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Ask HN: Should I cash out my 401K and try to get my dream job?

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Re: Ask HN: Should I cash out my 401K and try to get my dream job?

#21

Post by eshvk »

Please don't go by the echo chamber that is the Bay Area based Hacker News. A Github profile is nice, contributing to OSS projects is nice, yet those aren't the only things that matter to acquiring a job. Unless you are targeting specific companies which are so overwhelmingly biased towards hiring people who only fit a certain demographic. There are loads of people, for example who work in Finance, who don't have all these things. They make the transition to tech just fine.

Source: I worked for two years in SF. I am currently working in NYC. A bunch of my co-workers are incredibly smart ex-finance folks who are good at Math and C.S. I am willing to bet that most of them didn't start a github profile until they joined us.

Re: Ask HN: Should I cash out my 401K and try to get my dream job?

#23

Post by eplanit »

Listen to those here saying to NOT cash it out. I speak from experience. I kept my startup afloat for almost a year by using up all my 401K savings. I was in my mid-30s, and in that moment the worry of losing momentum on the startup was so strong that I calculated the risk with a strong bias. To make a long story short, the startup fizzled and I found myself in my late 30s with no retirement whatsoever. That was a while ago, and the short-term issues (being broke and with wind gone from the sails) cleared in about 2 years, and my income is again quite fine, and the spirit lives on. However, I will likely have to work until I die as a result of having no retirement savings. What has been built back since the fallout will not be sufficient for a long-term retirement. So now I work new strategies to transfer what I earn to safer investments (real estate) in order to have some assets to liquidate later in order to fund a retirement. All this said, it's not pathetic to me -- I made my decision, and I'm living with it. I expect nobody to provide me any "safety net" (that just wouldn't be genuine living). However, I would strongly discourage anyone from following this same path.

Re: Ask HN: Should I cash out my 401K and try to get my dream job?

#24

Post by steven2012 »

I'm in my 40s. I got a job at a YC startup without a Github, Twitter, any OSS contributions, Stackoverflow activity, and without even knowing the primary language that they develop here.

If you live in an area outside of SV where programming jobs aren't as prevalent, I would be a bit more careful.

Instead of using your 401k which is a terrible idea, you really should have a savings account that you should dip into. Therefore I would continue working for the next year or 2, keep working but save every dime you can so that in 2 years you can take 3-6 months off. In the meanwhile, apply to every single job you can.

Re: Ask HN: Should I cash out my 401K and try to get my dream job?

#27

Post by rhizome »

No, don't.

Wait...what? You want to cash out so you can create a GitHub profile and answer SO questions? Just no.

On first pass I thought you were going to take the money and time to build something. But not this. Here's my advice: don't get a dream job, get one that makes you happier. Not "happy," not "happiest," not "dream job," just a bit better, so you can have a little more time to put stuff on GitHub and answer questions on SO and spend time with your family. It's not just "dream job" and "old-school software company."

Re: Ask HN: Should I cash out my 401K and try to get my dream job?

#28

Post by whatevsbro »

I'm going to go against the grain here and suggest that if you can invest your 401k wisely, you might as well cash it out.

The reason for this is that you're not going to get that pension anyway, because the Western world's economies are barely holding together even as we speak. No one knows what will happen, but some of us know that something bad is going to happen.

It's fundamentally quite simple. Dozens of trillions of unpaid liabilities are just not going to get paid, and most Western governments are getting even more indebted each year. Using money you don't actually have will have consequences even for governments.

Whether your current plan is a wise investment for that 401k is another matter. I'd consider other plans too.

Re: Ask HN: Should I cash out my 401K and try to get my dream job?

#29

Post by techwatching »

seanmccann wrote: post #12

If you are indeed a good engineer you could do all those things on a single weekend: 1.) Sign up for GitHub, fork a project, and improve it 3.) Answer 2-5 hard questions on StackOverflow 4.) Profit They just want to see your skill. You shouldn't answer "a ton of questions" on StackOverflow. Just answer a couple hard ones. Somehow prove that you've actually got stuff done over the last 13 years. There are programmers…

This. Work before work, after work, on the weekends, once the kids are in bed, whatever. If you have a dream, stretch for it.

Re: Ask HN: Should I cash out my 401K and try to get my dream job?

#30

Post by 127001brewer »

Your definition of a "dream job" sounds like it could be any new job.[1] Why not look for a new job instead (since you should be relatively marketable with thirteen (13) years of software development experience)?

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7532138

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