Inside one coder's journey to leave tech and land a 'baby blue-collar' job

Brian Gordon Brian Gordon fell in love with coding. Over a decade later, the industry wasn't loving him back. In March, Gordon learned that his company would be shutting down, eliminating his frontend developer job in the process. He'd read horror stories online about the job market for programmers. He'd also tried applying for a second job a few months prior — and found little luck. "I need to make money," he told me in March, one week before his job's end date. "I have a wife, I have a two-year-old son, I have people I need to take care of." Gordon began plotting his next moves — hopefully, he said, out of tech. His brother-in-law was a plumber, and he once dated an airplane mechanic . Both seemed to have better career outcomes than he did, he said.