Ask HN: Who is quitting? (July 2026)

poolnoodle

I'm thinking about it every day

tcp_handshaker

You mean Ask HN: Who wants to be fired?

retired

Already did. Hated working with AI. Will try to start a business one day where I can code how I like it. Currently not doing anything IT related. Just went on a bike ride.

Edd314159

What an utterly privileged life we lead when we can just decide to quit our jobs because things are getting too “absurd”.

pelagicAustral

Not long ago I had a dream about becoming a butcher, and so then I bought half a cow with a friend and after a week trying to cut it out in pieces I realised maybe I was too old to make the move... so im still a programmer.

tomaytotomato

There's always been absurdity though, right? These are some I can think of or have witnessed since starting my dev career in 2010: - 4GL business languages making developers redundant - Big data - Cloud computing - DevOps - LLMs For those about to quit, I salute you.

snek_case

I was working at an AI startup, and I saw our CTO lie in a demo to potential customers. I know that startups sometimes have a "fake it till you make it" mindset, but the guy straight up used a product from another company, presented it as our company's product, and faked numbers. I saw him completely misrepresent the capabilities of our product several times. Unethical and most likely illegal, I felt super disappointed, but I didn't immediately quit. I quit later, as it became increasingly clear to me that this guy knew nothing about technology, didn't care, but also had a fragile ego where he had to present himself to the company as being in charge, even though he was the worst person for the role. To top it all off, it also dawned on me over time that we basically had an absentee CEO who was working only ~15 hours a week at most. Then when I quit I found out there was a third co-founder who owned a huge stake of the company and I did not even know existed while I worked there. When I first interviewed, the CTO seemed like a nice and friendly guy, I didn't immediately see red flags. This was my first startup experience. I'll try to research things better if I decide to join one again. I might also just not join unless I can myself be a co-founder. Fuck reporting to incompetent twats. Currently taking a sabbatical. I decided to take the summer off. I'm working on personal projects. Lucky enough to have good savings from a previous job so I can afford to do this. I'm planning to take gradual steps towards returning to work near the end of the summer.

Rnonymous

Im close to stopping. Founder of a deeptech/hardware startup in a difficult sector and we are struggling to get our tech validated (latest datapoint are no improvement over the current practice). While i believe with sufficient time it can be proven and improved, that crosses into the realm of academia and not entrepeneurship. So yeah motivation is quite low at the moment, and im not sure if to push-on or accept failure and move on. Any advice?

kilroy123

I quit about a year ago... I did a crazy experiment: Built and shipped 25 projects in 25 weeks. Several of those projects made it to the top of HN here. One went viral and ended up in TechCrunch and many other big-name sites: https://channelsurfer.tv I wasn't _trying_ to make money. I just wanted to build a bunch of cool shit, rekindle my love for building websites, make the web more fun, and maybe figure out what I wanted to do next. Now I'm trying to focus on making money. I'm kind of out of money, so I'll likely need to do some freelance work for a while. Soon I'm going to release something to help others do the same thing. Ship high-quality stuff quicker.

hn_throw_71329

Throwaway. Software person here. Quitting current job in a few weeks. 1. Leadership, culture, and (development) process changes; I've been looking casually for over a year and finally got something. 2. New company, same role, but should be much more amenable and stable.

Longlius

I quit last year and have just been chilling and working on side projects. The reason I left was because of mandatory RTO combined with a very steep decline in the engineering culture of where I worked. Got tired of having to talk to like five different people who barely spoke English to get anything done and the increasingly naked hostility from the c-suite about our value to the company.

anonymoussuomy

Not quitting just yet, but the culture is super toxic lately. Managers will promise things that are not feasible, set absurd deadlines, and then let engineers take the fall if they don't meet those deadlines. When engineers come up with good ideas, managers will say it's a bad idea, but then run away with the idea and take the credit. I wake up every day wondering if I should quiet quit or go for a clean exit.

oriolgfarssac

Yep! I just did. I’m leaving this July. To anyone reading this: don’t be afraid to make the move. It’s your life. It can feel scary before you do it, but once you finally quit, it’s not scary anymore.

m_m_carvalho

I'm not quitting, but AI has completely changed my priorities. Building software has become dramatically easier over the last year. The hard part is no longer creating products—it's getting people to discover and trust them. I spend far more time thinking about distribution today than implementation. That's a shift I didn't expect.

witx

My current company, even though slower than the industry, has started pushing AI-first for everything. Funny that as soon they announced it they started losing senior developers and most teams are now composed mostly of juniors + 1 senior.This on safety-critical adjacent products. Burnout and bugs are rampant. As a counter measure they are increasing salaries of the seniors but with low adherence. I'm currently looking and I'm considering cutting my salary up to 50℅ to work for a company with a very interesting product that doesnt push AI and let us instead decide where to use it. I'd rather lower my quality of life than put up with this bs and being forced to use a tool that I disagree so much on an ethical and moral pov. Let alone letting managera decide which tools I have to use on my engineering work

phantasilide

I just quit recently. After a few years in big tech the only thing I have to show for it is a fat bank account. I don’t remember the last time I’ve learned something new or had any kind of responsibility. I’ll be joining a startup in a few months to hopefully find the joy in my profession again with a fresh start and more skin in the game.

kerm1t72

quitted on 6/30. Was working for 5 years as PO in autonomous driving. teams changed 3 times, France to US/Mexico/Europe to India. Each time start almost from scratch. Now cooking for family and boot strapping 2 startups.

anonSrEng202309

Still can't get work. I've pretty much given up working for anyone else building software. Had an offer on the table for good pay, rescinded after a credit check (gov't subcontractor, "potential insider threat" excuse; fishy happenings with primary contractor lead me to believe they had their own guy they wanted to install...) I found a little job in education (no tech at all) that pays $22k/yr. That'll float the bills while I use my spare time to build other things. Got a couple dev boards (one SBC, one for that cheap TI component that came across HN a few days ago) to toy around with some little hardware ideas I have that maybe I could productize. Grabbing a PD analyzer and an older M1 or M2 Mac to explore Asahi Linux and maybe start contributing in a few months.

punk_ihaq

I quit over a year ago after burnout with a little bit of savings working in devrel and technical PM. Since then I went all in on scuba diving - became an instructor, maxed out open-circuit (OC) tec diving with 100m advance trimix dives, technical stage cave diving (OC), and most recently O2ptima CM Air Diluent CCR diving. I also got B2 certified in Indonesian. After burning a hole in my pocket on diving gear and certs, I'm looking for my next fully remote devrel/dev-ed role so I can go CCR cave diving in a few years :D

cmrdporcupine

I quit last September and have been doing sporadic freelancing and intensely working on personal projects. It was already clear to me last summer that the agentic stuff was kind of the final nail in the coffin of a "normal" software dev shop. All the routine of typical SCRUM-based etc activity was degrading even further from ritual and theater into a pointless charade or comedy, or as you say, absurdity. Dueling LLMs on the code reviews, people sitting around a conference room on laptops counting fantasy story points, getting Claude to write their annual self-assessments. Unfortunately I still need to make money. I've done a couple freelance gigs. Some is less absurd than others. I'm sporadically interviewing to go full time again but I'm being extremely picky.