241–250 of 265 posts
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OP here. What's the equivalent for data science / ML / stats type jobs? I'm not a pure software engineer. Any code I've even written in my job has been for experiments, not for end products.
I think generally data science/ML/stats will pay much lower than SWE outside of finance, fyi
> But doing that would ruin any chances I ever had of being able to retire early. > I would love to be able to retire and get into meditation / travelling the world / learning about things for fun. I lost some of the best years of my life because of thinking among the same lines. What I had failed to consider: - The more you make, the more you want, you never have "enough" - Whatever you save, keeps losing its value,…
> Better find yourself a job which you'd be happy doing even if you could never retire, and build some happy / healthy / harmonious lifestyle around it. How many people have such jobs though? For example, I wonder how many people stay in their jobs past retirement age (and not because they need the money)? I suspect it's a tiny fraction.
There's a couple of constraints here that seem to be dominating your decisions. One: early retirement Two: the idea that the recruiter was right about not being able to find the money elsewhere You have a PhD in Computer Science , one of the highest academic accomplishments in one of the hottest fields for the last 30-40 years. I want you to know how far ahead you are of people like me who just taught themselves to c…
"You have a PhD in Computer Science, one of the highest academic accomplishments in one of the hottest fields for the last 30-40 years. I want you to know how far ahead you are of people like me who just taught themselves to code and glue web apps together for 6 figures." I have a Masters and don't make 6 figures. I think the PhD has a smaller pool of positions, especially if you expect to be paid well.
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> Better find yourself a job which you'd be happy doing even if you could never retire, and build some happy / healthy / harmonious lifestyle around it. How many people have such jobs though? For example, I wonder how many people stay in their jobs past retirement age (and not because they need the money)? I suspect it's a tiny fraction.
Your experience may be different, but I know surprisingly many such people in my circles. Usually engineers, doctors and other white-collar workers, who got to the point where their job is more satisfying than stressful. They don't do it for the money, but to socialize and to have a purpose in life.
I feel this post is really hard to understand. You are: * A phd in quant finance in London * You joined due to high comp * You say getting a home would cost 10 times your salary * You have a partner earning multiples of your salary (?!) * You want to retire early I guess I just feel like this story doesn't seem like the numbers make any sense? A quant finance phd should be able to afford a home. A quant finance phd w…
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It's a real shame that spending your youth fixated on money and a nebulous future retirement doesn't have a price tag attached to it. You can calculate the opportunity cost of a dollar spent vs a dollar invested, but you cannot so easily calculate the cost of squandering a chance to have a memorable experience while you're still young and unencumbered. Balance.
> you cannot so easily calculate the cost of squandering a chance to have a memorable experience while you're still young and unencumbered. Do people who do the whole "frontload a big hedonistic experience before you start working/living as an adult" actually end up with memorable experiences that often?
Absolutely shameful straw man.
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Your experience may be different, but I know surprisingly many such people in my circles. Usually engineers, doctors and other white-collar workers, who got to the point where their job is more satisfying than stressful. They don't do it for the money, but to socialize and to have a purpose in life.
Do they see themselves working after retirement age? Work may have some entertainment value, but there are so many other options available for that in one's free time - and those options are unburdened by the unpleasant aspects that every job has.
I'm in my 30s and I've been really struggling to find something both enjoyable and meaningful besides work, and maybe gym.
> those options are unburdened by the unpleasant aspects that every job has.
Anything worth pursuing has some unpleasant aspects.
I feel you; I too went through the same sort of thing -- PhD in CS from Cambridge, girlfriend in London who thought the center of the universe was London and parents back home screaming at me to 'get a house and settle down in London'. I was slogging it, being paid incredibly well only to end up at work before the sun came up, back home when the sun had gone down, forever damp, wet, cold, windy even when it was sunny…
What did you end up doing
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It's a real shame that spending your youth fixated on money and a nebulous future retirement doesn't have a price tag attached to it. You can calculate the opportunity cost of a dollar spent vs a dollar invested, but you cannot so easily calculate the cost of squandering a chance to have a memorable experience while you're still young and unencumbered. Balance.
> you cannot so easily calculate the cost of squandering a chance to have a memorable experience while you're still young and unencumbered. Do people who do the whole "frontload a big hedonistic experience before you start working/living as an adult" actually end up with memorable experiences that often?
Otherwise I'm pretty sure 80%+ of those who don't do it end up being squares in their 30's married to some girl who missed out.
I do know that maybe 20% of people aren't really in to the big party hedonism thing, and that's fine.
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Depression after returning to work from a holiday is very common. That should be a clue that we're doing something wrong as a society.
What is wrong is that people have unrealistic expectations towards their jobs (and, more general, their lives). These expectations are making them unhappy and depressed.
There's a lot of research and information about the difficulty night owls and people with > 24hr body clocks face. I suspect there's some research about how some people are more cut out for bursts of work rather than a large contiguous block of attention (and I'm not just talking about ADHD people - which itself is a convenient but unreasonable box to categorize with).
No, I believe the issue with post-vacation depression is that like a sponge, people expand back to something resembling who they are or could be while they are away from work. But when they go back to work, they are squeezed into the cube. The feeling is dramatic and unnatural. Or maybe they are suddenly in the cubicle next to the marketing guy (not hating on marketing, per se) who likes to take his calls on speakerphone all day while they are trying to build mental models and do deep thinking.
I have after many years identified my pattern of experience. Each job starts with promise, turns into a grind with too many limitations, and ends with me hating my 9 hour block - even if I like my colleagues - and ultimately finding a new job or taking a freelance period.
But sure, if you have impossible expectations - such as any lifestyle resembling what the typical middle class American had in the 1950s - then you will certainly be set for disappointment.