371–380 of 463 posts
I have some cash savings, hate my day to day job, and dream of having a small machine shop producing aircraft parts (I'm a pilot and sell some aircraft parts on the side).
I think I'm too big of a pussy to turn down $150 an hour and find happiness (my current industry sucks and is is a cocktease).
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> not having to worry about stupid office politics, planning, or performance reviews You don't have performance reviews as a pilot? Maybe that should concern me next time I'm flying
Do any other fields of work have the insane performance review style as tech? None of my accountant, lawyer or doctor friends do. 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…
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.
I used to work as a compiler engineer in the US for several years, before deciding to try starting over at the age of 30, in pure mathematics. I moved from the US to Paris in pursuit of an affordable mathematics education, and spent two years in a Masters program. I did have a considerable amount of savings, but it was very risky nevertheless: if it didn't work out, I'd be out-of-touch with compilers, and it would be…
I'm on a hiatus from tech after nearly 20 years at a FAANG, I'm now an airline pilot. 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…
>The money sucks Is this true? I thought Major Airline Pilots could make upwards of $200k per year. Or are you doing something smaller scale?
https://fortune.com/2023/03/01/delta-airlines-pilots-new-con...
I left tech ~6 years ago to pursue medical school. I'll be graduating and starting residency soon. A significant number of my classmates express regret for choosing medicine, and a lot of them fantasize about pursuing a career in tech, instead. I feel pretty well inoculated against this, having had a varied life and a collection of very different work experiences before med school. I'm happy with my choice. My work s…
I'm 29 now, just curious how that matches up to your timeline? Were there a good number of older students in your classes as well? Cheers and congrats on almost finishing!
I used to work in the industry for 9 years, got disillusioned working in tech and I moved to food, I've been working as a cook for the last 2 and a half years, it's something i wanted to do when i left high school and i always kept an avid interest in cooking while I had a tech job. Overall I think it's become more stressful for sure but I have found more meaning to my work, status and finance wise i would say its a…
I would say where I live you get decent respect as a cook or pedicab driver compared to tech - probably because the tech salaries here are absurdly low.
*The reason I mentioned hourly and yearly is that I'm wondering if a pedicab driver can put in 8 hour days like a cook or dev.
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This is not uncommon in the more blue-collar businesses. Many boomers now retire, and they often can't find a suitable successor. Most ambitious young people are being led down a different path via university, so there is a real unmet need in less glorious, but nevertheless still profitable fields. Btw he wasn't gifted the company, he had to buy it from the owners of course - still a good deal.
If you get to know small business owners in these areas, you find that a large number of them have NOBODY to take over the business, for love OR money. 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.
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It is feasible, but it's not something i would recommend doing because it won't solve the underlying issues that causes your unhappiness. Also most people severely underestimate the stress in this job. I've met quite a few doctors who would be equally happy having a cushy job in tech instead of night shifts.
A doctor’s job is definitely much more stressful than a tech job. You are dealing with people’s lives every day and a misdiagnosis could possibly lead to someone’s death. Seldom do you have that level of responsibility in a tech job.
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I would say where I live you get decent respect as a cook or pedicab driver compared to tech - probably because the tech salaries here are absurdly low.
Curious about this. Could you give me some idea of hourly and yearly* wages for cook, pedicab, junior software dev in your area please? I want to understand this phenomenon better. Thanks. *The reason I mentioned hourly and yearly is that I'm wondering if a pedicab driver can put in 8 hour days like a cook or dev.
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Interested to hear more about your experience with Julia!
I was in Silicon valley for most of my time, lucky to have Tom Perkins as our Chairman and Ceo for our first startup as he taught us how to ignore the "shiny" tech. Our experience with Julia has led us to believe that it's a language with a great future behind it. We're going to work with the Carbon guys to highlight lessons learnt.