Ask HN: People who cashed out early and stopped working: What is your life like?

I work for 2-3 years and take anywhere from 6-18 months off in between jobs. I'm pushing 50 and it hasn't been a problem.

I hear the ageism claim all the time, but I've seen no evidence of it whatsoever. I have no problem finding a job when I put myself on the market, usually within a few weeks at most. Many of the people I work with are in their 40s and 50s. I've never heard or seen any age discrimination.

I occasionally run into people in their 50s who haven't learned anything new in decades, but they're always working. Sometimes they express fear that they won't be able to find a new job. In all these cases, it's warranted, but also deserved. Regardless of your age, if you're not keeping up with the technology trends, you don't belong in the game. You don't need to chase the latest flavor, but if you're a software engineer, you'd better keep up with at least some modern tech stacks. That applies regardless of age.

Another myth I see spread all the time. HR departments don't care about this. If they ask, it's only because someone told them it's a thing to be concerned about, and they're parroting what they heard. Make something up if you really feel like you need to address it and are afraid to tell them to fuck off. It's a stupid question that doesn't come from any legitimate business concern. In my 30+ year career, I was asked about a brief gap between jobs only one time, and that was decades ago. If a place actually cares about this, it's a good sign that you should find a job somewhere better. If you're really concerned, just leave the dates off your resume entirely, or at least leave the months off. Who cares about this stuff?

So it feels like there was a big element of luck, but also I feel that having a history of open source work visible on github, as well as creating personal connections in the open source world, helped it happen for me.

There aren't a whole lot of Adafruits out there, where you're shipping new hardware products weekly, most of them with open source drivers.

I'm unmarried... spent most of my younger life driven to make money and buy a house. It's been the best decision for me to buy a house when I'm working because of the tax deductions. That being said I've always wanted to be a musician, and an independent thinker. Working for others served to pay bills, but also served to burn valuable years off of my life... Because I'm not married and have no kids, I'm able though to be a bit less cautious, and have taken time off of work in small cycles (3-6 months at a time).

I have always planned a point of retirement, but I'm not there because it's impossible to know how good my savings need to be, and how the economy will go into the future, and I don't want to have to go back to working, after years off, when I'm much older in a future where jobs may not be available to someone like me.

I have no shortage of things to do in retirement, but most of it depends on being well funded, and in today's world, financial, time without income, and investment risks are much scarier than it used to be. But the truth has always been the same - No risk, no reward.