Ask HN: I feel trapped in my job and city

Being employed or running a business (or being in school, in a sports team etc.) also means you're part of the general actively synchronised life. Might sound fuzzy but it boils down to being in touch with society around you. Then again, there is plenty of society all over the world where that means working strange hours, strange jobs, or not at all.

Going to push back a little here. The two of you are miles ahead of most of the world (and your own country) in income and education. You'll be able to retire likely decades before the rest of us slobs. In the meantime, find some awesome hobbies, you can certainly afford it. Learn some fun and difficult shit, get really good at it, rinse and repeat. Your job doesn't have to have meaning, just enjoy your life; you're set up to enjoy it a lot more than most. If you can't find any fulfillment outside of work, then good luck.

Switch jobs and get a 5 to 10% increase, and keep doing it for a while, this way you will retire earlier and the excitement and optimism of the new job will keep you going for the first year at least.

Persue an alternative that you find interesting and learn how to make a living out of it.

You can create a small SaaS company on some niche, freelance remotely, get creative and learn how to invest, maybe invest a little bit in crypto, take what you have an invest in real estate buy a studio and rent it and start making some extra income.

Make a plan, there has got to be a way.

Look around you, do you see anyone over 45? This means they all figured out an alternative, so with time, so will you, but don't make the mistake of thinking that you are "trapped", you have a lot of alternatives and choices.

Set a deadline - 6 or 12 months. Cheer yourself up by using that time to plan carefully some of your desired activities. Save as much money as you can during that year.

Then quit.

It will take three months at least before you find your balance again. At least, that's how it was for me after my company closed and sent us all away with nice severence packages. One of my colleagues literally stepped into a nicely paying contract gig the following Monday. I took a month which turned into three which turned into six. I did the cliché thing and went to Bali. And still my mind was so focused on the rat race and how to live by its rules that I almost forgot to enjoy my time.

I did some contract stuff, did some nice travel, and then got a "real job". Now, 1.5 years later, I hate almost every day. I have money again, and safety, and a comfy house with a big yard (great fortune to be stuck here during COVID compared to a flat in Amsterdam). But knowing I have to get up each day and do nearly pointless tasks just to keep the ship moving in the right direction has been making me question the point of existence. That questioning can easily reach a point of danger, because ultimately you will reason that there is no point (and there isn't...); so you should be doing something that makes you happy or that you find passion in.

Tomorrow I quit. I worked out a contract where I have total say in how the tech stuff is built, and I have total flexibility in location and nearly total flexibility in hours of the day.

Given your skills, if you wish to leverage your unique and pretty valuable talents, you should be getting involved (networking) with entrepreneurial finance people. One of my other colleagues was a quant, and now he's investing and managing investment for a few clients. It took him about 5 years, but now I believe he has surpassed his income level from when we were at a professional finance shop. He travels for work and pleasure, and he mostly keep hours of his choosing.

There are really so many things you could probably do... you just need to start getting to know people and seeing which opportunities present themselves.

The biggest impediment to your breaking out of circular thinking, might be thinking automatically that any other job would entail a big pay cut. Because first of all, maybe not. Your skills are in high demand. If anything it's the opposite problem: If you don't decide for yourself what direction you want to go in, someone out there will always have an opinion. In your case that person was the recruiter you mention, but everyone of course has lots of ideas about where they can put talented people to use. Which is a nice problem to have if you're said talented person, but it becomes about being selective. The recruiter decided where you should work, not you.

Analogies:

1) Maybe I'm quite handsome and let's assume heterosexual for this example, and I never have to ask women out; I just wait for them to ask me. Corollary: I date only the women whom said women want me to date (themselves)!

2) Maybe I'm an accomplished musician and someone's always asking me to join their band. When I do, inevitably the band ends up sucking. Maybe I don't like music anymore?!?! (No, probably I should start my own band, or at least not limit my search to only the bands that go looking and find me. Maybe I should even write to my very favorite band, refer them to some of my amazing work and say I hope we get a chance to work together someday. You never know!)

Secondly (and yes I realize it's been a long time since the "first of all"), just for the sake of argument - if you did take a pay cut, so what? What do you need all that money for... to throw away on rent in a city you hate? Work remotely from someplace cheaper and you might find that the differential amount that you can save each month remains the same or even increases. Just food for thought. Or to get more extreme and "Shit My Dad Says" about it, experience complete unemployment for a while, or be in the army for a stint, and see how much more appealing that "low" salary job is!

Bottom line: Don't be a prisoner of the golden handcuffs!