In a world where high-paying tech roles are highly coveted, many professionals are choosing alternative paths over big paychecks. Some left behind their glamorous roles to pursue their passions, and some quit tech due to burnout.
These 10 professionals share what finally made them leave big tech — and what they're doing now.
Eric Yu quit his $370K software engineer job at Meta after having panic attacks
Eric Yu was a software engineer at Meta and experienced panic attacks due to work pressure.
"In November 2019, I experienced my first panic attack while I was working from home. It was around 4 p.m., and my left pinky went completely numb. At first, I ignored it, but it got worse: An hour in, my ears were ringing, and my heart was beating really fast."
Now, Yu and his fiancée have started house hacking, a lower-cost way of getting into real estate. They bought a five-bedroom home in Redding, California, four hours north of San Francisco. While they lived in a 252-square-foot detached guest house in the backyard, their main house was bringing in about $8,000 a month in revenue on Airbnb.
Yu told Insider that he knows it sounds crazy to leave a $370,000 job, and staying at Meta for the rest of his life would have ensured financial security, but he knew it wasn't right for him.
Sergio Najera quit a six-figure engineering job because the company didn't allow international travel
During the pandemic, Najera was working as a software engineer at a major corporation based in Minneapolis. He had been dreaming of traveling abroad for a long time. However, the company was very strict on employee travel policy. If he wanted to work outside of Minnesota, he would need special permission.
He decided to quit and take a startup job because it would give her the flexibility to work from wherever he wanted to. "I've traveled to Spain, Morocco, the Netherlands, and Argentina. Next, I'm planning trips to Brazil and Chile."
Mayuko Inoue left her tech job due to panic attacks
Mayuko Inoue is a former iOS software engineer at Patreon and Netflix. She started to get panic attacks and learned her anxiety stemmed from overexerting herself at work.
Inoue told Insider that "Work hard, play hard" is a mentality that echoes throughout tech offices, and hustle culture seems like this aggressive, masculine personality (though that's probably because the tech industry is very male-dominated).
"I saw that what lures people into hustle culture is the idea of working for financial stability, finding status, or feeling that you're changing the world. It can feel contagious and impossible to escape.
Michael Lin quit his job as a Netflix engineer making $450,000 a year and has zero regrets
Michael Lin joined Netflix in 2017 as a senior software engineer. At first, he enjoyed his role.
However, over the next two years, the shine began to wear off. Lin told Insider that the projects and meetings blended together, and they felt like small variations of each other after a while. The engineering work began to feel like copy and paste.
After quitting Netflix, Lin was worried that he'd have no social life. But the opposite happened — he's met more people through starting his own business, like other entrepreneurs, writers, and creators. "I now feel a deep calmness inside me, an unshakable belief that everything will be OK, even if any future success is not guaranteed right now.
Jerry Lee quit his $198,000 job at Google to build his startup
Jerry Lee is a former strategy and operations manager at Google. He told Insider that after working at Google, he felt like he got a mini MBA.
Lee told Insider that he's grateful for all the lessons that his managers and his teams taught him, and he still uses them to run his startup today.
"But certainly, my job at Google was stressful: We worked on a global team and some coworkers were based in Europe and Asia. So we had meetings at 5 or 6 a.m. on Tuesdays and at 11 p.m. every Wednesday. I felt I always had to give 110% every single day because my colleagues were extremely smart and hardworking."
Rahul Pandey left his $800K job at Meta to build his own startup
In 2017, Rahul Pandey he joined Facebook (now known as Meta) as a senior engineer and worked there for almost five years. His compensation at Meta rapidly increased to more than $800,000 a year.
In 2022, he left Meta to start Taro, a community to help other engineers achieve similar career success.
Pandey said that he left Meta as a much better engineer compared to when I joined in 2017. "I attribute this to a mindset shift around building deep relationships at work. I understood that asking questions is a prerequisite for growth within a complex, fast-moving team. I was able to receive actionable feedback from colleagues, which allowed me to identify and deliver high-impact projects."
Mitchie Nguyen left her $196,000 tech job at Meta to build her creator-economy startup
Mitchie Nguyen spent about six years working in the tech industry at companies such as LinkedIn, Meta, and Google.
Nguyen told Insider that many people talk about salary bumps as a benefit of job-hopping. However, her No. 1 reason and motivation has always been to gain a breadth of experience.
"When you're starting out in your career, it's important to explore roles and build a network in new companies. Through all these jobs, I gained confidence and skills from sales to product marketing. That's why I quit her job at Meta to start my own startup in the creator economy."
"I realized my 20s was my time to explore roles and industries. Our careers span upwards of 40 years, so I wanted to take full advantage of exploring — I feel the later you get in your career, the harder it is to drop off and do something else."
Dayana Sabatin quit her job in tech in Seattle because she felt miserable with her career
Sabatin used to work in a cubicle for eight to 10 hours a day as a financial specialist at a tech company in Seattle. Feeling beyond miserable, she decided she wanted to change her life. She made the decision to move to Los Angeles and is now a writer, blogger and YouTuber.
"I can confidently say I'm on the right path now, and I've never felt more excited about the direction my life is headed in. If you feel destined for something outside of what you currently have, then go for it. Don't be afraid to color outside of the lines.
One tech worker quit her job due to burnout and has no regrets
This tech worker hit a wall last year after working at a large technology company for about a year and a half. She'd sit on the couch with her partner at the end of each workday and not be able to carry on a conversation. Her job was so demanding that she didn't have energy left over for anything else.
"So, I asked myself: Is this what I want for my life? I'm nearly 30. Do I really want to give up so much for my job? I decided to quit in August."
She has no regrets about quitting, despite a tough job search.
Jonathan Javier left his $120,000 job to build his startup to help people land their dream jobs
Jonathan Javier is a former product operations analyst at Google, Snap, and Cisco. He left his $120,000 job to build his startup, Wonsulting, an AI-powered platform that helps job seekers optimize their résumés, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles.
Javier than told Insider that people need to build their network early on to land their dream job. "Building your network early on makes a big difference in job hunting. Before negotiating compensation, I asked peers who worked at other tech companies what a reasonable pay range might be. With that information, I felt much more confident during interviews. It's better than relying solely on websites like Glassdoor."
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