For various reasons, mathematics didn't work out, and I was forced to interview again. Fortunately, I did manage to find a job as a compiler engineer again, and will be moving to London soon.

Now, the price of my adventure was quite steep. I uprooted my life when I moved from the US to Paris (especially because I didn't know French at the time), and the upcoming move to London will once again be difficult. I nearly halved my savings, by studying mathematics at my own expense, and will be back to earning the equivalent of my starting salary in the US.

However, I'm an adventurous person, and view my experience in positive light. I'd been wanting to study Jacob Lurie's books for the longest time, and I finally did it. I worked on a mathematical manuscript, which is now up on arXiv [1], and on a type theory project which has been submitted to LICS '23 [2]. I've had a good life in Paris, and my French is decent.

There's the larger philosophical question of "What is a life well-lived?", and for me, the answer is to pursue those things that you're truly passionate about, even if it doesn't work out.

[1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.09652

[2]: https://artagnon.com/logic/νType.pdf

... and third, they give me a kick in the backside when I feel whiny and complacent. "Oh, so you're pissed because your bonus was 2k instead of 2.5k? Well, if you were still washing dishes like back then, there would be no bonus at all..."

My best friend was driving long-haul tractor trailers across the USA and since I had a half year waiting for my ATC school to start I went to truck driving school and got my license so I could team drive with him for a bit.

After graduating ATC school and training on site for a year I was unable to meet the increasingly-difficult requirements to progress to the next level. After a while it was evident to both me and my instructors that I wasn't going to be happy even if I managed to pass those barriers as my brain wasn't wired for continuous focus (I hadn't yet been diagnosed with ADHD).

I applied to return to university and while waiting for my application I worked as a construction supervisor. I had spent my teens working for an industrial construction company and they were delighted to take me back on a temporary basis as they were very busy and the market for experienced supervisors was tight.

Finally got back into university but before I had graduated with an agricultural science degree one of my professors asked me to do a Masters graduate program with him. So I eventually graduated with an M.Sc. in agricultural economics and business. I worked as an analyst/lobbiest for five years but disliked reading government documents so took a position as a Market Analyst.

While working as a market analyst I discovered that Excel was a terrible tool for handling all but the simplest data, and in my search for a solution I encountered Python and it's data analytical ecosystem.

While I would never consider myself a programmer, I loved the increasingly complex solutions I could create with Python and, inevitably, ended up learning Linux servers so I could host my data, scrapers, and visualization web servers.

And now I'm wondering what's next, but since my kids are teenagers I'm pausing here for a bit until they move out to avoid unnecessarily disrupting their lives by uprooting them and moving away to a new position.

I'd love to say it was magically fixed by pills but it will always remain a struggle.

To me, the unhappiest people in the world are those in the watering places, the international watering places, the south coast of France and Newport and Palm Springs and Palm Beach. Going to parties every night, playing golf every afternoon, then bridge. Drinking too much, talking too much, thinking too little. Retired. No purpose.

I know there are those who would totally disagree and say, ‘If I could just be a millionaire, that would be the most wonderful thing. If I could just not have to work every day. If I could be out fishing or hunting or playing golf or traveling, that would be the most wonderful life in the world.’

They don’t know life. Because what makes life mean something is purpose. A goal. The battle. The struggle. Even if you don’t win it."

-- Richard Nixon

Money buys the ability to do whatever you want. It buys you the ability to take what would normally be big risks. It also buys you the ability to live a sad but otherwise comfortable life on a beach.

Money bought the person you responded to the ability to travel the world and study math, instead of worrying about getting food on the table or taking care of family.

Denying this is one of the most ignorant things people with money can do. It's the core of many problems in society, as it's directly related to the inability for many in power to empathize with people who are less fortunate.

Having kids. Not that you have to do this with kids, but it is a reason

Other than providing tutors and making sure their children are in the best secondary schools, I don’t understand the American obsession with paying for college.

The best way to prepare your child is to let them experience reality not coddle them.

- A luxury university diploma will not guarantee a good job

- There are other educational opportunities besides an expensive university

- Acquiring internships and work experience is far more valuable to establishing a network and getting your foot in the door

It is unrealistic to expect parents to go into crippling debt to pay for your entire time at a luxury university when a regular school and internships will suffice.

Also, I’m not talking about “expensive” hobbies. Almost all sports need some sort of equipment and time investment from the parents. Summer camps for some parents are a necessity because they need child care during summer months. Vacations for kids are also expensive and people typically save all year long to take them. I could go on.

I estimate I spend about €1000 more per month for having one baby. It's pretty significant in a country where the average employee earns €2000/month after tax (and a senior engineer is at €3500/month roughly).

It all adds up and while you can get clothes at goodwill there are some expenses that are unavoidable and scale linearly with quality.

In my country preschool is free and it’s all around good. I don’t think we ever had to use any summer care either. Kids are now 12 and 15… the only necessary thing that is more expensive is the house since it needs to fit more people but that is just about the size, not location dictated by a good school as such.

For us all expenses related to quality of life just scale linearly with headcount.

A local 4 year degree at my city's state run university is around 18,000 to 22,000 per year for tuition. And that's without room and board.

In comparison a private liberal arts school near me is $65,652 per year for tuition alone.

To me the state option is still pretty darn expensive especially if you are also paying for the kids room and board.

You say this like this is normal advice.

People make all sorts of wild recommendations during a bull market, it wasn't that long ago that people were trading stories of buying Bitcoin with the money their grandparents gave thrm for college.

>- A luxury university diploma will not guarantee a good job

Maybe not guarantee but it can certainly make a difference. All else being equal a job candidate with a degree from University of Florida is going to get passed up for one with a degree from Yale and one with a degree from University of South Florida is going to get passed up for the one from University of Florida.

Childcare at 4,000 is upper quartile of expensive cities. You’ll find many places where it’s half or less of that price. Private schools at $50k a year are either going to be boarding or some of the more expensive country day schools. Even Sidwell, where Obama sent his kids, is cheaper than this.

And finally we get to university education. There are many schools with merit based scholarships. Treating living expenses as unique to college is also wrong.

Nothing is stopping a kid from getting a job in college!

> Childcare at 4,000 is upper quartile of expensive cities. You’ll find many places where it’s half or less of that price. Private schools at $50k a year are either going to be boarding or some of the more expensive country day schools.

You either have not lived in expensive cities in the US or at least didn't have kids while there!

For example in this list nearly all schools are over 50K:

https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-private-high-schools/m...

Most of the people on this site aren't farmers living in Rural Iowa so idk how relevant the cost of living in places like that are.

>And finally we get to university education. There are many schools with merit based scholarships. Treating living expenses as unique to college is also wrong.

Not everyone is getting scholarship. Obviously that changes the calculus.

>Nothing is stopping a kid from getting a job in college!

This is pure boomer sentiment. I had a job every summer in college and through grad school, this was only ~10 years ago and it paid for exactly 0% of my tuition. It was enough to survive the summers and pay my rent during grad school that was it.

It also digs into time that you could be socializing, or as professionals call it "networking". Having a job during school also is downward pressure on your grades, it makes it very hard to have top performance in your classes. Which excludes you from most scholarships.

Anecdotally I had two jobs most of my time during university, one on weekends one on evenings.

I wound up with less debt (note, not NO debt, just less) than most of my classmates but the tradeoff was that I basically entered the workforce basically already burned out and that was a seriously negative impact on my early career.

Long-term, the American style meritocratic striving is probably unsustainable and harmful in innumerable ways. But it is _rational_ at least in terms of the choices parents make. Numerous metrics point to increasing economic disparities; the rungs on the ladder keep getting farther and farther apart. How can I as a parent best position my child to negotiate that climb? Parents, who as a rule worry about such things on behalf of their children respond by taking various interventions on behalf of their kids. One is spending money to buy merit, however distorted the concept is in the U.S.

An expensive education doesn’t guarantee a good job? True. But if they have the means, it’s reasonable to anticipate that parents are going to play the probabilities. The problems that arise for parents, their driven kids and the broader society are significant; and I would prefer the circumstances to be otherwise; but that’s going to take an enormous cultural change in the U.S. One that’s more systemic than that of parents choosing to send their kids to less costly universities.

Exactly right. The OP set up a ridiculous straw man. Avoiding smoking doesn't guarantee you won't get lung cancer.

The returns to education are well documented and large.

https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2021/data-on-display/educa...

Kids aren't the huge bill that people seem to think they are unless the parents have a spending problem or don't really want to raise the kids and lease out the education, child care, and transportation duties to other people/organizations. Then it can be really expensive to pay someone else to raise your child.

The average amount spent on a child per year is 17k [1]. It may not be that much if you're making $200k+/yr, but on the median household income of $71k/yr [2], it's a pretty significant chunk — about ~24% of your income for just one child.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/cos...

[2] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...

I do think that families that figure out how to at least have one parent home for the kids seem to have better relationships with them. I like the idea of families that can swap each parent having a year or something with the kids, the issue is that most careers don't support that model. You can't have multiple year gaps in your resume nor do both spouses often make the same income.

My college experience was at a regular school learning and gaining experience through work. No debt, no loans, and state scholarship that paid 100% tuition if I went to a public school in my state. The scholarship required a 3.0 in high school and thereafter. Most of my high school friends who went to college did a similar thing.

Sure some went to Ivy League or other expensive networking type schools but it was the exception.

Me, an interviewer: "so you know compilers, great start on monday"

Also me: "so you know compilers and have studied math on top, sorry son thats a no from me"

If you take more than a few months off interviews become insanely hard.

Your competition for the best jobs do this. If you don’t, that’s up to you, but you’re asking for a five or six figure annual commit to you, it’s reasonable that in an hour or two you can talk about what you have done in the past in enough detail an interviewer can see how that experience applies in the new role.

But then again, I might be comparing oranges to apples here.

Depends alot on the supply and demand of compiler engineers though.

Could be interviewer: finally a competent compiler engineer! Handcuff him to that gold bar!

Why?

Ive always thought that those jobs are like: every company does it a little bit different (tools, processes, architecture) but theory, parsing and LLVM stay the same.

So what changes in e.g year or two? new CPU instructions? Architectures?

How does your job look like? You are doing more frontend or backend work?

I will mainly be working on the middle-end and back-end for RISC-V.

Probably worth noting that I did have an PhD offer earlier, to work with Coq. However, since it was in a small village in Germany, I had to turn it down.

On a more general note, I don't know if formal methods is that promising today: proof assistants are very immature, and proving even little things involves a lot of trial-and-error and is very time-consuming.

Yes, I recall interacting with you!

To me that is a truly a life well lived.

https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149...

> Sorry I missed your comment of many months ago. I no longer build software; I now make furniture out of wood. The hours are long, the pay sucks, and there's always the opportunity to remove my finger with a table saw, but nobody asks me if I can add an RSS feed to a DBMS, so there's that :-)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541964

How am I doing now? Still good, still grateful to be married to somebody who gets good health insurance through their job. Still need to update my website a bit (is that work ever really done?). Still working on the mix of building stuff and rustling up new business. Please feel free to reach out if you have a furniture need or a furniture windmill to tilt at (email in profile). I do sculptural light pieces too.

I doubt that I am alone in that.

Since HN has a lot of Bay Area folks, I feel that I should mention that The Krenov School[0] is but a short drive up the coast from you lot. I haven't been, but the student work I see from there on Instagram is a source of inspiration to me.

[0] https://thekrenovschool.org/

https://youtu.be/E0uRr_5zTQg

Follow what makes you happy. You don't get a second life. How long are you going to be dead.

If you don't mind, can you share a little about what the pay really is like? And how do you go about finding gigs? What are typical gigs like? i.e. do you build stuff and then try to find buyers, or do you find the buyer first and do heavy customizations? Do you use your own plans/designs or do you use others? How high was your skill level when you went full time? What would you recommend for someone who is largely self-taught and therefore has blind spots with some things?

(I'm working my way through the Anarchist Design book and thinking about getting started on the stick chairs).

Regarding stick chairs, I put one together from an accumulation of scrap pieces recently (hey, this could be a leg some day! throws it in the stick chair pile). Putting one together out of random pieces and letting the pieces you have "inform" the design is about as close as it gets to the sheer hackery joy of banging together some wild one-liner (if I use awk this way and pipe it to sort it'll do what I want) in the shell and hitting enter.

It's like, there's no way this could possibly work, and then you're sitting in it marveling at the fact that it only wobbles a bit. And then you level the feet (or fix your quoting), and damn if it doesn't do just what you want it to!

It's also a cool opportunity to make some of your own tools. Jennie Alexander has a great article on making your own tapered reamer[0] (which does sort of require a lathe), and Tim Manney has one on using your reamer to make a tapered tenon cutter[1].

[0] https://www.greenwoodworking.org/steel-saw-tapered-reamer-pl... Dunno what's up with the certificate error, but the site is legit. You don't have to get picky about the compass saw. I did this out of one I picked up at my local large home improvement store.

[1] http://timmanneychairmaker.blogspot.com/2015/06/use-your-rea...

Our goal is definitely that my contribution to our household economy grows to a more equal role, but she works an professional job and has been at it for a while and moved up over time.

> a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in Cleveland won by six runs (meaning “Cleveland's baseball team”)

(in this case, "circular saws" representing the whole class of dangerous power tools)

Still waiting for that World Series win.

Pun intended? :)

Interestingly, as I recall, nearly as many people are injured each year from power tools as are injured in vehicular collisions (in the US) and way more people drive than use power tools.

There is a solution, yes, but the problem is not solved.

As a hobbyist in a small shop, I bought it as my "best saw i'll need for a very long time".

The $200 saws are pieces of garbage that anyone who pursues the hobby for more than like a few months will rapidly discover the flaws of. Best bet is middle-road to get like a dewalt for $400 or so but even that has flaws compared to the sawstop.

1) Saw Stop holds a number of patents that legally prevented anyone else from adding the same tech to their saws. Most of the patents didn’t expire until 2021, but a few are still effective until 2024. We will probably see other manufacturers add similar features in 2025 as a result.

2) SawStop built its reputation on being a premium brand in addition to being safer. So the quality of components, materials, and build is a lot higher than what you get in even a mid grade dewalt saw.

I still wouldn’t buy one at their exorbitant prices, but hopefully the “accidentally removing fingers” problem will be better solved in a few years.

view.cogs.com

Windows are not ventilation. Ventilation must be measured so mechanical ventilation is required. Guaranteed mechanical ventilation ensures a certain quality of life.

Sprinkler system is required for a building made out of brick and has no furnace or gas appliances. The reasoning is egress. The Sprinkler is the worst part because I installed a mechanical thing that could flood to help in case there is fire.

Vertical lift to connect 2 hallways with a 4' height difference. This maybe Massachusetts specific but... When I was shopping for the vertical lift if I lived 15 west in New York State or a mile north in Vermont. I could purchased a used unit on ebay for under $7,000 and wheeled it into place. Massachusetts requirements ended costing $40,000 and every 2 years around $2,000 for inspections. All units need to accommodate modifications for ADA compliance. Meaning that don't need to be equipped but they must able to be retrofitted.

Do your research nothing can be considered logical or straight forward. Everything sounds crazy but it is a responsibility to provide shelter to others and most things are valid if costly.

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0Y5oqs3qnakFd

Here is there effort https://www.acorntoarabella.com

The building has a fiber line and 5 static IPs. Almost net zero and proof that air-sourced heat pumps work in New England even if the rooms have 44% glazing on 1 wall.

It's amazing the difference it makes in my daily well being - as you say, interacting with new people and working with your hands is very much more satisfying at the end of the day.

Getting a delayed passenger to their destination is a much more tangible problem, then coding for some ill-defined business need.

Still doing tech, but I have a much better outlook and productivity now.

The notion that someone would leave the tech world for a job in the service industry because it comes with more respect is absolutely wild to me. That's so far away from my personal experience I honestly can't fit it into my mental model of the world.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, or maybe your experience is actually super different from mine. Either way I'd be very interested in an elaboration.

it seems like everyone in this thread saying "tech workers get no respect" actually just work for shit companies...

There are definitely tourist-heavy parts of the US where this is absolutely true.

Perhaps OP meant as a trend over time? That has truth to it if you compare going back to the early 90s (my frame of reference).

In the 90s programming was not that well-paid, but was a very respected role in the companies I and my circle of programmer friends inhabited. A programmer/sysadmin was a wizard and treated as such. It was a vastly more fun industry to be in even if salaries were just regular white-collar professional level.

Slowly in the 00s after the dot com crash that seems to have vanished even as salaries started to climb. An in the 2010s programming became a low-level job where all the decision making power was removed from programmers and handed over to PMs. Now programmers are seens as replaceable worker units to be micromanaged to death via agile and daily status reports. In other words, not respected professionals anymore. The insane salaries kind of make up for the loss of respect, but not fully.

For the first couple decades of my career I always felt this was the best field of work ever, and it was. These days though, as I look at my high school peers who went into medicine, law, accounting I have to wonder. They all get ever more respected in their fields as they gain more experience, very much not the case in software anymore.

But I'd wager the barista gets thanked more often, and their customers like them more.

It sucks. People suck, you get yelled at, insulted, demeaned, shit pay, long hours.

Tech work is the cushiest job ever. It takes almost no effort to get into, you get paid insanely well, and skills are always in demand.

What is there to complain about?

But seriously, it is a hard job. You learn quickly that just because you understand something doesn’t mean you can explain it to someone.

As a complete side note, I think it would have been easier to learn programming if I had started with some lower-level CS, not high-level programming. Some concepts behind even high-level programming don't make a lot of sense to a newbie unless they understand what the limitations of a machine are, and why they inherently exist.

Depending on the district you end up in, it's not for the feint of heart.

Teaching is not easy and a lot of tech work is much less stressful than it

The pay will likely be much higher than teaching elsewhere (though I still took a 30k cut). Some bootcamps are more legit than others, so just do your research first

What subject are you teaching? Mine will be physics, if all goes well.

I was the only of my mother's children to attend her employer's appreciation event after she died [family did not have a funeral]. It meant so much to see how her community appreciated and respected and missed her. My siblings, her fellow children, did not want to witness this for some reason ["a waste of time"] but it's among the most beautiful things I've witnessed.

To those gathered hundred+ friends of my mother, I loudly thanked them for attending and sharing the spirit of her beautiful life; I told them calmly and proudly that "this is a celebration of 'how you should live your life,' to have left such an impact upon so many wonderful people."

Top 5 life moments/memories. RIP.

I know a few teachers who quit or went private (for less money) because of problems in the system. The bureaucracy can be oppressive and conflict with your morals. Safety and mistreatment can also be a real concern in some areas. The good news here is that most of the kids you'd be dealing with would be taking programming as an elective, so they should actually give a damn.

This is why I love mentoring new hires and interns.

An error message from a server while in the car going on a small vacation triggered the change. I had enough. So on the spot I thought of my options and decided on becoming a trucker.

My first aim was to do long haul but I never went that way. I got hired to do local LTL deliveries/pick ups and I loved it. For me it's hard to beat driving a truck when it's nice outside. Winter can be a bitch but you learn manage.

Constantly going in and out of the truck got me and keeps me in shape. I lost 100lbs and feel much better than the fat slob I used to be, tied to the keyboard. It also help that I bike to work (not in winter though).

Took a real pay cut but I would never go back. I don't think I can anyway. I started programming again a couple of years ago on personal projects and I love it. I realize that my skills are greatly diminished but it's still fun to find solutions to problems, fix the damn bugs lol, and be proud of the final product.

It is amazing how much of a difference physical movement on a daily basis will do.

Finding a job as a newbie was not easy at the time (because of the insurance they were saying) so I went the agency route and they found me work right away. Worked there for 2 years then found a job closer to home. Been doing that for about 15 years already.

That way you can ease into it, the other option is to go for one of those "we pay to train" places, but that involves more upfront commitment.

I did not have the savings to do it, but I eventually quit and became a bicycle mechanic. I actually enjoy what I do now, and the work environment doesn't have me constantly jumping back and forth between panic, undirected rage, and extreme listlessness like tech always did. That being said, I'm now broke and probably going to lose my house, so there is that.

That a great summary of working in big tech.

Being a competent employee and you'd be surprised what can happen.

For a small business, if you are really looking for someone to take over, you need to offer them a stake in the business, otherwise why would I bother working my ass off? I can make the same or more money just being a grunt in a large corp with much less risk and much more stability.

Sometimes they find someone, often they just close down when the owner gets too old.

You bought it while you had tech money and the bicycle mechanic money can't pay for it now?

Have you considered doing some consulting or something on the side? So sorry to hear this.

I've tried to do some consulting work, but never could figure out how to get any clients. Apparently this is a thing people do somehow, but everyone I asked just knew somebody to get their first ones.

Currently been using a portable toilet, for weeks, with no end in sight. Perfect metaphor for the mid-life crisis that's fortunately been co-happening during this same shit period =P

Currently seeking land with less of a view, and more solid foundations.

Jokes aside, good luck, so far I've been really lucky and haven't had any major house issues, that's super tough.

That's only true if you want to buy again somewhere with similarly priced real estate rather than somewhere with cheaper real estate.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3134322

The coffeeshop fallacy (2011)

It‘s easy to get blinded by how incredibly privileged the tech bubble is and have had a better experience so far just trying to find a great non-toxic spot in there. YMMV, good luck!

Whilst I wouldn’t be seen dead working in a place like that, y’all really don’t know how good you’ve got it.

I don't love working in tech the way I used to but I do still love cashing those paychecks! You can do what you love sure... or you can make the money you want. Almost nobody can do both.

As for me - I know theres bullshit every where you go and all jobs have sucky parts and I prefer this devil because I in fact do get paid enough to put up with this shit.

How about compartmentalizing your job and being happy after putting in 8h of work? Also, reading HN kinda bums me out on tech too at times. The Instagram Effect where you feel like everyone besides you is doing something cooler than fixing bugs in the CRUD application your company sells.

I was 8 when I started on a PcJr with BASIC.

I'm now in my 40s writing everything from Angular to C# APIs to database stored procedures.

Honestly, I've had enough and already suffered through one massive burnout that almost cost me my career.

I've been looking at what else I can do ... but I have no idea. And that scares me.

I can't see myself doing this in my 60s! And I'm not really the management type.

> "To take coffee shops as an example, an unending supply of idealistic wannabe cafe owners enters the sector every year, operates at a loss for a few years, and exits. The result is that even under normal business conditions, without swarming locust consumers, this is a loss-making business with an extinction rate of around 90% at the 5 year point in the US. Starbucks has the scale to be profitable and resilient. Locust coffee drinkers happily drink the excellent, loss-making coffee from small, local Jeffersonian coffee shops and callously retreat to Starbucks or DIY homebrew if the prices go up. Starbucks survives, coffee drinking grasshoppers survive, small coffee shops go in and out of business."

("Locust coffee drinkers" is analogy not insult).

[1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/04/03/the-locust-economy/

I’m sure many a barista fantasy has been crushed the first time having to deal with an unruly or argumentative customer, clean diarrhea off the bathroom walls, etc. Yeah, you have less to worry about once your shift is over, but your shift might really suck.

In our culture it sounds cringe/like bragging to make these kinds of comparisons punching down (to which I retort that the “back to blue collar” fantasy started it) but at this point in my life I don’t think I’ll ever have to put up with crap like that for money in the future, and I don’t plan to. Why would I do that?? We get paid several multiples just to tell computers to send little packets of data formatted just so from here to there.

All you need to do to be happy is what you’d be doing at your barista job anyway - stop giving a crap about your job after regular working hours, and stop trying to find an existential purpose in repetitive, draining tasks. Once you can do that, you reap all the benefits of higher pay with less bullshit

I went to college and tried a year of grad school, and then ran off to become an electrician. This is a profitable career but is extremely tough on body; any position within the industry, it is still physical labor. Now, after fifteen years of sacrificing myself "for the big bucks," I am left wondering whether I will be able to fit into a work environment that isn't construction [knowing that I must make this transition].

It is paralyzing fear, and removing this debilitation is hard when people are literally throwing bonkers money at anybody even claiming to be a skilled tradesman, right now — my body is done! The money is good! Whatdo?!

I'm currently "taking time off" and re-exploring a childhood love of computers... learning python, bought a new computer for first time in over a decade... trying to love this all!

And now with all the AI coding and copywriting... UGHHHHH. The timeline, it's just brilliant and perhaps I'll just retire and enjoy a new AI existence =P

No great surprise at all that people checkout and burnout, cause people are not machines.

So I'm attempting to reconcile the reality of modern, corporate software development with the way I derive satisfaction/meaning from my career. Boiled down, my naivete about our relationship with work, which is undoubtedly encouraged and exploited by society, has started to wane, and now I'm trying to uncouple how I get meaning/satisfaction from how I get money.

New years resolutions aren't for me but this year I tried to start loosely viewing things in my life like investments, specifically in terms of ROI. It's more of a reminder of how to think than a spreadsheet. I imagine myself as having an 'energy' budget. Sometimes I spend some energy and I get some back; other times I get nothing in return. As far as my career goes, I need to spend X to get my pay check, which eventually converts to energy. Sometimes I spend X+Y, hoping I get something more, like recognition/education/satisfaction. Sometimes that Y is engaging in a debate in peer review. Sometimes it's trying to anticipate one's manager or "showing initiative". The important thing is to track Y and if there's no return, mark that as a bad investment to be avoided in future. I burned out a couple of years ago because I was spending Y like mad with zero regard for the ROI, or at least with the vague expectation there would be some ROI one day.

Obviously this is not novel, or even a good analogy ("all models wrong; some useful"), but this framing is a (potentially) temporary way to adjust my thinking and behaviour from the brainwashed, single-minded, career-focused, please-notice-me-ceo-daddy track I started out in after school/uni.

I think the expectations that you sit at a job for 40 years before you can live is old corporate propaganda to keep people working. The objective of working is to earn money, money to be spent living. Work to live. Don't live to work.

If you keep your skills sharp, you can always return when you have that passion again. Burn out doesn't last forever.

Are you working remotely with this set up?

- The general pay and flexibility of a tech job is too good, it's easy to forget how privileged it is to be in a position holding a tech job. A lot of people out there are struggling, the fact that we can imagine starting over (and maybe have the time and means to do so as an option) says it all

- It's hard to escape the curse of tech. Even when I stopped working in tech, I have to use a computer and the internet everyday...and old habits come back, enticing opportunities arise, savings are disappearing...

- Money is not everything, but a day's tech work of pay equaling a week's worth of gigs or teaching really makes it easy to say no, especially when you live in a expensive city with expensive rent. For two years I working harder trying to doing both at full throttle and it drained me. I think with the current capitalistic system, by design it's really hard for people to pursuit multiple professions without a large sacrifice, e.g., for the majority of jobs you need to work full-time to make ends meet, not leaving one much focus time for other pursuits

- I felt guilt that I was "wasting" my tech skills, given tech industry really helped in my upward mobility. I don't have lifestyle creep (I'm okay with descaling), but not being able to save money for situations where I could help my parents and whatnot in the future definitely made me feel at unease

- I did learn that I was pushing myself and it's much better to only work a few days a week, or take a few months off a year (if you're contracting). Prior I would never take a day off and wouldn't think twice about it, now I get more FOMO about all the things in life I do outside of tech

- Success in some fields outside of tech is different, and in some cases arbitrary. Say in the arts, the competitive culture is very much there, and there isn't a shortage, but weirdly I didn't care and do my own thing (even just making ends meet is often considered success)

Interesting point. Thanks for your post.

The downside was that I lost money doing it (transport costs and no pay) and some of the tasks were mundane and / or physically uncomfortable (e.g. cleaning waterbowls on a cold rainy January day). But overall I loved it, partly because the birds and environment were so appealing, but also because compared with my old life, when I went home at the end of the day, I had no keep-you-awake-at-night responsibilities to worry about. I was also really pleased to have progressed in a new 'career' where my old status and technical skills counted for nothing, and I had to earn trust from the much younger bird team by pitching in and doing physical stuff. This was for me the best thing.

The money sucks and the hours are long, but somehow the simplicity of the mission (go from A to B, don't bend any metal) appeals to me. Being able to switch the phone off after work, not having to worry about stupid office politics, planning, or performance reviews is quite liberating. The view from my office desk is unbeatable!

I'm sure this job will lose its lustre soon enough, and maybe I'll return to tech, but for now it's fun.

You don't have performance reviews as a pilot? Maybe that should concern me next time I'm flying

For example at a previous tech company the levels were something like this (going by memory, not exact):

1 - Fails to meet expectations.

2 - Meets all expectations, delivers on time with only occasional mistakes.

3 - Exceeds expectations, delivers ahead of schedule with better quality than asked.

4 - Consistently invents new technologies and promotes them within the organization with demonstrable financial gain to the company.

5 - Invented the field (literally, that's what the description said!)

So unless you're one of a few people in the world (who didn't work for that company), it's impossible to be rated a 5. A 4 is also nearly impossible, sure maybe once a decade you might achieve that but nobody on earth does that every year.

Doing your job solidly well is clearly a 2, but a 2 is also seen as a straight road to RIF. In what other industry is that so?

So basically everyone is competing for 3 (mediocre bonus) or 2 (RIF). Sure, a few 4 and 5 get handed out to the friends of the VP but not for meeting that impossible criteria, only through politics.

Salary in tech are so high that even with a mediocre bonus, it’s still a good life.

For the last two years, I aimed for just meet expectations. Easy job, no stress, just taking some time to relax.

Last few months, I decided to continue progressing in my career so I started taking more responsibilities.

The point is that work is not linear, it’s fine to relax a bit or even downgrade your role.

Because if you do a solid good job that's a 2, but a couple 2s fairly quickly gets you on the RIF train to getting fired. Which is nuts. So everyone has to outcompete their team trying to get those 3s. And the manager is put in the nasty position of having to rotate the 2s (which they must hand out since there's always quotas) among the team so that hopefully nobody gets RIFd while still meeting the quotas.

(Assuming a 5 point scale here, which is fairly common, but I've seen other scales but the same principles apply.)

My partner was a manager at the G of faang for many years and twice a year the whole month was blocked off for 60-80 hour weeks just to fill endless review paperwork. And their employees spend all of the six months between reviews scheming ways to fill that next round of paperwork. It's all a monumental waste of time, effort and cause of unnecessary stress for everyone.

None of this nonsense exists in other industries, at least as far as I know from talking about it with my circle of connections in other professions such as law, medicine, accounting.

This definitely seems bad, but it’s not common in every tech company. Maybe is something in your company or city/country?

I worked in a few countries and I’m UK at the moment. Large corporations do have performance reviews, but there is no expectations that everyone needs to over achieve.

If your job is burning you out, maybe is worth it to look around for a new one. Is the high salary of FANG worth it? “Boring companies” can still pay good enough and have really interesting tech challenges.

> None of this nonsense exists in other industries, at least as far as I know from talking about it with my circle of connections in other professions such as law, medicine, accounting.

Maybe not in the same way, but they still have their own struggles to progress in their careers. The main difference is that the tech industry doesn’t have labor regulations and every company needs to do their career progression.

However, Law can be as bad on that, lawyers need to grind for years before getting seniority and higher salaries.

Medicine and accounting is extremely government regulated and you need to get specific certification to pass to the next role. So there is a lot of pressure to get those.

I used to dread every performance review in tech.

How did you make this move? I've day-dreamed about this, but curious to hear details from someone who did it.

The flight instructor thing was actually occasionally rewarding, especially when people landed the airplane by themselves for the first time. Seeing the look of joy and satisfaction on their faces is one of the better parts of this whole flying thing. :)

I hear you on the instruction. I used to teach climbing courses as a volunteer, and it was always nice watching people grow more confident.

Is this true? I thought Major Airline Pilots could make upwards of $200k per year. Or are you doing something smaller scale?

But if you're willing to make $40k-60k you can start out at a small commuter line in a few months, and slowly work your way up from there.

https://fortune.com/2023/03/01/delta-airlines-pilots-new-con...

The decision to turn my back on what I thought was my passion was a profound spiritual experience. The decision to change came from outside of me. The decision of what path to follow was up to me though.

Tech was hiring and hiring like crazy, and I wasn't going to do an unprofitable degree twice so CS it was. I had a job before I graduated making 4x what my mom was making at her non-profit admin job.

If I hadn't pursued my art career first and had the chance to get deeply disillusioned with it, I would definitely be sitting at my desk trying to write code and thinking "what if... I'm not made for this... there's something else..." The truth is that I'm not cut out for the arts industry. I like stability, I like being salaried, I like having the upper hand in the hiring market (I know Big Tech is doing layoffs, but try spamming applications for a year to everything you can think of until the only place that calls you back is a cashier position at a grocery store. I have skills that are in demand now.) I like work that is decent and stimulating enough but which is definitely not "my passion" because that helps me keep boundaries on it.

I feel for folks who didn't get that chance to try out that other thing, who went straight into this career maybe because they wanted to, maybe because they didn't have the safety net I had that allowed me to do a second degree, maybe because life has held them down and change doesn't feel like an option. I've been out there with my chosen field and gotten burned hard by it so I'm content to stay put. It's definitely one of the cliche sayings about how the lows make the highs much higher.

I have no useful advice for anybody beyond their very early 20s facing this question. I know I would be eaten by this question if I hadn't already gotten my answer at the start.