I’ll be leaving DuckDuckGo in a few days after working there for almost 10 years! I’ve been there for a third of my life, so I’m still in a bit of a shock that it’s all coming to an end.
I started there as an intern / consultant straight out of college—basically a baby—making and reviewing various open source plugins for the search engine. That eventually lead to a full-time role as a frontend engineer where I got to branch out to different parts of the product. A couple years later, I realized that I enjoyed designing more so I switched roles and became a product designer around 2018.
I loved working there: They accommodated my interests. I was paid well. My coworkers were the absolute best! So I’m honestly feeling very torn about leaving.
Unfortunately, I’ve gotten very cynical of the tech industry in general over the last year, so I’m struggling to put much effort into my work. I’ve been feeling broken, struggling to find meaning and joy from anything related to software (unless it’s retrocomputing ofc). So I think I need to step away from tech for a while to figure shit out.
My values have changed. I’ve gotten into anti-capitalism, degrowth, and permacomputing. The tech industry right now feels like it’s the opposite of those things. But it’s all I know, and I still need to make a living, so I’m hoping I could find my way back into it in one form or another.
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