Other places:
you are 22, you have just graduated i mean dropped out of Stanford University and gotten your first job in Tech. you work for a startup called Digital Velocity that is making a web app for managing b2b SaaS subscriptions. the pay is immorally good and you are allowed to bring your dog to the office. of course you don't have a dog because you don't want to be tied down and you don't go into the office because you have autism. life is good
...
you have spent one year at Digital Velocity and have been promoted to Senior Engineer. you manage a team of other Senior Engineers who are a great bunch, one of them is even a woman. on top of that business is booming, you have just received your third round of funding at a $200M valuation. time to switch jobs
...
you are now 25, after hopping between 4 different companies you ended up at Google where you are an L6 earning $1.2M/yr. you are starting to get sick of it though. there are so many meetings! they don't understand that you need Uninterrupted Blocks of time to write good code. and, while you only have 4 productive hours a day, you don't want to look bad so you power on until everyone else leaves at 3pm. this is just not sustainable. you are starting to long for a simpler life, no code, no meetings, just you and nature, like god intended (you are not religious, but you think it is a useful metaphor). in your free hours when you have used up all your productivity you find yourself idling browsing properties in the midwest, it's amazing what you can get for your money outside the Bay Area
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it is 5 years later. you burned out. one day you just said fuck it and walked out, got on the first flight to utah and never looked back. you met a nice girl there, she is a mormon, and was very impressed by your opinions on software development. you have 2 children together and spend your time tending to the homestead you bought (it's pretty basic now, but you hope to become self sufficient within a few years). you are now sitting on your deck looking out over the stables, thinking about how foolish you were to spend all that time chasing money and status. life is simple now, you get up, make love to your beautiful wife, chop wood, carry water, and go to bed. you feel a moral obligation to share your story so that others may be spared the same hardship you suffered. you open substack.com