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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

I know a few people who left careers as software engineers to go to grad school in a different field, some to a humanities field.

It's easier to escape computer work than most fields -- computer workers tend to have relatively high salaries and ought to be able to survive the transition period if they saved enough money.

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This. A dream of mine is to study developmental economics, go back to my birth country and join an NGO.

But how.

Step 1 is usually, reduce your expenses. When people say they can’t do something like that, it’s usually an economic decision. But, plenty of people live on the lesser salary. We all get used to the higher salary and rachet up spending accordingly. Otherwise, living paycheck to paycheck would only happen for a narrow slice of the country.

I’m not a minimalist, but it seems to me that the solution for many problems starts with “spend less”. We just don’t want to hear it. I know I don’t.

Read about Stoicism. There's a quote - which is apt considering it's nearly Christmas - about what to give someone as a gift. I can't recall it exactly but goes along the lines of, "Don't add to a person's possessions, but rather free them of their desires."

The money working for NGOs isn’t as good in most situations. But there is a lot of opportunity to be entrepreneurial in this context. Software will eat the world in these countries too. One starting point that may be interesting is: https://vc4a.com

Read about the two routes.

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

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