attitudes around quitting your job

05 Oct, 2025

"Why I quit my job" texts and videos seem to be my current "Baader-Meinhof-Phenomenon"¹ subject, meaning I see it everywhere.

Very obviously explained by my own focus on wanting to quit my current job either completely or transferring to a new position outside of my current department. Even my favorite podcaster/YouTube personality is currently dealing with that topic as she quit her cushy software engineering job at Google to focus on being a pottery artist fulltime, together with her podcast and YouTube channel. Controversial choice lots of people have opinions about!

My coworkers know that I intend to leave as I have not made a secret about it and have been open as to why I want to do that whenever they asked. The opinions are almost as polarized as the YouTuber's subscriber reactions are.

On one hand, there is my equally young coworker who also intends to leave and shares the exact same views and feelings as I do. She is optimistic in a sort of realistic way - that while you have to make plans for what's next and shouldn't leave on a whim, that you will always find something equal or better at some point, that the journey is worth it even if you land in other bad places for a while. She agrees that you shouldn't waste time working somewhere that grinds you down or changes you negatively.

It makes sense because we are both from the generation that knows giving yourself up for a job doesn't lead anywhere, that you can be replaced any second, and that time spent on friends and family is more important in the end. You have to protect your health and only have one shot at this whole thing, might as well try things out. We recognize that we still have so much to see and offer and that this isn't the end - especially because many of us don't have things to afford like previous generations had.

We aren't saving up for a shiny new car, or to afford a whole house, or to do fancy vacations all the time, or to be able to afford a child, or put things away for a retirement we know won't come. You need to stay in the safe, permanent position with acceptable pay for these kinds of things as you'd otherwise jeopardize them. But without all that, what gives? There is no financial obligation or reliance on you to keep you there.

As a most likely perpetual childfree tenant with no drivers license, using public transport and being uncomfortable with much travel and has no need to fly, my money goes into hobbies which are significantly cheaper than all of these things. I can afford to leave for something else without worrying about a mortgage.

So there's of course the other side from older coworkers, particularly one who needs to continue paying off a house and raising a child, that is more hesitant. Aside from the obvious financial obligations and needing flexibility to tend to the child, she feels very fulfilled by the job, and it fits her greatly. She had always just wanted to finish school and work, and the type of work didn't seem to matter to her much as long as it paid enough.

That is where she landed, with a lot of job security and other benefits, so she is set. Has been doing this same job for over 15 years now if I remember correctly. So of course, she would emphasize the advantages that I am also very aware of - great boss, great flexibility, she thinks we are being overpaid (maybe), working from home. "Who knows where else you'll land! Maybe it will be worse than here and then you will regret it. You'll never know."

Which I also understand and think of frequently; remembering the things to be grateful for has gotten me through really annoying and exhausting times at the job, but it is also something I would frequently tell myself too if I couldn't afford to ever switch jobs due to the life I have built myself.

But the thing is: "You'll never know" goes both ways. If people stay, they'll never know how good it would have been to leave, either. I am not for throwing the towel at every slight hardship, but I think after a while, you can tell whether it is a tough but temporary phase or whether you have truly outgrown the job. One thing I learned this year is to spot that, because I mistook the latter for the former, and if I had seen the difference sooner, maybe there would be less bore-out exhaustion and resentment associated with the work for me internally.

Sometimes, you don't even need better. You just need different, even if it ends up being worse, because at least it is not the previous thing, or it makes you more grateful for the previous thing. And I think that's okay.

This relates to a lesson I think I would give every person in their 20s in their first 'proper' job: Make sure you create paths out of this. Twice in my life, I felt ready to basically resign myself to the job I held at that time, because it fulfilled my low standards that I had, felt really good and new and I could not ever imagine wanting more or outgrowing it.

But the truth is: Things change in ways you cannot foresee. Your needs might change, the work itself might change, your coworkers and bosses might change. If you don't work on something on the side - maybe more qualifications, maybe extra projects at the job that builds CV and networks internally, etc. - you will arrive at a point where you need to leave, and you can't.

I am glad I did (and still do) my degree on the side, I networked internally, I took on extra projects and I got certified on the side too, just to open doors for myself that now make leaving easier. Because knowing you need to leave as soon as possible, but being unable to, and looking down years of getting some extra qualification on the side before you can use it to leave is soul crushing.

My law degree started as something on the side for fun, and I didn't intend to use it for anything when I started. Since then, it helped me discover a new career path for myself, pursue it more deeply, and is now something I will actually use to leave and change my career. Without it, things would seem a lot more hopeless for me right now. So even if the job you hold right now seems ideal and like something you can just stay at forever, always create a possible way out. You never know when you suddenly have a tyrannical boss, unreasonable work, or cannot work that job anymore for mental or physical reasons, for example.

Going back to the software engineer turned pottery artist, I think the negative reactions she got were pretty interesting, even if predictable.

It made me realize how many people there are who have a sort of romanticized view of a job they don't even hold and how much it gets them through their own work day. An idea of a job looming in their head that would totally be better, and they're just not following that right now, but it's always there like a warm embrace, a Plan B, a "I totally could have if I had wanted to, and maybe still will" path in life. A desk fantasy.

The fantasy might be different for everyone - whether it is becoming an artist, or software engineer, working at a farm, or similar stuff.

There seem to be two scenarios to this: People who are mad you enter their romanticized job, and the people who are mad you dare to leave it. Of course, the former are obviously mad they have not, and will likely not, do that switch. They keep putting it off or it is realistically impossible for them, but you actually doing it is rubbing salt in the wound.
The clock is ticking: "Others are achieving it but you don't, why? Time is passing, you can't keep putting this off or this door might close." Or: Rubbing in that this is actually completely out of the question, ruining the fantasy, the only out.

The second one is more interesting to me to talk about because in theory, people working other jobs who romanticize software engineering in their head and see someone leave it should be happy that there's a spot open for someone else (like them?). But instead, many seem to crash out about it, calling the person who left ungrateful, that they never even deserved the job, and that they will regret it.

It seems like someone leaving triggers not only intense jealousy (why are they leaving what I would kill to have? My dream??), but the fear that deep down, maybe the desk fantasy they cope with is not all that in practice. If even their ideal job is something people leave because it makes them feel as burnt out as their current job, then what is left? Their dream of a job that is effortless, always fun, high paid and fulfilling is threatening to be crushed.

I feel a little for these people, because man, did the tech industry do a great job of convincing us all for a while that it's about shooting the shit with the bros in what can only be described as an adult playground.

News about integrated gyms and their own cafes and restaurants where employees get food for free; rooms with game consoles, billiards tables and kicker tables; vibrant colors in open workspaces furnished with whacky looking sofas and indoor gardens; relaxation zones and massages. I remember a time when all kinds of tech companies seemingly tried to one-up each other about who could be cooler and quirkier about their office design. The flex clearly was: "We still have an amazing product even while offering comfort and distraction!" Together with the pay and bragging rights, what else do you want?

I think this image still sits in many people's heads who don't actually work there. But the many, many testimonials on LinkedIn or YouTube or Substack seem to underline the intense shift the industry had over the years: a lot of hard work, almost no play, working people to the bone while retracting a lot of freedoms and other aspects that made these companies' work culture stand out from others.

Now it seems not unlike working in any other boring office job, or like the finance industry that has a stick so far up its ass you could see it come out the top. So many software engineers grew tired of having to develop garbage, arbitrary deadlines, threats of layoffs, working intense overtime, questioned the ethics, and were disappointed and blindsided by the turn into despicable politics their leaders completed.

Acknowledging that shift and what people who left are saying would mean acknowledging that the dream of that job is dead, and that your "maybe one day" mind palace of completing a bootcamp and miraculously finding your way into FAANG is in the gutter. It would involve facing the fact that the positions you could have started in are now eliminated and probably done via LLMs.

What makes this specific case even spicier is the fact that someone would trade something highly regarded and well-paid for something that is currently facing its probably biggest devaluation in society so far - art.

The devaluation seems to be reinforcing itself, as the fears of artists being replaced has come true and in turn, people are told to leave art, or at least not do it professionally. This again narrows the field in who can be a career artist, making AI art seem even more like the path forward.

Of course, AI is not creating pottery, so that is an art niche that is safe for now, but still: The way people talk about, and treat art now thanks to AI generation makes apparent that most people have no idea what art is, what kind of process is involved, and where they can even find art.

Art, to them, is something meaningless and a waste of money that hangs in galleries. Even the biggest gamers at this point refuse to acknowledge the artists that created the worlds they love, instead acting as if a machine can just create all that in the same way, or even better, in mere seconds.

The design in user interfaces, in devices, in furniture, in clothes, in comics and flyers and infographics is not perceived as art that is planned and worked on, it just somehow appears, and AI has made that a reality. Human art is seen as faulty, time consuming, expensive; machine-created art is corporate-clean, brand-friendly, cheap and versatile. No personal style, baggage, wishes and time constraints by the artist to consider, just a fully malleable piece of play-doh.

Going from the place that creates the very thing that is intended to replace artists to becoming an artist professionally is bold in these times, and sends a statement. It may seem naive, outdated, too self-assured to others, but it's not only this specific scenario: lots of people in very digital jobs have pivoted into more hands-on, physical work, putting into question if just creating digital facsimiles long-term is sustainable and gratifying at all. This is bound to enrage people who see a sort of utopia achieved by radical digitization and digitalization of our lives.

Seeing people quit their jobs, their reasons for doing so and their path forward is something I really enjoy, but I also love seeing some of the destabilizing effects this has on people who have (or preferred to) keep their eyes closed and their heads down.

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Published 05 Oct, 2025

#2025 #tech