A job in Big Tech is a career goal for many software engineers and engineering managers. So what leads people to quit, after working so hard to land these roles?

Community Picks is a section on daily.dev where our community members share the most interesting and valuable content they've discovered online. From insightful articles to handy tools, every post is a gem curated by our dedicated coomunity. To contribute to Community Picks, you need to have at least 250 reputation points, ensuring that only active and trusted members can share their finds.

Community Picks

Big Tech jobs are highly coveted for their brand value, top-market compensation, and massive operational scale. However, various factors such as diminishing job stability, limited professional growth opportunities, closed career paths, organizational politics, and compensation drops lead engineers to leave these positions. Despite Big Tech's high pay, personal ambitions, preference for dynamic work environments in startups, and changes in company culture contribute to the decision to move on. The high compensation also provides a financial cushion, making it easier for professionals to take risks on new opportunities.

Why techies leave Big Tech

2. Professional growth in a startup environment

Would like to see a counter-post about why people leave startup tech companies.

If you ever think tech startups are better, please let me know again after 1-3 years.

Because people are tired feeling like a cog in a machine, the golden cage allure is eroding.

What is Big Tech’s message?
Developers, we don’t want you, and we will fire any developer who dares to try to work for us. And if you dare to work for us, we will give you the most boring risk avoidance jobs that have no meaning to you, you developer, just to make you quit.
And once you’re gone, we’ll show the rest of Big Tech that they don’t want you as a developer. They too will mass fire all developers who want to work for them. They will give them the most boring risk avoidance jobs to make you quit.
The message from all Big Tech companies is: “GO AWAY, you developer” and don’t come back.