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Comment by all_blue_chucks | Hacker News Reader

Engineering talent is in such high demand, the only reason anyone would work a death march is masochism. I mean, we get paid 5x the average US salary. We make enough to retire in our thirties. Working stupid hours in this environment is a choice.

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Engineers are retiring in their 30s? I can honestly say that I have never met a person that did this. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. What's the secret?

e: engineers, not people in general.

https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ (See sidebar for lots of links)

30s is a bit aggressive, tho ;)

The comment I replied to made it sound like engineers are commonly retiring in their 30s. I have never seen an example of that happening personally.

Yup. GP is definitely exaggerating how likely it is, although his larger point that in this era, working in the game industry is an explicit choice, because there lots of other options out there for devs, that point still stands IMHO!

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

It's not common but the math behind it is solid. You just have to not live like most other people do.

Simply put, if you save half of your take home, your passive income will approach your living expenses in roughly 10-15 years. And that even with a conservative draw of 3%, you can start to live off that money without touching your principle. There are a lot of assumptions about inflation and not getting stuck in a long bear market, but it's still a fairly solid way to look at how our spending keeps us tied to our work. The really big takeaway from MMM (who lately has been seeming more and more out of touch sadly), is that every dollar you remove from your budget works double, in that it helps you grow savings, but also decreases the amount of costs interest you need to live on.

Compound interest is something that more people should really understand.

Reread. I said "we make enough to" do so. If you live like an average person and invest the rest, you absolutely can retire in your thirties.

My point is that we are one of the few professions where there is NO reason to work ourselves to death. We are in a position to insist on good working conditions or to stop working entirely IF we so choose to do so.

That the case broadly in tech but in gamedev not crunching gets you marked as not a team player and eventually pointed to the door.

Which door? The one with more money and less hours?

If you work in a big tech tech company and let the RSUs actually vest with a bit if financial frugality and saving, then you could. This is, of course, assuming that you don't intent to stay in an area of high cost of living.

The only reason to live in a place with a high cost of living is if you have a high income job nearby. Literally the entire rest of world is left to you in perpetuity if you saving up $1-2MM.

I'm pretty close. Invest well and create passive income/royalties.

You would be shocked at the passive income you can have in your 30s if you actually get to keep some of the stuff you build.

¿Where is this magical world where you study up to your twenties and retire at your 30s?

That guy is not an engineer, judging by his credits[1]. I strongly doubt producers and QA testers (it's not some fancy script-writing SDET, it's a "play the game in different ways and try to find bugs" tester) are in such a high demand as to demand no overtime (which they are paid for, btw).

[1] http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,97...

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