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Comment by bradlys | Hacker News Reader

Do people really enjoy this industry that much? I get the feeling we have a lot of outspoken people who write a lot but almost everyone I’ve ever met is trying to get the fuck out. They want to get their payday and FIRE. They’re not interested in staying if they have the financial means to leave. Part of the distaste for the job and industry is what I think fuels the FIRE movement being so full of tech workers. If you’re in medicine or law or finance, you can do the same but you never hear of FIRE anywhere near the same level in those industries.

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My friends in finance don't have a management chain 4+ levels deep and idiot product managers and product marketers calling the shots.

Most people I know love the craft, but hate the industry.

Yeah, I think my frustrations have much more to do with the environment than coding or whatever. I don’t spend a ton of time coding and so my frustrations naturally are abundant.

I think a lot of finance these days is kinda bullshit though. My friends in NYC who are in finance and making a killing (easily making more than faang engineer comp) are barely working and seem to be happy with their jobs. What a joke it is to be in the tech industry when you’re also working one of the lowest social status jobs on top of being ground into dust.

I wish I had chosen a different career.

I resonate with this, unfortunately. I wish things in our field were better.

Personally I've enjoyed it a lot, at points, mostly when I'm permitted to keep my head down and build useful things or meaningfully improve existing things.

That said, I'm based in the UK so I don't think FIRE* is so prevalent here, because our salaries are much lower and there are barely any opportunities for a big payday compared to the US. I make 2x the median UK salary as a lead dev and live in a fairly low cost of living area, but that only puts me at the same salary as a junior dev in much of the US. I'm not paying my mortgage off any time soon.

* Financial Independence, Retire Early for anyone wondering—I had to look it up as I wasn't familiar with the term

The industry? Meh, not so much, as other sibling comments elaborate on. But the work? Oh, I do/did love the work. I retired in May, after like 35 years in software. I've been programming computing machinery since I got my Atari 800 back in, what, 1981? I still enjoy even in retirement, as just this morning I was wondering how to automate around a limitation of Square's offering for a non-profit I help out with. And as I was pondering that, I found myself looking forward to doing the work, 'cuz puzzle-solving, amirite?

But the industry? I'd bet one of my old paychecks that there are plenty of doctors and lawyers that will say the same thing: "love the work, hate the industry". Because MBAs didn't just ruin software development, you know.

Usually because medicine, law, and finance comes with huge student debt. There's also a certain level of prestige expected with those profession that it seems par for the course to buy a $1M house, a car with a 6 figure price tag, etc. Those two things probably make FIRE hard to fathom for most of those people.

They can come with large debt but it's not guaranteed. The one thing I will say though is that you typically do need to go to a more prestigious university.

Also, tech is no exception to the expensive lifestyle. It's basically a requirement of living in Silicon Valley. Crap homes in Santa Clara are averaging $2.5m right now. People still plan to FIRE in the bay area.

That's my point. Techies lived an expensive lifestyle not by choice. Now that we have remote work, how many have left to lower cost of living areas? Most of us are not driven by prestige and because of that we're a lot more amenable to FIRE.

Remote work is not that common still. All the return to office mandates should make that clear…

The Bay Area still is attracting tens of thousands of immigrants from across the world every year. I have not seen any big difference in population within the bay for tech workers. If I saw any big migration - it was that all the single men have been trying to get to NYC. There is a massive amount of single men in SF that are trying to get to the NYC offices for nearly every big tech company right now. Everyone finally got sick and tired of how hard it is to meet women in SF. The ratio is obscene. (33-50% more single men than women depending on your subregion of SFBA)

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