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How do you 'retire on software'. I'm a software engineer and I have nowhere near enough savings for retirement, not even close.

You make enough money from working in software that however much you will make in your second act (note: not necessarily zero) plus what you've saved up and investment proceeds thereof is enough to sustain you.

The same as retiring in any other field.

If you only spend %50 of your paycheck, and invest the savings well it's basically 5-10 years to FIRE.

It's more complicated than I make it sound there but ultimately it's a matter of deciding it's important to you to do this and making it happen.

I think it is closer to investing 70% for a 10 year target, actually. And that is a pretty "great case" scenario.

Yea, there is often an unspoken assumption of moving to some ultra cheap location which is central to those ultra short time periods. If you can live on 10% of your income in retirement then you can save that up very quickly.

A lot can be written on the topic, but it all comes down to the difference between your income and your expenses over the span of a couple decades.

A median income with a median cost of living and a median lifestyle won’t do it, obviously. Otherwise everybody would be retiring early.

There’s a lot written about finding remote, high-paying jobs and then living like an ultra-frugal bachelor. That’s actually much harder to do than people like to admit and the lifestyle isn’t for everyone.

The more common approach is to get married, keep expenses reasonably low but don’t torture yourself, and one or both spouses should have a moderately high paying professional job. Consistently invest the difference between income and expenses for a few decades and you’ll get there.

Nobody is retiring at 30 and living like a king unless they’re extraordinarily lucky with a startup or some other gamble. However, it’s very reasonable to retire before the age of 50 or even 40 if you’re smart about it and willing to live a moderately priced lifestyle.

Yes, that's very nice and all, but what does it have to do with saving the planet? Even if you don't need to have a job to survive, how do you go about helping? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I'm genuienly curious.

Spending your efforts on environmental work rather than building blockchain-powered juicing machines or tinder for sweatshop workers.

Yes but it's not one or the other - there's million different things to do in software before getting to the level of building blockchain crap.

Also I'm really curious what people consider valuable environmental work - like, if you didn't have to work for money tomorrow, what kind of environmental work exactly would you take on?

It was a typo, and I corrected it to read "retire from software". I expect it will impact my lifestyle.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29691039

make half a million dollars per year total comp, duh.

Are you going to lobby or start an NGO or something? How can I help? I am currently in a major northern US city running my air conditioner, and tired of meaningless shit.

Are you replying to the wrong comment or something? I'm not the guy in that article. I was posting that link in jest.

> I plan on retiring from software soon to devote the rest of my life to technical and political work to keep Earth habitable for subsequent generations

That is fantastic and inspiring. I'm shifting my life around in order to focus on similar priorities.

For people who think it is extreme, this is my perspective: Previous generations built 99% of what we have - the political system (freedom, democracy, peace, better justice), the economy, the knowledge, arts and culture, the endless social goods (school, healthcare, FOSS, etc.), the technology. How are we building on that for the next? Environmental catastrophe? Political chaos and social distrust? Online manipulation, cryptocurrency scams, and lulz? So far, IMHO we are mostly liquidating, as vulture capitalists, that largess by our predecessors - by their hard work, their forward thinking to build a 'More Perfect Union', and their sacrifices:

Many sacrificed everything. Some saw nothing more of life than high school, boot camp, and a bullet. Too grim? Too dramatic? Too serious? That's reality; it's too late in the day, in our myriad crises, to hold back so that it's not too challenging or upsetting. I'm not saying everyone should do what I do (certainly not - they should figure out what is right for them, as individuals), but I think we all have very serious obligations. We have the free choice to do good or bad; the good news is, the results are up to us.

What do you plan to do, specifically? I hope to soft-retire soon, meaning switch to another lower-paying kob or volunteering, but I'm not exactly sure what I want to do.

Bill Gate's book has a good summary of the technical challenges and the scientific and engineering needs. It's an easy read and I highly suggest it.

I'm interested. Have you found anyone/an area who needs software developers?

From talking to my (degree-holding) colleagues, they seem to think that everything will be well, and no amount of evidence would convince them otherwise. Felt like I was talking to antivaxxers.

The IPCC report suggests first-world citizens reduce their energy footprint by 80% if we are to have even a remote chance of keeping things under control. Yet everybody is now making plans where to travel next when the pandemic becomes milder.

Meanwhile Germany closed half its nuclear reactors yesterday and people were cheering.

Are you sure you want to save this version of humanity?

> Are you sure you want to save this version of humanity?

This fatalistic, sneering attitude is the least effective way of discussing climate change with people who don’t yet understand the issue.

I think a lot of people don’t realize just how much of a turn-off these attitudes are to people who are on the fence or otherwise doubtful. It’s not helpful.

Might not be helpful, but at least in some cases it is sincere.

Personally, I simply don't think we have the capacity as a species to overcome the challenges of climate change right now. I'd like to be proven wrong and think we should be trying anyway, but veer towards solutions which actually provide another benefit and help with CO2 emissions as a secondary effect - the most obvious example being renewables as a means of securing energy supply sovereignty.

This approach probably won't see us beat even 3 degrees of warming but let's be honest - most people in the western world will adapt to a less convenient life, and we don't care about the pending deaths in Bangladesh and similarly poor countries nearly as much as we like to pretend.

Climate change does make the weather less predictable, as in higher variance on things like storms. So... they're probably not disagreeing with you.

I recommend people watch Paul Beckwith who does a fantastic job explaining what he calls The Climate Casino.

https://m.youtube.com/user/PaulHBeckwith

Unfortunately, educating people is very hard and covid-19 clearly shows it.

I suspect people tend to mean unstable when they say unpredictable. Not that they think science is unable to see what’s happening.

I'm genuinely curious: does "technical and political work to keep Earth habitable for subsequent generations" include efforts to reduce the earth's population size? I ask this because sometimes such efforts fail to address the root cause, often deliberately.

I do, I just don't see any pointles in fighting a hopeless war that is already lost.

Now, that's the spirit!

You're the kind of guy I'd follow into battle.

I will follow you, my liege!!!

Brutal attitude, also wrong. 2 degrees warming is probably inevitable at this point. Not great. But 3 degrees is much worse than 2, and 4 is much worse than 3, etc. There’s no concept of losing, just how bad it will get for future generations.