I still write code but now its just for me to support my generative art. I still hear stories from my former team; not missing the nightmare at all.
I still write code but now its just for me to support my generative art. I still hear stories from my former team; not missing the nightmare at all.
Particularly if you don't have a family. You get one life. Take the leap.
If you think you got a handle on the business side of things I'd say go for it! That's always been the barrier for me, I think I can handle any technical challenge, but that's not good enough for a successful business...
I recently lost my job to due to a lack of funding and I'm a pretty difficult hire now: academia is done for me, if you haven't made it to professor by my age, you're obviously worthless.
But for an industry job, I'm facing the dilemma that I'm formally highly qualified but have no relevant (industry) experience to show. That is, I'm too mature for a junior position but too inexperienced for anything else.
To make things worse, I left the states over a decade ago, and thus have no relevant network there. Not that I have a network outside academia over here, either...
I'm so far removed from your situation (being able to pay off your house and thinking about retiring) that it's not even funny. My wife and I were only able to buy a tiny town house last year (< 1000 sq ft, shared walls with two other townhouses left and right), and will hopefully find some job that will allow us to pay off our loan over the next 20 years.
I might still decide to work on something but very not primarily software. Maybe I'll teach, work on something more manual or do volunteer work.
Thankfully my wife doesn't read HN.
Honestly, probably should have done it sooner if you could have.
As a 30-something, most of my peers are not planning to work past 60, and most are planning to retire in their 50s. Unfortunately that seems to be a privilege of a certain level of job income and not all of my peers will be so lucky.
Curious - was this a new(ish) phenomenon, or was this something that you experienced throughout your career and decided it wasn't worth it anymore?