I have worked retail before, and to add onto the things you put it was the lack of problem solving for me that was absolutely mind numbing. Sure there were the little "problems" to solve of shelving, stock order, tidiness etc but it doesn't push the brain (and maybe they're done with that part, which is fair), but until you've experienced it I would be very surprised if this person finds retail better than tech.
This is a nice understatement. What we see here is privilege at work and phrasing it in a likable manner. "Tech" folks appear to be particularly vulnerable to this type of framing.
But I don't think it's charitable to assume the author doesn't understand what he is getting himself into. I'd rather give him the benefit of the doubt and increase my admiration for his commitment accordingly.
that's pretty presumptuous I think. He says in the piece he is an Orthodox Christian who wants to build a offline community in Pennsylvania where he lives. The average salary at HD is 70k, that's the household income in the state.
I know a bunch of Orthodox folks in the US and their idea of a reasonable lifestyle doesn't include two Teslas and three holidays, they do just fine on less than that without a tech cushion.
It does seem a bit tiring to me whenever seeing articles about people moving out of tech that some people seem convinced they cannot live 'reasonable lives' without earning more than 95% of the population.
I'm not talking about Teslas and holidays. Where I am, an equivalent job would really be living on the edges in terms of the basics: rent, groceries, healthcare, energy, saving for retirement.
> It does seem a bit tiring to me whenever seeing articles about people moving out of tech...
It's tiring to me that tech workers really have no idea how well they live compared to people working retail full time - to the extend that it gets romanticised like this. It's incredibly patronising. Which is why I would be interested in a follow up on wether the reality matched the "dream".
That said a middle aged guy with college education and 10+ years as an engineering manager I very much suspect is not going to literally stack shelves anyway, and store managers at the big retailers earn a pretty handsome salary. Working what might be the most common, white collar middle class job is not some horror story in the making.
Fair, but another way of looking at it is - since the 1980s the income - cost of living gap has steadily increased, such that "median income" translates to a much more frugal lifestyle than the name implies, to put it euphemistically. Its not like people work multiple blue collar jobs because they want/love to.
It certainly has. There are other instances of former tech workers who subtely brag online about "moving to the countryside" to "raise chickens," "write poetry," or another performative lifestyle using profits from the industry they're quitting.
I would (genuinely) be interested in a follow up on how that works out for them. I've "threatened" to do this many times, but my partner points out that if I thought tech management was full of BS, wait until I am getting ordered about by retail industry management while working the shop floor, dead on my feet, penalised for taking too long a toilet break. I think reality could come down hard here.