Quitting a high-status job at Microsoft for freedom | Hacker News Reader

Quitting a high-status job at Microsoft for freedom

rydoo.com

36 pointsfmfamaral66 comments

Word to the audience here, many of whom are in a similar position. Please just keep quiet about it.

Not because that's the decent thing to do while other people are struggling, there's a technical reason I'll explain.

The Fed's inflation target is to stimulate "job growth". That is a euphemism for debasing money (via money supply expansion , aka QE & other tactics) so that people have to work harder.

What it also means is that people who may be comfortable managing life & responsibilities with partial work or early retirement are forced back into the workplace.

Sure it's great you have 7 figures of assets and are outside of the crashing wave. But the entire workforce & those at 1-1.5 Σ are running on a treadmill that's increasing in velocity.

the more you brag about having the money to retire, the more signals you send to the Fed and policy makers to keep cranking up the money supply treadmill to keep the pressure on working people.

> the more you brag about having the money to retire

I’d like to believe that policies are (atleast partially) based on data, and not braggadocious tweets/blogs.

get into politics. the decisions are made via handshakes and sold using data

Do you think tight money leads to people retiring early? I assure you, having been alive in 2008, it does not.

inverse vs converse

Your advice is useful in a social context - friends and colleagues are all in different life circumstances.

The Fed and other central banks can see aggregate asset values, productivity, and spending in the economy. Lots of money is being spent by the wealthy.

2024-Apr: "Airline executives predict a record summer and even more demand for first class" - https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/17/airline-execs-predict-record...

The Fed stopped doing QE in June 2022 and has done $1.5 trillion worth of quantitative tightening since then.

and?

Here's what their quantitative tightening looks like: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL#.

They have a ways to go. And they just announced they would be slowing the pace of the quantitative tightening.

What are the odds they get back to the pre-great recession trend line before the next crisis that demands quantitative easing? (Hint: the odds are zero).

It's way more intense than what I expected to see.

This is at the level where economies fail. Keeping inflation under control usually means turning it into a horizontal line.

> the more you brag about having the money to retire, ....

I think every rapper out there didn't get the memo.

I don't knock rappers , that's how they sell their product

If you think the Fed is trolling HN/Twitter to figure out how to set monetary policy for the entire country/realistically the whole world, you are living in la la land.

The fed hasn’t done QE for years. I’ve seen literally any policy move they make characterized as some sort of conspiracy by the gold bugs on here. They are tightening the money supply right now and have been for some time.

have you seen the money supply graph. and predictions for the next year?

> keep the pressure on working people.

The Boomers have sacrificed so much for us the least we could do is orient the entire economy around them for a few short decades they have left. Imagine if they had to sell their houses to pay for needed labor (higher wages) in old age and some young family (yuck) moved in? Better they reverse mortgage it so Blackrock can rent it out to that family after they die.

daily viagra is expensive have some sympathy.

Like Jerome Powell reads anonymous developer blogs to influence monetary policy? Come on, bruh?

> the more you brag about having the money to retire, the more signals you send to the Fed and policy makers to keep cranking up the money supply treadmill to keep the pressure on working people.

I hope federal banks are smart enough to not base monetary policy of anecdotes

Federal banks don't make decisions, people who work at federal banks do. And people often do make decisions based on anecdotes. Especially if they already support an idea that were already in favor of. So, yeah.

> the more you brag about having the money to retire, the more signals you send to the Fed and policy makers to keep cranking up the money supply treadmill to keep the pressure on working people.

If the FED used these articles for its policy, I really don't see a way out of this.

Technically, they’ll be using an LLM trained on these articles.

Warren Buffet famously used private underwear sales indicators as an economic bellwether .

Billions of dollars moved because people were or were not buying underwear.

Economists are extremely sensitive to consumer behavior. The abstract indicators like CPI, WFPR, M2/M3 etc are trailing indicators not leading indicators for them.

I'm pretty sure the Feds aren't going to ratchet up the heat just because a handful of people are retiring.

workforce participation among meaningful segments is nearly 5% below the peak. "retirement" isn't just boomers taking vacations. Lack of participation is due to part time work, and borderline "disability", and a dozen other qualitative factors that are influenced by price pressure (taxes & cost of living)

I live in an older community where people are forced back to work due to skyrocketing property taxes & cost of living increases.

That is a deliberate measure

Quote from the post: "I understood that I would have to retire at the age of 50 to be able to enjoy the time I had with the people I loved and do the things that brought me joy while I still had the health to be able to experience them fully"

In my opinion this is a bad approach. This approach is does not make sense as Warren Buffet put it: "Is like saving up your sex life for your old age".

In your 50s you cannot ski as fast as in your 30s; you cannot hunt as well as in your 30s; you cannot water surf / dive underwater as well as in your 30s, etc....

Enjoy life today and every day!

On one level, sure. But I spent my twenties and early thirties in medical school and residency - so even if I had time off to do things (which I often did not), I didn't have the money for them - certainly not skiing or diving, which would require an expensive flight on top of the costs of the activity itself. Hunting I could have done, as I already had guns and knew people who would let me hunt their land, but I don't much enjoy it.

Yes, live your life because you don't know what's around the corner. But OTOH it's not insane to decide that you're going to kick it hard at work through your forties and then relax - if you can be reasonably certain it's going to pan out for you.

TBH that's partly due to the rigors of medical schooling. I suppose it's also expensive if you don't live near a skiing site though which is understandable. But if you're happy with your choice of pursuing this field I think you may find more satisfaction in your work than a CFO at a tech corp.

replace skiing with your favorite outdoors activity and the conclusion still stands: you will have more fun in your 30s than in your 50s.

I am in my 40s and I was thinking about finally getting a fast car. And I noticed that now I am wearing glasses, my reflexes are slower and my hands tremble a bit. So I did not buy the car.

I am thinking that peak physical performance is late 20s / early 30s. That was probably the best time to buy a fast car for me.

About the CFO turned skateboarder at 50s: she would have had a lot more fun in her 20s / 30s. If nothing else, you recover faster when younger from the inevitable skateboarding falls / bruises...

Yes, she probably would have. But had she spent a lot of time boarding in her 20s, instead of working, she probably wouldn't be retiring at 50. Buying a fast car in your twenties? Hell, I could barely afford to maintain the ten-year-old beater I was driving at the time.

I mean, it's a rewarding job, but it is a job. I can assure you that if I were independently wealthy, I would never ever take call again.

The term "CFO" appears 29 times in that article. You were a CFO not a vegan, you don't have to say it over and over.

It is possible to realize you only have 1 life, and still need to work to live.

I'm not going to read this because here's what it's saying "I had a great job that only some people would dream of having, now I'm leaving to do nothing and have a nice vacation." This is tone-deaf to the life of 99% of the entire world's population. Why does an article need to be written about this?

Like the saying goes, "this is not an airport, you don't need to announce your departure."

Like the saying goes, "this isn't a comment airport, you don't need to announce your comment on my comment". I will absolutely comment this when I see garbage content. But you're right, maybe I should just let HN burn instead of providing some feedback that maybe we don't just wanna read about how nice it is for rich people.

I was agreeing with your statement and referring to article author's departure from Microsoft.

Alternative title:

Wealthy individual gets to retire early while you, the proletariat, get to suffer under the 9-5 thumb, crushed by the system the wealthy created. Enjoy, suckers!

Narcissism is easy to spot among a lot of the "elite"...

early retirement is pretty much entirely about spending. Given this forum's topic, about 100% could retire early if they're happy with their current lifestyle.

What an out of touch comment

Mathematically accurate though.

Again out of touch.

If we’re allowed to just say things without any supporting information, then my response is “Scientifically inaccurate”, which holds as much as weight as your “Mathematically accurate” claim :)

At least in the US, health care costs in old age are unpredictable and nonlinear. Long term care - where in an assisted living facility - or in home nursing can get expensive to the point of depleting savings of even reasonably wealthy people.

Long term care insurance is a thing and required in some states.

> At least in the US, health care costs in old age are unpredictable and nonlinear.

We have a few people in my family that retired early and many simply use free medicaid since they have no income (well no reportable income). Like it or hate it, the United States is quite generous if you correctly categorize yourself. In my experience, people usually don't seek out the social safety net because they're convinced it doesn't exist.

At 65, you get medicare pretty universally. Yes I know it doesn't cover some things.

The medicaid route is fine as long as you are willing to sign over everything you own once you need any kind of longish term in-patient or nursing home type care. At that point you'll never live on your own again because once you sign everything over you'll never be in a position to own anything again.

So are healthcare costs in middle age.

It’s the biggest complication in trying to make early-retirement numbers work. The solution I’ve read for some FIRE bloggers (especially the “just barely spend anything, it’s so easy to FIRE!” sort who usually turn out to be making it work by having three part-time jobs, including blogging about FIRE for affiliate income) is they just plan to get a corporate job again if anyone in their family gets seriously ill, which… is making some risky assumptions, I think.

Not here it isn't. Inflation and taxation can't be unspent... :(

maybe it’s hard for these exec types to understand that the subordinates they thought loved them actually despise them. then they write articles like this.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

I can’t fault anyone who finds an out and takes it. But to hoard — say — several lifetimes of wealth, that’s something else.

Very nice. Another:

"Woman calls from Ivory Tower: I am Superior!"

We all got into this career in the hopes of making more than just a living wage and retiring early. This person worked hard, made money (quite a bit of it) and then got out when they realized they could. Pretty much exactly what anyone you ask will say they hope for. Lambasting them for them for then posting "I did it" is pretty weird.

(Lambast them for the job they did, if they did a terrible job. Not for getting out of the game)

It's crabpot mentality

It doesn't help her case that I think most people doing the work in the trenches think that the C-suite people just sit around drinking and laughing together all day (which is my impression of C-suite people, they just had the money already so they got to be C-suite), so it doesn't feel likely to most readers that she actually worked very hard for what she got.

The professionally shot skateboarding photos really don't help make her relatable in any way. Most people at 44 probably don't get on a skateboard because they know one good injury could bankrupt them and leave them homeless.

> We all got into this career in the hopes of making more than just a living wage and retiring early.

Your motivations are not, generally, the same as everyone's.

Here's my favorite zinger of the article:

"When she became concerned, I used Monopoly as a comparison, so, for her, Mommy is playing real-life Monopoly now."

I wonder if she remembers that only one person wins in Monoploy and that happens when everyone else is bankrupt.

I think she could have focuses this article on how she was going to use the fruits of her hard work (and good luck) to improve her community and/or the world.

I'm the same age than OP, but spent most of my adult life living paycheck to paycheck. I have only obtained a comfortable income and bumped up the class ladder during the last couple of years, when I finally moved to the US working for Big Tech.

I don't know what is the point of this article other than a humblebrag. What should the takeaway for people struggling to make ends meet while working bad, low paid jobs be? Should I feel bad that I'll never get to retire before 40 because I didn't ride the high income wave since my 20s?

"I bought my freedom and you should be happy for me! If you are lucky, and spend your precious youth working for the corporate machine, and just ignore your inner light and the ensuing depression caused by the cognitive dissonance until you one day snap and fold, it could one day be you!"

lol exactly. I had to quit big tech after a little over a year. But for me I actually enjoy my profession. Finding a smaller company where I can learn every day while working chill hours is pretty close to ideal.

Oh yeah I would also retire from a job as soon as I hit 7 figures.

It's not hard.

In contrary it's just being either very happy with your live (which again is not hard if you earn a shit ton) or it's being tone-deaf and uncreative.

I have plenty of other things I wanna do before work comes up...

What a weird article to write tbh.

Crack your teeth on the skateboard, Bridget.

Oof, why the hate?

At first it seemed like a bunch of humble bragging, but she really did seem pretty genuine about the challenge it represents on your identity, what others think of you, etc. I appreciated the perspective.

Ok, on second though it really is a perspective from a VERY privileged position. While I think she was genuine and all, it's tough to contrast that with the increasing everyday challenges that most people are facing.

And it's literally written in a magazine aimed at... other CFOs. I don't understand people's beef with this. Good for her. Not everything is about everybody.

Can you be an ex Microsoft CFO and a cool skateboarder? What if she is legitimately good at it? It is tricky to divorce the spirit behind an activity from the activity itself.

Also wow you have to seriously lack self-awareness to pose for skateboard pics as the CFO of a gigantic corporation and think it is going to be cool.

Neal Katyal posted Twitter photos of himself walking out of Burning Man with a ridiculous hat on

The skateboard pics are amazing :) you look so happy

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