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Get a Corporate job in a big old school industry/traditional company (e.g manufacturing) where you are just a number. Trick is to find a team where work is minimal. FAANG and startups are out
2nd best bet is to find a Mid sized small business where they don't have much IT but just about enough where you could become a key IC doing 9-5 with minimal pressure. Tech is not their main business.
Meh, just go to a start-up. I went from startups to big tech, including a name that rhymes with "feta", and am back at startups. It's been a compensation roller coaster going from +360% to -68% over 6 years, but I have so much more energy and am making a substantial impact.
OP lacks motivation to do anything and wants to do "minimal work", "low stakes" and you are suggesting startups ? They will be found out in no time even if hired. With startups, there is no such thing as "minimal work". If anything, pressure will be more than FAANGs with much less benefits and comp.
The thing you want, low stakes low effort programming, doesn’t really exist. The reason Google can survive building everything themselves — and thus giving you and many others endless code to write — is because they have exceptionally deep pockets and army’s of people. Outside of Google-type companies, people write code to serve a direct business need which means the impressive software engineers are not the people w…
A few months ago I was the engineer supporting a new ask from marketing, after listening to their requests and evaluating what tools we had I wrote exactly 0 lines of code and we launched on time and without issues in part because I figured out how to use the levers we'd build into existing systems to do what they needed. It's engineering work but not development work.
Outside FAANGs there's more focus on contributing to success than simply contributing LOC. (I left where I was in part because I felt I was penalized for finding efficient ways to do things rather than churning out LoC)
“Frugal” salary band should allow you to still live a comfortable life. Perhaps you will save a bit less. That’s ok, you want to leave anyway and you will earn less in any other place. You will also become ineligible for future promotions. What do you care, you want to leave anyway.
Now use that extra time to find your next thing. Do interviews, or bootstrap your own thing if that’s what motivates you. Be careful with IP and noncompetes.
but seriously if you want to leave FAANG then just leave. there are many things one can do in life and maybe consider software might not be the thing you want to do. like if you didn’t need money and had housing. what would you do?
life is short and i did the sea change now life is so f’ing refreshing. wake up do work on the land. go fishing at night. do some computer stuff to make money but it isn’t my identity anymore.
bush/commune camping with a bunch of hippies i realised that having skills in computers is utterly useless skill in the world vs say knowing how to weld or lead a drum circle. computers are useful for business/making money but like if you wanna be useful in the world… what skills are relevant and in demand? not for money but for trade. go learn that stuff. you may just find your burnout problems magically melt away and a love for computers comes back (or not!)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really, because saving the same percentage of a much higher salary gets you to retirement or financial independence much faster.
Is that on the assumption that you will eventually move to the low COL area as described above?
Now supposing your CoL is halved, your CoL needs to have been $150k+ for this to be worth it. Since you lose $75k in pay, and need to make that up from the CoL difference. If you're single, chances are you weren't spending that much on food and housing, so you actually end up with less money. But if you're supporting a big family, you may well have been spending most of your money on necessities and the CoL reduction is worth it. (At least financially.)
Sounds like you need to decide what are your priorities first? I.e. choose between money, time, or anything in between (part time, sabbatical, etc). Then, commit and act.
You want to exit big tech, but don't want to give up the comp? I think you may have to make a tough choice.
I know I'll have to give up the comp but like you say, it's a tough choice. Mostly looking to see how others have rationalized this choice.
It's very possible that you'd be perfectly happy on less comp, in a role that's more fulfilling. IME, this is a fact that people realize 4ish years into a high-earning career.
For me, I realized that being happy every day is immeasurably more important to me than making a marginal pre-tax $150k/year, and that the FAANG environments are intentionally designed to be incompatible with what brings me happiness, day-to-day. YMMV.
"Somewhere where I can put the minimum effort and still impress" Get a Corporate job in a big old school industry/traditional company (e.g manufacturing) where you are just a number. Trick is to find a team where work is minimal. FAANG and startups are out 2nd best bet is to find a Mid sized small business where they don't have much IT but just about enough where you could become a key IC doing 9-5 with minimal press…
This is your target, if you want to do the minimum and wow people but the "wow" is equally lackluster.