Why Senior Developers Are Leaving Big Tech for Indie Hacking

My manager called me into his office at 3 PM on a Tuesday.

"We need you to work this weekend. Critical bug in production."

I looked at my Google Calendar. My daughter's birthday party was Saturday. I'd promised her I'd be there this time. Third weekend in a row they'd asked me to come in.

I said yes anyway.

That night, I started building my first solo product. Not because I had a brilliant idea. Not because I wanted to "disrupt an industry." Because I was exhausted with trading my life for a salary, no matter how good that salary was.

Two years later, I quit. My indie SaaS makes half what Google paid me, but I've never been happier. And I'm not alone—senior developers are leaving big tech in droves, choosing freedom over stability, ownership over equity, and sanity over status.

Here's why it's happening, what it really looks like, and how to make the jump if you're thinking about it.

The Great Resignation in Tech Is Different This Time

Everyone talks about the Great Resignation like it was just a COVID thing—people quitting to reevaluate their priorities, touch grass, find work-life balance.

But something else happened specifically in tech that nobody's talking about: senior developers stopped believing the fairy tale.

You know the fairy tale. Work at a FAANG company, grind for 5-7 years, make it to Staff/Principal, collect your $500K total comp, retire early. The dream.

Except people who made it there started saying, "This sucks, actually."

I have a friend—let's call him Marcus—who spent 8 years at Meta. Got promoted to E6 (Staff Engineer). Made $480K. Owned a house in Menlo Park. Living the dream, right?

He quit last year to build a Chrome extension that helps developers manage their terminal tabs. Makes $8K/month. Took an 85% pay cut.

"Best decision I ever made," he told me over coffee. "I forgot what it felt like to own something I built."

That phrase keeps coming up when I talk to people who've made the switch: "I forgot what ownership felt like."

The Big Tech Disillusionment Is Real

Here's what actually happens when you're a senior engineer at a big tech company:

• Your impact shrinks as you get more senior. Junior devs ship features. Senior devs sit in meetings debating architecture decisions that'll be obsolete in 18 months.
• Politics becomes your job. You're not coding anymore. You're "influencing stakeholders" and "building consensus" and "aligning roadmaps." Corporate speak for: nobody can make a decision.
• Your code isn't yours. You write brilliant code at work, and it belongs to the company. Forever. You can't show it, can't open-source it, can't even talk about it without getting legal involved.
• The equity golden handcuffs tighten. Every year, you get more RSUs that vest over 4 years. Leaving means walking away from money. So you stay. And stay. And stay.
• You're optimizing for metrics that don't matter. Your team's OKRs are tied to increasing engagement by 0.3%. You spend 3 months building a feature that moves the needle from 34.2% to 34.5%. Cool. Did that make the world better? Did that make you better?

The paycheck is great. The benefits are incredible. The prestige feels good at parties.

But you wake up one day and realize you haven't built anything real in years. You've built features—small pieces of products you don't own, don't control, and probably don't even care about.

That's when indie hacking starts looking less like a risk and more like an escape plan.

What Is Indie Hacking, Really?

Let's clear this up because "indie hacking" means different things to different people.

Indie hacking is building and running profitable internet businesses as a solo founder or tiny team, without venture capital, focused on profitability over growth.

It's not:

• ❌ Freelancing (you're still trading time for money)
• ❌ Starting a venture-backed startup (you're still answering to investors)
• ❌ Building a side project that makes $0 (cool hobby, not a business)
• ❌ Drop shipping or affiliate marketing (different game entirely)

It's:

• ✅ Building SaaS products
• ✅ Creating developer tools
• ✅ Writing and selling courses
• ✅ Building productized services
• ✅ Creating content businesses with subscriptions

The goal isn't to build a unicorn. The goal is to build something profitable enough that you don't need a job. For most indie hackers, that number is $5K–$15K/month. Not life-changing money. Life-changing freedom.

Real Stories: Developers Who Actually Made the Jump

Pieter Levels (@levelsio) – Left his job to build Nomad List and Remote OK. Now makes $2M+/year as a solo developer. No team. No funding. Just him and his MacBook.

Danny Postma (@dannypostmaa) – Quit his agency job to build Landingfolio. Makes $50K/month selling design inspiration and templates. Works 4 hours a day.

Tony Dinh (@tdinh_me) – Former software engineer turned indie hacker. Built multiple successful products (Black Magic, DevUtils, Xnapper). Makes $40K+/month combined. Travels full-time.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff (@anthilemoon) – Left Google to build Ness Labs, a newsletter and membership community for mindful productivity. Now runs a 7-figure business teaching and writing.

These aren't lottery winners. They're developers who decided to build for themselves instead of for corporations. They shipped products, found customers, and made it work.

But here's the thing nobody tells you: Most of them struggled for 1-2 years before making real money. The overnight success stories you see on Twitter? That's year three. Nobody tweets about year one when they made $200 and questioned every life decision.

Freedom vs. Stability: The Real Trade-Off

Let's not romanticize this. Leaving big tech for indie hacking is a trade-off, and you need to understand what you're giving up.

What You Lose:

Predictable income: Your $200K salary becomes $0 for a while, then inconsistent revenue, then (hopefully) steady income. It's scary.

Benefits: No more free health insurance, 401K matching, unlimited PTO, free lunch, gym membership, or whatever perks your company offered. You're paying for all of that yourself now.

Learning from smart people: Big tech has incredible engineers. You learn a ton just from being around them. Working solo means you're learning from Twitter, docs, and trial and error.

Prestige: "I work at Google" impresses people. "I run a small SaaS" gets a polite nod and then they ask what you really do.

️ Safety net: If your project fails at a big company, you still get paid. If your indie product fails, you eat ramen and panic.

What You Gain:

⏰ Time ownership: You decide when you work. Want to code at 2 AM and sleep until noon? Go for it. Want to take Wednesdays off? Nobody's stopping you.

Full creative control: No product managers, no stakeholder reviews, no committees. You build what you want, how you want, when you want.

Uncapped earnings: Your salary has a ceiling. Your business doesn't. If you 10x your revenue, you 10x your income. Try doing that with a promotion.

Ownership: You own the code, the product, the customer relationships, the brand. It's yours. You can sell it, scale it, or shut it down. Your choice.

Sanity: No more corporate politics. No more pointless meetings. No more pretending to care about Q4 OKRs. You answer to yourself and your customers. That's it.

For me, the sanity was the killer feature. I'd rather make $60K doing work I love than $300K doing work that makes me want to throw my laptop out a window.

But—and this is important—that trade-off doesn't work for everyone. If you have a family depending on your income, if you have medical conditions that require expensive insurance, if you hate uncertainty, big tech might genuinely be the better choice. There's no shame in that.

How to Transition: The Practical Advice Nobody Gives You

Okay, you're convinced. You want to try indie hacking. How do you actually make the jump without ruining your life?

Step 1: Don't Quit Your Job (Yet)

I know, I know. You want to go full indie hacker, burn the ships, bet on yourself. That's sexy. It's also stupid.

Start building while you still have a salary. Use your nights and weekends. Yeah, it sucks having less free time. Know what sucks more? Running out of money 3 months in and having to beg for your old job back.

The goal: Get to $3K–$5K/month in revenue before you quit. That's enough to prove the business works and gives you a runway to grow it.

Step 2: Build an Audience First, Product Second

This is the mistake I made. I spent 6 months building a product in secret, launched it, and... crickets. Nobody cared because nobody knew I existed.

The indie hackers who succeed do it backwards: Build an audience, then ask them what they need, then build that.

How to build an audience:

• Twitter: Tweet daily about what you're learning, building, or struggling with. Be helpful and honest. You'll attract people like you.
• Write: Start a blog, newsletter, or post on dev.to. Share knowledge. Teach what you know. The people you help become your first customers.
• Build in public: Share your journey. Revenue numbers, failed launches, lessons learned. People love following the story.

When you have 1,000 followers who trust you, launching a product is easy. When you have 0 followers, launching a product is impossible.

Step 3: Start Small, Really Small

Don't build the next Notion. Don't build a "platform." Don't build something that takes 18 months to ship.

Build something you can launch in 2-4 weeks. Something stupidly simple. Something that solves one problem for one type of person.

Ideas that work:

• A Chrome extension that does one thing well
• A script that automates an annoying developer task
• A Notion template or Figma plugin
• A curated list or directory (with a paid upgrade)
• A tiny SaaS that scratches your own itch

My first profitable product was a tool that generated social media images for blog posts. Took me 3 days to build. Made $1,200 the first month. Not life-changing, but it proved I could make money independently. That's the goal of your first product—prove it's possible.

Step 4: Learn to Market (Even Though You'll Hate It)

Engineers hate marketing. I get it. It feels sleazy, pushy, sales-y.

Get over it. Marketing is just telling people about something useful you built. If your product actually helps people and you don't tell anyone about it, you're doing them a disservice.

Marketing for developers:

• Write about the problem: SEO-optimized blog posts that rank for problems your product solves. This is how I got my first 1,000 customers.
• Post on communities: Reddit, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, relevant Discord servers. Be helpful first, self-promote second.
• Make free versions: Open-source part of your product or create a free tier. People try it, love it, upgrade to paid.
• Cold outreach (the right way): Find people who have the exact problem you solve. Send them a short, helpful message. Don't pitch. Help.

Marketing is a skill you learn by doing. You'll suck at first. That's fine. Ship, learn, improve.

Step 5: Have a "F*ck It" Fund

Before you quit your job, save up 6-12 months of living expenses. This is your "F*ck It" fund—the money that lets you take risks without panicking.

Calculate your bare minimum monthly expenses:

• Rent/mortgage
• Food
• Insurance
• Phone, internet, basics

Multiply that by 12. That's your target.

Yes, it takes time to save that much. Yes, it's boring. But having that cushion is the difference between "I'm going to make this work" and "Oh god I need a job RIGHT NOW or I'm homeless."

Step 6: Actually Quit (Or Don't)

Once you hit $5K/month in revenue for 3 consecutive months and you have your F*ck It fund saved up, you're ready to quit.

Or... don't.

Some indie hackers keep their jobs and run their businesses on the side. The business makes extra income, but they like the stability of a salary. That's 100% valid.

The point isn't to quit your job. The point is to have the option to quit. Once you have that option, the job feels different. You're there because you choose to be, not because you have to be. That shift in mindset changes everything.

The Harsh Truth About Indie Hacking

Let me be brutally honest: Most indie products fail.

You'll launch something you're excited about and nobody will care. You'll spend weeks building a feature and get zero feedback. You'll have months where revenue goes down instead of up. You'll question if you made the right choice.

Indie hacking is hard. It's uncertain. It's lonely sometimes. You don't have teammates to share the wins or the losses with. It's just you, your laptop, and a bunch of strangers on the internet who may or may not care about what you're building.

But here's the thing: Big tech is hard too. Just in different ways. The politics, the bureaucracy, the lack of ownership—that's hard. The golden handcuffs, the meeting hell, the feeling that your work doesn't matter—that's hard too.

The question isn't "Which path is easier?" The question is "Which kind of hard do I want?"

I chose the hard of indie hacking because at least I own the outcome. When I fail, I fail on my own terms. When I win, I keep 100% of it.

Resources to Get Started

If you're serious about indie hacking, here's where to start:

Communities:

• Indie Hackers – The best community for indie makers. Read the stories, join the forum, learn from people ahead of you.
• r/SideProject – Reddit community for sharing and getting feedback on projects.
• MegaMaker Club – Justin Jackson's community for bootstrappers.

Podcasts:

• Indie Hackers Podcast – Interviews with founders building profitable businesses.
• Build Your SaaS – Justin Jackson and Jon Buda talk about building products.
• The Bootstrapped Founder – Arvid Kahl shares lessons from building and selling a SaaS.

Books:

• "The Embedded Entrepreneur" by Arvid Kahl – How to find and serve an audience.
• "Company of One" by Paul Jarvis – Why staying small is powerful.
• "Make" by Pieter Levels – Practical guide from one of the most successful indie hackers.

People to Follow:

• Pieter Levels (@levelsio)
• Arvid Kahl (@arvidkahl)
• Tony Dinh (@tdinh_me)
• Danny Postma (@dannypostmaa)
• Marc Lou (@marc_louvion)

Final Thoughts: You Don't Need Permission

One more thing: You don't need anyone's permission to start building.

You don't need to ask your manager if it's okay to have a side project. You don't need to wait for the "right time" (there isn't one). You don't need to have a perfect idea (your first five ideas will probably suck).

You just need to start.

Build something small. Share it publicly. Get feedback. Iterate. Launch. Repeat.

That's it. That's the whole playbook.

Will you succeed? Maybe. Maybe not. But I guarantee you'll learn more in 6 months of indie hacking than you will in 2 years of corporate engineering. You'll learn how to ship fast, how to talk to customers, how to market, how to charge money for your work. Those skills are valuable whether you stay indie or go back to a job.

I left big tech two years ago. Some days I miss the paycheck. Most days I don't. I wake up excited to work on my own thing. I answer to myself. I own what I build.

That's worth more than any salary.

If you're thinking about making the jump, stop thinking. Start building. The world needs more developers building for themselves, not just for corporations.

Go be one of them.