Hacker News: away271828

New comment by away271828 in "Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs"

away271828 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:02:31 +0000

Pretty much. In a prior role I didn't have a real job any longer but the people making the decisions for a fairly small layoff probably didn't know that. Would have been happy to have taken a decent severance package. Hung out for a while more or less.

New comment by away271828 in "Raising money fucked me up"

away271828 — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 13:44:18 +0000

I wrote a (shortish) book with someone once who was obviously much more attracted to the idea of being an author than actually writing a book.

New comment by away271828 in "Layoffs Don't Work"

away271828 — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 13:53:33 +0000

Mostly I had team calls. Theoretically had 1:1s with one former manager but with both of our travel schedules it ended up monthly at best.

New comment by away271828 in "Layoffs Don't Work"

away271828 — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 13:52:17 +0000

I reached a point--somewhat older than that--when I didn't have a real job any longer, but nobody seemed in a big hurry to get rid of me, and they were paying me pretty well. I made it through a small layoff though I wouldn't have minded the good severance. I might have hung around in different circumstances but figured I should optimize the payout up to a point and wasn't really interested in heading somewhere new.

New comment by away271828 in "My second year without a job"

away271828 — Sat, 07 Dec 2024 16:56:50 +0000

Maybe. It's very situational. Beyond the spreadsheets for a given location, there are times in your life when you want to be able to pickup and move fairly easily and there are times when you want to be able to put down roots and be in a pretty stable situation that lets you tailor things.

New comment by away271828 in "I quit Google to work for myself (2018)"

away271828 — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 00:01:36 +0000

I did "reasonably" well for a couple decades and then I did, if not spectacularly, well for a decade+ that certainly set me up for retirement. And I might have even retired earlier absent COVIVD. Not spectacular sums but certainly reasonable amounts given owning a house and modest travel sums.

New comment by away271828 in "Workers are stuck in place because everyone is too afraid of a recession to quit"

away271828 — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 03:24:15 +0000

The other thing I see is that people nearish retirement age and are comfortable, who might have cruised on for a few years, are pretty much going: now is probably the time. Maybe do some consulting though that's tight right now. So, maybe not optimal, but why stay in a non-ideal situation?

New comment by away271828 in "Workers are stuck in place because everyone is too afraid of a recession to quit"

away271828 — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:14:35 +0000

I do know various people who left a job with a former employer because they weren't happy and seemingly landed fine AFAIK. I mostly stuck things out for a bit because I was mostly retiring. Otherwise, I'd probably have done the same even if the end-result was retiring a bit early.

New comment by away271828 in "Panic at the Job Market"

away271828 — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 14:32:20 +0000

Probably not uncommon. My final year at my last employer post re-organization and other changes was cold-hearted money extraction for (generously) part-time work. I was sort of disappointed I didn't get a package when they laid a fair number of people I worked with off. But I took a hard look at my vacation balances, upcoming holidays, RSU vesting, etc. and decided to coast for about the next year which, as it turned out, was just about the point it would have been difficult to continue on with no real job not that I would have wanted to.

New comment by away271828 in "How to Know When It's Time to Go"

away271828 — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 23:21:14 +0000

On the other hand, you have to guard against being that person who is in a perpetual state of "Benn there, done that. Didn't work the last 5 times we tried it." Because sometimes the circumstances/market/tech ecosystem genuinely are different.

New comment by away271828 in "How to Know When It's Time to Go"

away271828 — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 23:18:18 +0000

I'm a bit hesitant to describe $NEW_CONCEPT/TECH as just $OLD_CONCEPT/TECH. Echoes of older things in a new context can really amount to something different. Yes, VMware didn't create the idea of virtualization and Docker et al didn't create containerization but the results were pretty novel.

New comment by away271828 in "How to Know When It's Time to Go"

away271828 — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 22:21:42 +0000

For me, it was very obvious at the end. Technical but not programming. Felt like I was winding down. Circumstances were such there wasn't a lot of mobility within the company. Was somewhat disappointed that I didn't get a package as part of some layoffs but I assume powers that be didn't want to voluntarily lose headcount.

Ended up hanging around for a year effectively working part time. Not sure that was the right idea or not (had lots of vacation which I pretty much all took) but year+ passed by and it was pretty obvious at that point I couldn't drag my feet any longer and didn't have the interest or need to do a job search.

New comment by away271828 in "CentOS Linux 7 will reach EOL on Sunday"

away271828 — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 13:21:28 +0000

Sort of does. Can't imagine it's a typical experience and makes me wonder what's so unusual in this case. There are always bad experiences with support but usually systematic tire fires indicate some other issues.

New comment by away271828 in "2.6M Piracy Reports Against French Users Resulted in 234 Financial Penalties"

away271828 — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 14:57:03 +0000

Years and years ago, I got a warning because I downloaded some new series or other there was a lot of hoopla about.

It wasn't something I did regularly but it was definitely a wakeup call that if I was ever going to do something along those lines, I needed at least some minimum level of protections in place. Not 100% reliable I'm sure but almost certainly enough to protect against random torrent tracking.

New comment by away271828 in "Defeated CEOs are now conceding hybrid working is here to stay"

away271828 — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 00:37:21 +0000

And even a larger company I'm familiar with has been looking very hard at lease renewals and has been walking away from a bunch of them. There's a certain lip service to the energy associated with having people back in the office but, in practice, people are being switched to fully remote if they don't come in and offices are being eliminated or swapped out for smaller spaces.

New comment by away271828 in "Ask HN: Who's getting their job applications rejected?"

away271828 — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 13:55:22 +0000

Getting ready to retire pretty soon and had a handle on a few very part-time things more to keep my hand in rather than to make money. Anecdotally, all that seems to have sort of fizzled away. Nothing was too formal in any case and not a big deal. But I think the message is to focus on things I want to do that don't require getting someone to pay me.

New comment by away271828 in "Ask HN: How common is developer burnout? Have you ever been burnt out?"

away271828 — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 18:56:01 +0000

I've been sort of burned out a few times for various definitions of same. A couple were just pretty intense phases of projects--both in tech and non-tech--where I just needed a bit of a break afterwards.

The other was I was just ready to check-out late career. Didn't have the interesting earlier career work any longer. I sort of made it work but really didn't care and timeframes were such it didn't make sense to go elsewhere for a bit.

New comment by away271828 in "ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker"

away271828 — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 19:43:48 +0000

Stability and long product lifecycles are incredibly important to them. They're pretty much the opposite of move fast and break things or deploy early/deploy often.

New comment by away271828 in "Moore's Scofflaws"

away271828 — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 20:59:07 +0000

One can simultaneously be impressed by the engineering while wondering if this level of custom implementation at what will probably be pretty low scale really makes sense.

New comment by away271828 in "So long, and thanks for all the bytes"

away271828 — Sun, 18 Feb 2024 15:13:52 +0000

I've liked (often times a lot) parts of every job I've had. I've also been ready (or past ready really) to move on in I think every case.