After more than 20 years in software development, I burned out. I tried toughing it out for months, but I wasn't getting any better. So I quit my job in mid 2021 to rest and decompress. Now I'm just puttering around the house and yard. It's great, but what's next? I don't know... there's no ending yet, but my story starts here, if you're interested.
Taking a step back from the rat race...
Fearing for our country
A cold feeling is spreading across America. It isn’t a sudden change, but a slow erosion of the things we were told made this country special: liberty, justice, and the rule of law. We are …
Pretty much quit my software career and retired
In July 2021, I quit my job for about a year due to burn out. I found another job in Sep 2022. It was a senior firmware engineer position, fully remote. They shipped me a laptop …
A story from the software trenches 1
One of the worst projects I've ever worked on was a classified project at a large defense contractor. The project team consisted of a software lead, a hardware lead, a software engineer (me) and a hardware …
Officially semi-retired, again
My semi-retired status is official again. After working remotely full-time for a little more than a year, I was laid off. It came as a surprise, but I felt mostly relief and joy. No more meetings …
Job Hunting, Part 3
(Click here for Part 1 and Part 2)
All in all, I applied to about 20 jobs. Half of them never responded. I think that's par for the course. Then half of the remaining turned out …
Job Hunting, Part 2
(Click here for Part 1)
Once I started submitting resumes to job postings I found interesting, recruiters started contacting me in droves. I never used a recruiter to find a job before. I always applied directly …
Job Hunting, Part 1
I knew for my next position I wanted a fully remote job. The only good thing to come out of the pandemic is the prevalence and acceptance of remote working. With that in mind, I applied …
Finally, an update
Well, this blog experiment petered out rather quickly. I haven't written in more than a year. It's really hard to come up with blog post ideas and write consistently. I wonder what the statistics are on …
Early retirement: running from a job or running to freedom?
A recent post about early retirement by Jim from Route To Retire distills the reasons why I quit my job to take a break from work. Jim talks about his early retirement, but I chose semi-retirement …
Gearing up to interview again
Now that I'm no longer working, my wife is the main breadwinner. Her salary doesn't quite cover all our expenses though. We could cut our expenses from ~90k to 70k a year and I can remain …
Finances and Psychology of Quitting Your Job
I struggled over the decision to quit my job for months. There were two main components to it: the financial and the psychology. The psychology of it was by far the hardest, but I will talk …
Career Tribulations
I was always a good software engineer. Not stellar, but I worked hard and always got above average performance reviews. I worked at several defense companies, a start-up and some manufacturing companies. I came to specialize …
The Story Starts Here
I've been interested in computers since I was introduced to them in the 3rd grade. I was first taught LOGO on Apple IIe's and drew pictures with the "turtle". Then I learned BASIC. My parents got …