Join the Engineering Leisure Class • Hacker News Board

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#191

Post by imgabe » Fri, May 08, 2015, 8:49 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #190

imgabe wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having skills saves you both time and money in the long run. Let's say your toilet is broken. If you can fix it yourself, you need maybe a couple hours. You can do those couple hours any time, for example, on the weekend when you weren't going to be working for money anyway. If you don't have any skills, you have to pay a plumber to come fix it, for maybe $200. That's already four hours of working at $50/hour. Plus,…

Programmers routinely underestimate the complexity of every other field.

This is true, and if you wanted to be a professional plumber there is definitely a whole wealth of information you'd need to know. The threshold for the level of competence required for basic home repairs is much lower.

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#192

Post by shard » Fri, May 08, 2015, 9:14 PM UTC

mndrix wrote: post #92

hyperbovine wrote: post #6

How many kids do you have, Chris? :-)

I have 5 kids and do pretty much what the article describes. It can be done and it's grand :-)

That's pretty impressive. I would have thought that it's only possible to support a few people on that lifestyle. Could you give some more details about how you do it?

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#193

Post by ChrisLoer » Sat, May 09, 2015, 4:43 AM UTC

HaloZero wrote: post #154

ChrisLoer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- On how long it takes to save up enough money that you don't need to work: depends on your assumptions, but yes it takes some years of work. There are lots of people who write on this, I especially like: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ - I don't personally have enough money to pay for my current living expenses for the 70-odd years I hope to remain alive. It was an important shift for me when I stopped thinking this…

Wow, you live out in 29 Palms? I grew up in Yucca Valley. You can live pretty cheaply out there but you also have to deal with all dumb crap out there. It wasn't very pleasant growing up in the schools there.

We're still a few years off from worrying about schools, but it is the sort of thing that makes us toy with the idea of some variety of home-schooling. I'm sure there other nuisances around, but I'm a desert rat and I think this place is absolutely beautiful (although my opinion of the desert usually dips a little in July and August).

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#194

Post by klipt » Sat, May 09, 2015, 7:14 AM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #151

twic wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What work? There are no jobs in Bumfuck, and not enough companies that hire remote workers for this to scale. As i understand it, the situation in the US is that there is Silicon Valley, where the salaries are high and the rents higher, and then half a dozen other places where there are significant concentrations of software jobs, and more reasonable living costs. This is not really the case in the UK. There's London…

You're mistaken about how easy it is to find remote developer work. Upon moving to bf Lake District, I had no trouble picking up a gig for an American company at my Bay Area rate. There are enough companies hiring remote workers these days that I can't understand why anybody in England continues to put up with comically low and out of touch with reality London rates.

How'd you swing that? I'd love to live somewhere cheap and still get paid Bay Area rates!

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#195

Post by cerberusss » Sat, May 09, 2015, 10:25 AM UTC

sukilot wrote: post #140

vinceguidry wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even getting a brand new blade just isn't as good as a mediocre modern 3-blade razor. I had to face the facts that I really just moved to single-blade motivated mostly by the savings and the irrational belief that the way we used to do things is better than iterated, market-driven technological advances in consumer goods.

I don't get the money saving aspect. If you want to be frugal, just grow stubble or a beard. A $3 razor will last for over a month.

Also, gros your hair to a length where you can stick it in a bun or a ponytail.

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#196

Post by mndrix » Sat, May 09, 2015, 8:23 PM UTC

shard wrote: post #192

mndrix wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 5 kids and do pretty much what the article describes. It can be done and it's grand :-)

That's pretty impressive. I would have thought that it's only possible to support a few people on that lifestyle. Could you give some more details about how you do it?

We prefer a simple lifestyle so we omit many expenses: no TV, rarely eat out, drive older cars, have no debt payments, eat only a little meat, buy high quality clothes which last through all 5 kids, high deductibles on all insurance, save as much money as possible.

I'd be glad to answer any specific questions in private. Shoot me an email at michael@ndrix.org if you want.

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#197

Post by marktangotango » Mon, May 11, 2015, 12:39 PM UTC

rifung wrote: post #95

marktangotango wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this too, and I agree. IMO anything worth doing is non trivial. The project I took on had some really hard parts. Example: something akin to defining a relational schema for maintaining a model of c/c++ source code, before and after preprocessing (not exactly, but same idea minus the difficulty of parsing c++). This was one of about 5 'hard' problems. I got bogged down, and with no one to bounce ideas off, I be…

I'll have to respectfully disagree with the idea that "anything worth doing is nontrivial." This might certainly be the case for you, but I would love to just spend some time learning Haskell, writing an OS for fun, reading papers on Theoretical Computer Science, or trying to find security exploits. I don't think these things are hard, at least they certainly aren't things I would doubt myself to be able to do. These…

But is learning haskell worth the risk of quitting full time employment and living off of savings for x number of months or years? That is the context of this thread, and my statement.