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Comment by jart | Hacker News Reader

You make retiring in your 30's sound like it's a victory. No one does that unless they feel unwelcome and have enough money to scrape by after saying goodbye rather than being forced to tolerate an unwelcoming environment.

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I don't agree, many people just don't like work. Smarter people may be less influenced by social pressures/morals so they can see it in a more unbiased way (society forces on us perception of work as a virtue), so they like it even less.

After all, i for example, have never participated in a single project that would ever go live, and only a few times, built small pieces of code that were for some time used in live products. How can i probably fool myself into believing that work is a virtue?

It depends how you define work. I have built systems that are used in large production services. But even if you're just going to dinners and meetings then that's still work in a way. Possibly a more important kind. We all need to have some reason to exist. Tech is weird historically speaking since once the work is done the code runs itself which leaves builders as the architects of their own demise, since few folks are interested in disrupting cash cows with a better mousetrap.

Smart and productive people are happiest when they are free to do whatever they feel is worthy of their time and attention. One of the key to their productivity is that they don’t need to be told what to do every step of the way. Retire at 30 does not mean being unproductive, it means working on what you want, when you want. I have even met execs in large orgs that were essentially doing the job because they liked it. They did not need the salary anymore.

Why would it not be a victory? Who likes working for someone else when you don’t have to. I can think of an infinite number of things to do with free time if I didn’t have to work for money.

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