Hacker News Reader

Comment by Surac | Hacker News Reader

I quit my job 2 months ago ago Best thing I have ever done. Only now I realize how toxic and unrealistic the projects I have done where

View on HN

I've cost myself quite a bit over my lifetime by quitting work I disliked for pick-a-reason without a plan to replace the income. I wish you the best in your search for a new revenue stream.

They quit their jobs 2 months ago and felt great . But I think it would be more accurate if they reflect after two years

If they felt great after two months, they’ll most likely feel amazing in two years.

At one point I ran out of money and ended up homeless. Would not recommend.

Did you end up homelessness because you’ve left toxic job and felt great after two months of not working there?

I stopped working and then I ran out of money. For me, a toxic job is better than not having a place to live. You can learn to cope with toxic (whatever that even means), and you can't manifest yourself a place to live.

And they might find a better job and make twice as much money while being happier. You never know.

Sounds like a terrible gamble if you don’t know the odds - or the odds aren’t good?

Well yeah that’s the only downside, running out of money. Everything else is paradise. I took a year and a half off now and it was probably the best time of my life. I travelled extensively, hiked a lot, built a lot of high end furniture, spent quality time with my wife and kid, took on construction projects (barn, chicken coop, running path etc.) around my property, ate delicious home cooked meals leisurely, lifted weights, went to interesting conferences, concert and shows. Life was amazing and it wasn’t all that expensive. I can’t wait to FIRE which should be possible over the next 5 years.

My goal is to save enough money so that I can stop working one day. It should be more or less possible within 15 years. I'll be in my forties then.

I quit my job a little over a year ago and it's been the best year of my life. Not sure if I'll ever be able to go back to daily stand up meetings.

I realize now what total bogus nonsense standups are. You get asked the same pish everyday and nobody listens to what you say. Ten different ways to track things for different audiences. I learned to just ignore all instruction given in these meetings and when board to talk non-stop to consume time and have them quickly move to others. A waste of space. Sack all the PMs and interfering managers who depend on them.

This thread gives me some ease :')

About five years, for myself.

>Not sure if I'll ever be able to go back to ... meetings.

It's with the wisdom of age that I now understand why HR discriminates against gaps in employment history... mostly because I don't know how I could ever be employable, again.

Monk-mode is such a cheap way to exist. Highly recommend it.

Walked away from money and (project) name recognition for no commute and no extra hours. Best decision of my life.

I did that once: I was planning to quit to start a business, but when I realized the environment at my day job was toxic, I quit about 6 months sooner than planned.

Woooooooow good for you.

Must be nice to have quitting money.

I’ve never once been able to afford being able to quit a job, and I’m like, closing in on 40 now.

You just need to limit your expenses more.

It’s possible to live on $1000/month in the USA if you have a shared bedroom, dine-in, and skip medical insurance.

$1000/mo? Pff, that is luxury. Live on the streets, dumpster dive, forage and hunt for food, eat every other day, and you can get that down to $0. If you really need income you can take up sex work. $1000/mo, imagine!

The "just stop eating avocado toast" advice is neither helpful nor thoughtful, friend.

That’s not “just stop eating avocado toast” advice. It’s advice to cut extremely high expenses.

Avocado toast advice is dumb because it’s an expense that doesn’t move the needle.

Cutting medical insurance, for example, is a good way to end up medically bankrupt and lose anything you’ve ever saved if anything goes wrong. And by the time someone hits 40, chances are something has gone wrong.

Medical insurance is a basic necessity. Advising someone to skip that is irresponsible and degrading.

I would only 100% agree if this person had dependents (that medically rely upon his benefits).

I live on about twice that in a mid-sized US city. Own my car, rent in below-average part of town.

I hope you get there. Depriving most workers of the ability to step away is, it seems, a purposeful feature. But you can get lucky, and I hope you will.

Similar boat, but I'm finally at the point where I think I can just walk out. Just stay on the job hunt and you can get there. I went from musician living on the cash in my pocket with 4 roommates to $110k in 10 years. You'll have to job hop, you'll have to grind some self-learning, but you can do it.

I once quit a job because it was toxic. At the time, I was saving so I could start a business, but the environment became so toxic that I needed to walk out much earlier than planned.

My "6 month" runway ended up lasting a lot longer, mostly due to the stock market taking off. I ended up living off of interest for 18 months. By the time I admitted to myself that I wasn't much of an entrepreneur and needed to go work for someone else, I hadn't taken too much out of savings. I also had straightened out my head quite a bit, so I was able to figure out what kind of salaried jobs made me happy. (And paid enough for me to live a good life and save.)

I really encourage you to see if there's a way to adjust your finances so you can live more cheaply, save, and then live off of your interest for a period of time to get your head straightened out.

>By the time I admitted to myself that I wasn't much of an entrepreneur and needed to go work for someone else

This took me about two decades and two companies to discover, about myself.

Good timing and luck have also given me a much longer runway than I ever anticipated having. Mostly just need to work for my sanity and health benefits (at this point).

> My "6 month" runway ended up lasting a lot longer, mostly due to the stock market taking off. I ended up living off of interest for 18 months.

I can't think of a period in which markets did that well. (And "interest" is a strange term here.) Were you leveraged, or did you also just not have expenses as high as your original estimate?

> or did you also just not have expenses as high as your original estimate?

The market went up much faster than I originally estimated. Basically, I got lucky.

I quit my job in 2009, right when the massive bull market started. I had a bunch of stocks and mutual funds that I planned to sell in order to support myself.

Which I did: What happened was that my stocks and mutual funds appreciated faster than I spent them. (If I hadn't sold them, they would have doubled or tripled in value over the 18 month period.)

For example: The day after the iPad came out, I sold my Apple stock at a nice profit to pay my expenses for a month.

Ironically, if I had stayed at work as long as I planned, I probably would have had even more runway. (But then I wouldn't have landed the awesome job that I got when I went back to a salaried job in 2011.)

How in the world did you get back into work after that gap? I have a gap after getting laid off from my first job and a career is, apparently per my extended and futile job hunt, unrecoverable.

Come back when you gonna be out gf money AND out of job. It's delusion to say that being jobless is any beneficial on the long run

Where is it written "I finally don't have a job, I am so free!!!!" ?

With the energy you're putting out sounds like you might need a new job. It's always the people in shitty jobs saying things like this. Figure out where the pain points in your life are that are making you so bitter and try to fix them.

Why so mad bro?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com