It’s a short piece, but it resonates with me, specifically this part:
> I’m earning the most money I’ve ever made and yet I’m the least fulfilled I’ve ever been.
I’m making the most I’ve ever made and I’ve never been less happy and more depressed. I despise being a cog in a huge corporate machine, it’s like the job was designed to be as unappealing as possible.
At the same time I can’t get over the fact that I have it better than the vast majority of humanity. I feel guilty hating my job, I won’t complain to people IRL because how could I? I have it made by all accounts. This guilt completely consumes me and adds a special level of self hatred, if I’m not happy with this, maybe I never will be?
Unlike the author though I can’t just quit, so endure it I must.
Bluntly, every person I know who's expressed these kinds of sentiments is guilty of the same mistake: externalizing their happiness.
They inevitably move, only to find the new place they're in sucks, just in different ways.
Or they find another job, but just discover more things they hate there.
Or they find a new partner, only to discover a new set of annoyances.
The same psychology leads people to think they'll be happy if they finally get that new car, or that new house, or that new TV.
All of it comes from the same place: assuming that happiness is something you can find by simply changing your circumstances.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are absolutely good reasons to want to change those circumstances! But it's critical to understand that oftentimes there is no one change of circumstances, one decision, one thing that will result in happiness.
I know it's a cliche, but I think I'm old enough now to confidently say that, yes: Happiness really does start from within.
As a counter-point, I spent about 5 years pretty miserable between 3 different jobs - my complaints where the same at each organization. The profit motive was being put above all else, including employee well being, an actually high-quality service, and in some cases baseline ethics. People were constantly pressured into working more than they should, both in the short term (too many hours per week) and in the long term - vacation time that was hard or impossible to actually take. Overpromising and understaffing/tooling led to constant crunches, corner cutting, rushed low-quality deliverables, and constant fear - either that a client would be lost and blame would be placed, or that a bad client that should go would be retained to the teams detriment. Often all of this was paved over by toxic positivity. You point out the problems and they say "Look on the bright side. You are being too negative. It'll all shake out". Just pure gaslighting bullshit.
After the 3rd such place, and a complete inability to effect change - I threw in the towel and started my own agency 2 years ago. From the outset I made the purpose of the company to be quality of life, not profit. Fewer clients/hours per team member, more time to execute and put out work you are proud to hang your hat on. No assholes (teammates OR clients).
For the entirety of the past 2 years, including the hard bits of actually getting it off the ground and getting those first few customers, the difference has been night and day. My stress levels are the lowest they've been in years. My relationship with my wife is better. I never dread Monday, and rarely pine for Friday. Sometimes it really is the environment, and sometimes that environment is pervasive in a particular industry.
Had a very similar experience to you and have often dreamt about building my own company that would work the way I want it to.
But how do you get started? I have tried a few times and every time I got discouraged and it didn’t pan out. It’s just overwhelming, and I don’t know where to start. Then I’m doubting my abilities and thinking whether I really want to work like a dog for very little pay for months/years to start the business? Or maybe I’m just better off doing another 18 months stint followed by 6 months off to recover.
I know I’m not alone in this, but haven’t figured out how to get out of it.
Any insights on the above, or a blog if you’ve written about it already?
I'll try to answer this as fairly as I can by starting with the things that lined up to make it possible for me:
- I've been working in my industry for over 12 years and have amassed a decent sized network and twitter following along the way
- I don't have kids, so my costs are lower, and my time is my own.
- My wife makes good money and was supportive of me taking a hit to pay while I got things going (I didn't draw any money from the biz for the first 6 months, enabled by the next thing on the list)
- I had a close friend be willing to give me an essentially risk free, low interest loan of $30K to get things going. Enough to cover me for those 6 months. Loan was structured to be forgivable if business failed in the first 2 years, 5 year terms @ 5%, with no payments or interest accrual in the first year. Obviously a loan like this is a rarity, but if you are sitting on some savings that could be a good stand-in.
- I ran a business once before many years ago and learned a lot of the hard lessons that time (taxes/accounting/entity structure/hiring)
- I do digital marketing & WordPress dev - which means the service I sell is also a skillset most founders need (ability to market their service, set up a website). I'm also pretty comfortable selling to both a technical and non-technical audience, and I'm comfortable pitching directly to and managing the expectations of C-suite folks.
All of that combined is a pretty great place to "start from zero". Success wasn't guaranteed but I certainly wasn't going about things the hard way.
Anyway to get first few customers I started being pretty active in places where people who might need my services gathered - Slack communities, subreddits, et cetera. I tried to give insightful advice where good answers could be given in a few paragraphs. I offered to look at peoples issues directly or to solve really small problems for free + an ask to consider me for larger projects or retainer work, or to just say nice things if someone was asking for the types of services I offered.
I also pitched 2 customers who normally would have been below my going rate/retainer size as basically a "I need some case studies, someone has to go first, you'll get a bit of a deal if it's you". Once I had those first 2 customers as a base and a nice referral pipeline as a result of them and the presence in those communities I was able to grow from there.
When I had around 4-5 steady retainer clients and a bit of padding in the business account (about 4ish months in?) I started hiring help. I had a lot of previous experience hiring and working with international teams so I leveraged that to save some cash early on by hiring in the Philippines, Romania & South Africa. By the end of year 1 we were a team of 4 (myself included). Total revenue was around $200K, of which I managed to pay myself around $60K before taxes.
At the end of year 2 there is about 8 of us now including our first full time US hire. Year two was just shy of $600K in revenue and I was able to get myself back into 6-figure territory compensation wise, give everyone raises + Christmas bonuses, and still keep several months of runway in the business account. I don't expect the biz to make me a multi-millionaire any time soon (and that's not the point anyway), but things feel pretty stable at this point and growth remains strong. Results probably not typical.
I'll counter this counter-point: I started my own consulting (and later, hosting) business and they've been a slog.
The parent comment glossed over "the hard bits of actually getting it off the ground and getting those first few customers" -- it's really hard. Five years in now things are going okay, but it took a while to get back to the came total comp I had pre-starting-my-own-biz, and even now the level of work is much higher (but so is the comp...).
If I had to do it again I'm not sure I would, and would definitely do a lot of things different. The big one would be going hard on biz dev from day 1 (or even day 0; start prospecting before incorporation), with #2 and #3 being talking to an accountant and lawyer ASAP once I could afford them.
My anecdote was about finding what's important to you and making a change to that specifically. For me it was a bigger focus on quality of life and quality of product, not compensation. Sounds like compensation is more important for you so my path would not be your path. As to the hard bits - I'll be covering that in response to another commentor who asked how I got started.
Agreed on accounting & legal - though this is easier now than ever with services like Bench.co - which I set up on day 1 right after spinning up the business entity & bank account.
I won't say I'm not, but I will say it's probably a bad fit if you are in the US and a developer. It's a marketing agency that also does some custom WordPress development. For US based developers it's a combination of doesn't pay awesome + PHP rather than the latest shiny thing. Our hiring focus is mostly either outside of the US, or if in the US on people who've already gotten their bag from elsewhere and are more interested in chill work than a big paycheck. We win them over not with total compensation but with things like ability to only work 20 hours a week or leeway to rabbit hole down some interesting bit of code or try out a new marketing tactic that goes well beyond what the customers budget would normally allow, merely because it scratches an itch.
Not inappropriate - but no not currently. We're a Marketing agency that also does custom WordPress dev. We're working towards diversifying a bit by also launching some internally owned monetized content sites or small software products (such as a useful paid plugin for WordPress) but that's about it at the moment.
Same in my case. I quit my first software job because it made me feel so meaningless and depressed. I was immediately happier. I quit my second job because they overworked me. Same result.
I have less money now, but I don’t care. I’m much happier being where I am now.
People underestimate just how much work life affects your entire life.
You spend most of your life at work (at least in the US). 24 hours in a day. 8 of them spent working. 1 hour for lunch. ~2 hours getting ready for work/sleep each day. 8 hours for sleep... that leaves you with ~5 hours per day, but you also have to do chores around the house, maybe pickup/dropoff kiddos, commute (if you don't work from home), and cook dinner and clean up afterwards. If you have 2 hours a day to yourself to pursue your interests/dreams, you are "fucked".
Even if you do manage to find 2 hours to yourself, it's typically at the end of the day and you're utterly, completely exhausted. I've found that, with young kids in the mix, the best thing I can do with my hour-ish at the end of a long day is read, or draw, or just spend some quiet time with my spouse. Anything else requires mental energy that I simply don't have. Even the video games that I play at the end of the average day need to be fairly brainless or else I'm not enjoying my time.
I don't even have a wife and kids yet, but I already find many of the video games I enjoyed as a teenager to be too demanding. Fallout New Vegas was an awesome game, and I remember spending virtually my entire summer vacation one year playing through Fallout 3. I gave New Vegas another go recently and it just feels like work. It sucks. Like I just want to get through the game so it will be done.
Indeed, I resemble that remark. I've been on paternity leave for the last couple months with kid 2. I have 10 minute slivers of down time throughout the day, and I can sacrifice sleep for a few hours of focus at night. I've been playing through L.A. Noire just to cross it off my bucket list, and I shamelessly refer to walkthroughs on every case. It's an alternative to watching a TV show in the evening.
Typically when I play a game I like to explore every nook and cranny, trying to find secrets and glitches and stuff. Lately it just gives me anxiety to start a new game when I know it will be on deck for years. I've been playing through Tomb Raider since 2019 and I'm not finished yet... I think I need to consciously change my play style and expectations, and just barrel through main story lines.
I went over to a younger coworker's apartment last night to play video games, which is a very rare activity for me. Left 4 Dead was a lot of fun a decade ago. He loaded up whatever the latest call of duty zombie horde shooting game is, and it was more stressful than fun. I have an interesting anecdote about stress and Tomb Raider. In 2020 my heart AV nerves all stopped working. My effective heart rate got down to 20-30bpm, and wouldn't increase with demand. A few days before I ended up in the hospital, I tried playing Tomb Raider just to see what would happen. After about 5 minutes my peripheral vision started to black out and I felt like I was having a panic attack!
I will say for CoD specifically, since the original Nazi Zombies mode was introduced in the original World at War ("CoD 5") in 2008, the franchise has made the Zombies mode INCREDIBLY complicated. Long gone are the days of holding down a room until you and your friends are overrun. Nowadays you have to solve puzzles, do various "chores" to access things like the Pack a Punch station... It's lost all its charm.
LA Noire and other games like it (e.g. Red Dead Redemption, Destroy All Humans!) seem to have the opposite problem, where I seem to remember the game being more engaging and challenging (in a fun way) than it is now. I guess that's a result of growing up and getting "smarter".
We haven't even touched on the micro-transactions/pay-to-win stuff...
As for the panic attack- I read an interesting book recently called The Body Keeps the Score. It's about PTSD and how, even today under the DSM V, it and similar conditions aren't getting the attention they deserve. While reading this book, I realized that my "fascination" with Dead By Daylight (similar to Left 4 Dead) might be rooted in adrenaline/stress hormones rather than pleasure hormones. Indeed, I had (have) several "hobbies" that my brain seems to be interested in for the stress they cause (like stock trading, holy fuck). The book poses that my subconscious thirst for stressful activity is actually a coping mechanism that is derived from my dysfunctional attachment style to my parents and my subsequent childhood experiences. In other words, stress and worry are all I've ever known. I'm in therapy and taking an SSRI for this now, and I'm significantly better than I was, mentally.
Yeah, in the zombie game there were brightly colored vending machines, random gun dispensers you had to pay for with points, and dropped power ups. It was a lot going on.
Speaking of Red Dead Redemption, I am working toward being able to robustly stream games from my desktop computer to the living room TV. I'm hoping to try playing through Red Dead Redemption 2 once it's all set up and working. It's non-trivial, as I will soon be relocating my desktop to a detached guest house. I think the reason I am drawn to Rockstar Games is because of their level of immersion despite the relative lack of gameplay complexity. I like that the only customization in L.A. Noire is picking an outfit, and if you want a bigger gun you have to open a car trunk in the middle of a shoot-out.
I am certainly nostalgic for the games I played in my youth. StarCraft, EverQuest, Starsiege Tribes, Medal of Honor and Battlefield 2, Freelancer, the list goes on. My old friend came into town a couple years ago, and we had a small LAN party for old time sake. We spent an hour just getting StarCraft to run reliably on everyone's computers. It was just as fun as ever.
That does sound interesting, I'll have to check out that book. My wife copes with a vaguely similar sounding past. I think her "Left 4 Dead" is watching shows like Criminal Minds. Glad to hear the therapy and SSRI are helping you. It's tough.
I recently started trading individual stocks for fun, but with a relatively small principal that won't stress me out. I see so many "news" articles telling me which stocks to buy, and I've always assumed they're manipulating me into being a sucker. So, I've been blindly taking the free advice to see what happens. I'm only down about 10% right now. Also, my investment in SHIB coin is due to take off like a rocket at any moment!
I liked that LA Noire was "different" for the reasons you listed + things like picking out whether people were lying. RDR had some of that going on as well, and there really isn't anything like GTA.
The Body Keeps the Score mentioned some alarming statistics... I don't recall the exact figure, but MANY Americans are dealing with some amount of PTSD whether they recognize it or not, as a result of having a non-secure attachment style as an infant. It sounds kind of strange that a lifetime of strife could come from
how your parents were with you as an infant, but the science seems clear-cut.
With stocks, generally speaking if you are reading about a stock in the news, it's too late to hop on the roller-coaster and you will get left holding the bag. Most of my money is in index funds, but it still stressed me out trading a small portion with individual stocks.
Avoid ARKK/Cathie Wood. I have no idea what she's doing. She just loaded up on TSLA, as she does when one of her picks tanks, but automakers typically trade around a 4 P/E and TSLA is still well-above that at ~$120/share. TSLA will almost-certainly fall below $100 this year and perhaps even below $50 in the longer-term.
Completely resonates with me, my time became more precious the older I got, playing a game for 20-40h with quests that feel like work, even worse, menial work (go here, gather that, bring it back) is just utterly unsatisfying and unfulfilling.
That also made me notice that, even though I played quite a few single-player games when I was younger, most of my fun with games was on multiplayer/competitive games, it could be a grind to get better but there was a practice and I could feel myself leveling up my skills and playing them better, some up to competitive levels. That's always been more satisfying to me.
Newer high budget single-player games (feels like in the past 10-15 years) also feel much more like an interactive movie than a proper game, I don't want to be clicking to interact with a movie, I like mechanics and figuring out the metagame, I realised that watching something unfold with some interactive action in-between is not really my kind of gaming.
For the last 10 years I've basically stopped playing videogames, my gaming nowadays is mostly getting together with some friends and playing tabletop, it's social, it's fun and you always get to see a different persona of the people you know.
This resonates with me completely. I was an avid gamer in the first half of my life.
Then adulthood came and I just don't have time to enjoy games. I do watch a ton of TV shows and movies because they're easy to start up, put down, or even watch while doing something else that doesn't require full attention.
I do occasionally do a Let's Play of a game that looks promising, ideally one with little commentary, where the player focuses on the story elements rather than completion (prioritizes talking to characters over a speed run, or 100% quests completed, all collectables collected, etc).
Those are unfortunately hard to find (though I'd highly recommend the Cinematic Playthrough of Last of Us for anyone interested in experiencing the medium at its absolute best).
The nice thing about a Let's Play is that you get the story elements of the game, and can 2X speed through slow dialogue, skip action sequences as soon as they become monotonous, etc. You don't get to explore at your own whim unfortunately, but I've found it a good middle ground for being able to experience (and talk about) excellent games, while investing 10-20% the time actually playing it would take (not to mention it's free). It does tend to be more enjoyable with games that are fairly linear, rather than something like Fallout where there are thousands of ways to explore the game and align your character.
Other than that, I enjoy playing board games with friends.
Oh I can relate to this as well, but I think its not just being mentally tired.
Me personally I want to get through the story, I do not have time to explore the world to get to the next chapter. And I feel a lot of games nowadays have this goal of rewarding exploration at least thats what I get from youtube reviews of the games. So like you for me eventually the game just becomes more work after work
>Where else in the world people dont spens most of their lives at work?
I've worked in some manufacturing domains where unions negotiated the ability to essentially opt-out of large amounts of the work year. There were people who would take off Nov-Feb to essentially focus on families during the holidays, hunting, etc.
I think, to a certain extent, the fact that we're highly productive yet have an expectation to work constantly is a measure of our value systems. (Obviously, highly context and culturally dependent.)
In MOST other first-world countries, the working class has the RIGHT to elect to work less than 40 hours/5 days per week (in exchange for a proportional reduction in salary). In some cases, you must be a parent to be eligible for this.. but yeah, in places like New Zealand and The Netherlands, if you don't want to work 5 days a week, you don't have to.
Fair enough, but unless the other guy was just being tongue-in-cheek, I took the spirit of his question to be more like "where in the world is it different from the US?"
> In MOST other first-world countries, the working class has the RIGHT to elect to work less than 40 hours/5 days per week (in exchange for a proportional reduction in salary)
I work for a large swedish company in USA. None of my coworkers in sweden work less than 40 hrs, like not even one.
So is having that choice really relevant and does it really make it different than USA.
I'm not familiar with the laws of Sweden, but a quick Google search suggests there is a law on the books limiting the workweek to 40 hours. Even if that is only marginally-heeded, it's leaps and bounds ahead of the United States.
If Swedish residents can work fewer than 40 hours at their discretion, why is it you think most in your circle do not take advantage of this?
Qualtrics released the results of a survey recently stating that 92% of Americans are in favor of a 4-day workweek (that's not necessarily 32-hours)[1]
> If Swedish residents can work fewer than 40 hours at their discretion, why is it you think most in your circle do not take advantage of this?
Maybe because they want the money and working 40hrs isn't so bad? But i really have no idea.
That survey isn't directly related to your original point about working less than 40hrs.
If you are claming that its much different in other countries mere existence of some law isn't enough, it would be a stronger point if you had quoted how many people are actually taking a paycut in those countries in exchange for a day off.
Also sounds like you haven't really looked into laws of MOST first world countries ( whatever that means) yet you made that claim without any proof.
Yeah, you're fucked unless you work fewer hours. By "fucked" I mean "doomed to a relatively-miserable existence". I don't care if you have a FETISH for writing code, you do not want to do it ~40 hours/week.
We need a four-day (32-hour) workweek. Give me a 20% pay cut, I don't care. Most of us here make well over $100k/year. What we need is TIME.
This is, of course, by design. ACA made it a bit more realistic for part-time/self-employed people to get health insurance, however if you have to get your insurance through the ACA marketplace (healthcare.gov), you ARE paying more for it than if you were a FTE drone.
>People underestimate just how much work life affects your entire life.
It would be interesting to see how cultural aspects affect this. In the West, it seems like so much of our life/identity is focused on our job. "What do you do for a living?" is one of the most common opening questions upon meeting someone. I wonder if the impact of work life on one's happiness more muted elsewhere.
I quit and then asked: “what if I stayed and do I regret leaving” on my last 4 companies.
Universally the answer is no I don’t regret it. One imploded and laid off like 60% of people after turning into a nasty political hell hole. Another laid off massively and is now world renowned as a failed story. Another gave me zero opportunities and everyone was yelling at each other all the time.
Believe me, I tried to enter my internal universe and be happy not learning and not growing.
Being bored to death and underutilized if you feel highly talented and creative is a form of death.
Op needs to answer: What has he done in his life? Built a unicorn and IPOd it? Jet skiing with super models? Inventing cures for diseases? Or did he sort of sit in a cubicle typing and reading Reddit for the last five years.
A lot of those on here, I don’t listen to their input on what successs is.
I will never be happy until I am climbing to the highest potential I can get to. No one is going to talk me into being otherwise.
I think many of the people who say that "happiness must come from within" are making a logical leap. It's true, you could go out and make lots of life changes yet still be unhappy. But that doesn't mean /every/ life change is futile for our happiness. Perhaps you just didn't change it in the right way!
From a more scientific perspective, there have been plenty of studies done on happiness, and it's virtually undeniable that our external environment has at least /some/ effect on our happiness.[1] I'd argue that one has to ignore or dismiss a massive wealth of studies in psychology to insist that happiness only comes from within.
“No one is going to talk me into…” is shorthand for “I’m not open to any other ideas that don’t align with my preconceived notions.” It’s not terribly productive on a site whose guidelines try to foster an open and curious conversation.
It's a little odd to me that you would seem to expect an article and discussion on something subject like "happiness" not to have personal accounts of their subjective experience.
That's not what I said. It's an uncharitable interpretation of what I said.
By all means, people can say what makes them happy!
My point is that we have no grounds for criticizing another person's subjective experience or personal life choices, nor is that desirable as a goal for this website.
Where do you think the OP was being criticizing? I did not see them say anyone was wrong, or making bad decisions. They even made sure to equivocate by saying there's nothing wrong with trying to change one's circumstances.
So your issue is with me pointing out that saying what amounts to "Nothing you say can change my mind" isn't conducive to conversation?
How would you say the OP adds to the discussion if what they say, almost by definition, is meant to shut down discussion? Or is your issue with pointing out HN guidelines? It feels like you're reading way more into my point than was actually there if you think I was criticizing anything related to their life decisions.
It's fine with me if someone has that point of view. But I don't think a forum like HN, which is supposed to be about fostering dialogue, is the best place to share it, or at least share it in that manner.
> So your issue is with me pointing out that saying what amounts to "Nothing you say can change my mind" isn't conducive to conversation?
I've already explained this: "It's supposed to be about intellectual curiosity. Not questioning other people's life choices and giving unsolicited advice."
You've actually warped the direct quote "No one is going to talk me into BEING [emphasis mine] otherwise" into "Nothing you say can CHANGE MY MIND". The OP is talking about how they feel, what kind of person they are, what kind of life they intend to life. Not talking about some kind of belief about a subject X.
This conversation with you is becoming very tedious, and I'm repeating myself, so I doubt that I'll be continuing.
IMO, you've failed to point to how my comment questioned anyone's life choices or gave any advice outside of following HN guidelines.
I didn't misquote; I said "amounts to" in order to indicate I was paraphrasing because it seemed like it would benefit from rephrasing since it appeared we were talking past each other. Although what you've pointed out comes across as a difference without a distinction to me. Saying "No one is going to talk to me into BEING..." is just as apt to shut down healthy conversation.
The point being made is that HN is meant for discussion; so I'd assume you wouldn't see any value in discussing that topic on the forum.
I think it's fair to say there are certain principles (like the idea that a minor cannot consent to a sexual relationship with an adult, or that slavery is a moral wrong) can be viewed as immutable (or, at least immutable within a certain cultural context).
However, germane to the discussion in this thread, I don't think the definition of "happiness" is one of those immutable principles.
> A lot of those on here, I don’t listen to their input on what successs is.
> I will never be happy until I am climbing to the highest potential I can get to. No one is going to talk me into being otherwise.
What's being discussed is the definition of _success_, not happiness. And in fact, what the poster said is, this is what makes me happy and I'm not interested in anyone convincing me that shouldn't be what makes me happy.
You’re missing the even broader context. The article is explicitly discussing “happiness” and why the author isn’t happy despite being “successful” by traditional measures.
Further, some of the issue is with the imprecise definition of “happy”. The modern use of the term can be used interchangeably. What causes someone to be hedonically happy may make them eudaimonically unhappy. So IMO it’s completely warranted to have further discussion to either define the definition or bring into question if someone is chasing the right goal for them. Saying what is tantamount to “I’m not willing to discuss this” facilitates none of that.
It's exactly that imprecision that means the person making the statement gets to tell you what it means for them, and they're not unreasonable for being very explicit in telling you that you will not convince them that their definition is more appropriate.
Furthermore,
on a purely mechanical level, what you're doing here is trying to escalate scope specifically so you don't have to give the point. Just give the point.
Everything I've said is pretty clearly within the scope of the featured article or the HN guidelines. You seem to be conflating what I'm saying with something that's more argumentative.
What I'm not saying: The OP is wrong about how they go about defining happiness or what they do to achieve that goal.
What I am saying: They are misusing HN if they are so close-minded as to be unwilling to engage in discussion, or swayed by counter-arguments.
It's a red flag when somebody says they can't be convinced, particularly on a subjective topic.
Obviously, a subjective measure like happiness is up to the individual to define. I'm not disagreeing with that and I don't think any of my posts give that impression unless someone is already using a hard-focused lens to read too much into them. My point was pretty clearly stated multiple times but it seems people are primed to argue. The HN guidelines clearly state one of the intents of the forum is to foster curious conversation. If somebody makes a post that "they can't be convinced" they are no longer interested in a discussion and they are therefore misusing HN. I would make the same case if they were claiming "Red is best color and I can't be convinced otherwise." In that case, maybe HN isn't the place for you on this topic. If you want to just plug your ears and talk at someone, there's plenty of places on the internet to do that. It would be akin to someone saying "This classroom was built for learning" and I show up with my arms crossed and say I refuse to learn. Well, ok, nobody is saying you can't take that stance. But they can say you're misusing the forum provided.
Ha, the same thought crossed my mind as I was reading https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34420721. In fact, one of the top comments talks about the uncanny valley-ness of ChatGPT.
I guess the follow up question is: what guideline do you think I'm violating?
It's obvious you have tendencies that make it difficult for you to understand, and therefore effectively communicate, with others. The result is you cannot understand why someone would consider the expression of something as deeply fundamental as their own happiness with themselves as more important than some "guidelines" on a forum ran by people who are not themselves.
That you rely so heavily on the guidelines is telling, it's what often happens when persons don't understand the underlying principles.
Your initial post came from a place of not understanding. As we've interacted that's become more and more clear to me. I see no need to belabor this any longer.
Did you read what came after “talk me into”? I think a preconceived notion that you want to make the most of your life isn’t something that you should necessarily be open to being talked out of.
>preconceived notion that you want to make the most of your life isn’t something that you should necessarily be open to being talked out of.
Fair enough when it's just a vague, general sentiment like "making the most of your life." What is probably worth being open minded about is how you define the objective function that maximizes that potential. It might be a little odd if I defined "making the most out of my life" in the same way I did when I was six (or even 16) years old.
I've met plenty of people that took huge risks and wound up incredibly depressed. Many (most?) startup founders pour everything they have into that company. They give up money, time, health, relationships, other opportunities, etc. Most don't make it. Others will have a success on paper and then waste another year as a middle manager in a big company to get that earnout. Of course, that gets into the debate about whether they were working on the right thing at the right time -- survivorship bias is really strong on this topic.
I'm happy for your success. I assume it was earned with hard work. I hope it works out. A lot of startups with high valuations are feeling the crunch right now. Many of those will peter out and the founders will join the rest of those depressed by their life choices and/or feeling like victims of circumstance. There's far more to success than forgoing comfort and there's far more to happiness than success.
For my part, I co-founded and built two companies for ~4.5 years each: one in hardware and one in SaaS. The SaaS one was in the second batch of TechStars Boston. I had some success and I'm happy I did it. I learned a lot and it was generally fun. But, I trashed my health and wouldn't recommend others do it under the guise of happiness.
Nowadays I do industrial research on language VMs. I get paid very well. The work is gratifying. I have time for my kids, I'm learning things on the job. And I work with great people. I'll probably start another company some day because I like the variety of work and the thrill of the chase. My startup experience gave me a broad network and introduced new opportunities, but I'm only marginally better off compensation-wise than peers that worked a more conventional career. I'm almost certainly behind in terms of lifetime earnings. Many of them are impressed that I struck out and built multiple companies, but that has no real bearing on my happiness.
I'm not sure what being in the top 0.5% means without knowing the metric. If you love starting companies, have at it, but I can think of more challenging paths if you're looking to reach your full potential. Some of the smartest people I've ever met built the foundational technologies that allow SaaS to even exist while working for decades at the same company. I don't know how happy they are, but I know how impactful they've been.
I'm not sure what point you're alluding to here. I've met lots of people, some of whom I'd say took much greater risks than starting a tech company. I'm not sure if you're conflating conventional notions of monetary success with what the article is about, which is happiness.
Is your point that in order to take risks to be happy you need to be so cock-sure as to be closed minded? I tend to disagree and would probably characterize that as reckless as opposed to taking informed risks.
I'm detecting a low-level stubborn here, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
(Jet skiing with super models BTW is one of the most ephemeral ways of gratification one can seek, probably induced into you by media -have a look at Girard's theory of mimetics to understand why you even want this- and as such something that will only impress the most superficial of people, if you tell them "I super-model jet skiing" when asked what you did with your life - all of which make me believe this must be a young person writing.)
It's one of those things like "time heals all wounds". Nobody likes to hear it when the wound is fresh, but it's absolutely true. When you're younger, FOMO is much stronger. As you get older, FOMO starts to get replaced with "who gives a...". With that in mind, age might matter
maybe true. but for me personally, i just realized that the constant comparison of what i have vs what other people have is just dumb. as long as what i have makes me happy and the pursuit of those things isn't causing me to make bad decisions about other things, then i'm okay with it. it might be why i'm so sickened by all the ad tech as ultimately it's keying in on people's FOMO.
it might sound embarrassing to admit, but it was actually watching Fight Club and the scene animating the Ikea catalog and the accompanying monologue (and overall theme of the movie/book) really got me thinking about it. i was mid-20s when that came out, and it definitely planted a seed. people do remind me of that when i mention making soap!
Some wounds, emotional as well as physical, far from healing actually leave chronic and debilitating scars. The aphorism is far from "absolutely true."
How old do I have to become for "time heals all wounds" to work? I am 41 now, which is seemingly old for this website, but figure it might take another decade or two for that one to make sense? (How old are you?) In my so-far-limited experience, it isn't time that heals wounds, but active shifts in perspective (which of course require some time to happen but it isn't like time is doing it: I have many "wounds" that hurt just as much now as they did 20 years ago, because I have not been able to obtain any kind of closure and the thing that happened didn't retroactively change or anything... at best I just try to ignore it, but that was my same strategy right after stuff happened ;P).
A virgin will have serious FOMO over sex. But the more experiences you have with different partners, the less special it is ie. the less FOMO you get since you've "been there done that."
I think the thing about aging is that you have less energy,
so you're less likely to make energetic mistakes,
and more likely to take some calm moments to think things thru.
also, if you have moderate ambitions and desires, with time you may reach a point where you've met them. Then you are less focused on those for happiness.
Age can have a lot to do with it, depending on your path through life.
The adage is generally that wisdom comes with age, and there are some things in life that are difficult to internalize until you’ve gone though the experience.
To me, it’s just another way of saying “the more life experience I gain…”.
> To me, it’s just another of saying “the more life experience I gain…”.
I believe that if you never were in a position where your job was a soul-crushig source of misery and despair, you've been lucky to live a sheltered life.
Most people don't have the privilege of picking and choosing outstanding jobs with decent work/life balance, nice colleagues, reasonable deadlines and considerate stakeholders. Most people have rent/mortgage to pay, kids to feed, and unfavourable odds of improving their life with low risk and impact on your life. I'm sure they gained a lot of life experience too.
Yes, everyone experiences life differently, and the sum total of those experiences covers a wide spectrum.
Personally, I’ve been on both sides of this conversation. Grew up dirt poor, started working as a teen to help my family make ends meet, and dreamed of a “better” life where the work I did mattered to me and the money I made would be sufficient to not constantly wonder where the next meal comes from. A constant source of that soul crushing misery and despair.
Later in life, I was fortunate enough to experience the lifestyle afforded by a Silicon Valley salary after working my ass off to get there, an “arrival” of sorts.
Younger me had no ability to comprehend how/why this high paying job would make me more deeply unhappy than I’d ever been in my life.
Life experience is contextual and relative, but important nonetheless.
If it wasn’t clear enough from my post, I’m implying you are reading too much into the literal meaning of the age part of the comment. As the HN guidelines say, we should be trying to take the most generous interpretation possible.
> I’m implying you are reading too much into the literal meaning of the age part of the comment.
I'm not. In fact my previous comment would still be valid if the line "What does age have to do with it?" were omitted. The important point is that the anecdotal observations do not apply universally.
>The important point is that the anecdotal observations do not apply universally.
We are probably reading their comment somewhat differently. Because of the way they couched their statement as rooted in their personal experience, I assumed their were implying it was anecdotal and obviously not a generalizable, objective truth.
If I had said, "I've lived in enough places to conclude that southern California is really the best place" would you read that as me making a universal claim or simply relaying my subjective determination?
As I already stated, I read the OP as if the latter. Despite the often pedantic nature of HN, there's a lot of room for nuance and interpretation human communication.
I was stuck in a loop of: wake up -> gym -> work -> pub(Wednesday and Fridays, sometimes Monday) -> TV with SO -> gaming, pretty much every week day. On weekends I'd either game all day or go surfing. I'd go on a ski holiday once a year and two other one week holidays with my SO.
That was my life for years. Then I changed _everything_. Quit job, broke up with my girlfriend, sold my flat and most of my possessions, different job, became a "digital nomad".
Now I'm "happy". I found a job that doesn't have all the things I hate about working. I can do sports I enjoy much more frequently, I'm not stuck in a loop where everyday is the same.
I guess I agree that _one_ thing most likely won't be the key to happiness. I think the key is figuring out what makes you happy(I think a lot of people don't know) and what makes you unhappy(this is usually easier to identify). Then doing more of the things that make you happy and less of the things that make you unhappy.
I'm not sure if that's what "happiness starts from within" means, but that's what worked for me.
Edit: I guess being happy also depends on the definition of the word. Depending on the definition, maybe I'm not happy.
> Bluntly, every person I know who's expressed these kinds of sentiments is guilty of the same mistake: externalizing their happiness.
I don't believe this take is fair or correct. FANG-like jobs are designed to depersonalize workers, compell them to work extremely long hours, force them to be constantly on and available, and basically live for the company, only to be pushed out of the company by design and get fired as disposable canon fodder at the slightest bump on the calendar.
The pay might be good, but it resembles a deal with the devil.
Have you ever wondered why the average tenure at some top tech companies is measured in months, and reaching a milestone like 4 or 5 years is lauded as a major achievement? I seriously doubt that so many people is just "externalizing their happiness". Sometimes it's really the job that kills you inside and does so by design, don't you think?
> FANG-like jobs are designed to depersonalize workers, compell them to work extremely long hours, force them to be constantly on and available, and basically live for the company, only to be pushed out of the company by design and get fired as disposable canon fodder at the slightest bump on the calendar.
That mostly doesn't match my experience in two ~5y stints at a FANG:
* Depersonalize: maybe; not sure what you mean by it here.
* Extremely long hours: not at all. Most people worked ~45hr/wk counting ~1hr/d of lunch. I averaged a bit less than that.
* Force them to be constantly on and available: no. One of my roles had an explicit oncall rotation where you were primary for about one week a quarter and secondary for another week. The other role had no oncall. When you were off no one expected you to be in contact, and several team members had configured their phones so that their work profile was completely deactivated outside of work hours. At times when I was excited enough about what I was doing that I wanted to work extra my manager pushed back hard, getting me to think about the impact on team culture. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34329670
* Be pushed out of the company by design and get fired as disposable canon fodder at the slightest bump on the calendar: I worked closely with ~50 people and didn't see anyone fired. The people who got somewhat close to getting fired were ones who were having trouble getting things done, but in a sustained low output sort of way that was clear to everyone they worked with and not a "slight calendar bump" sort of way.
Agreed here, there's so much scope and specialization in a large company, it takes time to make impact that often goes beyond 1-2 years. I recall in my last FAANG at Apple, the opportunities for high impact projects are often left up for the individuals to find. You're hired to do X, but nothing stops you from creating some really highly useful internal library, side projects, pitching ideas to management (they will often get rejected by sometimes accepted), etc...
And honestly, I was averaging maybe 5 hours of real work a week in some stretches. Ofcourse crunch time happens, and it is team dependent, but one has to take control of their experiences in any company or situation instead of relying on others to make their expectations happen.
I don't know if all FAANG companies are the same, but your description of the job does not match my FAANG experience at all.
It was dehumanizing in its own way because you are such a small cog in a large machine, but nobody worked long hours, nobody was forced to be available all the time, nobody really needed to sacrifice for the company (because everybody was such a small cog) and even the lowest performers I worked with could basically not do anything to get fired. Many people there were also "lifers" because the job was so easy.
Most people left due to having ambitions for more impact, not due to being burnt out.
I'm going to go out on a limb and disagree with the idea that happiness comes from within.
For two reasons: 1) it contradicts my lived experience and 2) it contradicts research.
Let's start with money. I used to be poor and now I'm not anymore. I used to have all kinds of anxieties about money, surprise surprise, once I put my nose to the grind, earned more of it, and developed a healthy financial cushion, those anxieties disappeared and I became happier.
My anecdote isn't the only data point, there's research out there which indicates that more money correlates with more happiness (though the effect has diminishing returns once you hit the upper middle class).
There are at least three really big external factors I'm aware of which are correlated to happiness in a big way.
1. Money
2. A supportive network of family and peers
3. Health and fitness
Every time we look we find that as people improve their circumstances in these areas, they report greater happiness and fulfillment in their lives.
I'm not saying that striving for inner peace and all that is necessarily a waste of time. It has its benefits. But frankly I think if you want to be happy you can do a lot worse than busting your hump to sort out the three things I just mentioned. If you're broke, sick and alone, inner peace isn't really a priority. Working on those problems is.
The circumstances of my work make a large difference to my happiness. I know because I've been in a number of different circumstances and my happiness has varied greatly.
I’ve always liked the phrase “money can’t buy happiness but it can make you less miserable.” I think the main idea is that there are certain circumstances that can bias you into an unhappy state, but merely removing what makes you miserable isn’t enough to make you happy.
Happy or less annoyed? I find when I was truly happy I cared less about external influences. For example, if it's hot, a person is annyoing, someone almost hits me with a car, or it my manager wants me to do something boring.
So maybe what some people think are the sources of their unhappiness is actually just making their unhappiness more obvious.
You can certainly improve your happiness incrementally. From little things like getting shoes that fit better to things like moving to a climate that fits you better. Reducing annoyances and distractions.
Yeah in the limit you can't achieve capital-H Happiness with a change in physical circumstance but I don't think that's what's at stake here.
> assuming that happiness is something you can find by simply changing your circumstances.
Thankfully I learned years ago this doesn’t work and got past this mindset. Changing circumstances has never significantly improved things for any length of time.
> Happiness really does start from within.
I’ve also never had any luck with this and am increasingly convinced some people aren’t destined to be happy.
I hate this quote/pop advice. For some people location really, truly does matter.
There are irredeemable places, and places that just don’t work for an individual. They key is knowing when it’s a problem instead of just running somewhere random and hoping it’ll fix all your issues.
Personally? I feel way better in sunny, dry climates. My mood improves a ton and I legitimately feel healthier. Right now I live in the exact opposite and I don’t like it.
Hard to see how this meshes with published evidence about the role and importance of environmental and lifestyle factors in stress, well-being and burnout.
If anything, getting older is strongly moving me away from your mindset. To the extent that well-being is intrinsic it seems to be more about the causal relationship to environmental factors. Some people are better at managing workload, setting boundaries, avoiding stressful situations and finding a "scene" that fits their values and abilities. I've seen these people do very well.
There are plenty of people out there ready to tell you that happiness and well-being are all about attitude. But when I look at the people in my own life who have said this none of them have been particularly happy or seem to have figured things out for themselves. And it's no coincidence that some of the strongest advocates for "individual responsibility for happiness" are bad bosses and abusive spouses who have a vested interest in keeping people in bad environments.
You can change your circumstances in another way. Reduce your expenses despite all the money that's coming in. Then find something important to you. It feels like it should be something altruistic. Funnel money to it. But also funnel your time and energy.
Buy some property in Detroit and build a safe house there. Fly in once a month to be involved, actually forming concrete, or roofing, or whatever. Then be involved in forming the management team, and be the board chair or something.
Or found an IT version of a farmer's market. Whatever that means.
Design and build a cylindrical windmill that stinks, but can be installed on balconies to harvest $5 of energy per month. Then invite people who know what they're doing to teach you how to get that up to $20/month and cost only $50 to build. Refine it until you can distribute kits.
Launch a wheelchair repair service. Coach a 4H club.
I know recent events have made altruism look bad, but I'm not advocating... well, I guess maybe I am. I never really looked into it, so I don't know. But I know it feels kinda good to shovel a neighbor's driveway every so often.
If you’re talking about FTX, their version of altruism was donating vast sums to political parties. I would call that more power-seeking than altruism, whatever the media calls it.
I agree, but there may be a single change of circumstances that will open a path to something new. For example, if OP can accumulate enough $ to leave their job with at least a reasonable level of financial security, they might find that in the absence of the job's mental and physical overhead, heretofore obscured options would appear.
>> Happiness really does start from within.
>100% - and for some people to excel in connecting with themselves, they need a calmer environment - or just more simplicity.
Now let's go full-circle for a moment: sometimes the job, or circumstances, stand in the way of this ability to find inner peace, or sometimes just think. Even standing apart in a vacation for a few weeks gives you the ability to snap out of it. It's true in my experience that sometimes, the job needs to change.
The attitude expressed in one of the top comments above around happiness being within and not connected to changed circumstances is narrow, I've had this debate with friends who are high-achieving types. They argue that one should adapt and make the best of it, and often it's you and not the job. They also drink a lot.
To put it in another way, if we are trying to paint a canvas white, there is always a more whiter color that we haven't yet achieved. It will continue till we realise there is no perfect white or dark. Just shades of it.
I’m earning the most money I’ve ever made and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been even. It doesn't mean everything in my life is perfect, far from it, but that money is a huge help.
Doubling my salary and being paid what I am worth by doing what I wanted to do brought me a peace of mind I never had in the last five years (since I immigrated to a new country). I do not have to worry about so many things anymore, it's truly amazing and liberating. I can focus on what truly matters. I can take risks. I can plan for the future without having to go to the depression realm of looking for a better paying job.
Did I hate the jobs I did before? Some of them, but the money aspect stressed me a thousand times more than the work itself. When you don't like your job and do not have the money, you have to worry about both. When it's only your job, you know what to focus on and if you have enough savings, you can be bold and take risks.
A few years ago, I read this NYT article titled "Your Job Will Never Love You Back" [1] and that tagline is stuck in my head since then. Your work doesn't define you and even your dream work will have boring parts.
I'd suggest to go to therapy to focus and work on yourself. Better days are yet to come!
My approach to that problem is to oscillate between large companies where the pay is extra good and you get to see huge things but the work as a cog is not very appealing, and smaller companies / startups where work is fun and personal growth is noticeable even though it pays less. I think it also accelerates professional growth.
i've done something similar but different. when i get to the absolute breaking point of cannot stand to look at code any longer, i switch industries altogether and go back to a lower paying but much more creative field. once i get tired of essentially being a broke artist, i find a tech job again to start the process over. i also try to stave off the hatred of tech by having creative hobbies, and when i'm being a broke artist i keep up with coding trends to the best of my interest. the staving off of the hatred of tech is getting harder though. the pervasiveness of ad tech and privacy invading tech is just got me just under red lined.
for paying gigs when it's that time, video/photography work. when it's just playing/hobby time, i like to make things by hand that can be used. techy side of my is always tinkering with things to make video/photography stuff like arduino controlled things. i've made my own camera support things by milling aluminium blocks from my own designs. randomly, i even do things like make lye soaps and candles and other bath products. it always gets a raised eyebrow at first, but ends with great big smiles when people try them. it's actually my favorite thing to make simply because of it having that kind of result.
If you think you feel bad being a cog and making a lot of, money, imagine how much it sucks being a cog and making much less in the service sector. Go to a Chipotle..there is a near 100% likelihood that the people preparing your food hate their jobs way more than you hate yours.
If I worked a blue-collar/service job, making 1/5th what I make as a SWE, having to commute, stand on my feet all day, deal with customers... I'd do drugs. Like I get it. I get why people do drugs. I get why people don't save money for retirement. Life sucks SO MUCH, that it's basically the daily $5 Starbucks drink or suicide. Make no mistake, for most people, life fucking sucks. Then some of you come into that Chipotle and cop an attitude because the cashier misheard you or they got your order wrong or whatever.
> Make no mistake, for most people, life fucking sucks.
And for many, it's one small slip-up, poor choices, medical problems, etc. and they may have to look forward to these sorts of jobs ... potentially until they drop.
I have no back-up plan, and ageism is a thing. I have to play this software engineering game for as long as I can to avoid the service sector when I'm older. And I have to play it very carefully.
Right now I'm sitting pretty, good income, unlimited vacation, work from anywhere. A "dream" job. But for how much longer?
Fingers crossed. I am not sure about turning to drugs, that would likely amplify the hell and make suicide even more of a viable option.
Agism is a thing, in both directions. I believe I have been discriminated against for being the youngest person on the team (I often was until mid/late 20s).
Definitely though it will become an issue later in life, though I have to wonder if agism really will be a problem for us, or if it will be that we simply quit the rat race of keeping up with the industry. I'm thinking about all the older developers/engineers I have worked with over the years, and they all had one thing in common- they did not or would not keep up with the industry. Some were working with System Z mainframe stuff, some were working with VB.NET, and most moved into management.
Management is certainly one way you could save yourself from aging out (whether through agism or not keeping up).
I mean I worked at Safeway, Trader Joe’s and a bunch of other terrible jobs from age 15-27. Low skill labor/service jobs are not bad at all when you don’t have much context. Sharing one bathroom with 4 roommates who party constantly would be a nightmare for me now, but as an 18 year old who it was a paradise.
It’s all relative, and you are viewing their jobs through the lens of an engineer making 6 figures.
The "these are starter jobs!" argument is tired and invalid, because so many Americans north of 20 (30, even) are working those jobs. I almost want to say you should know I am not thinking about teenagers/college students in my previous comment.
I am just pointing out that it is all relative. My friend is a doctor who makes 500k+ and dropping to a lowly 120k would make him miserable. I also have friends who make 25/hr and are fairly content, they don't need drugs to fend off suicide like you implied.
Someone wouldn't spend 30 years working retail in utter misery the entire time, these are intelligent people who have agency. I spent ten years working these jobs and the people who were there for life were relatively content.
$25/hr isn't bad pay... Nobody at the local Chipotle is making $25/hr. That makes all the difference in the world, believe it or not. At $25/hr you and an SO also making $25 can buy a house, for example.
Planning an exit, if you truly want to leave, is possible and takes time (years). You don’t have to keep on but just know the time horizon is long and you need a solid plan.
society/civilization[/state/government] was meant to collectively make it better for the next generation in general. But society is not on that path anymore, it seems like there is serious decline happening in terms of quality of life all around the world. Everywhere seems to be converging to a consumerist, busier, fast, urban, sickly lifestyle.
On the flip side, it has never been easier for parents to ensure prosperity to their children. For some people, if your parents [and or spouse's parents when applicable] have saved enough to de-risk your [and your siblings'] financial situation; are there anecdotes of how to leverage that to exit the rat race [or probably not enter at all]?
With regard to your first paragraph, I'd agree in part, but to me it appears more like polarisation than decline for the majority. The changes suit some people (owning property while the market rises, as just one example) while not others. To me, it seems like a clear societal improvement for almost everyone creates more reliable prosperity - less fear of crime, dangerous behaviour, risky events, etc.
On the second point, you could obviously time inheriting assets to retire early, but I think there's risk in how it was done so that you didn't jeopardise future generations or lose purpose. There are typically existential risks for family businesses, as an example. It's easy to lose motivation/purpose if you have it easy and get things on a platter. There's exiting the rat race to retire or exiting to be self-employed in some fashion, as one consideration.
Right, it may not be a decline. But more of humanity is being pulled out of evolutionary stressors and forced into the same artificial stressors.
There is clearly not enough incentive to bring a bigger portion of a population towards a [somewhat subjective] better quality of life. This might be the polarization inherent to human nature.
So far we have done well to curb and mitigate crime, risky events, etc. Maybe the next phase will be more long-term focused including sustainability, responsible waste management, sensible regulations on fast-food and healthcare, etc.
Let owning property while the market rises benefit the few, we cultivate human capital more broadly. We have to be cautious of bloat, red-tape, short-term-thinking spreading to more systems and processes. We have to do something about education systems that seem to face too much inertia and vested interests among other reasons to not witness significant-enough innovation.
^ a few random thoughts in response to your first point
I'd be interested in stats about negative social behaviours (say household burglary, graffiti, etc) and how it relates (or doesn't) to home ownership. Is behaviour significantly different if someone feels a sense of ownership and belonging in a community?
Ownership and responsibility will be good in general for young folks. If youngsters were expected to be stewards, instead of being innovators and trailblazers and millionaires, it will be easier to belong.
Land and home ownership has become harder, financially and psychologically, even for middle class and above.
However the negative behaviors you mention is mostly younger people and they will not usually be owning homes by themselves. So your home ownership hunch might apply to the family of such actors; extrapolating, the general social fabric around potential negative actors is the realistic indicator. Which is a much more complex problem.
The time horizon is long, very long. I may make the most I ever have, but it’s a paltry sum compared to most HNers.
One way or another I will leave, it remains to be seen what that will actually mean. For now all I can do is keep putting money away and praying I get lucky.
I have gotten lucky in a small but not insubstantial way, a couple of times.
I still make less than most HNers, but it’s decent for where I am.
I don’t know what the exit plan is. It never seems like you have enough. I’ve even looked at minimum retirement savings needed and I should be good for my current lifestyle, but I don’t feel like the numbers are right or I keep coming up with excuses. There is a lot of anxiety around this.
I think there’s a huge difference in the value we feel ourselves contributing based on our own interests and what our company does.
I am working in the world of peer reviewed research now, and I think that’s one of the best places I can contribute to. I’m proud every day to start working because I know I’m helping, even in a small way, the many researchers around the world moving human knowledge forward.
I used to work in avionics development, mostly for defense purposes. Some people would hate it. I liked it for awhile, and then I reached the end of learning new things there. I left shortly after that to start my own company, the peer review research-focused one.
I never want to work for ad tech. That’s not the right answer for everyone, but I’d I was working in ad tech, I’d probably feel similar to you.
What do you work on, and how does that sync with your world view?
Remember that there are a range of options between highly-paid cog and financially-independent early retiree: jobs that pay less or jobs with higher uncertainty that care more fulfilling than the huge corporate machine. You could potentially find a better situation without quitting altogether.
That's kinda the whole point of being salaried though isn't it? (At least for those of us in the US.) You are an exempt employee as defined by US labor law. You aren't required to receive overtime pay, and you are evaluated on your expertise and the results you deliver.
So if you can get in daily rides and still meet the expectations of your employer, awesome, you're doing it right.
You're likely also doing right by your employer, since the daily exercise is giving you lots of health benefits and keeping you performing at a high level mentally.
Tell this to my employer. They require me to log >= 40 hours per week, they have no problem with overtime but get a stick up their ass about undertime. I lie pretty much every week on my timesheet unless I happen to do overtime that week. Most people I talk to in the company do the same.
Public service announcement: receiving a salary != being exempt from overtime, depending on where you live. In, for example, California, exempt status depends on the actual tasks you perform and the percentage of your hours each week you spend doing exempt vs non-exempt tasks. Thus, even a C-level executive can be owed overtime if they aren’t performing truly managerial work at least 50% of the time.
Q for all who are expressing this. A lot of job descriptions today emphasize a passion for "making impact". What is lost on most of us is impact by numbers rather than impact by percentages. Eg being part of a 1000 person <insert branded platform team> your one line fix is experienced by a billion users for a minute a year. Billion sounds sexy doesn't it? Impact by numbers.
How does one frame the other way. Ie I don't care if only a 1000 users experience it, but I'd rather be part of a 10 person team pushing out while features used by 1000 users for hours each day.
I dunno if such roles exist and pay reasonably enough and are sustainable? And how does one politely disregard other kinds of impact in favor of this?
I once developed a video game plugin for a niche flight simulator, that was subsequently bought by a few thousand people.
Their response left me flabbergasted: They thanked me! Personally, by email. They actually took out time of their own busy life to write a simple thank you note.
Never in my professional life have I experienced a response anything like this. Not as a researcher, being harassed and scolded by reviewers. Not as an embedded dev, by users or contractors being blissfully unaware of my existence. Not as an open source dev, hidden behind a pseudonym and fake "professionalism" in Github bug reports. The closest thing was perhaps professional recognition amongst colleagues.
I'd rather make a big personal impact on a small number of people than a small incremental impact on a large number of people. It's way more satisfying. Come to think of it, teaching and mentoring work similarly.
They definitely exist. I’m a fairly compensated developer at a biotech non-profit. We only have tens of thousands of users of the product I work on, but the value my changes and features make is impactful because researchers are using our platform for hours every day to do research towards curing genetic diseases.
I work 40-ish hours a week, have ample vacation, and am paid enough to own a fairly basic condo in Boston, all by my late 20s. It’s not glamorous, I don’t earn $300k+ a year, and it’s certainly not a prestigious resume entry, but hey, I like my life so far. It’s definitely sustainable. Enough so that my wife and I will probably start a family soon.
I had a job like this for a few years. Escalated tech support went to the actual developers, so you really felt that impact.
For software to be sustainable with only 1000 users, it's got to be something that a small number of people use to do their jobs. Look for B2B software targeting a small niche.
The other route is software that is trying to get to a billion users, and just isn't there yet. If you get into a startup scene, you can definitely make a career of it.
>I’m making the most I’ve ever made and I’ve never been less happy and more depressed.
Maybe this is something related to older generations, but I for one have never been happier. Of course my life isn't perfect, but I would never in a million years go back to my childhood/teens/yearly 20s. I have so much more freedom to express my self, to move in the world, to see and experience things and just in general do whatever I want. I never had the capital necessary or capability to do any of these things when I was a kid.
>I despise being a cog in a huge corporate machine, it’s like the job was designed to be as unappealing as possible.
Of course I can't speak for anyone else, but I think this is part of the "dream job" myth i.e. "if you work a job you love you don't need to work a day in your lift". This is pretty much garbage advice and only works for few rare people. I accidentally fell into my niche. I don't think I would have ever applied for position such as mine, but as new graduate I got an offer that was too good to pass by (however I expected to work here for couple years, gain some money, and then move to a bigger city and find job in my actual field), but when I started I just decided that I was going to be the best in my team/department. I took couple hours every day from work time to study and I became a professional. I wouldn't say I love my job, but I'm good at it and that makes my proud which in turn gives me joy. I've been doing pretty much same thing for almost a decade now and I've never been happier.
> I despise being a cog in a huge corporate machine, it’s like the job was designed to be as unappealing as possible.
How much of your unhappiness is your job, or more so a function of having a continually growing list of responsibilities that can become to feel suffocating (e.g., marriage, kids, managing people at work, etc).
Because it can be a taboo subject, I’ve seen people misattribute their unhappiness to a single thing when it’s really a culmination of many things … and their isn’t a way to “fix” the unhappiness (you can’t “un-have” a kid)
I have no kids and I have no relationships. I don’t manage people though work, though they’d like me more involved in a bunch of stuff. All I have is the cat and a house and the house actually brought me some peace of mind.
The idea of fathering a child is legitimate nightmare fuel for me. I already feel trapped as it is, though thankfully there’s no risk of it happening.
> How much of your unhappiness is your job, or more so a function of having a continually growing list of responsibilities
I have none of the other, suggested, confounding factors. Quitting my last job was fantastic and 100% the best thing I could have conceived of to improve my life.
I also had a very similar sentiment re: cog+machine, although found it more of a combination of amusing and tragic (rather than unappealing).
A quick comment: it doesn’t make sense to compare your life and level of happiness with other people. Why not to compare with ancient doom and gloom times? What would it change to realize that you are better off than 100% of roman empire citizens? Why does it even matter? This sounds like a very weak argument meant to give you an alibi against another part of you that is unhappy, but - it just doesn’t.
Generally speaking, most people are at the point where "this is the most they've ever made". Inflation and the passing of time in a given career will do that.
You being unhappy in your life does not mean that there is anything wrong with the world. Looking to pin the blame on society at large and other people's choices is a convenient escape from looking at yourself and your own fears, disappointments, choices made, etc.
I grew up in a rural place, no mountains but we substituted beaches, marshes, and ocean. When I go back to visit I can't believe how beautiful it is. But, I prefer to live in the city where I can walk to coffee, pizza, chinese, mexican, etc. I never visit city parks, the grass and trees don't speak to me at all of nature and as an engineer I see beauty in architecture and construction and (after studying economics) the dynamism of human striving.
It's fine to decide to drop out of the hurly-burly, but don't call your fellow city dwellers rats, they're people making a go of it. The carbon footprint of the average New Yorker is among the smallest in the world, that's what population density gets you, and rural areas? they're filled with human suffering, don't kid yourself.
> Looking to pin the blame on society at large and other people's choices is a convenient escape
Could you point to exactly where you think the author did that? I didn't see it.
At most there was, "Every storefront specifically engineered to attract me inside with gimics like flashing lights." Which may be true of London, though I can't say personally.
> don't call your fellow city dwellers rats
"The rat race" is a well-known, long-standing metaphor. "The term is commonly associated with an exhausting, repetitive lifestyle that leaves no time for relaxation or enjoyment." "The earliest known occurrence is 1934." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_race
> "The rat race" is a well-known, long-standing metaphor.
I know, that's my point, that's why the headline was all he needed, everything after that was belaboring the point. I watched the video and I read the rest because I imagined something new would be said, but nothing was.
>Looking to pin the blame on society at large and other people's choices is a convenient escape
In reality it's the opposite. Coming to terms with the fact that the world is screwed up rather than you is a much scarier prospect given the implications.
If you blame yourself you can hit the gym, lawyer up, buy some meditation apps, everyone will applaud you on your great self-help journey etc. Of course a student of economics would love this story, it's very profitable!
The world doesn’t need to be unfucked for you to be happy, I believe is the point. And that’s a good thing, because the world always has had and always will have its problems.
Keep trying to leave London for the countryside or the sea where I grew up, keep on finding myself back here. I just miss the city too much when I’m away. Countryside and sea are so beautiful but I need the buzz around me
I think your source [1] is directionally correct but very wrong on the numbers. (It's also a decade old, but that doesn't explain these errors.) For example, it says (last sentence) that Americans average 6 tons per person per year. It's actually around 15 [2]. Also, the densest urban cores have per household (and person) carbon emissions ~half the national average. Here's a recent NYT [3].
I am in my mid 20s. I have about $200k saved and I think about quitting everyday, even though it would probably be disastrous for my career.
I look up and I see colleagues in their 40s-50s. 20-30 years of experience in the industry, with the performance of their RSUs they probably easily have $2m+ net worth. I really don't understand why they don't quit.
Just a naive example: Buy a cheap house ($250k) and live off of $40k/year for the next 40 years ($1.6m). You can always freelance or do extra work on the side if you want to splurge on a vacation or major purchase.
And I "enjoy" my job. It is comfy and interesting most days. But it is just such a massive time sink, after accounting for the chores of life and the "ramp up" and "ramp down" time before work, it honestly feels like I have maybe 2-3 hours a day on the weekdays of time that I can honestly say is my own. I can't imagine doing this tradeoff for another 15 years, but we'll see.
Props to the OP for having the courage to do this. I hope I can muster up some of the same courage soon.
Inflation is a bitch, and the current status quo cost of living will be exponentially more in the future. What I thought was an unfathomable amount of money in the 90's ($100k / yr, and $1m net worth) is not good now in 2020's. Healthcare in the 90's was $500 / yr and is $1.5k / mo with $5k deductible. Property taxes, utilities, continue to increase. Basic child daycare is $2k / mo after tax.
$300k / yr is the new $100k / yr, and I'd hate to project what it'll be 20 years from now ($2m / yr?)
And are there an abundance of tech jobs there like there are in the HCOL areas? Remote work is shrinking, and while it'll be here to stay, there will be far fewer opportunities as companies rein it in. If we look at the housing market alone, it looks like there's a big crash in these 'low cost of living' cities people flocked to from SF and NYC as they move back.
In my mid 20’s I had an order of magnitude less savings and quit my job to backpack Europe. My career wasn’t remotely impacted in the process and I genuinely think this is one of the best decisions I ever made.
The 4 hour work week has a far better treatise on this than I could ever write and I highly recommend reading it. You’re incredibly resilient in your 20’s. I’d rather be coming out of prison as a 20 something than be a millionaire in retirement.
As a late 20s, recently laid off, I'm wondering why you think it would be disastrous for your career? I'm not necessarily disagreeing, I've been in a very similar headspace before, but now that it's actually happened - without my choice - it feels a lot less bad than I expected.
Maybe I'm in denial, but I'm not super worried about getting another job right now. I'm enjoying the time off and reevaluating my priorities. There's even a work-related benefit: the extra time / lack of stress has allowed me to read up on tools etc that I haven't been using (although lately I've been tuning out of career stuff entirely).
I'm a senior eng at FAANG nearing my 40s, so according to your napkin math I should be a millionaire.
Of course is not that simple. I won't bore you with my life history, but I spent most of my career living paycheck to paycheck, and only got a high paying job recently. With the double wammy of moving to the US and stock plummeting, my life savings are paltry. I'm still renting and I project it'll take me 2-3 years to save for a down payment.
In fact I'm confident that if you graduated 3 years ago and have been working in tech in the US, you'll likely have more wealth than me.
I would say this is pretty normal. Everyone thinks about life and salary and a linear path to wealth, but its not true.
Not everyone stick in a company for 10 years. Some take sabbaticals, some have medical bills, some go travel for 2 years.
I was earning peanuts up until my early 30s. Also if you are not in US and not in Tech which is lets face it, majority of people - you are nowhere near these numbers.
> I look up and I see colleagues in their 40s-50s. 20-30 years of experience in the industry, with the performance of their RSUs they probably easily have $2m+ net worth. I really don't understand why they don't quit.
I was/am that person. I actually did quit and retire for a while. But then I went back. Mostly out of guilt. I felt guilty not working and building up my kid's trust fund during my peak earning years. It felt like I was betraying my family by not continuing to bring in income while I could.
(just wanted to say thanks for writing this —- I think it is sometimes hard to be honest in this way, about a hard decision, out loud, and while I’m not in the same situation as you right now, there are others who are, and in those cases it can be nice to read something like this and know you’re not alone at least!)
- a lot of the people who are in their 40-50s today never saw the packages we are seeing today (well, until two years ago)
- some of them carry a family with kids. You will only understand the math behind it until you’re in it.
- life does not work like an xls spreadsheet. It’s not like you « decide » to live of $40k/year. You meet people, things happen and the next thing you know, your « basic » needs require 50% of a significant salary.
- people need a purpose in life. I have seen plenty of people with FU money keep going with their job if they like it. Not everyone dreams of creating a company or living in the countryside.
Simple answer – lifestyle creep. Over the years as you get older and keep moving up in your career you get accustomed to increasingly finer things in life. It's perfectly normal to drive a beater in your 20s, but you don't want to take your kids to soccer practice in one. It's normal to couch surf with friends when traveling in your 20s, but not when you are on a family vacation to Disneyland. Add in a hundred more of these and suddenly that $40K/yr that seemed like a king's ransom a couple decades ago isn't quite enough to make ends meet.
My family has no willingness to live in a LCOL location, or I probably would do that!
But I’ll note that $40k/year isn’t nearly enough to live on for people in their 50s unless you’re unusually healthy or someone is subsidizing your healthcare. Healthcare gets much, much more expensive with age.
My employer spends $20k towards my family’s overall healthcare consumption, and we still spend $10k out of pocket.
Regarding taking a break: what have you got to lose?
No programmer I know whose resume says “I took a year or two off to travel the world” has had any trouble getting a new job when they come back. Hiring managers will be jealous, perhaps, but not upset by your choices.
> I'm curious: Is "health tourism" a thing for Americans? Healthcare is extremely cheap where I live by comparison.
Depends on what kind of healthcare is required. I'm from a country with "extremely cheap" healthcare (Ukraine), but if you are diagnosed with something nasty you either shell out hundreds of thousands to go to a place with expensive healthcare to get that CAR T-cell therapy or you die.
It's not going to be disastrous for your career. It will have an impact, but one you can recover from -- if you're lucky, even fully recover.
I quit at 33, didn't work for 3 years, had the best time of my life.
Then I got a fun, flexible job that paid below market, but more than paid the bills, and didn't take up all my time and still allowed me to do what I wanted with a decent-sized chunk of every day.
After a couple of years of that, I ended up with an adult job, and my hours are no longer flexible, but it is fully remote and pays about market for a HCOL area, while I can live anywhere I want in the USA.
Then worked 20h/week for about 2y while I invested the rest of my productive time into hobbies or pet ideas.
Then I went back to similar job different company. Took me about 2y to get career back to where I left it, but remote and live somewhere I've always dreamed of.
> I look up and I see colleagues in their 40s-50s. 20-30 years of experience in the industry, with the performance of their RSUs they probably easily have $2m+ net worth. I really don't understand why they don't quit.
I'm at the very young end of that range. My answer is, when you have a couple of young kids and you live through the past year of inflation and stock/real estate devaluation, you scale up the retirement number by a pretty large multiplier to feel safe. My early retirement target is now around 10M (HCOL, want optionality to send kids to private school, got accustomed to nice things) and I'm not there yet.
Fortunately the trajectory is looking good, so I'm starting to ratchet down the time and effort I spend on work. As I do so, the stress is starting to melt away and I find myself able to better tolerate and sometimes even enjoy my job now. I don't need the job so I can take a risk here or there, drop a few balls on the floor, take some random days off to spend with the kids or get through some yardwork, etc.
I don't want to live in self inflected poverty in Tulsa, and I enjoy my work enough that I'd rather find something else to work on that I find interesting.
I took 18 months off of work to travel when I was 25/26 (2018-19) and had a job within 2 weeks of starting to look again. If there’s any line of work where it wouldn’t be disastrous it’s probably being a software engineer.
If you have kids and quit while your family is used to the standard of living there is a good chance a divorce is in the cards.
You will then owe 20% (pretax, 30% post tax) of your "imputed" salary for the kid, as well as possible alimony. If you don't come up with 20% of your generous salary you git tossed in a cage, even if the kid only needs a tiny fraction of that for a decent life. For many it's impossible to step down their career without being tossed into prison, as the judge uses "imputed income" to calculate what you owe based on what you can potentially earn. That is if say you go from engineer to carpenter, you may now owe over 100% of your salary for support.
Or you know, talk to your spouse about it first. I dropped down to $0 income for 2 years with two kids and a wife. My family is as strong as ever.
Obviously just one data point and divorce rates are high. Do you have any data on this specific case: depressed about job, quits job to be happier, results in divorce. It seems quiet possible that given the circumstances, quitting the job might decrease the chance of divorce by helping remove so much stress from work.
Thanks for sharing that data point. I'm planning to take 6-12 months off of work with 2 kids and a wife. I'm scared about the impact this could have on the relationship. But I've talked to my wife and she is supportive. Reading your comment reminded me that I'm doing this to feel better not just for myself but for the family.
If you're no longer going to be contributing income, what will you contribute instead to the family? Nobody respects or appreciates a freeloader as a partner. But if something other than money is contributed, it's more likely to work.
That's exactly what I said - "if something other than money is contributed".
But not every man (or woman) does these things, and likely their spouse will be doing them as well. If I do half the child care and chores, while my wife does half the child care and chores AND earns all the money, how much is she going to like the arrangement?
For half the assets + 20-25% of a top engineers salary (court imposed child support) you can hire an au pair to do your bitch work for half the week and still probably have money left over to buy dinner for a fuck-boy/girl on the side. Probably can even find a new person to stay with and take advantage of dual income life while availing yourself of the 20-25% income stream of the high earner.
Economically I don't see the advantage to staying together with a high earner that quits their job. Take half, plus the 20% support (they'll have to work now because they'll be tossed in jail if they don't pay, and imputed income will be at their high professional salary), then you can find a new person who doesn't work outside the house and let them contribute their half with chores. The sooner the divorce the better as they'll have to go back to work after the judge's order. Versus just having a person who doesn't work outside the house without the 20% of an engineer salary income stream.
This all sounds really fucked up but realize over 18 years we're talking about possibly $1M+ (tax-free) on the table. People will do some crazy shit for a million dollars.
I’m sorry but in this case you have a much bigger problem than “being a cog in the machine” and an “unfulfilling job”. You should never get in such a relation, or stay in one.
I don’t understand the logic behind this. A man can lose his job then how can he make court ordered payments for kids and wife? And then putting the man behind bars is detrimental to society because a divorced man would be experience depression and likely lose his job. Punishing such a man is not good for society.
Holding up the ridiculous edge case that almost never happens and needs reform -- rape victims that end up as a non-custodial parent and thus owing child support -- to prevent an honest discussion of the whole issue (with more common injustices but also complexity and nuance) sucks. It doesn't help us move forward and improve the world.
your sarcasm is completely misplaced, 1) coming out against rape victims would actually be quite brave, you'd get downvoted to hell, but 2) I didn't do that. "Rape victims" who have children (women) don't pay child support, men do.
OP is against all child support, in which he's wrong, but with regard to rape, a child born from a rape is entitled to child support from which men? that part of his comment actually made no sense at all
> When Male Rape Victims Are Accountable for Child Support
> When Shane Seyer was 12, he was sexually exploited by his 16-year-old babysitter Colleen Hermesmann. She became pregnant with Seyer’s child in 1989 and was charged with statutory rape shortly afterward. Instead of being convicted of rape, Hermesmann was declared a juvenile offender under the non-sexual offense of “contributing to child misconduct.” Seyer was subsequently court-ordered to pay child support.
> In 1993, at the age of 15, Seyer appealed this decision to the Kansas Supreme Court, arguing he should not be liable for these payments. He maintained that his babysitter (Hermesmann) took advantage of him sexually when he was too young to give consent.
> The Kansas Supreme Court ruled against him. The judgment stated that because Seyer initially consented to the sexual encounters and never told his parents what was happening, he was responsible for supporting the child.
The sad reality is that no one in this world is entitled to anything. Not even kids. Kids get what they get because of willful charity not entitlement. Some kids get more charity other kids get less, life is unfair.
This idea that all kids are fucking angels who deserve everything is absolutely insane. Realize Hitler was a kid once too.
My kids don't deserve shit. They get what they get because I'm instinctually obligated by natural selection to love them irrationally and provide charity to them so they maximize their chances of reproducing and spreading my genes.
The thing is, there is a selection bias at play here.
The ones who really succeed in "quitting the rat race" don't show up because they have next to no interest in discussing this with you, or anyone else online.
I don't mean the silence from HNW individuals, I mean the real quitters, who are sitting round a version of Thoreau's Walden pond NOT WRITING ABOUT IT
The "FIRE" community are the front edge. Once they get there, they stop obsessively telling people how they did it.
The best choice I made was closing out my socials. I do wonder why I keep HN open (as I am sure, do many people who choose to read what I write here) and I suspect it's also going away, when I turn off, tune out, and drop off.
My superannuation (pension in UK speak) is vesting out inside 6 months. It's not HNW. I won't be in lambos. It is more than enough for me and my partner, to be quiet, and sufficiently comfortable in our declining years.
If I misjudged the market I'll either go back to work, or not. "it depends". It might be in this field, it might be in another. A surprising number of older (and not so old) retirees work because they want to (I know many work because they have no choice)
"The truth is: nothing I’ve done or experienced in this place has given me any experience comparable to walking along the ridge between two mountains. Nothing has made me feel alive like getting in to freezing cold water despite my body screaming at me not to. Nothing has made me feel anything like that feeling when you summit a mountain after 2 hours of solid climbing in the rain, and the clouds part to reveal the most spectacular and breathtaking view you’ve ever seen."
This is the tricky part. If you're in the rat race, the feelings you get in the mountains are way more intense.
If mountains become your life, it won't be long until they become the norm, making you flee back to some urban jungle.
Unfortunately I don't have any links right now but I also remember reading that primitive tribes are far more "happy" than the average modern city dweller. I'm pretty sure "happiness" was measured by average amount of time smiling each day - take from that what you will.
> If mountains become your life, it won't be long until they become the norm, making you flee back to some urban jungle.
That's a really bold claim. I fail to see any evidence of it.
Anecdotally, it's not true at all. A huge portion of my city dweller friends are miserable and constantly talk about quitting their jobs or moving. I cannot think of a single friend in the mountains who is as miserable. None of them want to move to a big city removed from nature.
> If mountains become your life, it won't be long until they become the norm, making you flee back to some urban jungle.
Anecdotally, this is somewhat true for me. My wife and I moved to a rural location last year and every few of months we make a trip to "civilization" (e.g. a major city) to "recharge". Waking up every day surrounded in nature and breathing in the sweet air of a pine forest is great, no doubt. But being able to walk to a pizza shop or bike to a park are something we really miss too.
We're in bit of a pickle though, our daughter will be starting school in a couple of years but the public schools here are not very good. They have some of the lowest scores in the state and the state's scores are some of the lowest in the country...
They might not be miserable, but I hear things like limited opportunity, a young man's game, poor schools, compassion fatigue, and the emotional drag of living in a superficial tourist hotspot. Overemphasis on machismo & bravado, alcoholism, excessive risk-taking, unhealthy levels of competition, very small social circles, etc. (That's the blue collar though, not wealthy FIRE folks)
I have mostly heard this from folks who have been there over a decade, often with young kids. Everywhere has its problems, of course; pick what matters to you.
Some outdoors professionals might summit the same mountain 100+ times a year. Their breath is not taken each time. Watching them, it's more like the mountain is their office. An office with plenty of nature & exercise, but the magic is largely gone.
Living in a rural area and visiting cities beats living in a city and viting the mountains for me. Visiting cities is super simple, and time of the year or weather basically doesn't matter. But for the mountains you need to be there to be ready for the best weather and conditions.
So, it's great the author has recognized they are unhappy, but "heading to the mountains because I had good experiences there" seems like terrible decision making.
The "happiness trifecta" still seems to be a sense of purpose, autonomy, and expertise. Money just helps remove stressors.
I'd like to see more stories of people working to open a path in a system where it didn't exist before. Like, "how I carved out a new position at this huge company that gave be a better sense of why I do what I do". Everyone tends to think they need to go to a small place to have a big impact, but I think you can bend the world wherever you are a bit if you know how to define the targets, and get there slowly, one day at a time.
Big career changes are sometimes worth it, though I wouldn't follow this guy's lead. I found this experience from a woodworker who left architecture much more interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQoqGPnRLbU
I posted this late last night (BST) and I’m shocked to wake and see it was so heavily read and discussed. Thank you everyone!
The post received some justifiable criticism for making it sound like I’m about to disappear in to the mountains to live like a hermit in a poorly thought out, idealistic middle finger to society.
In reality the change I’m making is to move to a much smaller place where I still have people and the urban environment around me, but with a much healthier balance of the things I value: family, nature, and quiet. Importantly, I’ll be a 15 minute walk from the seaside and a short drive away from the mountains - so I’ll be able to escape to them as often as I want.
I also want to find or create more meaningful work, even though this means my income may be lower.
I don’t have FU money from working at a FAANG company, so my personal runway is ~6 months. I won’t be taking significant time off.
The most ironic thing is that change isn’t immediate. It’s going to be six weeks before my obligations here expire and until then, life continues as it has done previously. As I write this comment I’m standing in a packed train on the way in to the city, but today with a little smile on my face.
Funny, I was this guy 23 years ago working in London for Credit Suisse. It’s clear in investment banks that you can just keep doing that forever and get paid what most would consider a lot for doing routine stuff. What bugged me is that I’d stopped growing and wasn’t challenged. I quit and joined a fast growing dot com in 2000, met my wife, moved to the states and we’ve had one hell of an adventure since then. Sometimes you just need to pick a different path outside the current comfort zone, and that comes with risk, but the rewards can be amazing.
Haha. I was at 1 to 5 Cabot Square. The Friday pub gatherings were pretty epic. One Friday I got seriously drunk and swam across the dock, banged on one of the old barges parked on the other side and swam back. Canary Wharf security was waiting for me. A colleague pretended he was an off duty cop from Manchester (he had the accent) and talked them out of detaining me. And that was pretty early on in the evening. Haven’t been back there in a very long time.
Ha! Off there again in a minute. I’m a contractor who’s onboarding, so I walk in, talk to literally nobody and sit on floor 8 doing your thing for a while then leave, is kind of surreal.
I’m pretty sure the romanticizing of the idea of “quitting the rat race” is one of the largest motivators to play the game.
If you want to quit the rat race you’re going to have to sacrifice a lot, unless you checks notes “[work] at a top tier investment bank as a software engineer”.
Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good, yeah. If you can manage to work four days a week, or live halfway up a mountain in a weird semi-commune sharehouse and work from home, that's not perfect, but maybe it's a lot better than working 60 hour weeks for 20 years then retiring.
This is a thoughtful comment compared to the debates raging above. It makes you think we've fallen (yet again) into the trap of the utopia, the paradise ideal, namely freedom not to do this (where this is software engineering instead of something else, or living in an urban setting instead of a rural one; both sets of ideals described above).
Or work part time at a chill company, 3 days a week and still make 2-3 times the min wage of your country (easily doable in tech).
You're still in the race, but instead of burning everything to get in front and "win" (win what ?) you're just taking a stroll at the back, enjoying the view while chatting with your friends
I'm like please put me in the race track and give me $100k reward because my slow life makes me and family hungry .. yet still forced to race in a terrible track.
What I don't like about the discourse on the "rat race" online is that people only discuss two extremes: either you work a high paid, highly stressing job that you hate, or you retire. I feel dumb saying this, but there are many combinations of salary, stress and meaning (to choose three axis) as companies out there.
If instead of "rat race vs not" we frame it as a tradeoff between possibly conflicting attributes, which may vary person to person and at different points in life, I think we'd have a more fruitful conversation.
This post really ruffled some feathers on here, talking about how he can't find happiness out there, you can't find happiness externally, it's all internal, he can only do this because he makes money, etc.
It's amazing how many people simply want to tear others down, I think, deep down, many wish they could do the same as this man.
100%. The guy is leaving something behind that doesn't fulfil him in pursuit of something that does, and what do the best minds of HN have to offer? "Well actually"
When I told my family and friends my plan to leave my great FAANG job to retire early very few of the responses were positive. It was really disheartening after working so hard for so many years towards that goal.
You are the status quo. By leaving, you are breaking their new (since FAANGs are a recent thing) social structure. They’d definitively not support you.
I think it's more likely that he's a success story, and it's disheartening to see your example of success quit and "stop doing anything."
This is of course unfair to him and he shouldn't be beholden to other people using him as an exemplar, nor is it likely that he's done nothing since retiring, but it's an understandable reaction.
Did you leave where you were living and retire to some other area?
Most family and friends I’ve spoken to are completely fine and generally supportive.
Even when I quit my $1m/yr job, people were like - “if it feels like prison and is making you miserable - do it. Life is too short.” I took up another job at a 60% paycut. That turned out to be terrible too. So now I’ve not been working since June and traveling and living in different areas. They’re all supportive cause they’re like, “you’re living the dream. No responsibilities. You have money to live off of. Do it!”
It’s hard to imagine finding anyone who isn’t supportive of retiring early and is actually your friend.
> Did you leave where you were living and retire to some other area?
We did not.
My job was great. I was working from home (precovid), my manager always did his best to unblock me if I was blocked and let me go if I was going. My biggest fear was not liking being retired and having to come back to a worse job somewhere else.
Also, my friends and family are not in tech. My income to them was very significant.
> It’s hard to imagine finding anyone who isn’t supportive of retiring early and is actually your friend.
They do love me, that I know, but we've been indoctrinated with what success is in the u.s..
That's sad and somewhat surprising to me, as someone in a similar situation. Pretty much all of my friends are also in FAANG and all of them either completely sympathize or are also actively working on their early retirement goals. My family was a harder nut to crack but they're coming around and the most important one (wife) is now onboard.
This is a good article. I will be honest, the Twitter link felt like a very ironic finish to the article, so much so that I chuckled. Some rat races may indeed continue, though maybe it is not all or nothing.
We may see an interesting few years for tech going forward. The path for software engineers the last 10 years was to move into the biggest company you could… and then stay there.
A college grad who joined FB in 2012 would have made more money at FB than any other likely alternative including founding their own firm. The same was true for at least a dozen large firms. These big firms came with the added benefit that one didn’t have to worry that your 12 hour days of toil would lead to a layoff at the end.
I had the same thought about the twitter link. I also find that many people decide to disconnect from the "rat race" and explore the mountains and be one with the earth...often after you're already set up from your racing days that you can afford to adventure off like that.
I'm old enough where I've been through these pits of despair. Unlike this chap, in didn't have the FU money to just walk away.
At some point I realized that without this massive dehumanizing system to fire me regular income, the alternative is that we are out in the wild fighting for survival every minute, not knowing where my next meal is coming from.
What our system gives us seems decidedly better but man, it can be mentally tough to keep trucking along.
I believe Mr. Barry is simply doing what very few of us are brave enough to do: To think for himself!
We are social animals, and many of our goals are the defaults set for us by our social cohort. Very seldom do we take the time to think deeply about what we really enjoy, much less have the courage to act on what we might think in a way that would mark us as different. After all, any rejection of the defaults is a subversive threat to undermine the entire system!
Good for you, Mr. Barry. I for one am very excited to hear more from you in the future!
It's a rat race if you never enjoyed software engineering and computer science from the start, and joined due to the growing SWE hype in the 2010s.
Most people in the world have to work 40+ hours a week, and on weekends. It's kinda crazy to not take your career choice in perspective, which is relatively cushy, good perks, good pay, often wfh or decent offices, and call it a rat race because... you think you deserve to earn even more money and get more recognition? Okay, don't we all...
I still love programming but often feel burnt out at my SWE job. Things like:
- coworkers
- working culture
- autonomy
- sense of ownership
- sense of impact
- how much you actually get to code
- whether the coding you're doing is interesting
can make you hate your job even if you still like programming itself.
I think the things you listed are reasonable expectations to make someone happy for any job, but it's not what the original article seems to get at. At least from my perspective, he's dismissing software engineering as a fruitful career, humble bragging he's working at a "top investment bank" (?), and implying he's just somehow "better" than others for escaping the "matrix" despite being more "accomplished" (lol) than others.
I love writing code and solving problems with it. Even if this job didn't pay well and didn't come with all the amazing benefits, I would still do it.
I think a lot of software engineers need to hang out with more people who are less well off than them. Befriend the grocery store clerk, talk to the mechanic fixing your car. If you're in a bubble of wealthy people, it gets really hard to appreciate the benefits that you have simply because you stop seeing them as benefits and see them instead as the status quo.
> If this resonated with you - reach out to me on Twitter
It resonated with me, right up until the "on Twitter" part.
A few weeks shy of 20 years ago, I was a fed-up high school student and made probably the best decision of my life so far. I loaded my stuff in to the back of a beat-up Nissan 720, drove it over to the high school to return their books and sign a few papers to drop out, continued driving a few hours down the road to Georgia where I unloaded stuff in to storage the next day, then started walking the Appalachian Trail...
Just a few minutes ago, I got off the phone with a friend from 500-odd miles in to that walk; he recited a line from Thoreau about most men leading a life of quiet desperation.
My friend had to cut our call short, as a childhood friend of his was on another line, presumably with news about their recent stage-4 cancer diagnosis. We're talking about a canoe trip, and I very much hope we actually make it happen. But, in the meantime, I have an infinite list of bugs to work on.
Author here. You'll notice I didn't ask the reader to "follow me on twitter".
I had ~30 people reach out to me in DMs on twitter.
Some were people who feel in a similar position but don't know what to do. Others were people who have been where I am and offered advice.
Twitter is just a tool to connect with people outside of the immediate circle I have around me, I don't think there's any problem with using it as such.
Forgive me, but I don't understand the relevance of "follow" vs "reach out to".
In the post, you wrote a paragraph starting with `Almost everything around me is designed to addict me.`, which seems incongruous with communicating through Twitter. I'm glad it has worked out well for you and those ~30 other folks anyway.
Mainly I intended to say that I have exited and successfully re-entered the rat race (actually, a few times), and fully support others in doing so. Do it while you can!
Many commenters clearly don't get it, and probably never will. But, I do, and I don't have a Twitter account.
Watching the linked video made me realise how out of step I feel with the rat race now that I work from home 100%. No more stressful commutes, no more suit and ties. I might step into a giant shopping centre once every 3 months, if that. I don’t see adverts anywhere except on my phone when I’m scrolling.
I think I’m lucky because I get to live in a very walkable suburb in Melbourne AU. Feels less like a race, and more like a stroll. Instead of quitting and moving to the mountains, maybe just move to a place that’s a bit more liveable and work a job that’s a bit more flexible.
I’m with you. I don’t even live in a super walkable urban core or anything, just a suburb. I realized I don’t hate the rat race, I just hate being in an office.
This seems to be a common phenomena. One thing that recently stood out as to why is the flow state famous by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
In short, you might experience flow outside of your day-to-day life (i.e. work). It becomes such an addicting feeling that you try to revolve your entire life around that new sensation.
It's funny, because much of the time it happens when people do something a bit difficult and outside of their current skillset. For software types it tends to always be something with nature or woodworking.
Try seeing how fulfilled you are making the least money you’ve ever made! Maybe very fulfilled, maybe not at all.
If you don’t like what you are doing, do something else. I don’t know if it’s worth trying to project your personal dissatisfaction into some broad diagnosis of social ills. Many of the alternatives to the rat race are pretty dismal.
I might be a bit harsh, but this is a typical western le bon sauvage misunderstanding about what goes on in the wilderness. I also grew up in the mountains (of Eastern Europe), and I equally despise the eye-rolling fakery and the hustle and bustle of modern day Los Angeles. I love camping, and I surf, and kayak, scuba dive, offroad, and explore. But I don't make the category mistake of thinking the former is somehow better than the latter. I love the outdoors, but more importantly: I respect it.
In LA, I have the luxury of clean water, sewage, medicine, a decent cocktail, and, like OP, make a decent living. It's easy to decry modern society because you're not "happy" but, imo, that says more about you than it does about what you do.
Don't think the mountains, or the oceans, or the deserts are an idyllic virginal untouched Eden. You're going to end up getting yourself killed like the Into the Wild guy.
The same is true in London. You travel forty minutes away from where this guy works to rural areas (i.e. still in the "affluent" South-East of the UK), you will meet young people who have no qualifications, they can't leave their parent's house because property is too expensive, they live somewhere with no job market beyond working in a pub, no entertainment, there usually isn't even a supermarket...think about people living in Tower Hamlets, this is in the City, highest GDP per capita area in Europe, now imagine you earn £9/hour...how do you have kids when a 1-bed flat costs £1.2m? You aren't "racing" for anything, you are getting run over. You only get to quit the rat race once you have won, not because you have discovered some alternate way of living.
99% of people in the UK would take years of their life for the opportunity (even in other cities in the UK). Not for happiness, for the fast cars, nothing like that...to eat, to not worry, to have children, to live somewhere safe. Again, being in the race is a privilege, most people aren't racing, there is no sport...they are getting run over.
I love being in the wilderness. I love the quiet, the beauty of nature, the fresh air, the opportunity to stretch my legs and challenge my body.
And I love the city. I love good food and municipal garbage collection and plowed roads and the company of friends and family within easy reach.
I've often thought about buying a property closer to the Canadian Rockies (I'm close, but not as closed as I'd like), and then I remember that I'd have to maintain my own septic system, and invest in equipment to clear my own roads, and, and, and... and then I realize maybe my life ain't so bad after all. :)
As someone who has a farm an hour from anywhere, I can attest it’s … interesting and dangerous.
Imagine breaking a leg on a massive property, no roads to where you are, no cell service. What do you do? If you want to live, you crawl. If you’re strong enough, have enough will, and are lucky — you make it. Else, the coyotes eat you. Hell they might eat you anyway.
Addendum: just last week I was surrounded by the local pack of wild dogs. They were hungry and I saw one circle behind me. I drew my sidearm and yelled and they ran off. The point being, I had no help. None. If they were hungry enough, it would be me or them.
I live part-time on an island with no doctor and no way to the mainland besides an unreliable ferry. Most people on the island have a helicopter insurance plan for emergencies.
I live in the city, but have friends out in the mountains of BC and when we go hiking, we carry this 1 time use SOS beacon. It's registered with the government and if we hit it, they will send out a helicopter. He's used it before on another hiker who broke their leg.
I think the key here that people often desire and even fantasize about that which they don't have. A little bit of the grass is greener syndrome here as well.
The lesson I think to learn is to be true to yourself and try and be objective when assessing life. I grew up in extremely rural, a very nature heavy childhood and there are parts of it I believe are fantastic. Meanwhile as I grew older, I found there were things denser populated urban centers could offer me. Every now and then I look back nostalically about how simple life was but there were a lot of tradeoffs in that context I wouldn't just get rid of now.
For me the compromise is to find a moderately densely populated area with access to densely populated resources. I have most all the access to nature quiet and sanity where I live, meanwhile within a 15 minute drive I can do most everything one has access to in say LA or NYC as far as things I care about and am interested in.
As with many things in life, I don't think the extremes are where happiness tends to lie, it's some compromise or mixture in between.
You're absolutely correct in what you enjoy on a camping adventure is a different world than if you lived as full time mountain man. That being said, just because you move into the mountains doesn't make technology disappear. You don't need to live like the pioneers. Solar panels, windmills, generators, satellite internet, SOS beacons, filtration systems, pumps, heat exchangers, motor vehicles (pressing home made veggie oil and running diesel motors off that is not impossible) are all technologies to make it fairly comparable to city life.
With an investment into some technologies, you could live fairly nice. Dropping everything with no investment and just living off the land is a fairytale dream.
The dude is trying to have his cake and eat it too. Going into the wild with his civilization made gadgets, and the assurance that he can come back.
The wild without that? It’s wild.
A more balanced approach is to move to the country-side and work remote. Many people do that. But I guess that wouldn’t be too novel to get Twitter and social media attention.
Not disagreeing. But someone once said it differently and it clicked for me: the wild is out to utilize you. We build cities in part to invert that status quo.
Hm. Not in my experience. My curling club, robotics high school program, piano class, playgrounds and skating rinks and soccer fields for my kids. The incredible public schools. Leaving here would be dumb.
Let’s not forget that society is also out to kill you and utilize you. HN commenters are near the top of the food chain, while exploited third-world workers and oppressed groups are at the bottom.
When I wrote this, I had no idea it was going to receive so much attention. It was immediately after a call with my boss where I committed to leaving.
I have learned a valuable lesson: how important it is to be crystal clear with the words you choose and the message you convey.
Reading my post now, I agree it sounds like I'm naively planning on going to live in the mountains where I'll immediately die in a storm or get eaten by a bear. I also wrote "I'm the least fulfilled I've ever been". I should have written "this is the least fulfilling work I've ever done".
I am leaving an unfulfilling job, and an unfulfilling place, to move to a smaller settlement where I am a short walk from the seaside and a short drive from the mountains. I'll have a way higher quality of life, being able to do the things I love (hiking in the mountains and other general outdoor pursuits) at the cost of losing a significant amount of income.
This is a trade I'm willing to make, and it reverses the decisions I've made over the last few years. This is an important learning I hoped to share with others who may be in a similar predicament.
I don't have FU money, I still want to work as a software engineer and will have to very soon. The difference is that I will not trade quality of life for money, and I will try to find or create work on the terms that maximise happiness for me. These terms are different for everybody, so my solution is unique to me.
The TL;DR of my original post is "don't optimise for income over quality of life".
imo a good balance is having the ability to float in between those two worlds. Frequent trips into nature and time amongst modern comforts to recharge and rest.
> Don't think the mountains, or the oceans, or the deserts are an idyllic virginal untouched Eden. You're going to end up getting yourself killed like the Into the Wild guy.
I don't think they're mutually exclusive. One can think of wild places as paradise while taking the necessary precautionary measures to survive there. I've camped next to a lake with hippos in it that passed a few meters from me as they strode past at sunset. A cape buffalo has done the same thing. I know what these creatures are, I know to anticipate disaster. And yet these places are still the closest thing to paradise I've ever known.
the author kept it brief by relying on cliche after cliche, telling us to make sure we watched a completely cliche video. Why do people who have a critique of society think that they're the only ones who ever thought of this stuff?
did you need to watch the video to grasp the idea of what a rat-race is? The author thought you did, OP thought you needed "dropping out of the rat race" explained to you, meaning thta OP thought you never thought of it before.
The reader's ignorance isn't implied at all. If anything, that video is a concise, entertaining way to prime someone for the post's topic. This isn't some op-ed in the New York Times. With all due respect, maybe introspect your reaction.
you asked where I got it from, and I explained succinctly; I think my answer was adequate and is a perfectly valid criticism. That you had a different reaction does not require introspection, nor does it require me to be wrong. i hope you don't go online just looking for agreement all the time.
Endurance test: If this guy gets into an accident in the mountains, will he call the civilization and its machines to bail him out, and give him medical attention?
I do my adventures without medical insurance, looking up nearby clinics, and there is no embassy to turn to and no emergency contact. I try to be careful, but if there was an accident I’d accept this is the end of the journey.
Kudos! May I suggest ikiagi, the overlap between what you are good at (vocation), what you love (passion), what makes adequate money (profession), and what the world needs (mission). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai. The Japanese call it "the reason for getting out of bed in the morning." Best of luck with your continued search for balance in life.
Been there, done that. "The rat race" is a very reductionist and naive take. What I found out is, wherever you go, there you are. You must really be at peace with yourself for a change in environment to bring you lasting peace.
Mountains, beaches, deserts, forests are all amazing. But you do get used to them and then miss the cool city life and convenience. But wherever you go, you bring your problems with you.
The drugs, alcohol,etc... in that video are solutions for the rat's unhappiness. It isn't the race that is the problem, it is the person.
There is wisdom in balance. Make a lot of money with the least amount of work-time and spend that money by traveling or living somewhere nice. Doing fun things. But none of that will solve the sickness of the human soul.
There's some truth to this, but environment does make a difference. The problem with this advice is that it seems to imply that moving doesn't make a difference - when the reality is that some people are just better suited to different environments. A nature lover is just going to be happier living somewhere blessed with beautiful nature than in NYC. The challenge of course is distinguishing which problems are external vs internal, and sometimes you need to make the external change to discern the difference.
I think I have acknowledged that. Sure, move where you are better suited but don't expect that to solve your problems. It's the same thing as with finding a spouse or a job of your dreams that also pays well. That's less problems for you but believe me when I say the disappointment is is truly crushing when you work hard to make these changes happen hoping it will solve problems that can only be solved by working on yourself but things get even worse! Imagine moving to a rural place and you enjoy nature but now ontop of it all you are very lonely, isolated and stressed for time and money for example.
His job sounded like a hamster wheel but otherwise, well, it’s amazing how different I am from the author. I view everything about the inner city completely opposite. That’s where the people are, things to do, engagement, social life, the action. He even got to ride a subway. I’m very jealous of what he tossed aside. Meanwhile, it’s not that I don’t like nature but I go crazy stuck without people.
I grew up in the suburbs, in a lower-middle class neighborhood. We were always out in the woods near our house. The children of the neighborhood would work on the horse ranch next to us. Every weekend was all day rugby games in a massive field we had near us. It was great. We weren’t wealthy, but had an amazing childhood.
Having lived in multiple major cities — they aren’t ideal. Particularly, for children.
With the advent of starlink and wireless networks I think increasingly (I hope) children will be brought up with space. I know with remote work I moved and built a homestead, we are nearly breaking even while supplying all our food. I know me and my family are happier with the space, being outside, etc.
Less pollution, less noise, better air, better food, and generally safer.
Me me me me.
Virtue signal, virtue signal, virtue signal.
I don't understand these pieces ... like, quit your job. I don't give a shit that you make a lot of money at a bank and you aren't fulfilled, what did you think was going to happen?
These self-indulgent "I'm not happy with my high paying job" posts are getting pretty repetative and tedious. Most people don't actually work to get "fulfilled". I guess this must resonate as freedom-porn.
"In the past century, the American conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers to callings—from necessity to status to meaning. In an agrarian or early-manufacturing economy, where tens of millions of people perform similar routinized tasks, there are no delusions about the higher purpose of, say, planting corn or screwing bolts: It’s just a job."
Ah yes.. the trope of overpaid (with respect to history) millennial writing about their transcendence from this absurd thing called 'work'.
Not judging harshly because I did nearly the same as the author years ago! Only I found a pot of emptiness at the end of the rainbow. I hope he reallyREALLY likes mountains ;)
Have a lot to say, it was an emotional journey with highest highs and lowest lows of my life.
But can't type it all out. Happy to answer any particular question.
In short: I saved up enough not to quit rat race forever, but to see what life was like without the obligation to work for an open ended amount of time. I did whatever the hell I wanted at any moment. Which was euphoric, but it's really really hard to accomplish larger efforts or really meaningful things with that attitude, because those things necessarily come with struggle. With no obligation, you don't need a tolerance to pain. You just quit building your side project when it gets frustrating. I only had staying power doing the things I enjoyed the process of.
After 2.5y (the last 1.5y spent doing 20h/wk contract work, and trying to build a startup) I crashed and burned hard psychologically. Freedom means nothing to me intrinsically, I need a reason to appreciate the freedom or make productive use of it. The appreciation wore off, mountains wore off, I don't actually want to code on my own time. Everyone else in life is busy doing meaningful things to them.
I broke down and got a job again, but with a much different relationship with work.
Wow, we actually have very similar trajectories. Except I'm still at the point of doing part-time work + coding side-projects/startups on the side.
I agree that the too much freedom can be disorienting. If you don't mind me asking, how did you end up deciding that getting a job again was the right move? How did that compare to keeping doing 20hr/wk contract work and then spending the rest of your time doing non-coding/non-startup stuff if that's what was burning you out?
I didn't know it was the right move (and still don't? There is no right move?). I was severely depressed, unhelped by the professionals in my ring, and really really did not want a job.
But rationally I knew that what I thought was "freedom" was not and was hurting me, so I picked up a decent set of nearby chains to make myself a more useful person and occupy 8h of my day (that was otherwise spent moping about)
Contract work for me was boring toil that the companies I worked for couldn't convince someone to join full time to do.
Perhaps it's my personality, but no amount of non-professional endeavors/hobbies make up for an empty professional life. I equally burned out of 20h/week + startups because they were unfulfilling.
This is a very helpful realistic antidote to all the blogs telling people their life will be just endlessly incredible and. "happy ever after" if they'd save up then quit, buy a camper van etc etc. Mountains are fantastic . I love 'em. But they do indeed wear off if that is all one does.
Well to be fair I don’t think you have to become a camper van / mountain person after quitting a job. For example I am living in the same place/city after leaving the workforce a couple years ago and am personally still a lot happier than I ever was having a job. I agree though that type of blanket advice is not helpful.
After getting up to FANNG-esque levels and seeing the “mountain top”, I’m done too. I’m not sure when or why decide to climb the latter but upon reflection, it just seems so empty. I’m planning on a career change within the next 5 years. Unshackling from the golden handcuffs takes time, especially with a family.
I’m not sure what recycled water was meant in the article? Does he mean grey water? Apparently that is used only a little bit in London and in specific places, not in households unless a system has been installed.
I guess if he wanted to avoid recycled water he could collect and purify water from animal aerobic respiration or hydrocarbon combustion. Even then the oxygen and hydrogen could have been used before.
"If this resonated with you, message me on Twitter"
That makes the post ring rather hollow to me. It sounds like they want to monetize their experience of quitting and rejoining nature. Which basically reads like another version of selling the secrets to a 5 hour work week kind of deal.
I see software engineers lament about a lack of fulfillment in their career (heck, I'm one of them). The author doesn't have fulfillment and decides that they should quit their job and move closer to nature to be fulfilled.
I don't really understand the problem or the solution. Is this sustainable? Will the begin to feel unfulfilled in the mountains? What is fulfillment? Could a steady cadence of vacations to the mountains have bridged the gap? Does it require such an 'all or nothing' solution?
He's also dissing engineering as a rat race, as if we're all idiots and morons for adhering to some 9-5 job, and he, a software engineer at a "top bank" can see the light while all of us are just plebs. Yea, you're not Tyler Durden...
> The truth is: nothing I’ve done or experienced in this place has given me any experience comparable to walking along the ridge between two mountains. Nothing has made me feel alive like getting in to freezing cold water despite my body screaming at me not to. Nothing has made me feel anything like that feeling when you summit a mountain after 2 hours of solid climbing in the rain, and the clouds part to reveal the most spectacular and breathtaking view you’ve ever seen.
It's true by definition. One experience is not like the other.
The tone hints at what OP prefers but it's rather easy to come up with a statement pointing in the other direction. "Nothing has made me feel anything like that feeling when you get out of a nice warm bath, dress up nicely, walk to your favourite local restaurant with your mates and get a your favourite meal with a nice glass of wine." Or whatever tickles your fancy.
> The best part about those things is that there is no booking system. There is no door security choosing who gets in because there is no door. It’s all there, ready to be experienced, and free.
There are many other free things out there. Starving in the African heat. Freezing under shelling somewhere in Ukraine. Dying of incurable disease.
At the same time, there are many things ready to be experienced that are not free but, I'm sure, OP can easily afford. A nice meal in a good restaurant, a movie, a coffee with a friend, a book, comfort of his home, a trip to wherever his childhood was.
I suspect, even his quitting is not entirely free. It probably comes from his privilege to be able to not work for a while and be able to afford all the gear he needs for mountaineering. It's not a critique of his choice. I'm glad he has the option to choose and doubly so that he's happy with the choice he made. I'm critical though of OP implying that that option is the best. That it's obviously betters, and free on top of everything, but somehow overlooked buy everyone.
I understand how big city can be overwhelming. Referring to it as "Rat Race" is a little dramatic, I'd say. The toon paints a bleak picture that reflect only one side of the modern city life. Retreating to mountains is only one way to deal with it, too. And it's on the more severe side of possible solutions spectrum.
I'm terrified of retirement because then I would be "free to do all the stuff nobody else wants to do" around the house. From the rat race to the rat trap.
What I feel is perhaps missing here is some sort of a plan, so the author can either generate enough income or control the spending well enough not to become homeless. It's nice to (hopefully) have savings for these sorts of situations, but for many out there the end result of something like that would be eventual financial peril.
I recently also submitted my own resignation, except I've figured out that my current savings could last me around 3-5 years, so my plan so far is to take one year off work for personal projects, books and other ways of upskilling myself, as well as handling various larger events, such as moving to the city from the countryside (healthcare or even getting to the store is problematic otherwise), as well as just hang out with friends occasionally and visit some museums.
Though maybe my plans are too much work and too little play.
Thanks for the clarification, this is probably an interesting point to make:
> I don't have FU money, I still want to work as a software engineer and will have to very soon. The difference is that I will not trade quality of life for money, and I will try to find or create work on the terms that maximise happiness for me. These terms are different for everybody, so my solution is unique to me.
I'm inclined to agree, though of course having adequate savings and planning ahead both feel like pre-requisites to me. Best of luck!
>I’m excruciatingly lucky to have been in the right place at the right time
This article is just another reminder that techbros making bank can afford the luxury to save-up a few years, and spend years contemplating their self-realization. I'm glad the author was able to finance their perspective-changing journey, but reading this is less of a lesson, and more of reading that someone won the lottery.
You can only leave the rat race if you can afford to... The rest of the earth can't do this and the author is writing from a place of great (earned) privilege. Must be nice.
The rat race and BS jobs' are not that bad. You get paid good money to not have to expend much effort .many people would love such a privilege. Look how many applicants white collar companies get. Low paid jobs are just as tedious or worse, but obviously lower pay...having to death with 'Karen' customers and such. There are many stories of people on reddit (such as investing and 'FIRE' subs) and here doing their '4 & 10' and having a large nest egg to show for it,
I've mentioned before, how I had to have done [to|for] me, that which I could not do for myself.
I was told "Go away, old man. No one wants you.", in, pretty much, those words.
Hurt like hell, but after I got over my sniffles, I learned to "lean into" my exile.
I just released a new kernel for the app I'm working on. I budgeted two months for it, but got it done -at much higher functionality than planned- in five weeks.
The difference in my development velocity and product Quality is nothing short of astounding.
Interesting question. At my old job a lot of people would let vacation days accumulate and since only a few days would carry over to the next year, lots of people "had" to "think of" a vacation towards the end of the year.
This was always insane to me, I always had my vacations and visits to family planned out well in advance, I never had anything left over.
If you're well-off, have no dependents, and can also work remotely, why not enjoy the mountains, the nature, the beauty of the great outside? Do yourself a favour.
I did this during covid. I really enjoyed it. But it does get lonely, not that many young people, and the city I lived near was just not that bustling. You quickly eat your way through all the restaurants in town and there's just not that much culture.
It was a great covid experience, but it's not quite something I want to repeat soon.
Hey, if being in nature makes you happy good for you but your outlook on the rest is kind of crap.
Me, best time in my life, commuting in Tokyo to my jobs working on a project I loved with people I loved. All the ads on the trains were eye candy to me. I didn't buy anything that I remember but I did find out about museums, concerts, and other events around town as well as various obscure services which I never used but was amused to read about.
Drinking with my buddies, including work buddies about once a week was great. Clubbing, going to restaurants, and going to events of the kind that generally only happen in giant cities was lovely.
I like the occasional trip to nature but as for me I'll pick the city and the public transportation. I love it!
>Hey, if being in nature makes you happy good for you but your outlook on the rest is kind of crap.
It reads like you are stating a fact, but really, it is a matter of opinion. Perhaps, you can just say what you like without invalidating what others prefer.
They have opinions. One is nature rules. The other is the city sucks.
I think their opinion of that the city sucks is wrong, full stop, and that a change in attitude would see all the great things a city provides that nature does not so that then you can appreciate both.
To me, enjoying the good parts of both the city and nature is a better POV than shitting one one of them.
Have you considered that they may not value the things the city is good for? For instance, I really don't care that much for any of the things you listed (museums, concerts, restaurants etc). I value what the mountains have to offer significantly higher.
Yes, I did consider that. That's exactly my point. He stated he hates (A) and likes (B). I suggested that hating (A) is a poor POV. It would be better to like both (A) and (B) even if you prefer (B).
Let's put it another way. If someone says the France sucks, Germany rules. And someone replies "The France doesn't suck, here's a few reasons why". Why do you feel the need to jump in and defend the POV that "France sucks"?
I also listed spending time with people as a plus to the city. It's interesting that you left that out. I'd guess if the author had a job they loved with people they loved their attitude about everything else would change. The fact they're in a job they hate arguably taints everything else about their life. Commuting of course sucks if it's to a place you don't want to go in the first place. To me, commuting by public transport rocks because I got, on average, 50+ minutes of walking (25 each way) for free (added to the 20 minutes of standing on the train)
>Let's put it another way. If someone says the France sucks, Germany rules. And someone replies "The France doesn't suck, here's a few reasons why". Why do you feel the need to jump in and defend the POV that "France sucks"?
Because you're forcing your opinions on them. You literally said their opinion is wrong.
Saying France doesn't suck because they have good croissants is pointless for a person that doesn't like croissants.
You can't force yourself to like something just because "it would be a better POV".
I actually don't dislike cities and I didn't generalise that they are terrible.
London is one of the busiest and largest mega cities on the planet. It's incomparable to a city of ~400k people where you can walk in 45 minutes from the city centre to the boundary where the urban environment becomes a more natural environment.
The mega city is not for me, and I regret sacrificing quality of life for income. This decision is about rebalancing those two.
> Around the 30 second mark is a scene where the protaganist rat is waiting for a train to arrive at a packed platform. I recently had a sobering realisation while standing waiting at the platform for the Waterloo & City Line: this had become my life.
He calls himself, and by implication those around him, rats in the rat race. Whether you agree with him or not, the clear implication is a negative one.
> Around the 30 second mark is a scene where the protaganist rat is waiting for a train to arrive at a packed platform
I was visiting London and took the train in the morning to the airport (this is a really bad idea), and saw that exact thing play out. Some girl was smushed into the crowd in train by someone outside so she could make the train, like a cartoon character.
Definitely convinced me I couldn't do a 9-5 after that
Having "quit the rat race" last year, spending much time in the mountains just like the author, and now finding myself back in the corporate world again, I do have one piece of advice.
Do not let your job become a part of your identity.
I work just as hard at my new job as I did at my last one, but in my mind, they're just a client I'm choosing to offer services to at this time. I've made many good friends through work over the years, but now my loyalty to my friends is independent of my loyalty to the companies for which we work. I used to use the demonym of my place of work to tell people about myself; now I describe myself by my hobbies, my beliefs, and my aspirations.
Did that solve everything? Of course not. Late-stage capitalism is still riddled with bullshit. But I do sleep better at night.
> Do not let your job become a part of your identity.
I disagree. People should strive for a fulfilling job that allows them to express their identity. Just try not to be so picky that you end up with so few options.
"I'm quitting! But I'm not telling you anything about how I plan to pay for life."
The message mostly resonates with me, right up until they leave out the most crucial part of the post. How do you escape the rat race, and still pay for things like health care, food, rent, etc.
Even if you're making $100k+ a year, those costs aren't insignificant. No how do you handle them making $0k a year?
> "I'm quitting! But I'm not telling you anything about how I plan to pay for life."
I quit the rat race in my late 30's. I saved and lived a frugal life while earning a great FAANG salary during a time of economic growth. I used my savings to buy income producing rental properties and aggressively payoff mortgages. I now do woodworking most days and love it. The pay is low, but at least the hours are long.
I used to work on some of the most popular applications in the world. I would see my work in keynotes and read about my work here on HN, but none of that compared to making an urn for my cousin when my uncle passed away. Or selling a few items at a winter market at my kid's elementary school.
No problem. I don't often share the details because I don't want to assume that what worked for me would work for others. Here are a few more details:
- There is a rule of thumb that you need 20-25x your annual expenses in networth. So if you spend $8k a month, you can retire at a net worth of just between 2 and 2.5 million.
- Whenever I refinanced I always round down to the nearest loan term. A lot of people refinance and start their 30 year mortgage clock over. My goal was to have no debt.
- Because I was saving towards a multiple of my monthly expenses I did some extra things to lower those expenses before quitting like getting solar so I don't have an electric bill and getting a $5k used electric car so eliminate fuel costs.
- If your net worth is in equities you can take ~$80k in capital gains tax free each year. This puts your $80k withdraw closer to $100k in an equivalent salary.
These are some awesome tips, thanks again for sharing them!
Do you have any more details anywhere (blog, etc.)? I'd love to read about it.
Just as the OP here frustrated me by not explaining their process, others like you really help and make me happy to read about how they do/did it.
It inspires me to make changes in my own life to live more conservatively financially. I already make an effort to do so but its nice to be reminded that there is more you can do. Solar + Electric car should be next on my list.
Do you have a recommendation for a good used electric car?
It's strange to me how often I'll read a post like this that conveniently leaves out the crucial detail. Leaves a suspicious feeling in me that they have some nest egg or something they're not telling us about.
I think insurance policies cap maximum out of pocket costs. I'm on a cheap policy ($300/month) that caps annual out of pocket costs at $12K. I have that $12K on standby if something really bad happens but it's been years and no issues yet.
Do not embark on such a project if you have some chronic conditions. Start in a good shape. Generally keep a healthy lifestyle: no heavy drinking, no junk food dinners, enough motion, etc. Stay away from high-risk pastimes like snowboarding, motorcycle racing, etc. Wash your hands and do other trivial things to keep infections reasonably away, especially when far from thickets of civilization.
Things like that. Do what you can not to get badly sick or injured, because medical bills can quickly burn through your savings.
No doubt, but beyond the practical advice you've offered, a lot of health in the long term comes down to luck. Some people eat perfectly and still develop cancer at age 34, others never develop it despite "living a hard life".
On average, health insurance doesn't seem optional.
I temporarily "quit the rat race" years ago with savings from a tech job which paid decently but not today's crazy salaries. Travelled all around N America coast to coast and back, worked a couple of ski seasons etc. How I did it was eat cheap but healthy food, while travelling had no rent costs. Had a 17-yr-old fuel efficient Japanese car, sometimes slept in it, camped for free in national forests, stayed at hostels. (this was well before AirBNB) . The way I saved up enough was always having fairly frugal habits, never bought fancy clothes or gadgets etc. It was a lot of fun. Wouldn't have wanted to do it for ever. It gets transient and less fulfilling after a while. Met many wonderful people, but, they move on. Its not like having a set of local friends and family. I'd argue that in today's tech industry it should be possible for most people to do what I did (before they have a family). Only caveat might be that rents have increased in last 20 yrs a lot... but then.. so have salaries in tech. I think its good to see it as a temporary adventure. In the long run this caused lost earnings, set my career back a little for a while, but with tech having such wonderful opportunities, this doesn't matter now, cos after that, worked normal jobs again for years, and repaired the "financial damage". I guess a lot of people with my skills are richer now, but, does it matter? Seems worth it for the experiences. I must say, it is indeed a privileged thing to be able to do. It largely depends on being born with the type of brain/intelligence that lets you work as a coder. Couldn't have done that so easily otherwise. That said... I met many people travelling who funded their travels by all sorts of means. One guy worked 80-hr weeks at a supermarket for months to fund a big trip. Others did all sorts of things. One girl worked at a strip club. I remember a lively debate in a youth hostel common room about whether such "selling your soul" was worth it for all the adventures she used the money for. ;). One caveat - of course healthcare is a cost issue. In my case I had health coverage of a sort by various means. This has surely gone up in cost since.
Retire on a boat for like $3-4k/m and live pretty well, see the world. That's still a lot tho and your money will run out in a few years, unless you figure out a way to make $50-60k/yr on a boat (so you have some cushion, because you won't be employed all the time in this scenario).
Couples routinely live like this for $2k/m, so it is possible.
'The mountains' are wonderful while you still have a pile of cash to pay 'friendly locals' to help support your dream, but eventually you will get older, and it will run out...
For a great example of an utterly different way of life, I recommend checking out the TV reality series "Port Protection" where they document the lives of people living a modern-day subsistence lifestyle in a small community on an island in Alaska. The only access is by boat or float-plane.
By any definition these people are not rich but they are definitely happier than most city-dwellers IMO. I think there are 6 series now.
Happiness, it's what you don't have - that's the oldest hustle in the world.
I was just cursing a pile of sticks that were too damp to light and I was being deprived of the bonfire I had assembled and was preparing to light, and I was laughing because in the words of Buckaroo Banzai, "wherever you go, there you are." I've achieved a kind of temporary exit for as long as my means permit, and I can say that the real that the rat race conceals is not for everyone.
My trip up the hedonic treadmill was such that I even wrote professionally about the sort of things one might buy in the hopes of finding a there there, pitching stories about exotic experiences one could have for the price of a vacation. There isn't a there there. There is no yacht long enough, club exclusive enough, view stunning enough, or achievement great enough that it makes you any different from the person standing on the subway platform. You will be the same person. I guarantee that if you flame out of your job, cash in your savings and manage to summit Everest, the first thing you will do when you get to the top is check your phone. The things that seemed so important were only symbolic. Pursuit of symbols specificially disqualifies us from attaining the meaning they represent. Maybe the humility is worth it, as yeah, the things I achieved were symbols that don't mean the same things now that I have them, but that's the treadmill, the pursuit of symbols and representations - affect.
I can say with some confidence that you only actually have what is yours to share, not all of it is good, and meaning only exists in the moment of sharing it. I can also say that unhappy people are not lonely, as their misery and self involvement keeps them from noticing it. I think to really understand what it means to be lonely, you need to find some happiness first, then when you move to share it with someone who isn't there, that's the feeling. That absence of no one in particular, but with the sense of having lost someone close. It is truly a rarefied experience I am glad to have been able to appreciate, but it's not a solution to anything. If you want to exit the rat race, try camping first, maybe a longish canoe trip, or read some good literary fiction. Ultimately, it's just you.
This is all to say, we invent the conditions we impose on our choosing happiness. They are symbolic and representations, they are not the real, and the real is not far or exotic. It's perhaps easier to believe we are unfufilled by our successes, and that there is another life out there if we just leave all this behind, as it puts off recognizing that we're probably just idiots in profoundly difficult ways.
First, this comes off to me as a very privileged take.
Second, I do feel the pain of corporate life, and I switched to working for a non-profit because of it. Leaving the city… nah. Just moved to the perimeter and now I can drive 10 minutes to downtown or 20 to the mountains. Why get a septic tank, a well, my own water treatment, and all this other stuff if I need not do so?
Everyone access happiness through the world (work, money, people, events, trips, etc). What happens to everyone is this: whatever things that give access to your happiness, cease to be be that conduit to happiness after sometime; so, you end up chasing new things in the world, these new things provide that new conduit to happiness. Rinse and repeat.
I resonate with this as I type this from NYC, a city significantly more nature-starved than London. I was pretty impressed with the parks and greenery in London. My friend there bought a unit in the first floor of a townhouse with a backyard in a peaceful but convenient neighborhood. Such an apartment would cost at least double in NYC and those sort of places are rare.
I'm definitely not a rural person, but I do think that living in nature has a strong correlation to happiness. I don't think the average person in a concrete jungle like NYC is happier than in a random village in the Amazon jungle or the Swiss alps. I don't regret my time I lived in NYC though other than that I stayed too long. It's fun for a time in one's life while one is young, but it's not a forever place for most people.
Most jobs suck. "Find your passion" is bullshit career advice because a job by definition means selling your freedom (if the job was so much fun they wouldn't need to pay you because people would do it for free). Unfortunately the reality is that we must make money to afford a modern lifestyle, and thus if you want financial freedom you will probably need to get a job (yes you can create your own business, but until that takes off you need to pay the bills somehow).
I quit the rat race and left NYC to travel the world. After 1.5 years of traveling I started to run amount of money and I reluctantly decided to start working again - this time remotely. But to my surprise I found that I actually enjoyed the new job and had missed having that sense of responsibility (or maybe I liked finally seeing my bank account balance go up and was trying to rationalize it, who knows). But eventually the job started to suck as I realized it was a deadend job and felt like I wasn't respected. I was miserable and performing the job was a chore, but I stayed because I didn't have the courage to quit a job that paid so well for so little work - the same position I was in in NYC before my world travel.
Finally that contract ended, and I was again free from work obligations. This time I set my goal to create my own tech projects with the hope of eventually monetizing them and living off of that. Finally I enjoyed programming again because I was building whatever I wanted.
A job fell in my lap with another startup, and I initially didn't want to take it because my focus was on my own work. But in the end I decided to give it a chance as I figured it could be a valuable experience, and I can always quit if I don't like it. The job turned out to be awesome. Awesome people, interesting problems, and I get a front row seat at an early stage startup. The downside of course is that I have not been able to put as much time on my personal projects as I'd like, but I am still working on it on the side, and we'll see if I can manage them both.
Leaving the rat race to travel the world led to some amazing experiences with high highs and low lows. I went from being sick of software engineering to wanting to build my own tech startups - which is my main work goal now. It took me traveling so much I got bored of it until I got inspired to want to build tech things again to solve my own problems. But maybe you'll leave forever and prefer being a park ranger in the words - who knows. We're all different.
In any case I think people should do whatever the hell they want, as no money is worth wasting one's life in misery. Worst case scenario you don't like living in the nature and can return to London to work at another bank with a renewed sense of gratefulness. Of course most likely you probably won't ever return to the same exact old life. Maybe you'll work remotely for a startup from the woods, or become a writer, or go completely offline and just live a simpler life. Who knows. It doesn't matter as long as you're doing you.
Either way best of luck on your journey, from one rat rat escapee to the next.
The mountain stuff and diving into ice water doesn’t resonate with me at all, but the burnout at the industry generally does. I’m glad you’ve found something to make you happy.
Thank you for this!! I finally have one link to send to all those who asked me "why", instead of getting lost in incomprehensible [to them] explanations ...
IME long breaks do very little to help with burnout like this.
All you're doing is giving yourself a brief reprieve from an environment that drains your energy. You'll build up a bit of the energy over the break, but as soon as you come back you'll start getting drained again, possibly even worse than before because of the contrast of having to be back in that environment.
Breaks are important but if your environment is fundamentally draining you day after day, they're not going to move that needle.
I grew up in a rural area in the US. I love nature and the outdoors. I also love programming.
But, rural living is vastly less sustainable on a per capita basis than city living. The elegiac tone of a rural paradise lost is a familiar one throughout the past few centuries. It’s an aspect of “blood-and-soil” nationalism (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_soil) and Boomer-era environmentalism and of Tolkien (so, I guess that’s in order of most to least problematic). It is easy to feel the longing, but it’s also worth some critical thinking.
I’ve got a place in the country that I go when I need to get away from the city (and, yes, putting a lot of time and effort into making it sustainable…). I find myself doing a lot of programming there. And then I go back to the city to talk to people about the code, and find out what they’ve been coding.
> I’m earning the most money I’ve ever made and yet I’m the least fulfilled I’ve ever been.
I’m making the most I’ve ever made and I’ve never been less happy and more depressed. I despise being a cog in a huge corporate machine, it’s like the job was designed to be as unappealing as possible.
At the same time I can’t get over the fact that I have it better than the vast majority of humanity. I feel guilty hating my job, I won’t complain to people IRL because how could I? I have it made by all accounts. This guilt completely consumes me and adds a special level of self hatred, if I’m not happy with this, maybe I never will be?
Unlike the author though I can’t just quit, so endure it I must.