First Month After Quitting My Big Tech Job as L8 Principal

Name: First Month After Quitting My Big Tech Job as L8 Principal
Uploaded: 2026-05-17T16:00:31.000Z
Duration: 14 min 36 s
Channel: Kun Chen

Kun ChenMay 17, 202614m

Topics10

Decision to Leave Big Tech0:00 Why the Decision Was Made0:31 Financial Modeling of Outcomes2:30 Personal Values Over Pure Math4:34 First Monday as a Solo Builder5:04 Initial Focus and Rapid Progress5:31 Early Momentum and Audience Growth8:02 Key Learnings from Early Progress9:02 Autonomy and the Need for Mission11:31 Looking Ahead and Advice14:02

In a Nutshell

Ex-L8 engineer quit Big Tech after nearly 20 years to build solo, prioritizing personal mission over higher expected earnings. First month showed extreme velocity—shipping multiple projects daily with zero overhead—plus rapid audience growth to 8k followers and 1k+ GitHub stars. Key lessons: clear personal mission prevents distraction, authenticity and craftsmanship drive traction, and autonomy requires intentional focus.

AI-Generated Notes

These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.

About a month ago, the speaker quit their big tech career as an L8 engineer to become a solo builder. They worked at Meta, Microsoft, and Atlassian for almost two decades. The job was good, the people were great, and the compensation was strong, yet they still chose to leave. The video shares why this decision was made, how the trade-offs were evaluated, and how the first month has gone. The speaker wants to provide a real, transparent story for others considering a similar path.

The speaker had a great experience at big tech. They started at Microsoft as a junior developer, learned from talented engineers, gained significant autonomy as they advanced, and worked on large-scale problems. They grew from an entry-level engineer to L8 and do not regret the experience.

Over the last couple of years, several changes shifted their perspective. As they became more senior, their time was better leveraged by directing others rather than coding themselves. Helping a 500-person team avoid a wrong path was more impactful than individual coding, but they missed the hands-on process of building. AI created new opportunities for what one person or small team could build and changed how work gets done. Their son is now eight years old and more independent, giving both parents more breathing room and savings to consider new directions.

The speaker modeled four typical outcomes for people who leave to build independently:

Nothing: building something no one wants
Soft landing (also called acquihire): building something reasonable that demonstrates expertise, leading to acquisition of the team rather than the product
Successful exit: building something with business traction that companies want to acquire
Unicorn startup: achieving very high valuation

In a conservative probability distribution, most startups result in nothing, a reasonable portion achieve soft landings, fewer reach successful exits, and very few become unicorns. Even under optimistic assumptions, the expected financial return over three years remains significantly lower than staying in big tech. The speaker acknowledges the decision was not fully rational from a financial standpoint.

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First Month After Quitting My Big Tech Job as L8 Principal

Decision to Leave Big Tech00:00

Why the Decision Was Made00:31

Financial Modeling of Outcomes02:30

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