Ask HN: I feel trapped in my job and city

I'm 34. I work in quant finance in London, UK (in ML/statistics). I graduated with a PhD in CS and sort of fell into this field when a recruiter contacted me with the promise of $$$ that is hard to get in any other field unless you're at Google. I'm on a pretty decent salary even by London standards, but I'm utterly miserable.

1. The job is meaningless. When I first started in the field I thought I enjoyed it, but now I see that the bonuses were what excited me about the job, not the actual work.

2. Although the money is good, an 'adequate' house in London would cost at least 10 times my salary. I'm renting a flat with my partner. It's a reasonably decent flat by London standards, but because we're renting we can never really make it a home.

3. London is a horrible place to live. I have no affinity for it whatsoever. Even if I could afford a house I would not want to live here.

4. My home town is an hour flight away but if I were to move home I would most likely take at least a 2/3 pay cut. I would prefer to live back home. But doing that would ruin any chances I ever had of being able to retire early.

5. My parents, like most boomers, had a much better standard of living when they were my age. My father had a pretty average salary, bought a massive house for a reasonable price, and saw his wealth multiply many times over. It's not like that for my generation.

My partner is in a similar job to me and he is making multiples of what I'm making (although it's more stressful than mine). Luckily for him, he hates his job less than I do, so he could probably stick it out a few years longer.

I have just come back from 2 weeks holidays at home with my parents and was pretty much in tears this morning starting another day at work. It's so hard to muster up any motivation for the job, especially now that the company is in a dry period pnl-wise. I much prefer my home town to London, but I can't expect my partner to move back with me, as he is doing extremely well in his career and it would be career suicide for him.

I have racked my brain trying to figure out what field I would prefer to work in, but I can't think of anything. I just go round in circles thinking about it. Given that anything else would involve a massive pay cut, I think I would regret leaving the job I'm in. I could probably grind leetcode for a couple of months to try to get into Google, but I would find working at Google utterly meaningless as well. I have the ability to work hard to pass an interview, but I've been working for long enough now that I find it difficult to muster up any enthusiasm during job interviews, which is probably a red flag for potential employers. I'm no longer young and excited about this stuff!

I'm interested in computers and programming in general, but doing it for a living ruins the joy. I would love to be able to retire and get into meditation / travelling the world / learning about things for fun.

With a phD in CS, the likelihood is you could probably find something outside of Quant finance at a big tech company. Try and connect with some recruiters at Google etc and see what they have going on.

A better job can make a big difference, perhaps one that will allow you to spend more time visiting home (remote work supported).

The problem is the salary differential between my industry / FAANG versus everything else. It's a bi-modal distribution.

Quant finance is notorious for being extremely unmotivating and depressing to work on. You say:

I'm interested in computers and programming in general, but doing it for a living ruins the joy.

Well... maybe. But maybe it's just the soulless nature of quant finance that ruins the joy. You need to quit your job, because you hate your job, and try something else. Anything else! Don't conclude that you hate programming for a living just because you hate programming at a quant finance job.

Google and the other huge tech companies is one reasonable thing to try. Yeah, it might not be the most inspirational job in the world, but based on the experience of my personal network, it's far more interesting to work at Google than it is in quant finance. If I were you, I would also check YCombinator companies for ones that are willing to hire remotely in a European time zone, since it sounds like you don't really want to live in London.

Don't work on ads then if you don't like ads. There's thousands of different roles within FAANG companies that all pay well, is there really none of them that you would find more meaningful? Give it a try, don't just stay in quant finance forever because you assume that everything else sucks just as much.