Ask HN: How do you make big bucks and get out of grinding? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you make big bucks and get out of grinding?

52 pointsyedaveking68 comments

Like everyone else here, I work for a tech company. I work and live in Seattle. I make around 130k with nearly 10 yrs of experience.

It seems though, I am grinding without a lot results. I was in bay area before with dieing tech company.

I have tried to see if I can do my own side project or startup, but I have not gone past idea. I don't know frontend development and I don't feel motivated to learn due to 60 to 70 hrs (including travel) each week.

All I do is get up, go to the work, go to gym, work again and sleep. No wonder that I am lifelong single person and despite being in shape no woman has shown interest in me or agreed to date me.

I don't know if I am burned out.

I can't figure out how can I get out of rust and daily grinding. I want to make big bucks 300k or more. I know goog/fb pay that much; but I don't have master's degree to command that much salary. I am not a native American as well. I am 31 by the way.

What did you do to get out of rust and how did you do it? Seeking guidance from men and women who have enough experience under the belt and/or successful by any definition.

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Sounds to me like you're unhappy with your personal life. I would suggest to focus on finding more ways to date women (e.g. dating websites, tinder, etc) and maximizing that first. Try to understand why women are not in to you, it might be because how you behave.

The first thing you should figure out is what you want to do in life, what you want to be and to achieve. Then, you will need to build a path towards there. If you plan on getting to financial independence, you need to plan it wisely.

The first option is to build a business. Some options are very safe but most are not, so it would be hard to find the right opportunity there. It is possible (I did it) but it's hard. By the way, if you don't want to do things that require front-end, you can do things like a paid API service or things like that.

The second option is to maximize salary by becoming a rare asset. Special skilled workers can bill 2k/day, putting you at around a 500k annual salary, even for doing things like front-end development. What you need to do to get there is to acquire skills that are considered to be in high demand right now in the market (e.g. front-end development, DevOps) and they don't ask you if you have a masters degree or not.

The third option is to become an executive, and that requires strategic thinking, and mainly showing your organization that they can trust on you. Plus - being super extra friendly to everyone would help.

> being super extra friendly to everyone would help.

This is a good idea no matter what your motive. As long as you don't take it to the point of appearing fake, or using your niceness to use or manipulate someone. Be genuine, and be nice.

And I agree about the women comment. Get out there and meet people, ask people out. If things don't go the way you'd like, you can always ask in an honest manner what the issue was, with the intent to use that feedback to improve yourself.

Ill give you concrete advice: 1. you need to be smart

2. Practice interview questions online on career cup, hanker rank, and the like. Also buy cracking the coding interview. Do all the problems.

3. Since you are experienced, you will also have design questions in your interview loop. A list of these is harder to find online.

3.a you can read some articles on highscalability.com

3.b think how you'd design the popular products of today: Facebook messenger, Google search, Apache zookeeper, etc.

4. Get referrals for several top tier companies: Facebook, Google, Amazon. Also apply for companies you don't plan on joining: square, twitter 5. Sequence your interviews so that your first choice is your last interview.

6. Before interviews go on glass door and do all the interview questions for the companies.

7. If all goes right, enjoy your 300k+ job.

This is not theoretical. My friends and I have done this several times now.

As an aside, I don't know why HN always has a houlier-than-thou attitude when these questions are asked. The only reason I work - THE ONLY REASON - is to make money. I don't care about social media, or advertising. If money were no object I'd much rather study CS theory and code for my own enjoyment.

if you've pulled 300k in multiple jobs, why is money still an object for you? study Cs theory now! i know a few ex-quants who are self-funding their phds because they have wads of cash and their jobs were boring.

Off topic, but what does it mean to self fund a PhD? Does that mean that they don't receive a stipend or salary the way most graduate students do? Does this mean the lab they are working in isn't responsible for funding them?

My understanding is that he's getting the normal-for-the-sciences stipend, but is able to do it while not also eating rice and beans. So he's supplementing his nominal pay with his (really very significant indeed) savings.

In non-science PhD programs, sometimes you literally self-fund because those programs have no financial support for their students. This is a problem, since it effectively means that there's a huge selection bias for rich people to be the educated arbiters of, e.g., english literature.

> I want to make big bucks 300k or more.

First of all, 130k is already 'big bucks'. If you want 300k+, go to medical school or start your own business. You're upset about the time you spend working, yet you also want to make more money? That is not going to happen soon. You can keep working and make more money, or work less and have more free time.

... start your own business is either negative dollars or $300k or somewhere in the middle with a LOT of grinding (certainly a lot more than 70 hours/week). So if the goal is to make $300k guaranteed, starting your own business is not what you want to do

I mean, $130k is nice and all, but if there are people making double this and your goals all require that kind of income, then why not?

What exactly do you want in life? Why do you want more money? You just complained about wanting to escape the grind, but then you want to double your salary and mention fb and google, two places notorious for high hours where you'll have to grind.

While the cost of living where the big-4 might be higher. Going from 130k to 300k would still significantly enhance a person's ability to retire very early, thus ending the grind.

I don't understand the comments here. OP wants $300k/year. They don't need to justify why. If that's what they want, then why not go for it? There is absolutely no reason to settle.

I especially don't understand the folks that ARE making this salary but are dissuading the OP from doing so. That's kind of like saying "don't move here; we are full."

As for OP, outside of starting some passive income generating business that generates enough income to meet your needs, you will probably need to start looking outside of making software to hit your goal. While it is possible to command this much as a developer, your skills have to justify this level of pay, and current market forces are strong enough to make this difficult for you.

Most of the people I've met who are making or have made this much either started their own business (risky), went into sales and did well at it (also risky) or had great networks and exploited the right opportunities.

There's definitely some "don't move here; we are full" but I think a lot of it is just that many have learned the hard way that if you're fundamentally unhappy in your life at $130k, you may think that more money would solve your problems but $300k is probably not going to and you may have just found yourself at $300k but fundamentally even less happy than before. Some of the things that might happen to also get you there, like changing your specialty, reeducating, or starting your own business, might also address what you're dissatisfied about in life, but they may not if you're not trying to address anything but the money.

A while ago I was quite depressed, and all of the problems in my life that I could've listed for you on a piece of paper boiled down to not making enough money to live where the job required me to. I worked way too hard to address that. It affected my family life, my mental health, and didn't yield the financial benefits I hoped it would. The ultimate fix to my happiness was actually a very big, risky hit to my career. I don't have the job security I used to have at all - but I am happy. I would hate for OP to get to $300k a year and still be unhappy. By all means try, but really do step back and ask yourself if $300k will make you happy. $130k is probably a typical salary in Seattle from my understanding, so not exactly "raking it in" and buying jet skis every weekend, but also unlikely to be the real source of frustration in life.

As someone who has made "the big bucks", let me tell you - it's overrated. At least, in the fashion in which people generally proceed once they have capital.

The thing is, most of the time one finds that expenditures grow to match income and capital - you have shinier toys, a bigger box to keep them in, and the ratio between income and expense stays constant. You find yourself constantly levering up, reassessing what it is to be rich, aspiring to loftier goals - all of which are just a slight rotation of the hamster wheel.

I finally reached the conclusion that the only winning move is not to play. Sold up. Went frugal (feral?).

I'm now travelling the world marvelling at how far how little can go in some corners, and considering the next move. Subsistence permaculture up a mountain is looking appealing at the moment - and the capital outlay is tiny. I can retire, at 32, and enjoy living.

130k is a lot of money, but so is Seattle. In much of the world, it would be a fortune that you could live off for decades, not a year.

Ultimately it comes down to what you want in life. Money is gas in the tank, which can take you places - but like gasoline, having a lot of it sitting around does little for you - how you apply it is what makes the difference - and even if you have no gas, you can still walk.

So - the question is, what brings you happiness? Not money - many think it does because there's a gap in the chain of logic, whereby the means somehow become the ends, but if you think about what you want money for, it might reveal that money isn't actually what you want, but you've spent long enough in the pursuit of it that your true goals have been left by the wayside.

I can't pretend to have the answers, but I can say that I'm having the time of my life on $20 a day, living in a van.

The other thing that has opened my eyes is that I'm not alone in this conclusion. The more I wander, the more I meet disillusioned entrepreneurs who have likewise sacked it all in to be a vagrant.

I write this sat on the terminal moraine of a glacier, watching a little bird slowly edge closer to me, and the shadows creeping over the mountains. The air smells like moss and honey.

You can't buy this, but I feel something I thought I had lost - happiness.

Pretty cool. I hope you don't get sick, sincerely. Also, I hope you've done the hard thinking about the years when you are 50-60+ years of age. Life changes as you age.

I've had my share of health troubles - and it turns out healthcare is surprisingly good and surprisingly affordable in parts of the world where you wouldn't expect it. I had a laparoscopic cholecystectomy in Thailand for $250.

In terms of the mysterious future - what's the point in preserving a half-life until the bitter end, an enfeebled and intubated shadow of a living thing?

I know plenty of diligent planners who had their plans shattered by fate - I was one.

If anything, dicing with my own mortality pushed me towards not worrying about a future that may never happen.

If I one day get a serious health nasty, I will likely die. If it's treatable, it's treatable. That will be invariate whether in a hospital in the US, or in a hut in the Andes. I'd rather go out with a nice view.

As a culture we seem to put an inordinate focus on our future selves, while neglecting our current selves. Then we wake up at 60 and realise that ahead of us is only arthritis and gout, and the good years are irrevocably gone.

Talking to octagenerians is an excellent pastime - we young'n's can learn a lot from their experiences and perspective.

This kind of worries are normal when you are used to a job routine, but are out of place once you see how many different opportunities life has to offer, e.g. when traveling around the world. Also how is a good idea to think about the far future when you don't even know where you are the next year?

While your story is plenty valid, I think you can see how this would equally apply to someone making $50k that wants to make $130k solely for the improved quality of life.

Making $300k or greater might be a hamster wheel rotation for OP, but give them a chance to get on the damn wheel...

"All I do is get up, go to the work, go to gym, work again and sleep. No wonder that I am lifelong single person and despite being in shape no woman has shown interest in me or agreed to date me"

you just described a large majority of men who already have a signifcant other.

why do you think you need 300k to be in a relationship?

You don't need money to get out of the grind. The best way to win is not to play. Why exactly do you want more money? If you worked at a place that paid you 300k like Google or Facebook you'd likely just become even more dissatisfied. When it inevitably doesn't change your life as you're thinking you'll just wonder how you can have even more money yet people who make significantly less appear happier.

It's not easy at all to get paid 300K at Facebook or Google. You need to be in the top 1 or 2 percent of engineers there, with quite a palmares.

In terms of success with women, I can empathize a lot with that. I used to be extremely unsuccessful with women and I hated it. Eventually I had enough and made a conscious decision to improve my dating life. It took over 5 years to get there, but after putting in a lot of effort by studying material and grinding through failure after failure, my success with women has increased by orders of magnitude.

If you want to date women, earning a lot of money is not the right approach, nor will it actually solve your problem. In fact, trying to attract women by a display of wealth is one of the worst things you can do for yourself. Your problems with dating women come down to two things: (1) lack of confidence and (2) lack of understanding of what women want and how they feel.

It's a very deep and complicated topic so I can't explain to you everything you'll need to know in a forum post, but I can point you in the right direction. The resource that's been most helpful for me in the past year has been Coach Corey Wayne. You can find his material on his YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/coachcoreywayne) and his website (https://understandingrelationships.com/).

His website looks real janky but trust me when I say that his material is the ground truth for understanding women and dating. I've read his book 3 times and am going to read it another 12. It has literally changed my life and I feel so insanely lucky to have chanced upon it last year. I recommend it to every single guy I know, whether they're single or married. If you really dive into what he teaches and, just as importantly, practice it out in the field, you will see results.

If you have any further questions, feel free to email me (contact info in my profile). Good luck.

edit: why the downvotes? He mentioned that he's not happy about his dating life.

How did this spam get here?

Ummm ... it's not? I wrote it myself.

It reads like the kind of spam that will link me to a program that wants 8 easy payments of $12.99 for a few pamphlets by mail and a patented pheremone spray, guaranteed to help pick up women.

I can see that. I have no affiliation with the guy at all. I just read his book and it improved my dating life. His online book is free anyway, that's what I read first before I bought the paperback.

I read it twice to see if I missed something, but it still reads like a typical spam message about shady dating advice websites. You even had to apologize for the website looking suspicious.

Did you actually read the content of my post?

Look at my comment history and let me know if you still think I'm a spam bot.

If I said I read it twice, then yes, I did read it. Twice. Sibling post mentioned "It reads like the kind of spam" to which you agreed "I can see that."

> Look at my comment history and let me know if you still think I'm a spam bot.

I didn't say you were a bot. I asked how the spam got here, because I also checked your comment history beforehand.

If you checked my comment history and decided I wasn't a spam bot, perhaps you should've been more generous in your interpretation of my post.

Similar to you, I am 27. I worked at facebook seattle making 315k a year, I left after 8 months I do not recommend it. I work now with much greater autonomy at a smaller company for half the pay.

I would recommend cutting your work hours and using that time to develop things that you find fulfilling.

315K at Facebook before or after bonuses and accrued stock? I think you need to be a level E8 or more at Facebook to get that kind of standalone salary.

That's with stock and bonuses and at e4 it's in the middle for pay there

Except you never really got any of the stock if you left within 8 months, right? Couldn't hold out for 4 months more to get all your vesting? You probably also had to return your signing bonus, right? (I'm at fb in new york btw. Also this still seems pretty high to me, 315k total for an E4. 150k base is the higher end of E4, so how many RSUs did you get?)

>> I want to make big bucks 300k or more.

Why? Seriously. Your problems (long hours, no free time, no success with women) are not going to get solved with more money. In fact they might get solved with a salary reduction. Find a job that lets you work fewer hours. You'll have more free time, be able to get out more, and meet some people. More money will not solve your problems. There are many people supporting entire families on less that what you earn and are very happy (i.e. the old cliche, "money doesn't buy happiness").

So you want to work less but get paid more than double you are currently on? You don't seem to be motivated to learn anything new, so how do you justify the more bucks you'll want to earn?

I hear what you're saying. It's worth noting this person is tired. Hard to say what their motivations would be if they weren't tired. If they had no ambition, or desire to change their situation, they wouldn't have submitted this post in the first place.

It's totally possible to have a programming job that doesn't consume your life, and leaves you time to have a life. E.g. dating. Or a hobby. Or whatever you feel like.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Make sure you have 6 months of expenses saved up. This will be much easier if you cut your expenses, since 6 months' worth will be lower and you'll be saving more. This will make sure you have a good negotiating position for next step.

2. Cut your hours to 40 hours a week. If you can't do that at your current job, time to look for a job where you can do that. There are in fact many companies where that is possible.

3. With the resulting time, figure out what you want to do with your life.

I'm working on a book, "The Programmer's Guide to a Sane Workweek", with a whole lot more details, tips and techniques. Meanwhile here's a free email course if you're interested: https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/

Well, I feel like I'm just reiterating what everyone else is saying.

1) What's with the preoccupation behind making 300k?

2) Would finding a less stressful job, even if it paid the same, make you happier?

3) It sounds like there's some other underlying issues to address here. Maybe finding some work-life balance would help you address your unhappiness with other parts of your life?

Hi lost traveler fellow! I am living in Croatia, Rijeka. It is a nice climate here, and much cheeper then where you live, with an abundance of beautifull women. Croatias internet bussines is not yet fully developed like in the US-a. There are plenty of opporunities for start-ups and making it big (in termes of a 4 milion population of Croatia, plus 3 BiH, 7 Serbia). I got a small flat here. My brother has a small web dev firm of 4-5 people. We need people like you. We would love you to stay at our home and together we could make something relevant. At least in Croatia. It is much easier to get know and noticed over here. Somebody with your capabilities can make it eazy. Contact me if interested: uberklipan@g.com

Being a startup employee is a burnout generally, for the most part most startups will fail so you're getting extreme hard work plus generally undermarket pay and possibly no benefits at all. As an employee for an establiished company you get nights and weekends off to ironically have time to bootstrap your own products and start having extra income streams. In a startup even if it succeeds your equity won't really be on par with what you can earn with your own bootstrapped product even if it takes years to find the right idea.

There is only one way you can get out of the grind, let go of the reward and just go and very seriously and scarily challenge yourself. I've made and lost a lot of money in my life.

If you want to meet people, you have to free up some time. Even if you don't want to meet people, you should free up some time; that you can't figure out how to solve this suggests you have no energy for imagination and creativity.

Since you're working 60-70 hours per week, your employer probably expects that. So change jobs, and possibly change cities. You don't have to have your current job situation, and it's hurting you.

300K is just a number. You would probably do better to reduce your expenses (more time would allow you to cook for yourself, by the way, which has numerous benefits). Apartment, car lease/payments, subscriptions to stuff you don't use (cable?), all of that should go. Small apartment, small reliable used car, get rid of HBO, etc.

Save as much money as you comfortably can: short term cash savings, medium term CDs and the like, long term index funds and the like, and max out your 401K or IRA.

When you have enough FY money, tell whoever's in front of you to FY (politely), and spend more time working on what you like in a job/activity that allows that.

Live a life that's enjoyable, and you'll find someone that enjoys that life too.

As someone in a similar age bracket as you (mid 20s vs 31) and making the money you want to be making, I have a few recommendations:

1. The scattered complaints you express seem to speak to a deep seated dissatisfaction with your life, your accomplishments and your personal identity. Without going so far as to make an armchair psychoanalysis on the internet, I'd suggest you learn what it is about the money that you think will make you happy. Does it evoke power for you? Control? Social success, or particularly success with the opposite sex? If you resolve your personal unhappiness now, you'll be happy regardless of your salary. If you don't, the money will not solve your problems. Whatever feels out of control in your life now, it is likely a personal hardship, not a financial one.

2. You don't need a master's degree. Unless you want to do something in research, or branch into an industry you're not already in, more education will not generally be a net win for increasing your salary.

3. You need to be willing to either learn a lucrative skill or get very close to revenue generation for a business. If you do that, you can make a convincing case for making the money you want. I understand that you feel burnt out, but realistically you have to be motivated to learn something new and invest in yourself in some way.

4. This might sound tone deaf, but once you make $300k in a year, it will cease to be "big bucks." Realize that you're making a significant amount of money already when compared with the median income of the United States. Pursuing money for its own sake when you are already doing well enough to live comfortably is not a sound plan for increasing your happiness. $300k is an arbitrary number. Think about what you want to do with that money.

What I find distressing in your account is not the 130K, which is a good amount of money, but the fact tat you are working 60 or 70 hours a week.

Anyone with your experience should have no problem whatsoever getting a job that pays the same, if not more, and doesn't ask you to work those extra 20 or 30 hours. That's a lot more leisure during the week, which might make you a lot happier. Not only that, but it gives you the time and energy to aim higher in pay. Definitely do this first.

It's true that you can more and also not work so many hours, but the secret there is not a masters degree, but the right contacts. A hidden secret in US software is that we have a hidden class system: Different employers that pay very differently from each other, and also tend to only hire from the same class. You can join the 'top' class early by going to the right school, and using that school to do a couple of the correct internships. That makes your resume register in the HR departments of the right companies.

Once you start your career in a place that pays less though, the one way upwards is networking.

So how do you network? Attend (and speak) at user groups attended by people that work in companies that pay better. Speak in conferences. Write blogs. You have an extra 20 hours a week that before you were using to getting zero extra money to dedicate to this! Building an online presence in 20 hours a week is not difficult.

At some point, someone from a company that pays better will see your value, and you'll get recruited upward. Repeat a few times, and you work for 300K.

If you have the presence, but fail at making the big contacts, there's also consulting. There's a lot of low pay consultants right out of school, but some of the very best paid people in the industry are experts at something, and also make 300k+.

I know this because I am also an immigrant who started making about 50K at a place that had a lot of weak programmers and a few underpaid jewels, and some of us did a long climb to the top together: It took a lot of work, but now I am making great money working on a good product, surrounded by those MIT and Stanford graduates that just had a very easy road just for going to the right school.

The road isn't easy, but it's possible as long as you really have the time to dedicate to it. And that's why you really have to quit that job that takes 60+ hours a week.

I used to be a recruiter, and when I did contingency recruitment, I was making the kind of money you're talking about wanting to make. I also was tired, and burned out all the time, which sucked, because I didn't like the work that made me tired.

Now I'm a developer, and I also work a lot. I'm often tired, but I love development, even when I'm tired. I'm slowly figuring out how to be less tired, and it's a lot easier to figure out when I like the rest of what I'm doing.

A couple tips here:

- if you're tired all the time, it's going to be hard to think effectively about making positive changes. I don't have any specific guidance more specific than "don't forget to take care of yourself, because no one can sleep away your exhaustion for you".

- If you want to make the big bucks, you have to be what my boss calls a force multiplier [1]. Generally speaking, a force multiple is (in theory) someone who gives you more bang for your buck. A simple example would be hiring someone gets 4x more done for 2x the price, or does 1X of work in 25% of the time is takes a typical 1X-er.

I'm not sure if I have anything else to offer you without more information. What I can say is that if you learn to accept the reality of your situation, and don't let negative feelings weigh you down, it'll be easier to take steps towards the life you think you want.

You could always try recruiting :) If you're any good at it, you can make a killing. I know a good recruiter, and I'm sure he'd be happy to speak with you, if you'd like to explore that option. He has all the first world problems that come with making boatloads of money.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication

> no one can sleep away your exhaustion for you.

This is a really eloquent reminder.

I recomend the first change you make is to consider working remotely:

https://weworkremotely.com/

This will give you a great salary and a lot of freedom which you can use to start exploring other aspects of life that are more fulfilling.

Yes. I switched to remote-only in 2006 and never looked back. Like the submitter, I don't live in SV (small-town Canada) and I don't touch front-end work, but I do work for a SV BigCo. So while my salary isn't much more than his, it goes a lot further. I think that's one of the secrets to an effective, if not absolute, high salary.

Also, you get control of your time. Because I have no commute, I can start at say 7 am, take time during the day to work out in my home gym, then finish up around dinner. My evenings are always free.

In summary, Mr. Submitter:

1. Land remote work.

2. Live somewhere cheap.

Now you have more money and more time.

Your woman problem will fix itself when you stop caring. Keep lifting heavy, find humour where you can and buy some decent clothes.

Are you very high up in the SV BigCo? The only people I hear of working remotely at these big companies are people important enough that they can live wherever they want (for example Kent Beck at FB who lives in Oregon on a farm)

First ask yourself why do you want to make $300k/year. I had that opportunity once, but upon rapidly introspecting on what I wanted during the interview, I decided that I valued my time/comfortableness much more than $350k-400k.

If you already know what you want and it is indeed to make big bucks, then carve out time to study to get to the place where you are qualified. Then demonstrate the ability, i.e. open source, work, etc. Relentlessly iterate on becoming more efficient at all areas you fall short in.

The secret to professional success isn't really secret - smart & hard work gets you there.

You probably think that making 300k per year will help you find happiness or woman of your dreams, unfortunately this will probably not happen unless you want her to love your money. You think that making 300k suddenly will make you happy? That making 300k = less work? After a while you will come here and write that you need 600k and:

"All I do is get up, go to the work, go to gym, work again and sleep. No wonder that I am lifelong single person and despite being in shape no woman has shown interest in me or agreed to date me."

You see where the problem is ?

I suggest reading Letters from a Stoic.

> "It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."

$130k is big money by the standards of many people in the United States...

Totally made this up, but this served me well: Imagine your happiness balancing on three pillars - work, health and love. In your case, making good money and being in shape probably got the first two pillars covered.

Now, you might want to install a third pillar instead of trying to make the first one bigger in order to provide your happiness with stability - even if that means taking material off the others :)

Go grab some self help books. If you don't know where to look, start with something generic like https://www.amazon.com/New-Earth-Awakening-Purpose-Selection...

Here is exactly what I tell people like you. In life we're all chasing for the same things. The only difference between the top %1 and the rest is the order of priority.

You, like %99 of the people are looking for 1. Job Security, 2. Comfort, 3. Becoming Rich

The other %1 go like that: 1. Becoming rich, 2. Comfort, 3. Security. It's all about focusing on what you want in life while getting rid of the extras...

Making a priority of becoming rich isn't enough. People who put "becoming rich" above anything else risk corruption.

You need to think about it more deeply. The perfect "achievable" life is to go to college, get a degree, secure a nice job, live a comfortable life, buy a car and a house for your family. If you made this choice like %99 of the people, then you're probably getting into debt. College tuition, car loan, mortgage, bills, etc. You probably have a 9 to 5 job because you need to pay for all this stuff every month. You're on life support and your paycheck keeps you alive. It sounds pretty dramatic and maybe you can still travel once in a while, buy some random stuff... But here is the trick - you're probably dreaming about becoming rich. You're probably working on a side project after work that will magically save you from all this mess. You're using what ever time and energy you have left during the week in order to focus on your dream. It's your main priority but you don't have enough resources to make it happen because you have other responsibilities - paying your bills.

That's what it really means. Look at successful business people like Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Jobs, etc. The sooner you work on becoming rich, the better. Don't get trap into security and comfort. Focus on your main priority.

Does it make sense?

>What did you do to get out of rust and how did you do it?

By understanding that "making big bucks" involves a fair share of luck. By not defining my life by my career or money, but instead valuing time.

I mean, I'm still working on it to. But that's what I'm trying to do.

Downsizing is easier. Buying a new car isn't required it's peer pressure. Living on 2k a month is possible and not so difficult. It opens up many more possibilities for professional happiness.

I don't think you are grinding. You have time to go to the gym :) Pun aside, you should start enjoying life, socialize and forget about getting big bucks. If you are happy then who cares.

Success != contentedness, which seems to be your underlying goal.

Realistically, I believe you will have to start your own business to achieve the level of success you want. The "system" is just not designed to get people to high levels of financial success by "grinding" working for someone else. The only real way to do that is to live well below your means, and invest your surplus income very wisely over a long period of time. But honestly, does that sound fun?

The problem with the "start your own business route" is that it's not easy. And success, while extremely possible is not guaranteed. OTOH, the nice thing about the business world is that you can try over and over again, and - as the old saying goes - "you only have to be right once."

I guess there are some people who achieve financial independence solely through trading (currency|commodities|stocks|derivatives|etc), but I feel like most of the stories you hear of wild success doing that are apocryphal stories, or - at the very least - impossible to replicate.

One other thought is to go into sales. The thing about sales is that you are basically in control of how much you earn (to a point). The harder you work, and the better you get at selling, the more money you can make. Sell enterprise software for Oracle or IBM or somebody, I am pretty sure some of those guys / gals are pulling down some serious dosh.

I'll also throw in a plug for watching Grant Cardone's videos on Youtube. He's a veritable fountain of advice on business/life/success.

As far as the thing with women goes... others have already said it, but it's mainly just about confidence. And it's also something of a numbers game. Honestly, I'd say jump into the PUA community for a while... not with the goal of becoming "a PUA", but just to reset some of your current beliefs about dating and women. Doing approaches using canned routines and what-not and having even limited success, can go a long way towards improving your confidence and help you interact with women in a way that is more productive. Just don't get overly caught up in that world.

Edit:

Let me add this: the very first thing you need to do is quit your current job. Working 60/70 hours a week and doing extensive travel is bullshit, especially for only $130K. You should easily be able to make that with a job with no travel, working 40 hours a week. Make that your first step. That frees up 20/30 hours a week that you can then use to advance yourself towards YOUR goals, instead of working to make the owners of your current employer rich. If you have enough savings, quit on Monday. If not, start contacting recruiters and trawling through job boards first thing Monday morning (or better yet, right freaking now).

TL;DR: Money will not make you happy, lifestyle will.

I was exactly like you - work, exercise, sleep, repeat. In a big dirty city. Got so fucking sick of it.

Solution:

1) Work remotely. That, by far, was the best decision in my life. I didn't have to sacrifice a penny. I just told my employer I'm moving to a tropical island, and they agreed to continue my employment. From then on it was just coding and once in a while meetings over the phone. No more boring daily standups. No more daily dumb meetings that waste hours of everyone's time. Just make sure you produce quality work.

2) Stop working altogether. I was making good money for years, in the $200-250K range, and I never spent it on stupid shit like expensive cars or expensive restaurants. I saved up enough, and I haven't worked in two years as of today. Well, I haven't been employed for two years, I work on my own projects that I enjoy. If you live frugally, $100K will last you 5-7 years in a cheap area, or even more if you move to Asia.

The problem is what happens when that money runs out? It will be very hard to get back in the tech job market. Things move so fast you will be obsolete in 2 years.

I have more time to try new tech than when I was employed. And 2 years is ridiculous - maybe in the javascript world, but not in the rest of IT.

I've never allowed myself to believe this. I've taken 1-2 years off 3 separate times during my career. It never took me more than a month to get back in - great jobs at top companies each time. Good programmers are still in demand, and not every company seeks to hire to a specific tech stack.

Step 1 to ending your singleness: STOP WORKING SO DAMN MUCH. Seriously. You said it yourself, you don't have time for anything else. Stop giving your employer so much free work. Take your time back, and use that extra 20 to 30 hours for YOU, not to make some other asshole rich. Take up a new hobby or something, and get out and meet people.

This goes for everyone else, too. Don't feel you have to give your employer so many free hours. The work will still be there in the morning. No one is going to die because you decided to work normal hours.

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