'professionals are sharing dreams of “disappearing” or “living on a farm somewhere” or “going off the grid.”'

This has been a meme in tech for decades. I seriously considered farming 20 years ago due to my dissatisfaction with tech, its nothing new.

I fall into the group of tech workers that never enjoyed their work, I still loathe it but it pays really well. Standups are the worst, every day its "what did you do yesterday". The number of hours worked are far above a normal 9 - 5.

Sections of sociery spent years telling people to learn to code and they did and they do. The issue is that for many people that just work to live and don't live to work, code is souless and there is nothing to show for it after decades of grind.

This negative outlook is not universal of couse, I am sure this site is full of people that love software and more power to them. For a good deal of us though, its just how we pay the bills and there is nothing else that will come close to paying them as well.

Now to add to the general malaise we see companies laying off tens of thousands of engineers to justify their token spend. The feeling of living on borrowed time is prevelant especially for those that never got RSU's or SF salaries

I enjoy coding, but I always sort of hated working in tech. It's something I do because I get paid well to do it, I happen to be good at it.

It was ironic that I was at my most miserable when working for FAANG. Allowed me to save to buy a house, but man, I hope I never have to go through one of those again.

Things got better after I started avoiding startup and US companies.