Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 111 posts

Re: Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier

#71

Post by butterandguns »

I had a great relatively chill job at a FAANG-adjacent company, making 300ish in a LCOL city. I went and chased some money at a very large company. It ended up being the worst possible time. The company was soul-sucking, they froze hiring as soon as I got there when I supposed to be building out a new team, I sat around and did nothing for like six months before I was laid off.

I took a few months off and got connected to a co founder of a local seed stage startup through a friend. I convinced one of my best friends to join me there as well.

While we are making less money, the work has been really fulfilling. No more big company bullshit, I help determine direction with a handful of other leaders, and I feel like I make an impact. We have product market fit, we’re growing, and the hardest part is scaling to keep up with the growth.

It’s been fun, I’ve learned a ton. I probably haven’t worked this hard in a long time but I really do feel fulfilled in my work which I haven’t been able to say in a long time.

YMMV

Re: Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier

#72

Post by Apreche »

For my current job I negotiated that I would work four days (32 hours) per week, in exchange for less compensation. It's still plenty of money, just less than I could be making elsewhere. I'm not saying it couldn't be better, but it's hard to beat.

Re: Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier

#73

Post by burningChrome »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #15

I took job that I thought it was going to be more fulfilling (for about 30% less than my current), and ended up regretting it massively... In fact I'm still here, but my work team is an absolutely hellish group of individuals, and my boss is the most crooked individual I've worked with so far.... so In retrospective, I've should picked the other job, the problem was that it was incredible specialized and involved wor…

> working in radar stations on top of remote mountain.

Interesting story.

I worked in a bike shop a number of years ago. Guy came in and I helped him find some stuff for a long distance ride he was going to do. I noticed he had a black baseball hat with the initials "NJTTTF" sewn into the front of it and I had no idea wtf it meant so as he was checking out I asked him. He said, "You don't want to know." and I said, "I really do." and he said, "Its boring, seriously." and after some more bantering he said, "It stands for National Joint Terrorist Tracking Task Force." I just stood there confused, then asked him, "So you're CIA or NSA and track terrorists? That's pretty cool." He then said, "Not exactly NSA or CIA, but I do work for the government and yes, we do track terrorists. You ever hear about Weather Mountain? I was stationed there. Conspiracy nuts love it, but its not as cool as they say. I was in a windowless room with a sealed door listening to radio chatter and analyzing radar signals. Since the room was sealed, we had to open the door every 30 mins because we would run out of oxygen otherwise. It was hot, it was miserable, and the work was pretty boring when you get right down to it."

I asked him if he was still working for the gov and he said he was, in a different capacity. I asked him what he was working on and he said a few different things, but his favorite was cryptography. I told him I was fascinated with cryptography so he gave me a few books to read and then we parted ways.

Of course after he left, I went right to google and couldn't find a single thing on the task force but did find a bunch of conspiracy stuff on Weather Mountain, just like he said. Very interesting meeting and a very interesting guy for sure.

Re: Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier

#74

Post by ht85 »

I have a small software company, under 10 employees. We make B2B applications and focus 100% of our efforts on understanding our customers' needs and the quality of our product. No marketing, no "incentives", nothing. Just honest work and creativity.

I've done consulting here and there and going full time could easily clear half a mil a year. I make a LOT less than that.

Our customers are happy. They are warm and praise us. They are forgiving when we make mistakes because the trust is high. They tell us about all the trickery they face from most other companies all the time.

It is a true win win. I do not sleep on a pile of cash but I sleep very well nonetheless.

Re: Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier

#75

Post by kevinsync »

I did 7 years in a small shop (websites), then 7 at a mid-sized digital/ad agency (websites, mobile apps) that got acquired by IBM. For many reasons, I had no interest in IBM, and despite completing the 2 year vesting period to receive the acquihire retention bonus, I refused to sign the paperwork before the official transition into IBM iX, left the bonus on the table, and resigned.. walked out with nothing but a thrilling sense of possibilities for the future.

That was 2017, been 100% freelance since then literally flying by the seat of my pants (no insurance, no benefits, no PTO, no guaranteed income, nothing) and never been happier. Some years I've made more money, some years way less, and that's 100% on me. It's very freeing to take responsibility for your perceived success or failure, rather than be a cog inside of a machine that you truly can't control.

FWIW, I'm in my early 40's with a wife and kid, single-income household, eating what I kill. It's the only lifestyle that makes sense for me, and I would NOT even begin to recommend it to anyone else; I have a suspicion that people who are cut out for the risk are living like this already.

Anyways, I don't tell this story to brag or posture, or to invite dark karmic retribution upon myself -- I just think it's worth articulating that there are so many different paths in life, some you choose, some you're forced into, and it might help paint a fuller picture of options for somebody who is curious about how other people are getting by in the world. Not everybody can/should "be bold", but I do advocate for people to try to find what brings them joy and contentment and inspiration and motivation, and be brave enough to pursue that if it's even a remote possibility.

Re: Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier

#76

Post by Volundr »

A few years ago, I was offered a job in fintech, a company whose whole business model was basically to sit on a pile of money and make it bigger. The company had a good reputation among developers and used interesting tech. Plus, I knew someone who worked there, and he had nothing but good things to say about the experience. During the final interview with the hiring manager, however, I asked a question about how they made their money. It was intended to be a mechanical question, getting a better understanding of exactly how the business functioned, where I would stand, and how I'd be contributing to the core business model. He seemed to take it as a philosophical question, however, and an answer that made me think either he deeply drank the Kool-aid or was justifying it to himself. It made me stop and think about the business's impact on the world and if I wanted to be a part of it.

I ended up taking a job developing software for medical clinics instead, which paid around $30k less. It was the worst, most demoralizing job I've ever had, and I'm counting Wendy's. A year later, they cut 50% of their development staff, including me, and I was let loose into the 2023 developer job market (0/10 do not recommend). At the time I really, really wished I took the fintech job.

Just when I was starting to feel desperate and cornered, literally the same day I got offered a job working on some legacy .NET software for an airline, where the manager gave me really bad vides, and was feeling cornered like I didn't have room to say no, I got offered a job in public transit, working with interesting technology. I'm a contractor, making around $100k less than what the fintech job offered. People are frequently mad at our agency, and it gets a lot of bad press. In other words, they care. They rely on it to get where they need to go and live their day-to-day lives, and our mistakes are visible and painful. My first production issue (a dumb mistake where I failed to account for a null value) was discovered in 15 minutes due to rider complaints. It may sound weird, but I love that. Sure, they were mad about it, and not necessarily very nice, but the fact they were upset? It meant they gave a shit about what I was doing.

Am I happier than if I had just followed the money and taken the fintech job? I can't see down that path. But this is the first software development job I've had in my 15-year career where I'm confident my work is a net positive for the world.

Re: Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier

#78

Post by tobyjsullivan »

j_maffe wrote: post #50
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #46

Not really a story but this is what I've learned having made this move more than once: - There's an important difference between being earning less and being paid unfairly. It's easy to work for less as long as it's enough to fund your lifestyle and save something for retirement. It's very difficult to be happy if you believe you're paid unfairly (which is subjective, of course). - There's generally no correlation be…

Wouldn't you say that the second and third statements slightly contradict each other?

As written, yes. I suppose I meant there’s no correlation in one direction.

Perhaps I should have avoided a technically-specific term such as “correlation”. It seems inappropriate for an anecdotal observation.

Re: Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier

#79

Post by matrix87 »

mikrl wrote: post #43
tasuki wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand software work can be tiring. But I can't imagine it being so tiring I'd rather do a factory job (maaaybe if it was a bread factory or lego factory or some such). How is it?

From experience, counting small stock (10s of pieces) in a warehouse allowed me to zone out into a high fidelity mental landscape. At one point I was doing my job and vividly hallucinating what I was going to do in dwarf fortress later that evening. Honestly one of the trippiest experiences I’ve had and a sign that I should probably be applying my mental abilities to something else, which I did eventually.

> From experience, counting small stock (10s of pieces) in a warehouse allowed me to zone out into a high fidelity mental landscape.

I wonder if this is what writing code for the feds feels like

Re: Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier

#80

Post by ActorNightly »

So I have a sample size of 5 people that I know who did this. Still talk to 3 of them. It seems like the lower stress life is temporary. As they grow older they face new challenges that seem to be just as stressful as their work.

My personal belief is that happiness in life comes from being able to deal with adversity rather than away from it - the biggest advantage that it gives you is that you often find there are "have your cake and eat it too" choices you can make where there only seems a binary choice. For example, it may be possible for you to secure a job offer at a start date a year from now, ride out the high paying job, save/invest money, then you go back to a lower paying job while having a nice reserve of money to play with.

Post reply on HN