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

I quit the tech industry

eev.ee

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 565 posts

Re: I quit the tech industry

#131

Post by koliber »

lsaferite wrote: post #100
mootothemax wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to Poland - 19% flat income tax rate for companies - you can get flat by 400 euro / month in biggest cities and work remotely for foreign clients. To expand on this: one can operate as a sole trader company, and enjoy the 19% flat income tax rate. You can also register your company for VAT, and then claim back the VAT on company purchases. The only other cost is ~$270 / ~240 EUR / ~180 GBP per month in social insu…

You know what sucks. As an American I'd still have to pay American income taxes. I cannot wrap my head around how we can say that's ok. Sure, there are ways to get around a portion of the taxes, but those involve things like never coming to the US for more than a set (short) amount of time.

No! You would not have to pay American taxes on the income you have earned while living abroad. There is the foreign income exemption which essentially says that the IRS does not care to tax the first $100,000 you earn. For taxes above that, you first deduct dollar for dollar what you have paid to the foreign tax authority. Ball-parking it, you would have to earn more than $180,000 per year to need to pay US taxes. You still have to file US taxes, which is a cost and an inconvenience, but is manageable.

Of course, you must be genuinely living abroad to apply for this. This means either spending enough time outside of the US (> 330 days in a tax year, if I recall correctly) or have enough proof that you are really living abroad (things like primary residence in your name, bills, bank accounts, mortgage, insurance, kids at school -- regular every day stuff).

Now if you want to game the system and just "kind of" live abroad in order to take advantage of the income exemption, that's a different story.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#132

Post by lkiernan »

lsaferite wrote: post #100
mootothemax wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to Poland - 19% flat income tax rate for companies - you can get flat by 400 euro / month in biggest cities and work remotely for foreign clients. To expand on this: one can operate as a sole trader company, and enjoy the 19% flat income tax rate. You can also register your company for VAT, and then claim back the VAT on company purchases. The only other cost is ~$270 / ~240 EUR / ~180 GBP per month in social insu…

You know what sucks. As an American I'd still have to pay American income taxes. I cannot wrap my head around how we can say that's ok. Sure, there are ways to get around a portion of the taxes, but those involve things like never coming to the US for more than a set (short) amount of time.

Income tax, perhaps. Corporation tax, probably not?

If you can structure your work and business correctly, I'm sure you can bypass such taxes. Assuming you don't want to renounce your nationality!

Re: I quit the tech industry

#133

Post by borplk »

johan_larson wrote: post #34
probablyfiction wrote: post #17

This is what burnout looks like. Unless Yelp has a toxic work culture, it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard. After several months, the author will probably start thinking about work again, and begin the job search once more. Not to say that the author's points are invalid; it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she m…

Generally speaking, if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work. It's strenuous or dangerous or dirty or degrading or stressful or boring. If it were actually fun, people would be doing it for free. (Exceptions, anyone?) We programmers are quite lucky. At its worst our work is only frustrating. And we are well compensated, usually. Don't get me wrong; programming itself can be lots of…

> if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work

Even if someone loves doing something they can still ask to be paid to do it for other people

Re: I quit the tech industry

#134

Post by chrisbennet »

johan_larson wrote: post #34
probablyfiction wrote: post #17

This is what burnout looks like. Unless Yelp has a toxic work culture, it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard. After several months, the author will probably start thinking about work again, and begin the job search once more. Not to say that the author's points are invalid; it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she m…

Generally speaking, if you have to pay people to do it, there is something nasty about the work. It's strenuous or dangerous or dirty or degrading or stressful or boring. If it were actually fun, people would be doing it for free. (Exceptions, anyone?) We programmers are quite lucky. At its worst our work is only frustrating. And we are well compensated, usually. Don't get me wrong; programming itself can be lots of…

I've been getting paid to do fun stuff my whole career. No sense in doing it for free if someone will pay you to do it though. :-)

Re: I quit the tech industry

#135

Post by Kiro »

I definitely don't agree with everyone screaming "burnout" in this thread. I feel exactly the same and I'm far from burnt out. Some people are just not fit to be employed.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#136

Post by nickbauman »

aaggarwal wrote: post #26
probablyfiction wrote: post #17

This is what burnout looks like. Unless Yelp has a toxic work culture, it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard. After several months, the author will probably start thinking about work again, and begin the job search once more. Not to say that the author's points are invalid; it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she m…

I am going to start working soon. This makes me think if full-time work is really worth it. Wouldn't multiple short-term contracts with regular breaks be able to cut it in today's world? Isn't there people with experience on working on short-term contracts and still living well-off?

I'm working as a contractor right now. I have a few different clients. I set my own pace and schedule. If I want to take a day off I do it. In 2013 I took an entire month off and still made a very decent amount of money. Contracting is great you get exposed to a lot and you can walk away without too much trouble. If you have a lot of debt and overhead, it's not so easy, though.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#137

Post by xienze »

jahnu wrote: post #43

"I had stock options, and I cashed them all in last week. I net enough to pay off the mortgage, so I’m doing that, which will leave the entire household debt-free and cut our expenses drastically." I'm happy for you. Even a tiny bit jealous. But it does in the end make the whole post sound like a humblebrag to me.

Well, if it makes you feel better, he probably made a bad decision paying off the mortgage right away considering that he has no idea what he's going to do to earn money going forward. It would have been better to continue paying the mortgage for the time being (interest rates are absurdly low) and have a big cushion to fall back on if the whole "I don't wanna be part of the rat race, maaaan" thing doesn't work out.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#138

Post by jahnu »

yc1010 wrote: post #62
jahnu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't live well €100K in Ireland you are doing something wrong. Do you realise that you are in the top ~12% of household income with that sort of money? I do sometimes wonder what kind of self-awareness people have of their status.

I just pulled a round figure that someone working in tech either in US or EU would be expecting http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-developer... A lot of HN readers are from US and would be shocked at the tax rates here (on everything) and they further shocked as to how little we get to see for our tax money (no free healthcare etc)

It's very difficult to compare like for like though. For example, US property taxes are a completely different animal than Irish ones and by and large they are massively higher. Healthcare costs are not free in Ireland but they are significantly lower than in the US. And if anything really bad happens to you or your children in Ireland you are financially far more secure.

The US always appears to have a much lower tax rate but once you compare similar lifestyles things are not as different as you might imagine.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#139

Post by mpdehaan2 »

probablyfiction wrote: post #17

This is what burnout looks like. Unless Yelp has a toxic work culture, it's likely the author brought it on themselves by pushing too hard. After several months, the author will probably start thinking about work again, and begin the job search once more. Not to say that the author's points are invalid; it's a terrible feeling to have to spend your most productive hours working on someone else's problems. He or she m…

While not burnout related,

I found out a while back, and this is somewhat paradoxical, that if I care TOO much, I'm less happy. What happens is I notice all the stuff I can't fix, or need to fix, and other people get stressed out making them fix it. The end result is that I stop caring quite as much (I still care), get happy, and then start caring too much again.

It's especially hard at times when you have a lot of energy and want to make something work and you have to fight others who don't want to make it work. 8 hours plus of your day is a lot, so you want it to count, to matter, and that makes you care, to define yourself by that work, and that makes it hurt more. The alternative though, is just collecting the paycheck, which is also bad!

The trick is finding a balance and making sure you also define yourself by other things. And this is a very hard thing for creative folks to do, because it feels like their art, and it's easy to always want to hit the next target/goal/feature, in a never ending wave. The catch is they don't stop. It's a continuum. One of my first jobs as a kid was in a grocery store, and I learned clearing out the line was impossible, and the beeping doesn't stop. It is madness to want the beeping to stop because people from other lanes just come over to yours, and it won't.

I'm not great at this, but you just have to enjoy the people and the things along the way - as there's not a destination.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#140

Post by mrgriscom »

I don't understand the desire to pay off the mortgage after a big windfall, especially with interest rates so low. I suppose you get a vague sense of security, as in "the bank can never take my house away now", but you just took a big chunk of liquid money that could have been used to pay any kind of expense, and you put it into very illiquid home equity that was being loaned to you at a long-term locked-in rate barely above the historical rate of inflation.
Post reply on HN