to utilize some free wikis and such to help share ideas.There are simple things that can improve life for people, especially seniors, that are very low tech, and that's the rub.Low tech things mean taking action, getting away from the screen, where SO WE THINK, magic happens when we create some new fantabulous code gizmo.Maybe just bringing a pizza to someone, inventing some gadget to read invisible labels and expiry dates on food, or making an exoskeleton for someone with back pain will do more good than some AI that writes exciting posts on social media, or better, counters some other AI that is coming for your money and creative mind.We are all overthinking everything, when simple, human problems are neglected in some race to an unknown "endpoint" that is illusory and ever-moving.
• siliconc0w
  It would be hard to give up on tech as I genuinely enjoy building, watching systems come alive, figuring out the puzzles through when they break. I do like the term Neo-Amish though and definitely relate.I do recommend people get outside activities to balance things out - just walking my dog 1-2 miles a day is like therapy for me (and a good way to get unblocked and energized with a new idea).
• flw_0311
  burnout at tech companies is a real thing. my previous manager was very high up in tech and quit one day to pursue her passion—something i am very envious of.
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  d_burfoot
  It's a poignant piece, but I feel that HN should have some stories of soaring enthusiasm, optimism, and visions of a spectacular future, to counterbalance the doom and gloom.
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  rootsudo
  It is amusing and depressing to see so many people exit tech. I remember this happened in similar “vibes/strides around 08 and then for Covid, which ironically doubled down on remote work. And now for AI.It really paints a projection on how much time we all really have in this world and this segment of work.At best I wonder, do “I” have another 10 - 15 years left in tech?Do you?Agreed with the other comments on financial freedom. It does feel that tech is one of the last bastions remaining where you can really solidify being an autodidact to have an exit of your choosing.
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  Waterluvian
  I dream of being the Zamboni driver for my town's arena. I have a plan I'm successfully executing to get to be that before I'm 50.The hardest part will be beating all the competition for the job.
• stego-tech
  I'll never give up tech. It's a passion I've had since childhood, and a large part of what keeps me going in society is seeing the lights of the eyes brighten when someone discovers something new with technology that genuinely makes their life that much better than it was a moment ago. Not merely the flame of some dopamine hit of something shiny, but that genuine, "Thank you for helping me save an hour of my time/cross this chore off my list forever/give me back time, to live my life" sense.The fact so many of us are burning out so hard, so fast, so thoroughly despite tech being a passion genuinely worries me. These are otherwise brilliant people, well-read, modest intellectuals that are just sick of this anti-human society we've built, with the constant braying by Capitalist and Industrialist leaders that this thing is necessary or you will be left behind, in lieu of natural discovery and adoption and integration into our lives. We bought into it initially and for so long, even as time after time after time it proved to be empty, or shallow, or vapid, or hollow. Never life-changing, never society-changing, always enriching those with far too much by taking from those with far too little.I wish the OP well. I think we all need more offline time, if just to remind ourselves what the role of technology was always meant to be within it.
• jordemort
  I am very lucky to be ensconced right now within a team and a company that views the current LLM mania with a similar level of disdain as myself. I'm not sure there's a place for me anywhere else in the industry right now. I wish I had the resources to wander off like this.
• anon
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• chasd00
  i got 9.5 years. 9.5 years and then I'm finally climbing off the stage, picking up my tips, and my dancing days are over. i'm counting it down.
• ismaelyws
  Been thinking the same lately…
• stereosteve
  This is great. I’ve been thinking to set up an HF radio rig to talk to friends and strangers that are real people. Maybe the LLMs flood the internet with enough trash and we go back to more voice comms
• ethagnawl
  This really resonates. I'm a dev/sysadmin/whatever with 15+ years of experience and I've been seriously considering applying for a job at my local Tractor Supply.I've been having trouble finding consistent work for the last year but was recently accepted into a recruitment network. Almost every posting on the network's job board is for AI/agentic bullshit (many of them in defense contexts) and I just can't bring myself to apply for any of them. I won't be able to fake the required enthusiasm. I've been through 4/5/6? hype cycles over the course of my career and I'm just over it all. Maybe the AI bubble will burst? Maybe it won't? Either way, it takes the fun out of what I've enjoyed doing -- even if it's because it's all anyone wants to talk about. Layer all of the surveillance* and age verification crap on top of that and ... I want off this train.*Anecdote: I was a chaperone on an elementary school field tried yesterday and there were >8 cameras on the bus. This amount of surveillance and accompanying normalization of it hasn't prevented or even helped rectify multiple incidents my child has had while riding on school buses. So, all of the downsides and no upsides.
• lbrito
  I was about to comment something like "happy for OP, he's very fortunate to have enough to be able to simply retire" when I read the bit about Home Depot.Amazing, really walking the talk at a level I've never seen before outside of novels or lives of the saints etc.
• procaryote
  Best of luck to him, I hope he finds what he's looking for!What's not completely clear from the post is what he dislikes with AI / technology. Does someone know?
• solomonb
  I love learning about computers, programming, and math so much. I actually got into tech as a career pretty late. For many years I worked as a art fabricator/carpenter in the art world.I only got good enough at programming to get a job in tech because I became obsessed with the Curry-Howard Correspondence as a backdoor into learning math.I've always had a wide array of interests. I live on a half acre property with a giant garden and a shop that is bigger then my actual house. I've always split my free time between exploring and learning about computers, gardening, radios, and carpentry, fixing old machines, etc.The shift in my lived work experience with AI has substantially demotivated me from programming and computers in my free time. A million times over I would rather pull weeds or clean my Bridgeport mill.I've always wished I could go back to a 1990s experience where the computer lived in the den, the internet was only somewhat monetized, the future was utopian.OP's plan to fallback to 1980s era technology is appealing but also somewhat depressing. Not only do I really like and enjoy learning about computers, but also making this kind of individualistic decision doesn't really get us to a better place as a society.I wish we had heeded the warnings of researchers like Sherry Turkle who identified the impacts of technology on the individual as far back as the 1980s.
• aquir
  I would go offline but never retire from tech, I would miss music terribly. I would also move all my ebooks over to an e-reader and that's it. If I can live somewhere offline with my music player and e-reader that's fine.
• elmean
  "maneuver my body into close proximity and vibrate air with my throat." XD
• karmakaze
  > 1980. Neo-Amish.I've not a new 'retirement' plan to voluntarily be stuck in the '80s.
• METANOIA-ANDRIO
  Damn, I am a beginner in my coding journey, and even I fell the fatigue - the fear that no matter what I do , it can be easily replicated with AI, I now have to think extra hard to make sure that a new project I am embarking on cannot be easily vibe coded in a weekend, it exhausting - I feel the spirit of coding, building together is dying as everyone wants to monetize and sell to PE firms, everyone wants a million or billion $ valuation, is open source and community dead ?
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  ern_ave
  If this is viral marketing for a typewriter company, it's genius.
• WillAdams
  Echoes of _The Soul of a New Machine_>I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.If memory serves, the note left by a burnt-out engineer on their workstation when they left abruptly.
• html5cat
  You, sir, are a fish. Good luck on the path!
• keybored
  Then they came for the programmers but there were no one to come for because they all have taken up farming.
• anon
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• anon
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• ryanmcbride
  I think about this a lot but I also kind of feel like I'll never truly be able to retire in a way that matters.
• Kuyawa
  60/yo and still loving it. I get burned out every couple of years but new technology always refreshes my admiration for the field I chose. It never ceases to amaze me the capacity to reinvent itself, from the early days of dbase and clipper, it came the dial up internet, the craze of FrontPage and webmasters, the move to client/server, Python, Ruby, Go, then mobile apps, Swift, Java, Kotlin, then back to basics with Node and PostgreSQL, painful deviations like React, Tailwinds, NextJS, I've learned them all. And now we're finally here, in front of us, the promised land, AI, the final frontier, one of the most beautiful pieces of technology my wrinkled eyes have ever seen. I am more excited than ever.See, through the years I've left behind an immense graveyard of dead projects I never had the time to finish and now they're all rising from the dead at the same time, like a really bad zombies movie, like MJ's thriller video, all dancing to the tune of AI, all coming alive in minutes because of AI.This is it, Valhalla, Elysium, Paradise, here we are, I am already dead and I don't know it, but I love it.
• webdoodle
  I've been smartphone free for over 5 years now. It's been liberating, but its just not enough. I still use my computer to doomscroll for an hour or 2 a day. It takes me hours of hiking alone in the woods afterwards too unwind all the stress and distraction that comes with being connected.Ironically right around February I started to have similar thoughts as Chad, that perhaps I should become Neo Amish as he calls it. Like Chad, I like disconnected, non-AI technology just fine. But anything that spies on me or tries to modify my behavior needs to go.Maybe I'll mail Chad a letter and see if he wants to be my penpal.
• ossicones
  This is so camp.
• OG_BME
  Chad has been one of the strongest voices in the open source community for the past few years. When we were building tools for OSS developers we valued his opinion highly.This is the final nail for me, that something is rotten in the state of open source.There's the "old guard" of open source, who seem to spend most of their time arguing about semantics, governance, and the nth kubernetes telemetry solution.So where is the "new guard"? There's been a lot of interesting work in open source AI, but it seems to me like a championed effort cannot exist without a new paradigm around collaboration and monetization. More and more, we see the new guard question or outright deny new contributors due to AI slop PRs and issues continue to pile up.There desperately needs to be a sexy revitalization of open source, starting with young developers. I thought it would be from the YC-esque startups of the world, who use open source as a way to garner legitimacy, good will, and a top-of-funnel upselling motion."Trad" open source is greying - and the new wave is more of a ripple. It has no shared identity, and no champion.
• demorro
  I would follow him if I could. Most of my colleagues as well.
• Gomotono
  I'm curious about one thing thouhg:Or profession is very young and what annoys me the most: i can do my job only on a computer and i'm very good in knowing how to use it and i also use it for everything.Privat and work has merged into being in front of a screen.The joke of starting a bakery or doing other manual labor jobs is quite common.It might just be time for this to transform.I would retire yesterday if i could afford it though.
• ginkgotree
  This is a great choice
• Ccecil
  To the OP...Best wishes. You are an inspiration.
• anon
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• insane_dreamer
  I feel thisupdate after reading the comments: a good portion of the HN community is so f*ing judgmental
• rramadass
  Folks might find the following beautiful framework from Indian Philosophy very useful here.One's Life is structured w.r.t. three axes;1) The Goals of Life aka Purusartha - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puru%E1%B9%A3%C4%81rtha They are; - Artha: All sorts of wealth including material and non-material like friends, health etc. Needed for a good life. - Dharma: Rules/Regulations/Laws/Ethics/Morals which make coexistence in a society possible. - Kama: All sorts of pleasures that one seeks for enjoyment. Many equate only this to the goal of life. - Moksa (optional): Cultivating a mindset which supersedes and transcends the above three thus "freeing oneself" from the unending "wheel of life". 2) The Stages of Life aka Asrama - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80%C5%9Brama_(stage) They are; - Brahmacharya: From Childhood to Adulthood (before puberty) which is the Student stage. During this stage you focus on studying and learning various subjects/arts. Since both mind and body are still developing, self-control and discipline w.r.t. various harmful external influences are emphasized. The goal is the development of a healthy mind and body. - Grihastha: The married Householder stage with Wife and Children. The Grihastha is considered the central pillar of society since everything else depends on him. He generates wealth, enjoys all sorts of pleasures and lives within a social law framework for peaceful coexistence. - Vanaprastha: The retired householder stage who has successfully raised his children i.e. put them through brahmacharya and into grihastha stage. He now removes himself from much active duty in society thus making room for the next generation to step-in and develop. He curbs his desires/wants (since both body and mind are ageing) and acts mostly as an adviser to the next generation. - Sannyasa (optional): This is a completely different stage/way of life whose only goal is Moksa. A person can move to this stage from any of the above stages. Most of the ordinary rules/laws/practices of society are not applicable here. 3) Finally, your "duty" aka Karma in Society. In today's world, we generally equate this with work which enables us to earn our livelihoods. This should be in harmony with the Goals and Stages of Life i.e. at each stage the mix of goals and emphasis on them are different.Understand your current stage in life, Manage/Control your goals w.r.t. that stage and Adjust your duty accordingly for a Happy and Fulfilled Life.
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  mmmgge3
  While I definitely respect the choice to live an offline life, as someone that grew up orthodox christian in an orthodox country I can't shake off the vibe this dude gives: very LARPy and sounds like an evangelical. Orthodox never tell you that they're sinners and to pray for their sins. That's an americanism.
• thatmf
  Must be nice.
• YcYc10
  I wish I could do the same.
• poszlem
  Reminds me the Three Body Problem book and the scientists suddenly killing themselves because they cannot see any point to doing science any longer.
• segmondy
  I wish I could retire...
• epolanski
  I am very fatigued by tech and AI too.I do find occasional pleasure in personal projects, creating exotic programming languages that are not text-based, compilers and stuff like that, but otherwise coding work makes me wanna puke.
• quietsegfault
  This isn't an airport, you don't need to announce your departure.
• tantalor
  wait home depot is hiring??
• mubaarakhassan
  Good luck with what you're doing. It feels like everyone's shipping more but thinking less and with open source you really feel it with the PRs and issues. All the best!
• juleiie
  Even good ideas can be ridiculous if you take it 100% radically literal.Internet is nice, connectivity is good. We just need self control.
• Grosvenor
  I feel like there's honestly a space for "Greybeards Inc".Maybe a consultancy of people who have seen and done it all before - Very selective of their clients.
• mikeyinternews
  Legend
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  eej71
  I am clearly in the minority in these parts.I find it intellectually alarming (but not surprising) that someone would say something like "[the north sentinelese tribe] are doing the rest of us a favor by preserving a way of life we may need again someday"."way of life" is doing a lot of obscuring here.It took centuries of hard work to leave that behind.
• manesioz
  Godspeed.
• ChrisArchitect
  Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48315784
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  sublinear
  Text inside images is not a11y. That's a paddlin'.I jest, but not really. There were already a ton of reasons tech might burn someone out and AI was the cherry on top.
• tootie
  As an AI hater, I sympathize. I really don't enjoy the engineering world since LLMs. I fully concede their value is immense, I just don't like it. Unlike Chad, I've put in enough years that I can step back and kinda do nothing. I don't want to actually do nothing, nothing. I have absolutely zero respect for the foolish notion of returning to a fully pre-modern lifestyle. It sounds he's accepting electricity, but rejecting the internet which feels arbitrary. Maybe an attempt to return to the world of his childhood which was scary and new for people who born 30 years before him. It's fine and even laudable to want to be more connected to humans and to reject the toxic parts of the online world, but it's another to stick your head in the sand.
• magic_hamster
  While I share the sentiment, this feels like an extreme, nuclear reaction which might be irreversible. I understand the fatigue, and resentment, but if you are about to be a family, you are going to find that typewriters aren't the acceptable mode of communication nowadays, and that you need some money to raise children.Even if you are already wealthy and don't actually need to work anymore, going off the grid completely is still the wrong move. There's a lot of ways to spend less time online, improve your privacy and reduce tracking, and still benefit from some of the actual, real advantages of tech.And the last and maybe most important thing is, we are currently on a roller coaster of disruption and frankly some daunting prospects - but we don't know what's right around the next turn. What the development landscape might be like in a few years, or maybe what kind of new problems will emerge that are not yet clear.The right move is to take some time off, clear your head and decide if you stopped liking tech altogether, or you just needed a break. If you still like problem solving, limit your AI use, stay effective and skillful, and find ways to enjoy your skill.I've never met an engineer who actually stopped enjoying problem solving.
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  moralestapia
  Very nice performative piece.The reason he, and others, are "retiring" from tech now is because they have the wealth to do it, in big part due to being at the right place at the right time in life. That’s it.AI has nothing to do with it, they just want a small ego stroke.
• selimthegrim
  I mean, were phones in 1980 considered dystopian?
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  tristor
  I plan to do the same eventually. I want to buy a shop and become a mechanic, primarily flipping cars, and doing actual repairs for a fair price. I need to get to the point where the business venture only needs to do a bit better than break even, and I'll quit this industry. After more than 20 years in tech, I've done a lot of cool things with smart people, but almost none of what I built still exists (every tech stack is a Ship of Theseus) and AI is just making working in corporate miserable.I personally like using AI tools and experimenting with local models, but I hate being subjected to the output of AI from other people. There's such a large competency gap that exists in the human operators, and AI does not ameliorate it, it makes it worse, but so many have drank the koolaid that it solves everything and eliminates that gap. I won't become a luddite, I will still build technical things at home, but I miss being able to see the tangible fruits of my labor and getting an honest thank you from another human being I've helped out through my work. I miss the permanence of physical things. I'm also tired of arguing with people who think their incompetence + AI outranks my competence and expertise.
• gyanchawdhary
  weird boomer flex but okay
• zzzeek
  did Chad, or whoever posted this for him, post this as a jpg with no alt text? wow, thought Chad was a bit better than that (I can't even read this thing easily and im not considered to be visually impaired)"but it's a real typewritten letter! you dont understand!"yeah but you didn't snail mail it to all of us, you or someone put it on the internet on a webpage. if you can scan a letter as a JPG and scp it to a server, you can run an OCR and put alt text in.
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  Markoff
  what's the point in posting scan (?) of paper online instead of just publishing it normal way, so people can adjust font and actually read it? especially since you are anyway at computer and posting it on website and bsky
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  simonw
  Am I the only person in this thread who thought this might be a joke? The job at Home Depot in particular, and this bit:> I haven't used a phone or the Internet in my personal life since February 6. To communicate, I use the USPS, or maneuver my body into close proximity and vibrate air with my throat. I love it. I want to be part of a society of people likewise inclined.I'm not at all certain though. Chad posted it on LinkedIn and Bluesky, so if it is a joke he's definitely committing to the bit.Here's Vlad-Stefan Harbuz, the person Chad names as taking over the Open Source Pledge, posting about it - https://bsky.app/profile/vlad.website/post/3mmw3jigagk2q - which makes it seem more real.Update: more evidence in-favor of "not a joke" is this 19th Feb 2026 video from Chad's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCC76jmmzkc - at 16:22> I don't not want to be someone who helps lay the groundwork for the remnant. I'm going to call it the remnant, a remnant of humanity that doesn't take the bargain. I have no idea what's next. Alright, we're starting Gift magazine. Whoa. I went to Penguin Bookstore. I got an address book, and I got a ridiculous planner. And we got our P.O. Box. Box 200. Oh, and I also switched to paper billing. Paper bank statements at Dollar Bank. Puzzle gaming. Figuring out the offline.Update 2: here's a blog entry from 19th Feb that accompanied that video: https://openpath.quest/2026/spitting-out-the-agentic-kool-ai...> Long story short, I’ve decided to dial back my engagement with mainstream technology, and to launch a print magazine called Gift to network with like-minded individuals.So I'm sold, there's humor in the presentation, but it's a real decision.