[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28785222 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28786321
I love DIY so I've used that time to refurbish two apartments and catch up on gold rush. This time it's been 8 months and I'm just working on a side project.
By now I'm not enjoying that much anymore. It's been too long and I start to miss making part of the bunch. I'm also not fully using my time anymore, partially because in the end my wife is still working as well as my friends. I believe there's a limit to happiness when you do things on your own and don't share. At least I'm realizing that. I guess it's time to go back!
Also I wonder if I'll still be able to do this when I'm in my 40s or 50s. My parents always taught me it gets tougher to find a job as you get older. Obviously someone that's good will always find, but I wonder in general how aging will apply to tech.
Edit: As a follow up thought and this is what I've realized, the weekends are a pretty good picture of how we'd behave at retirement. If we are lazy on weekends, we'll be lazy afterwards. If we keep ourselves busy in the weekends with non work stuff, we'll probably be the same after retirement.
Interesting, thanks for the insight. I've also heard that, your teenage hobbies are another source of where you might find your passion in retirement. What did you do for fun as a teenager, and how does that compare to what you do during your breaks?
My DIY face then went into sleep mode for many years and came back when I started taking breaks from work.
What you said might be spot on.
I think you have that the wrong way around. That should be:
> "Thanks" to modern distractions like binge watching and doom scrolling people lose their creativity and drive to do anything but further please their addictions.
(somewhat /s)
I recently found the adventure riding community and built up a Husky 701 for multi-day (hopefully multi-week in the future) on/off road trips. It’s not unlike a small open source project but more physically active. I’m early 40s now and plan to explore on a bike into my 60s.
I also recently bought a ranch in Colorado. This isn’t from my childhood but turned out to hit all the right notes for me. Ranchin’ is almost impossible to make a profit at but I’ve met a bunch of people now who can’t stop doing it and I understand why. It’s a never ending stream of natural projects, big and small, that engage every part of you mentally and physically. Again here, not unlike a (larger) software project.
I went into tech because I thought I liked hacking, turns out I just like work, especially on systems you can iterate on every day and see improvement.
As for tech, I haven’t written a line of code in years and rarely use the internet except for practical things like maps and basic information. I still browse HN occasionally. Not sure why as there’s not a lot of content relevant to my current interests. It still has a little of whatever I loved about tech in the 2000-2015 era, which seems entirely gone from the wider internet now.
Getting a paycheck means surrendering your ability to wake up and live your life based completely on your own internal clock, and it can be a big drain on your mental health and physical well being. There are ways of charging your battery, but it's not always possible without risk and/or sacrifice if you weren't born rich or somehow otherwise financially lucky.
Health is wealth too though... We're usually born with a "glass full of water" that represents our health - mental and physical health. Over time we drink from that glass until it's gone... Once you burn out, you're toast. It's important to always be cognizant of where your water supply is, and to try to stop letting people drink from your glass before it completely runs dry... If you're lucky, you'll turn your water into a nice vintage wine.
Best case you keep your work habits and can continue working on your hobbies like you did work previously, but worst case it will all look like those weekends.
Edit: A side note being, between the changes to work culture and me gaining the experience to be more desirable to work places, I’ve managed to move to a more flexible remote position that gives me a fair bit of control over my day to day. This has definitely increased my ability to be productive in my off time, due to the lowered stress on my general energy levels.
I think this depends on how one’s current job is affecting them.
If you’re near burnout or just work in a very stressful environment, the weekends are more about recovery from the week and might not be a good predictor of future choices when not stressed/burnt out.
Basing this comment mostly on personal experience since I’ve had both productive weekends and lazy/lost weekends and it generally depends on how the current job is going.
This resonates a lot. My partner is a startup founder, and fairly often their weekend is life maintenance and recovery because their work week allows nothing else. I spend much more time on side projects, but on some weeks I can tell on Friday that it’s not going to be a productive weekend by any standard except self care.
- Recovery
- Steady state
I think understanding that both exist is important so as not to fall into negative patterns of thinking like "I'm just wasting my time away" vs. "I'm giving my system a very needed break".
But I also get 1% lazier every day, and after 6 months it seems like I eat breakfast, and then the day is over.
There's also this time I had a chat with my manager and peers about whether or not to hire this guy. We wanted to hire him, but we had a feeling he wouldn't stay long with us. He was very entrepreneurial. The conclusion straight away was "it's fine, if he stays with us just 1 year, we already benefit from it". I'm not saying I'm this guy, but it sounds acceptable nowadays.
If I had a valuable employee that could leave us for 2-6 months a year (without pay), without us having support issues from the absence, I wouldn’t much mind it, and if I don’t mind then HR would never get involved. My employees work for me, not for our HR department. The only time HR processes are forced upon me is in hiring situations, the yearly employee development plan review meeting or if someone logs a serious complaint, like bullying or sexual harassment, and, that’s not because of HR, it’s because the four CEOs have decided those are the organisation wise processes to follow.
If you mean hiring processes, nobody really cares about absence periods in my experience. Sure you’ll be asked, but it’s not like it’s really relevant in most cases. It’s like hiring a young woman around 30 with no children (I work in the public sector where there are fairly good maternity leave plans), you know there is a pretty big chance they’ll have one or two kids while working for you, but if they are good, then you’ll still want them.
Another myth I see spread all the time. HR departments don't care about this. If they ask, it's only because someone told them it's a thing to be concerned about, and they're parroting what they heard. Make something up if you really feel like you need to address it and are afraid to tell them to fuck off. It's a stupid question that doesn't come from any legitimate business concern. In my 30+ year career, I was asked about a brief gap between jobs only one time, and that was decades ago. If a place actually cares about this, it's a good sign that you should find a job somewhere better. If you're really concerned, just leave the dates off your resume entirely, or at least leave the months off. Who cares about this stuff?
I work for 2-3 years and take anywhere from 6-18 months off in between jobs. I'm pushing 50 and it hasn't been a problem.
I hear the ageism claim all the time, but I've seen no evidence of it whatsoever. I have no problem finding a job when I put myself on the market, usually within a few weeks at most. Many of the people I work with are in their 40s and 50s. I've never heard or seen any age discrimination.
I occasionally run into people in their 50s who haven't learned anything new in decades, but they're always working. Sometimes they express fear that they won't be able to find a new job. In all these cases, it's warranted, but also deserved. Regardless of your age, if you're not keeping up with the technology trends, you don't belong in the game. You don't need to chase the latest flavor, but if you're a software engineer, you'd better keep up with at least some modern tech stacks. That applies regardless of age.
It went really well for him for about 30 years, and then he started to decline into depression. I don't think it was directly related to being retired.
He built a barbecue out of cinder blocks, then rebuilt it out of bricks. He learned to knot in order to make hammocks. He took up painting with acrylics -- I wouldn't say he ever became good at it, but he liked it and that's the point. The same for charcoal -- but he didn't like the mess, so he dropped it quickly.
He took up teaching advanced math to the local elementary school kids. He taught himself programming in BASIC and wrote math games and text adventures about our neighborhood.
He watched a lot of movies, read a lot of books, and kept the house on a schedule. He went from being an adequate cook to a reasonably good one.
He built relationships with the neighbors and went for a walk twice a day when the weather was adequate.
That sounds fascinating. Are those available online somewhere? I absolutely love text adventures, would love to try it out.
I can relay his three best pieces of advice, though, all of which he related to me around the time I went to college.
1. Don't take a course where the professor wrote the book. If they knew any way to explain the material, they put it in the book, and won't be able to help you more than that.
2. People get excited about all sorts of things, and if you're reasonably friendly and available they will invite you to everything. That's not bad in itself, but you need to be selective about what you go to, or else you'll find that you never did the things that you needed to do, just the ones that you wanted to do.
3. There are lots of reversible mistakes, and others that are disastrous to try to recover from. Try to recognize your mistakes and back out of them before you hit the disaster point. Marriage is easily but painfully reversible until you have kids; then it's a disaster.
I hope your dad feels better soon.
I worked a ho-hum programming job for nearly 20 years (yes, just the one), feeling miserable for at least the last 3. There was no "cashing out", though when the company sold to private investors I got something like an extra 75% of a year of pay. It wasn't that money, but saving (index fund investing) all along that would have let me say "to heck with it, I can retire today" (albeit with a slightly reduced standard of living).
Instead, I waited until something part time & much more fulfilling came my way. Now I get to work on open source all day, or as little as I want, and I get paid for a substantial chunk of it. To my surprise, working 50-60% as long each week not only means I don't have to do dip into investments, but I can still add to my investments.
Now, the timing of this change was not great, because 5 months later COVID hit, so the travel aspects of my new life haven't materialized in the way I thought they would. When I start travelling as freely as I thought I would when I left traditional work in late 2019, that's when I hope to truly feel semi-retired.
When will I fully retire? Not while I can get paid to work on open source software, largely on my own terms. When will I stop working on open source? Hopefully not anytime soon.
Any tips on finding "something part time & much more fulfilling"? Did you just wait for something to find you, did you actively search out opportunities..?
So it feels like there was a big element of luck, but also I feel that having a history of open source work visible on github, as well as creating personal connections in the open source world, helped it happen for me.
There aren't a whole lot of Adafruits out there, where you're shipping new hardware products weekly, most of them with open source drivers.
technically i didnt really quit working. but rather i am free to pursue what i want to do. for example im going to build my own house. and grow and sell organic food. i want to develop technology to improve farming. i enjoy designing and building things in all sorts of mediums. i like working, but i have an entrepreneurial spirit. and in order to feel fulfilled i have to pursue my own ventures.
Makes it easy for people like me to buy your stuff. Anyways, good luck!
How did you get into building polebarns? And then framing houses? Who did you convince to take you on? Did you have prior experience?
for the framing job i walked up to a framing crew and asked if they needed a guy. they did and so i got hired. i just convinced the boss. the place where i moved to has lots of small crews and lots of home building going on right now.
previous relevant experience includes woodworking and machining. i also watched a fair amount of youtube before and during. ability to do fractional math and read a tape. ability to read and produce mechanical drawings helped.
really it was just being interested in the field and convincing someone i was serious enough about it. and i followed through everyday.
I've sort of conned myself into thinking I could start some solo projects on my own in the past 6 months, but it just hasn't happened due to classes and a myriad of distractions. Recently I've been beating myself up a bit for it, but I know that isn't productive. Once I solve a few ongoing projects in my life and I get things moving a bit faster for the farm I'll start keeping to a strict schedule of farming from 6-9am, then going to my coworkspace and code until maybe 3pm, then work out, then either socialize/read or go to a local hackerspace and work on side-projects.
Medium/long term it's important to me to not just live off of my savings and to generate enough value (not off investments) to maintain my quality of life.
Curious what this involves for you. Are you in an urban, rural, exurb, etc area? What are you growing?
at the same time. it is a lot of work, you should try it before you just jump in. ive had suburban gardens for years. so i kinda know what to expect.
Humans are built for problem solving and the struggle and the adventure of challenge. I think we need it like we need food, water, sleep, etc.
I quit my job as a scientist and rolled over all my retirement into Bitcoin a few years ago. That has gone well. I started a business of growing medical marijuana and I love that. That has gone well too. Incredible amounts of work and 12 hour days and struggles, especially at first, but I love the challenge of trying to grow the best in the world and in my area. I will probably be able to quit if I wanted to soon. But I can’t imagine what I would do. I want to travel but I know that won’t last. I’ll probably just scale back my weed operation some but still concentrate on chasing the dragon of growing the best weed. I love it that much. I should also add that I don't even use marijuana. I just love plants and always have.
At least with money in traditional index fund investments, entire economies have to collapse before my money goes away, and if there's one thing I learned about the stock market, is that it can be irrational (yet irrationally consistent!) far longer than I expect it can be.
https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/UuzUBUTa-Bitcoin-4-...
The end of the cycle is this December and I will sell and diversify my portfolio in case crypto fails completely. I will buy back in crypto after a year with a significant portion of my portfolio though. I don’t see crypto going away ever. I see the next decade being the decade of hard money like crypto and gold after the unprecedented money printing decade we just experienced.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
I think you should be more worried about your stock portfolio crashing. I won’t be in equities again until I see a significant reversion to the mean. They were overextended a few years ago, now we need a new word for what they are haha.
https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/buffett-indica...
https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-re...
Doesn't the entire viability of bitcoin as a currency depend on miners mining?
I think that's only true for some people. More generally we need to feel useful. For many people (women especially) that means caring for people, making sure they are well fed, warm etc. not problem solving or adventure.
Another third of my time is spent pursuing paragliding. It’s something I found interesting before, but I just never had the flexibility in my life to take more than a week off work. Now I can live in Colombia for a month at a time, both a great environment and change of pace, and a fantastic way to learn.
The rest of my time I work on a little mini startup. It’s different than what I was doing before because it’s decidedly ‘lifestyle’. No VC money. Just building something I find interesting with people I like. If I don’t want to do something, or I don’t have the time, I simply say that! It’s all the fun of building a product and bringing it to the market with a world less stress.
The most important thing to know is: I didn’t plan any of this. I was so burnt out that thinking of anything I wanted to do was challenging. But after six months of cranking on cars and other mundane projects the world opened in front of me, and I realized all those things I loved doing as a child are still with me.
I had been so defined by work for my entire life that I didn't really know who I was outside of the crunch and the office. I don't miss the office or work but do miss the people. I am not from a wealthy background, the majority of my family and friends find it very strange and it can be a bit awquard in conversation. When I feel ashamed I browse job postings / linkedin, but am coming to realise that it was sad how much self worth I gained from having other people think I was successful or smart.
I've learnt that staying busy is paramont to my health, I've started a small bussiness to keep me busy doing one of my passions, grow a lot of my own food and walk a lot. Sometimes I miss the massive engineering challenges working with a team, I could see myself taking a job for that alone. My life doesn't have a lot of meaning right now, sometimes I dream that some great purpose or mission will be thrust on me. To be honest I feel a bit adrift!
On my days off I catch up on chores. I take care of my body by going to the gym, yoga studio, boxing gym, or ride my bike. I spend time with friends if they are available, which is tricky because I'm only off every other weekend. I bake sourdough bread and seek perfection in extracting the perfect cup of espresso. I read HN.
I often think what I would be doing if I met your criteria for answering this questions and didn't have to work the other 3-4 days of my week, and I think the answer would be to look for meaningful work. There is a fulfillment or sense of purpose in work that doesn't come to me in the prolonged absence of it, I don't define myself by it, but as Marcus Aurelius said in his Meditations:
“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”
So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”
Sorry to nitpick, but spiders build the web and then cowardly hide and wait till a victim gets caught and is completely helpless. Not really a model of moral virtue.
Strangely, I get up earlier as there's no dread of the corporate environment.
I have standing time with friends and family: Depending on the season, Weekly golf, lunch, tennis. Daily walks with my spouse.
Volunteer efforts provide some opportunities to give, feel internal and external appreciation and a sense of adding value to others.
Plenty of time for reading, learning, experimenting and puzzle solving. There are so many resources to learn about new topics and try things.
When I hear people express fear of being bored after their career, I have to pick my jaw off the floor. I can't imagine there has been a time with more information freely available.
It has been a very difficult transition for me. I have had 3 or 4 years of borderline depression despite having more money than god :-)
The loss of structure, status, social interaction, goals hits hard.
The problem is, I don’t want a job and probably lack the motivation to do another business.
I need to build hobbies and friends outside of a work context, I know.
My advice to people is to be careful what you wish for!
It's work, sure, but all you really have to do is hire the right person to lead the effort (and build a team under them) while you call the bigger shots. It only requires as much energy as you want to put in.
It's enabled me to help homeschool our 8 kids over the years (now all flown; youngest just started college) and travel quite a bit with the kids to various music and dance camps around the world, etc. Plus timber framing with sons, wood-fired pizza making, etc, etc.
Don't know if I'll ever formally retire, but could see doing a lot more travel visiting kids and grandkids around the country, and doing more woodworking/timber framing.
I didn't have anything planned, which was a huge mistake on my part. Long story [0] short, I was surviving on my earnings from the job for more than 4 years before writing ebooks got me back on track.
I'd say it has been tough going. But even now I can't imagine going back to work.
[0] https://learnbyexample.github.io/my-book-writing-experience/
So to each his own!
I started working in 1987, got burnt out in a couple of startups (but did well financially), went half-time in 2003 until last year (with a break for a PhD in between), and am now officially retired.
It is wonderful having the leverage to do whatever I feel like doing, or not committing to a long-term project. The more I act pricey, the more I seem to attract 'em!
I used to miss the camaraderie of office mates, but live interaction is gone anyway in these covid times. All days are weekends; my social calendar is dictated by others' schedules! We moved close to our aging parents and in-laws to be with them in their dotage, which has its pluses and some minuses, but no regrets at all on that count, for we must afford them some of the affection and happiness that they showered on us when we were yay high.
I code for fun, have done a bunch of ML courses and am now learning statistics in earnest. I am learning (Indian) music from two separate teachers, and cook a fair bit. 'Sall good!
I just started an 8 week sabbatical after 16ish years in startups. Also self-taught I’ve had a copy of SICP on my shelf that I’ve been meaning to get to.
With a parent who has a PhD in RF engineering I’ve always wondered how it would have turned out if I’d gone the academic route instead of dropping out of high school to chase being a founder.
Stepping away allowed me to completely reprioritize what mattered to me and what I wanted out of life. I rekindled old friendships and love interests and eventually met my wife. I realized I'd never actually been truly happy before on a consistent basis, and learned what life is actually all about. That money and career success are simply means to an end of living well and loving others.
I feel for people that are always trapped in survival mode because you get stuck in these ruts that become completely impossible to see out of. You end up so shortsighted and focusing on something that doesn't really matter in the end. But life is just a game that's meant to be played for the enjoyment of it. There's no prize at the end, and your score doesn't matter.
I went from only having visited a few countries briefly to having seen quite a lot of around 70 countries. I did lots of mountaineering, skiing, diving, and tried my hand at quite a few other sports. I went to a bunch of tech conferences all over Europe and Asia, just for fun. I flew so much that I was in the air for over 2% of my total hours a couple of years.
After a few years of that I slowed down the travel some, and by luck I had just signed a year lease for a beautiful home overlooking the sea in a country I kept coming back to just a couple of months before the pandemic shut down air travel.
Since then I have been taking up the hands-on hobbies that I thought looked fun and just never had enough time/space/funds for when I was working. I had a daughter with my partner, and am incredibly glad for the joyous little being I'm starting to raise. I have even recently gotten back into doing some software engineering for fun.
About a decade ago I had an idea for something that felt too big to be what got me setup to pursue what I wanted early on. The project was too complex, too long-term, and there was too little existing ecosystem to tap into. In the intervening years the ecosystem has started to come together and I've managed to strike well enough to have my freedom elsewhere, so I'm looking at getting back to being a founder within a couple of years.
The days do feel longer but not in a bad way. There is plenty to do even when doing nothing. I exercise regularly, eat healthier and my overall health is a lot better now. I have started traveling a bit which I expect will increase once Covid situation improves across the world.
There is a ton of books I would love to read but so far I have not found time for it.
Before quitting (and before COVID), I was working remotely and living out of my backpack in places all around the world. I lived in Central America for a few months and learned Spanish to a conversational level. I experienced what it's like to live in a conflict zone in the Middle East. I couchsurfed in strangers houses in lots of countries and places off the beaten path and got a glimpse into many very different lives. I took time off to do multi-week hiking trips in high mountains and wilderness areas, often solo. I did some workaways housesitting, petsitting, helping out with construction and/or gardening.
Now that I no longer have to work, I'm doing more of that plus spending more time learning things (languages, dancing, etc.), getting more fit, volunteering with youth, and so on. I'm hoping find a more impactful way to help people suffering from things I've suffered with in the past, we'll see what I end up doing on that front beyond volunteering.
Today so far: Mostly fundraising for an Olympiad (get in touch!), half an hour of open source work. Cutting weight for the next ~7 weeks, so aiming for 2 hours exercise/day. Weather isn't great, so did a few sets in my home gym, and spent the remainder of my time on Beat Saber (VR).
As for plans for later:
I haven't done enough Open Source today, I should do some testing and get a PR in. Might shelve it for tomorrow.
I'm working on a bilingual textual corpus for my local language with a few friends (colleagues?) (it's an uncommon revived language, and it's a reasonable goal to digitize every known work/manuscript which is out of copyright).
I'm prepping a .djvu of a book to upload to Wikisource for safekeeping. I've got a small backlog of texts that need a bit of proofreading which I'd like to clear. Long-term plans might involve getting the book republished (for fun, rather than for profit).
Afterwards? It's Friday night, probably off to the pub with friends for a pint.
I've chosen flexibility instead of money. I can meet friends whenever they're free. I'm living a purposeful life, and I'm truly content. Financially: it's a lifestyle hit, but that's an acceptable tradeoff for all the above, and I expect the income will continue to increase.
I'm unmarried... spent most of my younger life driven to make money and buy a house. It's been the best decision for me to buy a house when I'm working because of the tax deductions. That being said I've always wanted to be a musician, and an independent thinker. Working for others served to pay bills, but also served to burn valuable years off of my life... Because I'm not married and have no kids, I'm able though to be a bit less cautious, and have taken time off of work in small cycles (3-6 months at a time).
I have always planned a point of retirement, but I'm not there because it's impossible to know how good my savings need to be, and how the economy will go into the future, and I don't want to have to go back to working, after years off, when I'm much older in a future where jobs may not be available to someone like me.
I have no shortage of things to do in retirement, but most of it depends on being well funded, and in today's world, financial, time without income, and investment risks are much scarier than it used to be. But the truth has always been the same - No risk, no reward.
A friend cashed out mid 40s but is the kind of person who doesn't stop. Did real estate, baking, landscape, had a kid, seems up for anything and quite content.
A another is wealthy enough to stop working at anytime but doesn't want to retire.
I slowly slid into retirement in mid 30s. Started out great. I sometimes work part-time and program for fun a bit. But when kid #2 and #3 came it was very difficult for me. Being retired was the saving grace that made it work at all. Now things are slowly getting better.
For me a normal day is 4-5 hours for kids, 1-2 hours walking/biking, 2-3 hours reading/programming/working. Then there is always something (doc appt, car repair, house stuff) in there somewhere.
Best part is the flexibility to do things during weekdays. Meet with friend/family for lunch, random escape room, errands.
Worst part is not having the camaraderie of good coworkers working together. I had one job that was great in that respect and gave me lasting friends. Other jobs not at all.
Financial freedom is amazing but everyone handles it differently. Best advice I have is if retirement is an option see if you can try it for 3-12 months.
I'm no longer young and I have family, so simply packing my bags and touring the world is out. Can't take my kids for a 1y world tour either, the school system doesn't allow it. Going on expeditions would saddle my wife with the full child care, something I dare not ask. Just staying at home for the kids would probably get boring.
I did like to code, but 10y in enterprise have cooled me to it somewhat and I feel my age. Just joining some OSS project to kill time isn't that great either if you just dropped your coding job.
I don't really know how to socialize and have no (next to no) friends. And those that I have, I tend to neglect for some reason.
I have some ADHD traits and the older I get, the harder I find it to focus for longer times or concentrate deeply enough to really solve challenging problems, so I doubt I'll start 3D-printing the next drone generation or rebuild a vintage car or something.
It's a weird problem to have, but I feel like not retiring so I don't bore myself to death.
* solo board gaming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUqB2AKAexw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpyeWbbdssY
* paul schelnutt dancing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Zbs56AKYs
* ecstatic dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY41coxPKuY&t=70s
I could do all that, it's just that nothing "clicks" in the sense that I really want to do it, instead of doing it to pass time.
That sounds like depression and maybe it is, but I feel it's got more to do with the "I have achieved all I wanted in life, wife, kids, wealth, whoops, now what?" thing. When I was younger, every item of that list seemed like a challenge, and now that they are behind me, I realize I never planned for it.
Also when I was younger, I was just day dreaming when I wasn't busy and I was content. Now that I feel that I only have a couple of decades left, I feel the need to no longer waste my time. That kinda clashes with the lack of ambition.
Work helps in the sense that I have social interaction outside the family and some problems to solve, but I also feel I am just papering over a void.
or the buddhist notion not to waste time https://tricycle.org/magazine/how-not-waste-time/
I wouldn't suggest anyone else try this.
Retirement is great and you shouldn't let anyone talk you out of it. The guys at the top of the pyramid aren't working very hard, so why should you?
To quote Kurt Vonnegut: "I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
about 750,000 lines of codes in, 3/4th for testing.
Do something for others. Do stuff for yourself too, that's fine, but don't look inward only. Be a good human to others, too.
I'm sorry to say this, but this is one of the saddest things a person can say in my opinion. You can definitely become your job, but I can't see myself ever wanting something like that.
I hope you don’t take it personally, because it’s not intended as such, but this is sad.
I know, first-world problems.
A lot of the posts in here are based on a singular view and it worries me.
Only some of us are very fortunate to be in a position where we can simply quit our job or pivot to a new way of life, but the majority of people in the world cannot do that and survive well. We should never forget the need to be able to consider walking in the shoes of others.
But to each their own, my perspective is that I don't want to have work-related regrets (ideally no regrets at all) when dying, and me being my job would definitely be #1 or #2 on such a list.
I would change it to "you are what you can", which expands possibilities up to the sky (with paragliding, sky is included)
> you have Stockholm syndrome, snap out of it
Very rude.
If I retired I'd be able to learn anything I want - but If I wanted to tackle the challenges I have fun tackling, state-of-the-art and involving some nifty constraints and difficulties... I'd need whole teams around me, and a large infrastructure comparable to a multinational company.
That's what I get now - working. If I retired, I could only find it, I think, by getting the same job.
If I'm already working there, doing the stuff that I find fun, in a schedule that fits me and keeps me healthy and safe, and already relatively financially secure - to the point where I don't have to bother with focusing on corporate ladder or anything like that - what do I gain by retiring? At least on this aspect (there is obviously a tradeoff)
Not to mention I get to do some empowered volunteering from within the company itself. It helps that I actually have respect for the leadership, up to the CEO, as actual human beings. Not reverence - respect. Specially looking at some other companies out there.
I have a whole other perspective. But toss me into a meatgrinder job and I agree with you immediately.
Finally, I hope you see how your comment on Stockholm syndrome and snapping out of it was mean and ignorant towards the parent poster
I think many people are trapped by this dream of attaining financial freedom so they can escape work, but in a way that is a cynical take because it presumes that if you are getting paid to do something then it must be something bad that you wouldn't do otherwise.
Such a mindset is unfortunate because harbouring escapist fantasies is a really good way to undermine one's ability to find the joy in what they "have" to do. I spent over a decade not realising that I wasn't suffering from work, but from my hangups about work.
My advice to those who hate not only their job but any conceivable job, and who nonetheless have a job, is to get as good an understanding about why that is as possible. Reflect on it. Try moving around and changing your environment. Try different jobs. Try jobs that have one redeeming thing about them and seem awful in other ways.
The goal isn't to find the perfect job, i.e., the one that fits all your preconceived notions of what you want out of life, but rather to develop an understanding of what your assumptions are and where they come from. It is a useful mindset to be open-minded about what you really want and how you might get that.
Enter association with other people and assume obligations and responsibilities? That's not too different from having a job or a career.
You should update your world facts database, we’ve been on the 7 billion revision for over a decade, and are about to tick over again. Currently at 7.898B humans alive.
Of course you can care about other things, but if you care about this thing then work is the easiest way to fill that fix.
https://hbr.org/2019/12/what-happens-when-your-career-become...
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/wealth/earn/why-your-id...
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/10/05/career-job-work-i...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/06/style/work-life-balance-t...
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/09/self-obje...
All i can read this as is “Brooks Was Here”
Hoping that the global economy is past the hangover by the end of the decade.
Some people feel that if they were sufficiently rich, they will never work. I think one source of this view are the health effects of the sedentary lifestyle associated with tech, and I respect people who say that. It's all to common for people to be overworked in tech, so I understand people who want to exit for that reason too.
Still others, don't really enjoy work at all and would exit the workforce if given the opportunity. I respect that view too but it's not for me.
Because even if I had unlimited financial; resources I NEED to still work. I believe work, especially the kind that you feel is helping people and results in deep concentration called flow is beneficial for my mental health.
If I stopped working and entered a perma-vacation, I would go out of my mind. There are only so many golf courses, and so many days you can wake up late, before I would be bored out of my mind. When I go on vacation, I enjoy it and need it. But after about a week, I start to get bored and to miss work. I need a challenge.
There is a nice documentary called Born Rich by Jamie Johnson (one of the heirs to the Johnson & Johnson empire's wealth) in which he films the sons and daughters of billionaires (it's on YouTube). What I found fascinating is the happiest ones seemed to be those that applied themselves by working or in one case applying themselves in academia all the way to a PhD.
Even if I stopped my current start-up, I think I would find myself spending a few months catching up on technologies I didn't have the chance to catch up on, and imagine I would just start a new start-up after that.
I have been out of work for a long while, and family uses up lots of time. But I have always suffered with balance, programming entirely consumes me, and I ebb and flow with it. I feel totally disconnected and disenchanted with it and have no money and lots of debt.
And have no job security or fallback. Given a good manager and the right position I could happily amble along and be a useful asset.
But I am very disillusioned with web work and the industry. And I think web programming is a tremendously wasteful brain drain.
However if I had money and time, my perspective would be totally different!
Martial Arts Music Cooking
Here are some things I would love to learn more about
World History Science Gardening Sailing Camping + foraging
Here are some places I've yet to see:
Antarctica, Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, Tibet, The Pyramids
Not to mention spending more quality time with my friends and family.
Enjoying more of my parents' finite years together
Spending time nurturing my children.
I am not my job. My job serves me - it brings me closer to my goals. When that is not true, it's time for a new job.
Was kind of semi retired but still CTO and directed the team on projects and issues.
Then Covid hit.
Now went back to work full time rebuilding systems but looking forward to jump into semi-retirement next year again.
The most important thing I learned?
Time.
I’ll do anything to preserve time freedom. Housekeeper, transportation, people to do stuff for me. I’ll do it all to save this precious resource.
And these are not things that cost a lot, but because I do them, I have more time to spend on myself.
Having the freedom of time is completely underrated and misunderstood and I reckon that most people do not know what to do with the extra time once they step back from the daily grind.
Which contradicts hiring someone to do my tasks.
My retirement plan (I wanna be independent by 50) is to have time to do all my chores proper and in my time.
Would you say you got used to that lifestyle? Do you earn so much that it doesn't matter from an expenses standpoint?
I'd I would hire someone that would be 5k and more per year which I can't save. 15 y * 5k 75k
In the example of cleaning your own home, everyone should be able to do that barring a disability. Learn how to do it, learn to do it well, then offload it to someone else and routinely ensure you know how to do it well. I think a similar approach is useful in business as well. I think middle managers and execs give themselves way too strong of a pass on understanding how to actually do the jobs in their own company. This is partially why so many managers have almost no idea how their internal systems actually work.
Anyway, diatribe over.
If I had a way to make more money without losing the ^ balance, I'd jump on it. But, I am not running crazy behind any one of those.
I realise what I said would probably not make sense to me from 10 years ago - it was all about fun, and money then.
i'm actually trying to figure out what i want to do in the next 40 years of my life. i like building stuff and still have an exciting "tech startup" on the side.
i have 3 kids and so my focus is mostly on making sure they don't kill themselves... and get them to 18 and then pray. lol.
life is just as frustrating as it was before i was retired... the frustrations just changed though.
Good one, I'm gonna be 40 in a bit with 4 kids. I can totally relate.
What worked well for me:
1. Having a supportive partner. I am very lucky that my partner has not murdered me considering how much time we are at home together with her working all day from home and me not working. I know if roles were reversed, I would have a hard time.
2. Having existing hobbies that require time and discipline. Most of my hobbies are pretty cheap: running, reading, gaming, and cooking. The problem is, these all require time and discipline, which I used to not have. I treat my "hobbies" like a job and actually schedule time for each of these on a weekly basis. It's amazing how much time you can fill with stuff you love. It is also amazing how much more discipline you can have in your hobbies when you are not spending all of your "discipline points" on work. An exception for me is travel, which requires money, but not as much as you think if you fly on random weekdays and stay in hotels during off-peak times. Of course this has been limited during COVID.
3. Having some part time technical work. For me, this was taking on some advising and mentoring roles. I get paid for some of them, but mostly I do it because I enjoy it and I feel it keeps me connected enough to the rest of the technical world.
What did not work well:
1. Doing this during COVID. I was completely naive in thinking that we would be going through this for a "few more months" last year. Not being able to see family and friends was made even harder because I cut off my social connections from my work colleagues (I was lucky that I really liked most of my work colleagues). In hindsight, I wish I had thought through this more.
2. Alcohol consumption and other vices. Since I did not have to be up every morning at 7am anymore, I was staying up late and drinking ~5 nights a week. What got me to stop was my supportive partner identifying this for me and also seeing the liquor store bills add up. Thankfully, I was able to shake it, but it took about two months to change my habits.
3. Obsessing over the stock market. Since my assets are 90% tied to equities, I was obsessing daily over the green and red lines. This is somewhat common in a lot of FI/RE threads, but I realized that my very concentrated portfolio was stressing me out. I created a plan to slowly rebalance over the coming years, probably giving up some potential future gains, but the short term sanity gain is important to me.
Unexpected benefits:
1. Rarely waiting in lines. I can goto the bank or grocery store at 10:30am. I can goto a gym at 2pm. I still wonder why/how a lot of places are open during these hours, but I get to benefit from it.
2. Sleeping schedule fixed. While working, I was notorious for staying up late to get something done, sleeping 6-8 hours (which is pretty good), and feeling exhausted when I woke up. On weekends, I would rarely get up before noon because I was so tired. After stopping work, my sleep schedule has moved to a pretty fixed 10pm-6:30am and I no longer am a night owl. Nothing wrong with being a night owl, but I thought I was one for a long time, and turns out, I am not.
3. Exploring local area. With my limited vacation time, whenever we wanted to take time off, we would always hop on a plane and go somewhere. Having time and COVID restrictions had me exploring more locally (running trails, businesses, cafes, libraries). I have a much deeper appreciation for what local governments do to make the places we live more enjoyable.
Overall, I am very happy with the decision. I have no idea if I will end up going back to work or not. I realize that I am in the 0.0000001% of people that is lucky enough to be even thinking like this.
Part of the appeal of work for me is the good example it sets to the kids. Work hard, get rewards (and not just financial rewards).
I always knew I couldn't live like that indefinitely. There are plenty of nasty disparaging comments here from kids who've clearly never worked long enough or hard enough or had a strong enough sense of responsibility to get that weary, but there is a tiny nugget of truth to some of what they say. Some structure and goals are necessary to stay sane IMO. Even during my idle period I mostly stuck to my routine. No sleeping in until noon, not bothering to get dressed, etc.
In the last couple of months, I've kind of come out of hibernation. I haven't started any major projects, but I've made several upgrades to the decor especially in my own room. There's even art on the walls. OK, one wall. ;) I refinished a couple of pieces of furniture. I've gotten into resin crafting, especially things that glow. At some point I expect I'll dabble a bit in 3D printing to complement that. When the pandemic conditions ease and my daughter (currently a senior in HS) is safely ensconced in college, I'll probably do a bit more traveling, but still mostly short activity-focused trips - e.g. hiking or snowboarding in mid-week, depending on the season.
I even have a couple of ideas for apps, completely unrelated to what I used to do professionally (distributed filesystems and such FWIW) and I absolutely will not get all wrapped up in all of the non-coding things that make professional development such a grind. Contrary to what the callow youth say, it's not necessary to push that hard to feel happy and fulfilled. People make themselves that way, but that's their choice and it's not mine any more. I'll write the code to do what I want it to do, probably publish it somewhere/somehow, but I'm not going to get tied down handling demands from over-entitled users.
So basically my life is getting back to almost what it was before, just a little bit better. Instead of getting crushed under the weight of responsibility at work, I spend the same part of each day doing a variety of things as the mood strikes me. When something starts to feel like a grind, I context switch. That freedom is IMO the whole point of retirement, and what any mentally healthy person should strive for.
I ran a web business from age 38-45 with a co-founder and we worked our asses off 7 days a week, 10-12 hours a day. Still, I never got burned out, rarely took any time off (single, no kids). He bought me out after 7 years because I wanted to do a backup thing and he wanted to expand the web business. Made a good hunk of cash from that over the 5 year buyout.
I wrote a Prime minicomputer emulator and licensed it for around 12 years. One customer paid for my rather frugal (by choice, not necessity) lifestyle.
At 49 I released the first version of HashBackup and have continued that the last 12 years. I'm not taking money for it because so far, I haven't needed it, and dealing with money is a pain.
My personal life was practically non-existent in my 20's because I worked so much (loved it too), but looking back I'm glad that I sacrified personal life for career. It has always given me the option of turning down work I wasn't interested in and leaving jobs I was no longer interested in. I never had to take a job for money. Having a spouse and kids obviously makes that a lot harder.
I feel like there are always trade-offs in life. I have a $22/mo cell plan from puretalkusa.com, am grandfathered in on the "Everyday Low Price" internet plan from Time Warner (now Spectrum) that originally was a whopping 3Mbit down/1Mbit up for $15/mo, but over time is now 20Mbit down/1.2Mbit up for $27/mo. I was recently rear-ended and had to buy a car, but bought a 2018 Acura RDX with 30K miles for $26K instead of a new one for $46K. I also bought a completely rebuilt 1918 mahogany Steinway B a couple of years ago, so I'm not shy about spending money, but it's also fun to beat corporations at their pricing games. I buy clothes at Goodwill most of the time, because I hate shopping and if I buy something at GW I don't like, I just give it back and don't feel bad that I spent $75 on a shirt that I don't like when I get home. I buy all my Macs and phones on eBay for usually half price.
In a lot of cases, people have choices in life, but they sometimes don't spend much time thinking about how their choices affect their life. I see people in brand new trucks that cost $60K+ and it makes me wonder why anyone would do that.
If a person wastes money over a lifetime, I think they will have a lot more financial struggles and maybe never have the option to retire early. I've always been frugal because having money gives me choices and options.
A key thing to being happy in retirement IMO is to take care of yourself and have at least a few things you are passionate about, whether it's side projects, music, sports, poker night, or whatever. I try to make the most of each day, even if I'm not getting paid for it.