Comment by netbioserror

I personally got one of those jobs at a smaller, "non-tech" (read: engineering) company, quite close to where I grew up. Got to pick my language and tools, have ownership of my slice of the product, live a very comfortable and flexible 9-to-5 where they gave me the room to do my best work. Pays maybe half of the typical inflated tech salary. But I'm doing well for myself.

My only issues at this point are 1) my life has bucket list things to check off that have nothing to do with work, 2) I'm running out of super interesting things to work on and entering a sort of maintenance mode on my program, 3) the old guard, who were all retirement age, are checking out for a new generation, with a new direction.

So all that being said, I've been looking for work far afield in places closer to my bucket list items. Hopefully, I can find another smaller, specialized company that needs a programmer with my skillset, because this experience has been fantastic.