on the uncontrollable desire of giving everything up and becoming a goose farmer

Every few months I get the urge to close my laptop, delete Slack, walk into a field, and begin a completely new life as a goose farmer. I don’t know anything about geese. I don’t know what they eat, what they cost, or how many geese is “too many geese” before the government gets involved. But after eight-plus hours of sitting in front of a screen every day, goose farming starts to sound dangerously reasonable.

And apparently I’m not alone, because a former Microsoft engineer, Feng Yuan, went viral after his LinkedIn profile showed the most powerful 180-degree character arc imaginable: 22 years and 4 months at Microsoft, then “Goose farmer.” Some outlets mentioned he had been fired rather than simply rage-quitting into the countryside, while Yuan, the legend himself, mentioned that his geese and chickens would be happier with him around. Which, honestly, is such a devastatingly calm LinkedIn update that it loops all the way back around into being aspirational. Not “excited to announce my next chapter in AI-driven enterprise synergy,” just: the geese are happier now.

I think that’s why programmers latched onto it so hard. We are all constantly being told to take breaks, stretch, touch grass, optimize our morning routine, do Pomodoro, buy a better chair, reduce eye strain, journal, meditate, and drink water like a Victorian child recovering from illness. All good advice. Unfortunately, after enough years of solving abstract problems inside a glowing box, the brain rejects small fixes and starts craving the most dramatic possible opposite. Not “I should go for a walk.” No. “I should acquire land, livestock, and a funny hat.”

Goose farming is probably also terrible in extremely specific ways. There is mud. There is weather. There are early mornings. There are animals with opinions and beaks. The grass is greener on the other side because we are viewing it from behind a monitor with 37 browser tabs open and a failing build. Still, I don’t think the goose farm fantasy is really about geese. It’s about wanting proof that life can be physical again. That work can end when the sun goes down. That not every problem needs a Jira ticket. And maybe, somewhere deep down, we all just want to update our LinkedIn headline to something that makes the entire tech industry pause for a second and think: wait, did he win?