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> The typical employment lifecycle of an engineer is: Get frustrated by the current company culture and/or benefits, let this frustration sit for way too long, snap and choose a random company whose recruiter just happened to reach out, join there, and repeat the cycle all over again. It's scary how real this is, but it's easy to say "don't do that", when all the inhibitions about leaving your current job rotate arou…
> The typical employment lifecycle of an engineer is: Get frustrated by the current company culture and/or benefits, let this frustration sit for way too long, snap and choose a random company whose recruiter just happened to reach out, join there, and repeat the cycle all over again. It's scary how real this is, but it's easy to say "don't do that", when all the inhibitions about leaving your current job rotate arou…
The takeaway here is to leave before you're frustrated. While things are still good. That is when you are in the best position and frame of mind to make a change. Because you can walk away from any offer that isn't better. If you wait until things are terrible then yes you can feel trapped in a bad situation because you have to pay the bills.
> The typical employment lifecycle of an engineer is: Get frustrated by the current company culture and/or benefits, let this frustration sit for way too long, snap and choose a random company whose recruiter just happened to reach out, join there, and repeat the cycle all over again. It's scary how real this is, but it's easy to say "don't do that", when all the inhibitions about leaving your current job rotate arou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a corollary: Don't have kids. They're like shooting your life in the foot with a howitzer. Also, don't get married; the author says they got lucky, but we'll have to see the long term before you can make that conclusion. In fact, just stay away from other people. They are an emotional and financial liability. (This is sarcasm, of course, although I suspect the author is serious about avoiding things that many…
Getting ahead is the most important thing in life!
Depending on your timing and location, renting is way more of a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot decision than buying a house. I graduated from college in mid-2000s and after a few years finally saved up to buy a house in early 2010s. Plenty of my peers saw no real need to this and continued renting through the decade of 2010-2020 while seeing home prices rise to unaffordable levels. I acknowledge that I got lucky in my timing and location (bay area), but it's hard to imagine a scenario where buying doesn't make sense when you can afford to. If nothing else, a (fixed rate) mortgage at least guarantees your monthly housing payment won't increase, vs rent. The decision to rent (as in, not being forced to rent because you cannot afford to buy) seems way more footgun-ish.
On the jobs section, the way most people choose jobs is insane, not by choice but more because it really is that hard and luck-based choosing a job. Over my career, I got to the "choose a random company whose recruiter just happened to reach out" point and landed a job, twice, and these both happen to be jobs I loved and stayed for a long time. Notably, another time, I moved to a company because I had a lot of friends working there so I knew I'd enjoy the people there, it didn't work out after a year and a half for other reasons than the people. The point of this all is, it's just really difficult to know what really matters at a job and company, so it's really hard to call this a footgun decision.
> The typical employment lifecycle of an engineer is: Get frustrated by the current company culture and/or benefits, let this frustration sit for way too long, snap and choose a random company whose recruiter just happened to reach out, join there, and repeat the cycle all over again. It's scary how real this is, but it's easy to say "don't do that", when all the inhibitions about leaving your current job rotate arou…
Yeah, I kind of forgot to caveat it all with how unreasonably good I have it as a programmer, and that story refers to my programmer friends, who like to marinate a little too long in bad jobs that they could have easily changed
> Here are the dragons: ... Buying a house or an apartment will disproportionately affect other areas of your life I agree with the general caution about buying a property and the baggage it comes with. Unfortunately with kids there be dragons in renting as well: having to move when getting priced out.
Houses have sizes, locations and whole spectrum of varieties that can be taken into account!
Not to be that guy but I'll be that guy > Don’t loose your asset Did you mean ... "Don't LOSE your asset"? (sorry)
I moved to the US a decade ago, and (I knew this before) the mindset seems to be that renting is only a temporary situation, until you finally settle down buying "your" house to raise your family in. People talk about their "first house" or "starter home", terms that aren't really common in Germany at all. Buying property isn't totally uncommon there, but often happens much later in life, and many people are happy never doing so at all.
I always felt that differing mindset has been doing me a service, as I feel zero compulsion to buy property until the conditions are really fully satisfactory. I am aware that any rent I pay is "gone", while the mortgage ultimately pays into a principal, but so far the overall equation taking everything into account (also including those aspects without a directly gaugeable monetary value that the article mentions) did not tip over towards owning yet.
Sounds to me like author has had some bad experiences and is trying to generalize them. But I would have been curious to read about those things directly that inspired the author to write this, instead of the indirect points. It all seems reasonable stuff that most of us do when picking a place to live, work, etc. Of course buying a house will pin you to the surrounding area. And I don't know if anybody does that wit…