“So you’ve made up your mind? I’m completely behind you. Honestly, I think it’s the right call.”
When I said that, Niu-ba and I were on our usual evening walk, the entrance to our neighborhood just coming into view.
The sun was already down but the air was still muggy. Cicadas screamed in the big leafy oaks, and pink ribbons of sunset floated along the horizon.
A perfectly ordinary late-July evening in Austin.
The next day, Niu-ba quit his job.
A month later, he and the kids moved back to Seattle.
Calm down — Niu-ma is not getting divorced.
These past few months our life has flipped upside down more than once. Forget you — we think it’s insane. The whole thing feels like a fever dream.
I know I’ve barely posted since we moved to Austin, and I hated that too. But work and daily life drained what little energy I had, and by the weekend all I wanted was to lie flat and interrogate myself about the ultimate questions of existence.
Nobody ponders the ultimate questions of existence unless life is actively whipping them.
When we first decided to move at the start of the year, I was all sparkle and ambition, dreaming about the new life and the new job — you saw it yourselves.
But the longer we worked, the wider the gap between the dream and the reality. So many times I wanted to come vent to you all, but then I’d think: we just got here, wouldn’t I look impatient? Hold on a little. Maybe things will get better in a while?
So a while passed. Then another while. And I watched the light slowly go out of Niu-ba’s eyes — and I suspect mine looked the same.
I felt stale from the inside out. So this is what they mean by corporate funk.
Neither of us has really done the big-company thing. I worked a few years in China; after coming to the States, Niu-ba and I ran our own company, did a game startup, then the blog and comics…
Niu-ba’s last job was a startup too. Once it grew big, he complained the boring busywork kept piling up while the fun, creative work kept shrinking.
So when this new opportunity landed, we were both thrilled. Games, AI, education — a great space, one we love and are actually good at. A small startup, freedom plus impact. The chosen job, surely!
Then we arrived, survived the initial chaos, and slowly realized this wasn’t quite what we’d pictured.
Yes, it’s a startup — but one sprinting full speed down the big-company highway.
Our project started with four or five people actually building things… and two project managers.
In more than a decade of working, Niu-ma had never once had a project manager.
Fine, fine — everything I’d done was small potatoes. Big products need them, I’m sure.
The managers are very busy. They hold meetings all day.
Meetings every day. Meetings without end.
I once lived through a week of eight-hour meeting days. Meetings till you gag — and afterward everyone goes back to doing exactly what they were doing, nothing resolved.
Decisions can’t simply be made, of course. They must be discussed in meetings. Write the doc, present the deck, align on thinking, socialize your viewpoint.
And some people can talk.
Take one simple thing: they can argue it forward, argue it backward; illustrate with an example, land a little joke; go cryptic and profound, then quote the classics…
Right or wrong, substance or filler — after a performance like that, all anyone remembers is: this person is impressive. Authoritative. Leadership material. We should do what they say.
I said nothing. I just went home and drilled my children accordingly:
The company ballooned fast — over a hundred people within months. Niu-ba’s corner of the work hit resistance at every turn. None of his ideas could land, and the plans that could get approved were ones he didn’t believe in.
We thought we’d signed up to build an elegant little tool. Somewhere along the way it became an enormous machine — and if you’re a gear that won’t turn on command, sooner or later you’re a problem gear.
For a long stretch, our daily walks were just the two of us cataloguing the company’s absurdities.
“Maybe we should just leave” came up more and more often.
But the sunk costs! We’d given up our old work and life, Niuniu’s hundred-year-old school, and survived a ruinously expensive cross-state move.
And Austin wasn’t without upsides. The kids slotted right into their new life, made great friends, liked their schools. We’d been house-hunting for a while — the houses here are cheap and pretty, and we very nearly bought one.
The job was maddening, but the paycheck wasn’t bad.
Until one day, the final straw landed on this particular workhorse.
Once he saw clearly that his way of working — and his whole philosophy of it — would never fit this company, Niu-ba finally made up his mind.
I fully supported him quitting.
By midlife, the priority list has been reshuffled. So many things outrank a job: family, how you actually live, how you actually feel, health — the physical kind and the mental kind.
Our finances aren’t “do whatever we want” money. But they are “don’t do what we don’t want” money.
The moment the decision was made, we both exhaled. The boulder on the chest was suddenly gone; the sky opened up, the grass got greener, even the air turned sweet.
After a few months of the double-commuter lifestyle, we’d learned how grim it is. Every day a fire drill — can’t eat well, can’t have fun, house a disaster, kids unsupervised. Quality of life in free fall.
Niu-ba being willing to run the household? Best possible outcome.
Niu-ma isn’t ready to quit yet. The company’s mission — build products that make kids love learning — is one I genuinely believe in.
My job isn’t what I imagined either, but it’s far more bearable than his was. I get to ship real ideas, I’m learning a ton, I’ve met a lot of brilliant people. The annoyances are still within tolerance.
Which left the question: stay in Austin, or go back to Seattle?
After another round of hard deliberation, we decided: Niu-ba takes the kids back first.
After a decade-plus there, Seattle still feels like home. Also, we own a house in it.
Niuniu and Niumei are genuinely easygoing kids. Dragged back and forth for months, they showed industrial-grade adaptability. They came to Austin happy; the minute they heard we were going back, they started listing everything they missed about Seattle and cheerfully threw goodbye parties with their friends.
Then came the logistics: company paperwork, school registration, ending the lease, packing, booking movers…
The stuff we’d shipped from Seattle had never even left the storage room — and now it was traveling a few thousand miles back, seals unbroken.
Looking back on the past half year and change: chaotic, yes, but not a total loss.
Taking the leap was risky, and maybe not the most rational move. But because of it, we understand the industry better — and ourselves better. Cut your losses when it’s time to cut them, and you haven’t really lost.
Here we are at our age, still collecting lessons and writing retrospectives.
A few days ago, the whole family landed back in Seattle. Summer isn’t quite over — there’s still time to enjoy this city’s most beautiful season.
A few days of unpacking and settling in, and the kids started school.
I dropped them off in the morning, waved goodbye, turned around and got in the car to the airport. For the next month, I’m on my own.
After almost twenty years — single life again.
Why am I… a little bit excited?
Wise people of the comments section: was this the right call?
And if you’ve got workplace grievances of your own — the vent is open. Let’s hear them.