So long, and thanks for all the bytes

https://chethaase.medium.com/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-bytes-02a4ef972f65

by ckue • 2 years ago

356 146 2 years ago

chethaase.medium.com

yawz• 2 years ago

Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."

oldpersonintx• 2 years ago

Lots of people will be leaving tech, not by choice. Unlike longterm Googlers, not everyone can afford to not get paid for six months.

Also, this isn't a "downturn"...the companies are mostly doing better than ever. This is a permanent restructuring in resource allocation. Companies are going to shrink headcount even as their businesses flourish.

nrjames• 2 years ago

I'm not sure it's the downturn, necessarily. I used to be enthralled with tech, full of energy to explore new tools, programming languages, etc. I think I slowly awoke to the fact that it's not the tech but the people that make it interesting and rewarding. For me (and I'm not trying to project on anybody else), interactions and activities with people who were doing things that are not tech seemed deeper and more genuine -- almost as if it was easier for me to get to know them and enjoy their company in a non-tech context. As a result, my hobbies and interests have pivoted to activities that don't involve computers much at all. My career remains in tech and I try to put my best efforts into the work that I do, but it's becoming more difficult as I continue to realize that life, for me, is better when most of it is spent away from screens.

Seanambers• 2 years ago

Tech pays so much, people can afford to move on. That's probably the biggest reason.

dehrmann• 2 years ago

Do you think remote work has made it less interesting for you?

CM30• 2 years ago

I suspect there will be quite a few people in this situation, but it won't be the majority of people simply for financial reasons. If your idea of a fulfilling career isn't tech, law, finance, medicine or business/management, it may simply be impossible to do it full time and have a decent quality of life in many places.

For instance, writing jobs pay terribly overall, with the quantity of them going down a lot due to the decline of traditional media and the advent of AI. Unless you've got a FAANG income nest egg or a trust fund to rely on, I wouldn't recommend anyone get into this kind of work as their main career, regardless of how fulfilling it might be.

Ultimately I suspect many people will be forced to try and stick out this recession/downturn just because tech is their best bet of a decent living.

ghaff7• 2 years ago

I wouldn't over-generalize. But there is some belt tightening at companies. Many companies have grown/changed. People may not feel up for a late career reboot even if, under different circumstances, they might have put some more years in.

throwaway63467• 2 years ago

I would assume that he just earned so much money that he’s rich and can now do something else with his life without caring about money. Good for him.

away2718284• 2 years ago

"Rich" is a bit of a loaded term. But, yes, if someone has had a successful 35-40 year career in tech and has managed their finances reasonably, it's not unreasonable that they might decide to pack things in some years early--especially if they're not wild about working at a behemoth company that isn't as much fun as it used to be.

gedy• 2 years ago

Even in the best of times, the best engineers I've worked with basically we’re just putting up with companies and management because the work was interesting and pay was good.

With so many people looking for work at the moment, I think a lot of these same companies have kind of a big head about themselves. Interviewing always sucks, but having to jump through a bunch of hoops, be ignored, or ghosted by some dopey SaaS company is really discouraging for a lot of people.

I myself decided to take a sabbatical so as not to deal with all this right now.

away2718284• 2 years ago

It's not 2001 but it's almost certainly harder for a later career person in particular get hired than, say, 5 years ago. I know quite a few people who presumably feel comfortable financially and have walked away from at least full time involvement with tech.

hnthrowaway6543• 2 years ago

Tangential to the article since that was a voluntary departure, but this is absolutely happening, yes.

My partner decided to get "into tech" in ~2018. Her reason more or less amounted to looking at me and determining "it's a cushy job that pays very well." For a while, I tried pointing her to various sources to start learning a bit about software development and programming; there's no barrier to installing PyCharm CE and Github, after all. But there was zero interest and zero natural curiosity. She just did some certificate coursework, passed, then started looking for a job, and nothing beyond that.

In a lot of ways, software developer has been brought down to earth as a more "normal" career. You don't really hear about lawyers working on passion law projects at night or mechanical engineers designing skyscrapers as a hobby; the path for that is just go to school -> get internship -> get fulltime job -> do your 9-5.

The thing is, my partner isn't alone. She represents the vast, vast majority of new software developers in the past 15 years. The industry has grown, the pay has exploded, people who worked retail could parlay a 6-week bootcamp into a six-figure salary. Obviously people would hop in even if they didn't know what a compiler was.

But in a post-ZIRP world companies are seriously reevaluating the value of the average software developer. In 2010, a software dev was far more likely to have at least some personal interest in software, or even just computers in general. Now, you have software developers who never touched an actual, non-phone/tablet computer before entering their university courses. They're not stupid--they can pass a leetcode interview just fine--they just don't care about technology beyond using it as a means to pay rent.

Even if we return to near-ZIRP, there's going to be less demand for massive software dev teams. Everyone hates him, but you have to begrudgingly admit that Elon successfully demonstrated you don't need massive dev teams to build and run software, even at Twitter's scale. (obviously it has other problems due to Elon's incompetence, but nothing more developers would solve.) Most companies could cut their dev team size by 50% and end up net-positive due to less overhead--the challenge is figuring out which 50% to cut.

So, yes. The tech downturn for this group of people--the non-passionate 9-to-5ers, particularly juniors--will last for many years, and that will lead to many jumping to other careers.

Mc91• 2 years ago

Everyone hates him, but you have to begrudgingly admit that Elon successfully demonstrated you don't need massive dev teams to build and run software, even at Twitter's scale. (obviously it has other problems due to Elon's incompetence, but nothing more developers would solve.) Most companies could cut their dev team size by 50% and end up net-positive due to less overhead--the challenge is figuring out which 50% to cut.

What do you mean this revelation was recently demonstrated by Elon? The NATO Software Engineering Conference 1968 paper talks about the problems of having too many programmers of low skill. The 1969 paper talks about the same thing. Fred Brooks wrote the Mythical Man Month in 1975, covering this topic extensively. This has been talked about extensively for over half a century with regards to software, it wasn't just discovered by Elon in the last year.

kbolino• 2 years ago

I think we have another problem looming, beyond the realization that many engineers are unnecessary:

Most of the business models in tech are unsustainable. The ad-revenue driven explosion of the Internet over the past ~15 years has long since reached saturation. The data mines are all tapped out, and what have we learned? Mostly, nothing. Following a person's habits can help you target ads and drive them towards (mostly) unnecessary consumption. Then what?

Without ZIRP we're going to run out of the easy credit fueling such consumption. The economic hamster wheel is going to have to slow down. Then the realization that the SnR on the data being collected is practically 0 will set in. An immense amount of investment dollars was thrown at companies that charge nothing to the end user but collect and sell data to third parties. Yet that data is almost completely worthless.

I personally think fee-for-service is eventually going to make a (bigger) comeback, though another round or two of ZIRP might stave it off for awhile. As it does return, it is going to put even more pressure on companies to run lean teams.

slyall• 2 years ago

So, yes. The tech downturn for this group of people--the non-passionate 9-to-5ers, particularly juniors--will last for many years, and that will lead to many jumping to other careers.

This happened after the dot-com burst in 2000. At that time there were a lot of people in Tech who would have otherwise gone into marketing, accounting or whatever.

A lot of these moved out of tech into other fields. Or they moved into less technical roles like project manager or management.

Buttons840• 2 years ago

If the most valuable programmers have a personal interest in tech and use it as a hobby, then businesses will realize this and will look for people who do tech as a hobby or who go to hobbyist meetups, etc, and then people who just want the money will start going into the hobby spaces. I wonder how much more potent our industries could be if they were filled with only people who deeply cared, and everyone else just got a generous UBI?

johnnyanmac8• 2 years ago

So, yes. The tech downturn for this group of people--the non-passionate 9-to-5ers, particularly juniors--will last for many years, and that will lead to many jumping to other careers.

1. I don't like the implication that junior = non-passionate. I'd even argue the opposite. Those new and hungry are most likely to be exploited and take whatever over the grizzled vet who's long had reality slap them in the face. There will always be non-passionate people but well: that falling passion seems to correlate quite well with the falling passion of companies to even pretend they want to better the world. Tit for tat.

2. The downturn is very much not correlated with passion. I've seen some 9-5'ers survive several rounds of layoffs and I've seen some of the hardest working engineers with almost a decade of experience slashed to the surprise of everyone. You look further in industry and you see some vets of even 15,20+ years cut. This isn't some calculated move to "drain the swamp". As usual, corporate is throwing darts on the board instead of seeing what each engineer brings to the table. If you're unlucky enough to be working on the wrong product at the wrong time (which at this point is just anything non-AI. Nothing is safe), it doesn't matter how talented you are.

The games industry is very much full of underpaid, underappreciated passion and is being hit just as hard as the rest of tech, so passion clearly isn't the answer to job security.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 2 years ago

In my case, I dove deeper into tech, but I love this stuff. Since no one wants to work with a greyhair (no beard), I just do it for free, for folks that couldn't come close to affording the kind of work that I can do.

johnnyanmac8• 2 years ago

My biggest fear. Ive never shaved and you can count the number of hairs on my chin after 30 years. At this rate, I'll never truly evolve into the endgame greybeard guru (/s)

matt32102• 2 years ago

I loved tech until I started working in tech. What else is there though? I can’t really do anything else

johnnyanmac8• 2 years ago

I haven't given up, but the past few years have accellerated my plans to try and become self-suffient in the field instead of relying on corporate to respect and compensate me. At least if I fail to appeal to an audience it will be on my own laurels and not because The company was fine with my labor but needed a 0.1% better earning call statement.

I of course can't speak for everyone, but I imagine there will be more startups/small companies forming over the next few years from people that were otherwise satisfied at BigCo. Tech has definitely felt like it devolved to being a cog in the wheel of raw profits over a field of innovation meant to make lives easier. You can't really get that back without sizing down.

inoffensivename• 2 years ago

I was a software engineer for 20 years, now I'm an airline pilot. Change is a good thing!

nktrnk• 2 years ago

The question I’ve been thinking about: what’s a better time to quit —- in a downturn or when things are going up?

If you can hold on to a job in a downturn, it’s a good opportunity to invest when the market is lower (which interestingly is not exactly the case now) so that you can benefit from it later.

But I guess the best time to quit is when you’re ready. Regardless of where in the cycle it is.

plainOldText• 2 years ago

On one hand computer and information science degrees have experienced the highest growth among undergrad degrees [1], so lots of people are joining in, but on the other I'm curious to hear from the people who have left.

Is anyone who has exited the tech world still reading HN? What's it like on the outside?

[1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-most-popular-u-s...

austinjp• 2 years ago

I remember being pleasantly surprised to find out that the guy who created the screensaver I used to use quit tech to make pizzas.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski

adamgordonbell• 2 years ago

Chet's book on the early days of Android is super interesting. Lots of crazy OS building stories. He must have interviewed 50 people who worked on the first couple releases of Android. I had him share parts of that story on the podcast and result is one of my favorite episodes.

I always thought of Android as, of course it succeeded, it was a big google project. But the story is far more interesting. They were somewhat of a small group, part of an acquisition and didn't actually merge with the prevailing google culture. Kind of kept to themselves and worked insane hours and were really into coffee.

Also, most of them had previous worked on similar projects. They had done the T-Mobile Sidekick and some of them came from WebTV, I think and BeOS.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61431659

https://corecursive.com/android-with-chet-haase/

raphlinus• 2 years ago

I joined Android in April 2012. Looking back, at that time Android was incredibly lean for what it was accomplishing. The entire Frameworks team reported to one manager, and we would fit in a medium size conference room. That included all of UI toolkit and the bulk of the Java APIs an app would call into, including Binder. (Networking, phone, graphics, Bluetooth, etc were other teams, but we worked closely together. And I think graphics was like 5 people). At the time I was slightly worried that I had joined a mature project and that it had already seen most of its success. Little did I know. (Disclosure: Chet was my manager for a couple years, until I left in late 2016 to join Fuchsia, largely because I was impatient to develop in Rust).

Chet is a great comedian, I think he'll do well in his new interest. I'll bend the norms here and tell a joke. It'll be funny to Android insiders, apologies otherwise.

At one point, he hosted a get-together in his house, which was one of many things that led to incredible team cohesion. It was somewhat chilly, and we were sitting around in our jackets shivering a bit. One person said, "we should have an Android app for turning on the heat to warm us up." My response: "we already do, it's called GMSCore."

eclipxe• 2 years ago

As someone currently working on GMSCore…I couldn’t stop laughing.

chaboud2• 2 years ago

That must have been an amazing ride. Note: in my opinion, a small, lean, focused team is the right way to build an OS. I haven't seen the "throw an army at it" approach succeed for building the core of an OS or platform, as it becomes almost impossible to keep coherence in the system.

And, yeah, that GMSCore joke is too real.

FpUser• 2 years ago

"until I left in late 2016 to join Fuchsia, largely because I was impatient to develop in Rust"

Shows how different people are. I only care what I am developing. I have my preferences but if generally language is the last thing I care about bar some pathological cases.

chairhairair• 2 years ago

Is there any animosity towards the later efforts to “professionalize” some of the early simpler Android APIs? I’m thinking specifically of some of the drama surrounding the banning of SharedPreferences.

jeffrallen• 2 years ago

I worked with some of them at WebTV and they were extraordinary hackers there, and at General Magic before that.

I miss Bowser the Rabbit most, though.

ndesaulniers• 2 years ago

I didn't work on Android until 2016. As someone who was very much not old guard, Chet's book helped fill in a lot of details and historical context for me. I enjoyed the read and recommend it. So long Chet, and thanks for all the fish.

jimmywetnips• 2 years ago

I was way too daft to understand the joke, here's the very unfunny but afaik accurate explanation from gpt

https://chat.openai.com/share/a5a62c3f-aaf7-4adb-a3e1-b13780...

blindriver• 2 years ago

The idea that another multi-millionaire tech worker would think that leaving their job is something people would be interested in is… strange. He’s letting the world know that in the second worst tech downturn in history, he’s going to retire and pursue comedy writing. Feels more appropriate for a Facebook post to this friends rather than a medium post.

lawgimenez• 2 years ago

I’m more interested on why he is posting it on medium when he has a blog.

agmater• 2 years ago

I really like how Medium lets you know how "distraction free" their reading experience is (using huge popunders, privacy notices, sticky headers).

herrkanin• 2 years ago

Weirdly gatekeepy. Why shouldn't he be allowed to update his followers on his life?

furyofantares• 2 years ago

It's actually fine for someone to post something you don't personally want to read.

poszlem• 2 years ago

To quote Gervais' bit:

On Twitter, people sometimes say, “Why don’t you keep your opinions to yourself?” I go, “You’re following me. I didn’t tweet at you.” That’s like going to a notice board in the middle of town, seeing a sign for guitar lessons, and yelling, “I DON’T WANT guitar lessons!” Well, it wasn’t for you.

Maybe hard to believe, but for a lot of people, it's way more interesting than hearing yet another self-proclaimed radical communist go on another rant about people making money.

pyb• 2 years ago

I'm not sure why it did, but it's not his fault that this has made the top spot on HN.

sulam• 2 years ago

It's also strange that all those people in movies think we care about their current relationship status.

sowbug• 2 years ago

You might be interested in an excellent keyboard shortcut: control-W. (Or command-W on a Mac.)

jacurtis• 2 years ago

He posted it on Medium, not the front page of the New York Times.

People follow him on Medium, presumably because they want to follow his thoughts and are interested in what he has to say.

So for him to post to a platform of followers, explaining the most major life change of his life and announcing that he effectively won't be as involved in the Android community anymore all seems pretty reasonable.

If someone has a gun to your head forcing you to read it against your will than I suggest dialing 911. For the rest of us, there is nothing forcing us from reading it. So if its not of interest we just move on.

flurdy• 2 years ago

that leaving their job is something people would be interested in is… strange.

Making it to the top of HN contradicts this

ilamont• 2 years ago

To quote musician Jon Wurster, roughly the same age as Chet, “I take whatever opportunities arise, no matter how weird or improbable they may be.”

MrUssek• 2 years ago

Some context for those that may be unaware; Chet has been a staple in the Android developer community for a very long time, having hosted a popular podcast and been a staple a conferences. His move into comedy will surprise no one, but he will be dearly missed.

jimmySixDOF• 2 years ago

The title is an allusion to "So long, and Thanks for All the Fish", a book by Douglas Adams.

(For those HNers not steeped in the HHGTTG trilogy of six books)

vitiral2• 2 years ago

Which is a reference to what the Dolphins say at the start of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as they leave the earth just before it is destroyed for a new intergalactic roadway.

jeffreygoesto• 2 years ago

Which made a lot of people sad, even the ones with digital watches...

stareatgoats2• 2 years ago

yeah, he swears he loves Google, Android and the rest - but he did put that title there didn't he? Come to think of it, that's one of the hallmarks of comedy - say one thing and subtly imply another ...

i000• 2 years ago

Reads like a good outline for a sitcom. Disillusioned tech exec enrolls in arts school with quirky green haired genZ : ^ )

manmal4• 2 years ago

Like Pierce in Community?

ignoramous• 2 years ago

Chet is a story-teller extraordinaire. imo, Devoxx 2019 remains his best presentation, so far: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/IEQj8ZxHejo (mirror: https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/IEQj8ZxHejo) And his best gift to all of us active in AOSP and Android developer ecosystem is his book Androids (https://www.chethaase.com/androids).

Thank you Chet. You have been sheer quality (q14) all year, every year.

aslilac• 2 years ago

good for you man.

MrDresden• 2 years ago

Never had the pleasure of meeting him in person, but as most of my career so far has been in mobile (and Android specifically) for the past 14 years, Chat has been one of those Android experts that have always 'been there'.

I wish him all the best with the new endeavour, and thank him for all the great content and communication he has been part of over the years.

I will though miss the banter dynamic between Chet, Tor and Romain on ADB.

p.s Highly recommend reading his book Androids on the history of the early days of its development

hcks• 2 years ago

I though Google paid decent salaries, but it turns out even after 15 years there you’re still concerned about making ends meet it seems

barelyauser• 2 years ago

Salaries is one thing. Your lifestyle choices are another thing entirely.

IncreasePosts• 2 years ago

I've been working at Google about 10 years as "only" an L5 and have about $3M in stock just from stuff I haven't sold

dangus2• 2 years ago

Yeah, every ex-Googler “riding off into the sunset” blog post like this is pretty annoying.

What’s even worse is when they do things like this post where there are little jokes about how it’s a financial burden to change careers or take a break rather than acknowledging how they have no risk of running out of money. Going to art school is the worst financial decision ever, tee hee! Yeah man, imagine what it must be like with student loans.

Great for OP for working at the right place at the right time and winning the proverbial lottery. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from it other than “must be nice.”

Going to a pricey private school as a hobby/retirement activity must be real fun.

manmal4• 2 years ago

Nicolas Cage can’t make ends meet, and he was one of the highest paid actors, once.

samspenc• 2 years ago

As they say in investing: "past performance is no guarantee of future results"

treprinum• 2 years ago

I always wanted to program, to create great things, got really good at it, but most of the time I was overtaken by folks playing politics that only used tech as a stepping stone to something they always wanted to do but only tech gave them financial resources to do that.

pickledish• 2 years ago

I remember feeling like this a while ago -- like there was something inherently different (...better?) about "us" (who are in tech because we just fundamentally love programming) compared to "them" (who are in tech because there's good money in it). Though over the last couple years I think I've been changing my mind a bit.

I've had the chance to get to know some more people -- people who are indeed in tech for mostly financial reasons, but who are still fantastic developers and care a lot about the craft. I realized that having dreams outside of software doesn't necessarily make you worse at it, or "less deserving" of the job.

And, I definitely wouldn't conflate "in tech for the money" with "playing politics" / stupid ladder-climbing -- I bet there's some nontrivial overlap there, but there are other reasons one might need strong financial stability, like if they don't have any kind of other safety net (from the government, from their family) to fall back on, and thus feel worried without a good foundation.

breather3• 2 years ago

Tech for tech's sake helps nobody. Politics is a fact of nearly every facet of life—you can accept this and play the game or accept that you're in the backseat.

The worst people in the world already know this and run our industry. There's no reason we have to accept them.

noncoml2• 2 years ago

Tech for tech's sake helps nobody

If it wasn’t for science, art and tech for their own sake we would still be on the trees gathering bananas

dart200• 2 years ago

The worst people in the world already know this and run our industry. There's no reason we have to accept them.

tbh until we change the way to go about politics, or collective decision making, this isn't going to change.

noncoml2• 2 years ago

I feel lucky and privileged to be in that position. I get to do what I love and get paid very generously.

If it wasn’t for “those people” or for tech being so lucrative to attract them, I would probably still do the same but struggle to make ends meet.

So I’m very grateful that tech is what it is today.

ghaff7• 2 years ago

People are lucky when there's some intersection between what they like doing, what they're good at, and what pays reasonably well.

johnnyanmac8• 2 years ago

as a gamedev, I just get the worst of both worlds. no job security and below average pay. I can't relate. "Passion" hasn't saved me from layoffs.

doesnt_know• 2 years ago

That's the system we live in. Feels pretty natural that people will optimise for the effort/$ ratio if they have the power to do so. Sitting in my home AC'd office, making a computer do things and getting paid more then basically every "essential service" is probably the sweetest deal outside of being born into a wealthy family.

I personally love to code, I literally do it in my free time to solve my own little problems and/or just to learn, but I don't resent people who are only doing it for the money or because it's easier than most alternatives.

Klonoar• 2 years ago

That’s the game, yeah.

Sometimes you have to do shit you don’t want to do in order to accomplish what you do want to do. It’s on you.

rvba• 2 years ago

You can make a personal project?

sieste• 2 years ago

I wish you and the rest of the android team hadn't forced me to give you so many of my bytes, but you're most welcome, good luck.

reactordev• 2 years ago

Nice! I’ve been rewinding myself. Not sure where I’ll go though but it’s fun. After 25 years I’m ready for it. Not going to write comedies but I’ll figure something out.

jll29• 2 years ago

It's his contribution to increase Android quality.

urbandw311er• 2 years ago

Shouldn’t the correct office annotation be @Obsoleted ?

billjings• 2 years ago

Chet is going to be missed a lot in our community. His talks with Romain Guy were inspirational to me: whenever I saw them it was clear that they could each hold the stage on their own, but that having the both of them got more out of both of them, both technically and in entertainment value.

I hope he does well in comedy, but I will miss his example: that you can bring even unusual talents and interests into work life and make something worthwhile of it

Xeronate• 2 years ago

good for him and sounds like he really enjoyed tech. i burned out after 10 years and am going to art school now. makes me wonder if he wishes he did it earlier.

namaria• 2 years ago

Took me about 6 years to go from "maybe I should understand computers, and Ruby seems pretty neat!" to "sight... devops is not a role". I'm getting into History professionally now and it's been a blast. Besides, with all the crazy bad primary source databases out there (there are some good ones, but some god-awful ones as well), I can see History needs developers who don't care about making the maximum bucks.

Zaheer• 2 years ago

I recently found out the creator of the show Suits was an investment banker previously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Korsh

It's great to see folks excel in multiple fields.

quickthrower2• 2 years ago

Well, we need more Shazam like comedy to get us nerds through the day (Silicon Valley is good and the IT Crowd but Shazam is way more into it with the inside baseball), so I hope for selfish reasons he mixes the two passions!

wtracy• 2 years ago

I remember Chet making delightful blog posts all the way back when he was at Sun. I wish him well on his new career, but hope that he doesn't give up technical writing completely.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 2 years ago

This chap sounds like a really cool person. I probably would have loved working with him, and wish him the best.

I'll bet he gave great presentations. Having a good speaker, who can draw out laughs, makes any kind of presentation a joy.

I assume that he has banked enough to follow his muse, so he can remain in the SF area.

I happen to love tech, so, when I retired, I actually increased my coding fervor (I was a manager, before, so I left all that stuff behind).

matt32102• 2 years ago

Author worked on android as his first job back when people hired entry level. Today, the entry level people I know struggle massively to get a foot in the door.

BeetleB• 2 years ago

Author worked on android as his first job back when people hired entry level.

Not true.

Incidentally, just for fun I posted the whole article into GPT and asked it to evaluate the "correctness" of your comment. Its response was rather verbose, but here's the key portion:

The comment states, "Author worked on android as his first job back when people hired entry level." However, this is not accurate as per the information in the article. The author clarifies that working on Android at Google was neither his first job nor his second; he had been in the industry since 1992 and accumulated roughly 31 years of experience before deciding to switch careers. His position on the Android team appears to be a result of his already extensive career rather than an entry-level opportunity.

MollyRealized• 2 years ago

Honestly, and I don't know if he'll have an opportunity to read this, but as someone who's both a computer geek and has dabbled in improv and comedy improv, he may find that coding and comedy writing are not entirely separate paths.

There's definitely a STRUCTURE to successful comedy. Certain things have to be in certain conjunctions. Yes, there are definitely times when anticomedy will work, or deadpan comedy, but it's not an utter free-for-all.

If as a person you (yes, whomever's reading this comment) ever want to investigate what I mean, shell out for the Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improv Manual [1]. It's fascinating reading on the structure of something you've simply enjoyed without thinking.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources?isbn=979...

donohoe• 2 years ago

Good luck Chet. Don’t give up the day job. Ooh…

MongoTheMad• 2 years ago

Now I know why Android is written in Java - they are a bunch of comedians! Everything is a joke to them!

In all seriousness, career changes are very hard. I hope the best for him.

angarg12• 2 years ago

I wish OP all the best, but there is one bit I can't get out of my head

I feel very strongly that everyone should try, to the extent that it makes some kind of sense if you squint hard enough, to do what they want in work and life.

This is much much easier to say after an entire career in tech. However I wouldn't give this advice lightly to people just starting over.

Here is a counterexample. I started my career following my passion and "doing what I love", so I became an academic and joined a university.

After 7 years I was burnt out, broke and hated what used to be my passion. And I had to essentially start over my professional career in the private sector.

These days I don't necessarily always love my day to day job, but I do enjoy more the lifestyle it afford me as a whole.

My takeaway is that earning money and growing your career capital early on has compounding effect over time, and more importantly, it increases your optionality in the future. Going into comedy writing is less scary when you don't need to worry about sustaining your family.

motoxpro• 2 years ago

I think there is a big difference between thinking you want to do your hobby/passion as a job and understanding you may only like one small part of it.

For example, you might have a passion for writing on the weekends, but to write as a job it takes writing every day, hitting deadlines, pitching books, getting rejected, making changes you don't want to, etc., etc.

The advice is sound, I think a lot of people just don't think through the reality of what a job in their field of passion looks like.

I've been a professional athlete for a long time and it's the thing people get wrong the most thinking they want to have their hobby as their job. That's why they love it, because its a hobby!

If you only want to do the "job" after you have financial stability, you don't want a job, you just want more time to do your hobby.

crossroadsguy• 2 years ago

Anyone wondering about taking up writing, acting, sketching etc and leaving your current paying, probably tech, job, because the passion was already tugging at you, remember this — this person is leaving after working for truckload-of-money years in FAANG and some more. You must remember that!

In fact that’s my take from his post. First earn lots of money and then “choose” what to do. Otherwise you won’t really be choosing.

muyuu• 2 years ago

we're going to miss him and his generation dearly, they're unique

So long, and thanks for all the bytes

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