Time to Move On

After four years, I'm leaving Snag and betting on the loop between living fully and building with AI

Walking the edge between two realities without collapsing into either

After almost four years, I’m leaving Snag and I am quitting tech.

I first drafted this post in January 2026. I already felt the urge to venture out on my own, but lacked direction. Back then I wanted to escape being being a software developer. I could not cope with all the changes AI was bringing to tech.

But this changed at the beginning of June 2026. Suddenly it clicked! I am not the best software engineer. I don't care about algorithms, and beautiful solutions. I am a product developer at heart, who wants to use technology to solve big problems.

AI helps me focus on discovering problems and coming up with solutions to them. It’s with me throughout the whole product development lifecycle. Most importantly, it does the actual heavy-lifting.

What if I can keep doing content AND engineering at the same time? With AI, execution is incredibly cheap. Anyone can build a working prototype in an afternoon. But what's hard is distribution and knowing what to build.

AI is only as good as the human behind it and it can't fake authenticity. The deeper I go into the human experience through radical authenticity and being fully alive, the better my AI gets. The better my AI gets, the deeper I can go. It is a self-perpetuating loop.

That's the life I'm building towards. 2-4 hours of daily deep work leveraging the full power of AI and living with full presence offline. That's what feeds the machine and my soul.

I was hesitating to make the decision to quit. But over the past 6 weeks the opportunity pain of staying kept rising. It got to a point where I couldn't not quit.

The shift started with Loamkeep. An iOS app I built to promote intentional social media use while taking care of your body. There are quite a few other exciting projects on the horizon that I’ll share more about when the time is right.

A round of love for the team

Snag has been a pivotal part of my journey as a product developer and human being. I learned so much about building distributed systems, but it was also a place that supported my self-exploration and my sometimes-unusual requests

I will be forever grateful for having the opportunity to work in this company and getting to know the people. I’m taking a piece of everyone on this team with me. Here is a round of appreciation for everyone I worked closely with.

Sufwan

He was always the one messaging me the second I broke the build, which happened quite often. He’s a talented engineer, always ready to jump on any bug.

I’ve watched him grow into genuinely challenging work over the years. He always has a smile on his face, and it does wonders for morale.

Muneeb

We worked closely for a few months, and I watched Muneeb grow so much in that time. He was eager for feedback and always came out the other side a better engineer.

He ended up owning a critical part of our product, and seeing that makes me proud. He’s a curious person, and we had many good chats between meetings.

Nick

I loved watching Nick grow into the Go-To-Market Lead role. When the previous lead left, he stepped in and crushed it.

But what I admire even more is his curiosity and drive to figure things out: he built an entire sales tool from scratch just to help himself do the job better. I’ll miss our chats about life, hiking, and personal growth.

Gio

Gio is a genuine person with a lot of love for everything he touches in life. He’s the team’s biggest cheerleader. The energy he brings to meetings and chats is contagious.

He’s the bridge between stuck clients and us engineers, and he inspires me with how he handles communication and how prompt he is with responses.

Gloria

Gloria brought much-needed structure to the organisation: making sure we actually got paid, setting up bug tracking, building sales funnels. The shift was real, and everyone noticed.

But my favorite thing was the games she introduced to the team. They helped me connect more deeply with the people I was working with. The energy she added was exactly what we were missing.

Haseeb

I’ve never met anyone with Haseeb’s skillset. He’s one of the smartest engineers I’ve worked with, and the human side of him is even more impressive.

His patience is remarkable: many times I couldn’t understand a problem, and he’d take the time to explain it in different ways until I did. A teammate I could always count on, and an absolute gem of a human being.

Nadav

Nadav is the first kick-ass designer I’ve worked with. One of a kind, with true attention to detail.

All those endless QA sessions paid off: I took the message of his craft to heart, and he made me a better product developer by teaching me what a good user experience is really worth.

We’re on similar journeys in life, and I admire his curiosity for new experiences across all areas in life.

Logan

The most cracked developer I’ve ever worked with. I stopped counting the engineering masterpieces he came up with.

For Logan there is always a way, and he doesn’t stop until the problem is solved, even if it means rewriting the entire backend in some obscure language overnight.

His intelligence shows up everywhere: he understands human behavior, economics, and has great intuition for business. He’s probably the reason I ended up AI-pilled. Thank you sir!

Rafal

One of my favorite people on the team. He is an inspiration on many levels. I will never forget the chat we had in NYC about parenthood. He looked tired, but deep down I could feel a profound appreciation and love for his family. That was the first seed planted in my head towards the potential future of being a father.

And the growth he underwent as a developer? Wow! He built beautiful solutions powering the heart of our product and he now owns an entire new product for the business. Doing this at a very high level!

Jason

He made me a better engineer, full stop. Snag was the first company I worked at with real scale, and he taught me so much about building distributed systems. He’s a wizard with architecture and anything touching a database, and he has a gift for simplifying the product.

As a person, he’s down to earth, delivers feedback with care, and is always there to help. We talked a lot about the digital nomad life and even met up for skiing in Switzerland. We resonate on a lot more than engineering.

Zach

Last, but definitely not least. Zach is an inspiration as a leader and as a salesperson. I remember sitting at the table in our Bushwick Airbnb during the NYC offsite, looking around and thinking — WOW!

He had an idea, started a company, and because of it, ten of us met and built something together. Deep down, I felt I wanted something like that for myself.

I admire his transparency: he shares the numbers, what’s happening with clients, and I always knew he’d give me honest feedback when I needed it.

On client calls, he doesn’t shy away from confrontation, but he handles it with respect. His ambition and ability to wear many hats are something to aspire to.

Thank you for trusting me so much.

Final words

Thank you again for the opportunity to be part of this journey. It wasn’t always frictionless, but that was never the point. It's about the people. It's always been and always will be. Snag is made up of world-class professionals and even better human beings.

I have no idea where I’ll end up, but I’ve never felt more excited about life. I’m not quitting tech. But I am done being just a software developer.

If you’re curious, follow along on Instagram or here on Substack.