Identity

For a lot of tech workers, being the capable one isn't a job description — it's load-bearing. It's how you get introduced at parties, how you understand your own worth, and the thing that makes stopping feel less like rest and more like erasure.

These articles are about what happens to that sense of self when the title goes: the disorientation of no longer being the smart one in the room, the fear that your skills are quietly rotting, and the slow, unglamorous work of finding what was there before the job.

This is the part people consistently underestimate. The money is a spreadsheet problem. This isn't.