I'm shocked at how much negativity there is towards people quitting early just because they can. I sense a lot of this comes from the idea that a well paying job is embedded so deeply in American culture as a status symbol that people who choose to leave willingly must somehow be either stupid or have something else wrong with them.
I'm very glad to work in an industry where people can trade 5-10 years of their lives and then move on to other things that deeply matter to them. My only hope is that those people realize how fortunate they are. The vast majority of people will simply not have that opportunity.
There are different kinds of education. For example, vocational schools and liberal arts schools. In one we learn to specialize. In the other, we learn how to generalize. While there are advantages and disadvantages to each, I don't buy the argument that only specialists are worthwhile people. (Orson Welles didn't specialize, but had a lot to share.)
For example, many schools have programs which cater to technical people. Most of them also require such students to study unrelated electives. I chafed at that at first ("but I know what I want to know"); later on in life I greatly appreciated it. I didn't know enough to know what I wanted to know.
Life can be more than doing what's expected or trendy ... as most of history shows us. A lot more. I enjoyed reading about someone making that leap. It has its perils, yes. But. A couple of quotes from Joe Campbell (learned about him in one of those non-tech courses):
"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's."
" People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality."
I'm very glad to work in an industry where people can trade 5-10 years of their lives and then move on to other things that deeply matter to them. My only hope is that those people realize how fortunate they are. The vast majority of people will simply not have that opportunity.