职业与工作方法eev.ee
我退出了科技行业
I quit the tech industry
2015 — 2022，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这是作者宣布退出科技行业的个人博客，讲述长期高压工作带来的倦怠、对办公室文化和公司忠诚的失望，以及辞职后的生活与财务安排。它既是一份 burnout 自述，也触及科技从业者把最有生产力的时间花在别人问题上的普遍困境。
为什么经久不衰：它把科技业的倦怠、雇佣关系和工作意义讲得具体而尖锐，多年后仍能引发共鸣，也持续带出关于特权与心理健康的讨论。
HN 评论精选
把辞职归因于 burnout，并强调雇佣只是商业关系、程序员不应过度效忠公司。
这就是倦怠的样子。除非 Yelp 有有毒的职场文化，否则很可能是作者自己逼得太紧；几个月后大概又会开始想工作、重新找工作。这不是说作者的观点无效——把最有生产力的时间花在别人的问题上是很难受的。办公室文化很消耗人，有些人不适合；程序员还常因错位的忠诚而长期逼自己，觉得高薪就必须拼命，却没看到工作本身已极有价值。雇佣是商业安排，程序员只欠约定工时。若作者回归职场，可能会更把自己放第一，并计划不再为别人打工。
probablyfiction查看英文原文
This is what burnout looks like. Unless Yelp has a toxic work culture, it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard. After several months, the author will probably start thinking about work again, and begin the job search once more. Not to say that the author's points are invalid; it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she may find themselves drawn toward entrepreneurship. There's nothing quite like working on your own idea...especially if that idea is going to make you cash. Office culture is draining. Some people aren't cut out for it. Additionally, programmers tend to push themselves too hard for too long out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to the company. They're being paid huge sums and sometimes feel that they need to work extremely hard to deserve what they're being paid. They don't see that the work they do is extremely valuable in and of itself. Employment is a business arrangement; a coder doesn't owe the company anything more than their agreed-upon hours of work. If/when the author does return to work, it's likely they will be much more likely to put themselves first and the company second. They'll likely have a plan to escape working for someone else ever again.
以支付系统开发经历说明技术复杂性，并指出离开科技业后仍可恢复与重建生活，问题常在公司层级文化。
我举手。我是 Datacash 的第一位开发雇员，写了后端服务器。Datacash 之所以出现，是因为 1995-96 年一家想在网上卖东西的创业公司，没有读卡器和拨号连接就处理不了支付。妥善处理支付很难，尤其做对了、业务又增长时，你会变成黑客眼中的大目标。我也类似原文作者的倦怠，只是十五年后基本恢复——靠不再在科技业工作。我现在是小说家，按自己的时间做项目，尽量不碰短于一个季节的时间框架。离开高压科技工作后仍有生活，也能找到不把你嚼碎吐掉、还能谋生的兴趣。问题在于公司内部的构成，尤其是控制层级里上层不理解下层面对的问题。
cstross查看英文原文
> The only things they have in common are that their main products are websites with tertiary features that let you buy things. Yet both of them ended up scrambling to write their own payment platforms from scratch. What the fuck is going on? * Raises hand * I was the first dev hire at Datacash and wrote their back-end servers. Datacash only came into existence because an earlier (circa 1995-96) startup trying to sell stuff via the web couldn't handle payments without a card reader and a dialup connection. Handling payments properly is hard, especially as if you do it right (and your business grows) you turn into a juicy big target for black hats everywhere. I also resemble the OC's burnout, except fifteen years down the line and mostly recovered ... by not working in tech any more. I'm a novelist and I set up and do my own projects more or less in my own time and (as a much earlier tech burnout case said, in Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine") I try not to deal with any time frame shorter than a season. Yes, there is life after you quit your last high pressure tech sector job. And yes, you can find things to invest your personal interest in that don't chew you up and spit you out and which earn you a living. The problem is with the way corporations are internally constituted -- especially with hierarchies of control and command where the people at the top don't have any deep understanding of the problems the people at the bottom are engaged with.
批评文章忽略作者的经济特权：能还清房贷再辞职，并非多数人可复制的选择。
重点被埋没了：这不是普通辞职，而是一个处于极大特权位置的人基本在退休，或至少短期“快乐失业”。还有更黑暗的方式赚更少钱，却更值得画成戏剧化乌云。也许看透倦怠后，作者会意识到能远程工作并做到这些本身已很特权。倦怠确实悲伤又可怕。
sbisker查看英文原文
>I net enough to pay off the mortgage, so I’m doing that, which will leave the entire household debt-free and cut our expenses drastically The lead seems buried here. This isn't someone quitting, this is someone in a position of incredible privilege, essentially retiring (or at least going on "funemployment" for a little while). There are far darker ways to make far less money, that are far more worthy of dramatic storm cloud drawings. Maybe once they see past their burnout they'll realize how incredibly privileged they were to even accomplish what they were able to (working remotely no less!) in the first place. Burnout really is a sad and scary thing.
把科技业心理健康问题提升为社会外部性，指出有毒文化造成的人才浪费与广泛代价。
我们谈外部性：化工厂往河里排毒、汽车厂商知道产品每年害死多少人，这些都很具体。但我们还没把对劳动力的影响当作社会外部性。工业安全让工作场所在物理上更安全，心理上却没有。很多工作让人生病：抑郁、焦虑、攻击性增强、久坐衰退、没时间健身而超重……现代办公室不是健康农场；Google 撒几个彩色豆袋、提供健康食物和健身器材，如果底层文化有毒，也只是创可贴。社会成本是多少？我不知道，也不知怎么衡量。但我遇到很多“离开科技”的人：有博士去当园林工或开果汁店，有三十多岁聪明有趣的人退出游戏或媒体职业。培养一个毕业生要十万美元？招聘和入职又要约薪水的 20%？为了什么？让他们五年后退出、去开风帆冲浪学校？劳动力是国家资产，伤害他们是对整个行业的外部性，也可说是公地悲剧。
nonrandomstring查看英文原文
We talk about externalities. A chemical company pours toxins into a river, an automaker knows its products kill X people per year. These are tangible, understandable. But we don't yet think of the effects on the workforce as social externalities. Industrial safety has made the workplace a much safer space physically, but not mentally. The reality is, a great many jobs make us sick. Depression, anxiety, heightened aggression, sedentary atrophy, getting overweight because there's no time for the gym... the modern office workplace is no heath-farm. And Google throwing a few coloured bean bags around, or providing healthy food and gym equipment is only a sticking plaster if the foundational culture is toxic. What is the cost to society? I have no idea, or how to even measure it. But I have a few observations. I meet lots of people who "got out of tech". People with PhDs who became landscape gardeners or opened a juice bar. I meet smart and engaging people in their 30s who dropped out of games or media careers. The cost (to society) of educating a graduate is, what, $100,000? Average post-grad education is another 4 years. Then it costs approximately 20% of someones salary to hire and onboard them. For what? So they can drop out after 5 years and go open a wind-surfing school? In a way, these people, the workforce/pool are a national asset, and it could regarded a tragedy of the commons that harming them is inflicting an externality on the whole industry. By culturing inhospitable, mentally harmful environments the tech industry is pissing in its own drinking water.
历次讨论
同类还值得读
用十年时间自学编程（1998）
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
Peter Norvig 1998 年的经典文章，回应“21天/24小时学会编程”一类速成书，主张真正精通编程需要约十年持续、有意识的练习。
职业与工作方法上首页 11 次 · 2007–2025norvig.com编辑精选如何成为一名程序员：简短、全面而个人的总结
How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary
一篇广为流传的程序员成长指南，作者以个人经验系统总结了成为优秀程序员所需的各项技能——从调试、测试、沟通到团队协作与身心健康。
职业与工作方法上首页 6 次 · 2008–2015samizdat.mines.edu编辑精选不要自称程序员
Don't Call Yourself a Programmer
经典职业建议文章劝软件工程师不要把自己局限在“程序员”这个标签上，而要从公司业务角度说明自己创造的价值；文中讨论了成本中心与利润中心、头衔、求职与职业选择，也顺带批评了学术界的价…
职业与工作方法上首页 5 次 · 2011–2021kalzumeus.com编辑精选创作者的日程与经理的日程
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule (2009)
Paul Graham 在这篇文章里把时间表分成两类：管理者的日程以小时为单位，会议可以填满一天；创作者（程序员、写作者等）的日程则以半天为单位，需要长时间不被打断的连续块。
职业与工作方法上首页 5 次 · 2009–2021paulgraham.com编辑精选为什么程序员的薪酬不与生产力成正比
Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity
讨论为什么程序员的薪酬往往不随其生产力成比例增长：生产力难以客观量化，薪酬更多受组织预算、岗位定价和个人议价能力影响。
职业与工作方法上首页 5 次 · 2009–2022johndcook.com