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I quit the tech industry

eev.ee

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Re: I quit the tech industry

#431

Post by eastbayjake »

ryandrake wrote: post #403
thwarted wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more appropriate to take a "no MBAs" rule as "no one who self identifies primarily as having an MBA". In my experience, an engineer with an MBA who neglects to even mention their engineering schooling/experience in favor of the MBA is a rare animal.

Self-identifies primarily as having an MBA? I don't even know what that means. If I interview with your company, should I not mention the MBA and instead say that during my 15 years of writing software, I took two years off to go wind surfing? Really? That's considered better?

I think the parent comment meant "self-identifies" as "your only qualification for this job is an MBA", not that you would hide having an MBA. If you wrote software for 15 years and applied for a job in tech, I would imagine the software experience was on your resume alongside the MBA -- you're not just an MBA who wants to get into tech because tech is hot but with no prior industry exposure, someone who could equally likely go be a VP of Paper Product Distribution at a Midwest conglomerate.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#432

Post by jclish »

I wish you the best! At 52 I have cashed out the stock options and paid the mortgage twice. In the end 3 weeks or so is the most I can go without either wanting to help someone build a company or wanting to build a company. There is work life after burnout!

Re: I quit the tech industry

#433

Post by hodwik »

michaelvkpdx wrote: post #428

This wouldn't be happening if we had a true estate tax in this country, and if we didn't allow corporations to sit on piles of money while laborers slave away. We in the USA are wealthy enough as a society that we all could thrive on 15 or so hours of work a week, if we didn't have to subsidize the fortunes of billionaires.

HN is turning into Slashdot. Great.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#434

Post by breischl »

brightball wrote: post #265
mschaef wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was actually going to pay close to triple the sale price of the house if I waited the full 30 years. Did you adjust for inflation? Even at today's inflation rates, the dollars you pay in 30 years will be worth considerably less than the dollars you pay today. There's also an opportunity cost issue. Paying off your mortgage means not putting the money somewhere else. > you're really just throwing away money. No...…

Matter of perspective I guess. When I looked at my early mortgage payments and 85% of the payment was interest so after 10 years I would have barely paid down the principle at all. To me, that feels like waste. I invested with steady 12-14% returns for 10 years and then watched it all get wiped out. The interest rate on paying of debt doesn't change. Granted, at current rates it's a lot tougher to make the argument f…

>>I invested with steady 12-14% returns for 10 years and then watched it all get wiped out.

I'm guessing you mean that all your gains got wiped out, not that your investments all went to zero.

On the other hand, a lot of people spent years paying on a mortgage only to get foreclosed on and lose everything including their principal. ie, that investment went to zero, or maybe even negative.

There's a lot to be said for paying down your mortgage, but remember that until you've completely paid off the mortgage all of your equity is at risk.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#435

Post by damoncali »

damoncali wrote: post #165
aaggarwal wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do this, but it's not all roses. Getting and keeping those contracts continually takes effort and time. It's stressful when you don't have much line of sight into the future. And even though you can charge a high hourly rate, it's difficult to work lots of billable hours. I need time for context switching, administrivia, marketing. And the one problem I don't see discussed much: on-demand motivation. If you work a…

One more thing. Getting a mortgage is a pain in the ass. You will be held to a higher standard than someone with W2 income, so you might not be able to borrow what you can actually afford, and won't get anything at all until you've got a few years of track record on your tax returns.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#436

Post by pjungwir »

brightball wrote: post #192
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…

He has actually done one of the best things that he can do in that situation: eliminate expenses. When I tried bootstrapping my startup years ago with periodic contract work the albatross around my neck wasn't anything to do with the company, it was the mortgage and other home expenses that continually made it harder and harder to go without a steady income. People always focus on income without looking at expenses a…

The "Dave Ramsey" approach of paying down debt rather than investing is appealing to me, and I think a lot of people ignore the extra risk of investing. If I can make 4.5% risk-free paying off a mortgage vs 6% in stocks, I'd pay off the mortgage. But here is another consideration I've never seen discussed before: mortgage interest is static, but investment returns are dynamic. My mortgage interest rate is fixed for 30 years, and that's a long time for the stock market to change. What I mean is, the day I close, my interest rate is probably only a little lower than stock market returns. But surely in 10 or 20 years the stock market will have times at 10% or 15% returns, and I'll still have that low-interest mortgage. It almost seems unfair to the bank! So even though my natural inclination is to pour retirement savings into my mortgage, I wonder if it would be better to keep the leverage of such a low-interest loan so I'll have cash for investing when the market has better returns or lower risk. 30 years is a long time. What do people think?

Re: I quit the tech industry

#437

Post by hunterloftis »

eevee wrote: post #345
mrgriscom wrote: post #140

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 bare…

I understand the math, but I feel like debt is a huge weight on my shoulders. I grew up with parents who were constantly in more debt than they could handle and constantly reminding me of it. I would rather not be anywhere near that situation again, even if keeping moderate debt would've worked out a little better in the long run.

This resonated with me because I feel the same way and grew up with similar parents.

I'm actually in the process of a cash-based home buy... the potential extra earnings of not fully owning my home aren't worth the mental anguish it would cause.

Re: I quit the tech industry

#439

Post by eclipxe »

OneOneOneOne wrote: post #370
eevee wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the math, but I feel like debt is a huge weight on my shoulders. I grew up with parents who were constantly in more debt than they could handle and constantly reminding me of it. I would rather not be anywhere near that situation again, even if keeping moderate debt would've worked out a little better in the long run.

Thumbs up. Too many people take on unnecessary debt (big house, new cars, toys, ...) It seems like many are at peace with their debt. Going into debt for anything more than a modest house (rather than paying rent) doesn't make sense to me.

Nothing wrong with debt and being at peace with it. Why doesn't it make sense to you? (I genuinely want to know your opinion)

Re: I quit the tech industry

#440

Post by nostrademons »

ryandrake wrote: post #414
nostrademons wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So go get it. A number of growth businesses - Uber, AirBnB, Stripe, Lyft, Zenefits, Slack - are hiring aggressively. Join one of them and in 4-5 years of slaving away at the computer you'll probably have the cash (and desire) to throw this kind of tantrum.

Too late. Each of your example companies are beyond the point where becoming the next employee has a high likelihood of returning a windfall in 4 years. Life-changing equity tends to go to early (single digit) employees.

"Pay off the mortgage" equity, however, continues long after that. Yelp started in 2004, I really doubt that Eevee was a single-digit employee there. I know folks who started at Google as employee ~20,000 in 2008-2009 and ended up with "pay off the mortgage" equity, particularly if you're living in Las Vegas instead of Silicon Valley.
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