Topic
Stories
All stories from Life Beyond Tech — honest accounts from tech workers who are figuring out what comes next.
14 articles
These are composite narratives — the experiences of many tech workers blended into single tellings, with illustrative names, employers and figures. No story here is one person's memoir, and none is the cleaned-up version you'd read on LinkedIn.
What they share is that someone found their situation unsustainable and changed it. What they don't share is almost everything else: what came next, how long it took, whether it worked, and how they feel about it now.
They exist because the practical articles can tell you how to calculate a runway and cannot tell you what the middle of this feels like. How these stories are written →
Career Pivot
Why I went back to a tech job after trying to leave twice
Career Pivot
I downshifted from senior engineer to junior at a different company — no regrets
Career Pivot
One year after leaving Google — the honest update
Career Pivot
From PM to independent consultant — the first 90 days honestly
Burnout
Three years at a startup that broke me — and what I learned from it
Identity
I had everything the job promised. So why did I feel nothing?
Burnout
Why taking time off didn't fix my burnout — and what did
Burnout
What actually helped me recover from burnout — and what was just noise
Career Pivot
I left a $180k engineering job to become a writer — here's year one
Burnout
The Sunday dread is not normal — what it's really telling you
Burnout
I thought I was lazy. Turns out I was running on empty for three years.
Career Pivot
From senior engineer to ceramics teacher — the finances nobody tells you about
Identity
What happens to your personality when you stop being "the smart one in the room"
Stories