<story><title>The Art of Quitting</title><url>http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-art-of-quitting</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jasode</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure what to make of this blog post.  The author writes:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;By resigning from Reddit, &lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Behind the scenes, Ellen Pao could have been forced out (also known as being &amp;quot;fired&amp;quot;) but presented publicly as a resignation.  I thought we don&amp;#x27;t really know what happened?  Therefore, it seems biased to frame a thematic essay about &amp;quot;quitting&amp;quot; around Ellen&amp;#x27;s circumstances.  If she didn&amp;#x27;t voluntarily separate, it&amp;#x27;s not &amp;quot;quitting&amp;quot; -- it&amp;#x27;s getting fired.  Does the author Ernie Smith know the inside details of Ellen Pao&amp;#x27;s situation that we don&amp;#x27;t?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;Ellen Pao is choosing to focus her attention on the other things that interest her.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The underlying Washington Post article that this sentence links to is ~900 words written by Ellen Pao.  She makes no mention of &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;other things that interest her.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Overall, a blog post of dubious quality.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Art of Quitting</title><url>http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-art-of-quitting</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>beat</author><text>I feel this.&lt;p&gt;I spent 20 years building a successful career as an enterprise software engineer, bouncing around between configuration management, development, and ops. It&amp;#x27;s a secure, good paying, stable career. And I grew to resent and sometimes hate it.&lt;p&gt;Then I started building something for myself, discovered the idea of creating my own startup to solve problems I experienced doing enterprise software projects in a general way, and I &lt;i&gt;love&lt;/i&gt; that. It makes me feel like I&amp;#x27;m doing something that actually matters.&lt;p&gt;Right now, I&amp;#x27;m back in the enterprise to make ends meet and building on the side, which sucks and drives me crazy - but at least I see the exit and can keep moving toward it. And I figure I can get five or ten years out of building a company before I&amp;#x27;m done with that as well.&lt;p&gt;Once you hit a certain age and a certain level of success, the things you realize you&amp;#x27;ll never do weigh on you more than the things you haven&amp;#x27;t done yet. And the things you do look more like impediments than accomplishments. That&amp;#x27;s when you need to change.</text></comment>