On Quitting Meta and a Startup

January 12, 2026

In June 2025 I left my Meta job to join a startup. In December 2025 I quit that startup. Here’s why and what I learned.

Meta was my first job out of college. I was on a great team and making important contributions to the reliability of the largest distributed system in the world. In those 5 years I had been promoted twice to E5 and left a lot of money on the table. I quit Meta because I saw what AI was doing to software engineering and I didn’t want to get left behind.

I joined a YC-backed AI SaaS startup that had just raised a Series A. I had friends working there and the business need made sense to me. I am proud of what I built in my time there: I shipped state-of-the-art AI-powered counterfeit detection tools; I implemented complex SOPs in languages I can’t even read (Korean, Portuguese, Spanish); I ran a live demo of multiple products I built in the same week, and fixed them live when the demo inevitably broke; I learned the inner workings of different model providers APIs and became an expert in the strengths and weaknesses of the different AI models. I quit because I realized I wasn't happy and needed to work more fully towards my dreams.

I learned three critical lessons:

1. The skill cap on software engineering has been raised. SWEs who embrace and learn how to use AI effectively will be able to ship so much more and deliver so much value. I am able to move so much faster as an engineer than I was even 2 years ago because of new tools like Roo and Cursor and Claude Code. Similarly, the skill floor has been raised, and even non-technical people will be able to ship products of increasing complexity.
2. Software engineering has never really been about the code. Just as biology isn’t really about microscopes, it’s about the study of living things, software engineering isn’t really about writing code, it’s about delivering working software to meet people’s needs. All the other parts of software engineering still matter: sorting through ambiguous requirements, setting product direction, communicating with customers and other stakeholders, etc.
3. I need to work on what I care about. I worked at Meta because I needed stability and income out of college. I’ve since paid off my student loans and have savings and runway. For me to be motivated in my next role I need to align with the mission on a deeper level. With my resume and savings I have the privilege of being selective in what I work on: in 2026 I’m using that privilege to work towards my goals more completely.

I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I’m building on my own full-time for a while and looking to connect, so let’s talk! I’m based in SF and would love to go on a coffee date with fellow entrepreneurially minded people, especially anyone working with language models on problems in climate science or biology, urban planning, energy, and music production/event production.