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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?
- Move to 2nd tier, lower cost of living city. My hidden gem: Chicago. Public transit, plenty of housing, culture, arts, #1 food city in the US, international airport with flights everywhere, half the housing cost and 3/4th other expenses as NYC and SF. 2nd option is Philadelphia for the same reasons and proximity to NYC for the weekend trips or to go into the office.
- Take a pay cut working at a financial, industrial, retail company as a cog while enjoying a stable 9-5. Lots of options remote and local with the resume you have.
- Work on side projects, hobbies. Decompress.
I wouldn't worry about your skills with "real world" tech stacks. It's straight forward to pick up.
Edit: I know calling one of the largest cities in the US a hidden gem is odd, but tech and Chicago / Philly? Not often considered.
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…
"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…
I say that because whereas I work where I want, there are a number of folks I interact with who drag themselves to jobs they hate because they "can't" leave the comp. Sometimes they really have ratcheted up their COL quite high, and other times it is just too much of blow to imagine their salary cut in half. I'll share my experience of a series of paycuts for ever more interesting work, and the satisfaction that resulted, but it usually doesn't seem to resonate.
There was a big "living below your means" message I was getting from folks when I was graduating 25 years ago, and I think it has really paid off. Finding a comfortable, satisfying lifestyle that can be funded with mid-level comp has been such advantage for my family. I say that because whereas I work where I want , there are a number of folks I interact with who drag themselves to jobs they hate because they "can't"…
If you want to be a little IC cog in the machine and build what you’re told, stay at big corps.