2026-08-20                             dispatches from helix
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   (cw: LLM-adjacent career-post)

   On my last two weeks. My second resignation of the year. I
   don't feel great about this (although it feels better than
   staying). A person I worked with (twice) referred to this as
   "resigning your way to the right job". What is slowly
   becoming clear to me is that the right job might not exist
   and also that the conditions for "right-job-ness" are
   globally going away.

   I'm not panicked by this, because I'll personally be okay,
   but I'm pretty sad. I was one of those "office every day"
   people who has not enjoyed the remote-revolution that COVID
   brought -- and I also enjoy thinking deeply about a problem
   and solving them with as few lines of code as possible
   (which I write by hand).

   For now, and possibly forever (but we'll see, I guess),
   those things aren't valued -- and my experience is that even
   places that _say_ they value those things cannot resist the
   allure of taking shortcuts with LLMs. And, like, I also
   understand that: if you're competing against steam engines,
   you can't be on a horse.

   I really loved talking to people in person, white-boarding a
   design collaboratively. I loved pair programming -- first in
   person and then I could just-about make it work online. I
   even liked constructive PR review which, now that it's
   diminished, I realize was an important form of communication
   all along.

   It's funny that I got into the computer as a hobby I could
   do alone, but I only really flourished when I joined a
   company and helped me grow. I always wanted to be
   computering with other people. And recently I am not, and I
   think the trend is away from it.

   Honestly, I also enjoyed the ego-boost of having rare
   insight and experience that is (kinda) available to everyone
   by asking a chatbot that synthesizes every book / blog /
   forum post on a topic down to an approximately correct
   answer.

   I don't think it's over-dramatic to say I need to redesign
   my life -- to be happy I have to orient myself less around
   work and these external signifiers of value and find a new
   way to be.