Man Quits $700K Tech Job to Chase Fulfillment, Ends Up Managing Existential Crisis Instead

KEY POINTS

•Jay Gengelbach left his $700,000-plus job at Verily in mid-2024 seeking more fulfillment over fat paychecks.
•After a dozen years rocking Google perks and six years managing layoffs at Verily, he grew unhappy and isolated.
•Jay moved his family to Canada in 2025 and shifted from a managerial role to hands-on engineering at Vercel.
•Though his new role pays less and lacks lavish benefits, the smaller company's recent $9 billion valuation boosted his equity hope.

In mid-2024, Jay Gengelbach dared to defy the $700,000-a-year Big Tech siren song by ghosting Verily, Alphabet’s health-tech pet project. After 12 years at Google enjoying exotic perks like cash bonuses and luau lunches that inexplicably didn’t require sunscreen, Jay spent six uneventful years managing layoffs and loneliness before pulling the plug. With spousal and therapist backup, he bounced to a smaller company called Vercel, fled to Canada (bye, pool and lavish vacations), and swapped his director hat for an individual contributor role. Now Jay’s flexing brain muscles on website infrastructure and proving you can leave the golden cage while still pretending you didn’t panic over pay cuts.