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Quitting the rat race

seanbarry.dev

271–280 of 434 posts

Re: Quitting the rat race

#271

It’s a short piece, but it resonates with me, specifically this part: > I’m earning the most money I’ve ever made and yet I’m the least fulfilled I’ve ever been. I’m making the most I’ve ever made and I’ve never been less happy and more depressed. I despise being a cog in a huge corporate machine, it’s like the job was designed to be as unappealing as possible. At the same time I can’t get over the fact that I have i…

Q for all who are expressing this. A lot of job descriptions today emphasize a passion for "making impact". What is lost on most of us is impact by numbers rather than impact by percentages. Eg being part of a 1000 person your one line fix is experienced by a billion users for a minute a year. Billion sounds sexy doesn't it? Impact by numbers. How does one frame the other way. Ie I don't care if only a 1000 users exp…

I had a job like this for a few years. Escalated tech support went to the actual developers, so you really felt that impact.

For software to be sustainable with only 1000 users, it's got to be something that a small number of people use to do their jobs. Look for B2B software targeting a small niche.

The other route is software that is trying to get to a billion users, and just isn't there yet. If you get into a startup scene, you can definitely make a career of it.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#272

I am in my mid 20s. I have about $200k saved and I think about quitting everyday, even though it would probably be disastrous for my career. I look up and I see colleagues in their 40s-50s. 20-30 years of experience in the industry, with the performance of their RSUs they probably easily have $2m+ net worth. I really don't understand why they don't quit. Just a naive example: Buy a cheap house ($250k) and live off of…

> I am in my mid 20s. I have about $200k saved and I think about quitting everyday, even though it would probably be disastrous for my career.

It really wouldn't. I had to take a year off waiting for a work visa, it was great and I got my highest paying job role straight after.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#274
post #176

This post really ruffled some feathers on here, talking about how he can't find happiness out there, you can't find happiness externally, it's all internal, he can only do this because he makes money, etc. It's amazing how many people simply want to tear others down, I think, deep down, many wish they could do the same as this man.

When I told my family and friends my plan to leave my great FAANG job to retire early very few of the responses were positive. It was really disheartening after working so hard for so many years towards that goal.

That's sad and somewhat surprising to me, as someone in a similar situation. Pretty much all of my friends are also in FAANG and all of them either completely sympathize or are also actively working on their early retirement goals. My family was a harder nut to crack but they're coming around and the most important one (wife) is now onboard.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#275

It’s a short piece, but it resonates with me, specifically this part: > I’m earning the most money I’ve ever made and yet I’m the least fulfilled I’ve ever been. I’m making the most I’ve ever made and I’ve never been less happy and more depressed. I despise being a cog in a huge corporate machine, it’s like the job was designed to be as unappealing as possible. At the same time I can’t get over the fact that I have i…

Bluntly, every person I know who's expressed these kinds of sentiments is guilty of the same mistake: externalizing their happiness. They inevitably move, only to find the new place they're in sucks, just in different ways. Or they find another job, but just discover more things they hate there. Or they find a new partner, only to discover a new set of annoyances. The same psychology leads people to think they'll be…

As a counter-point, I spent about 5 years pretty miserable between 3 different jobs - my complaints where the same at each organization. The profit motive was being put above all else, including employee well being, an actually high-quality service, and in some cases baseline ethics. People were constantly pressured into working more than they should, both in the short term (too many hours per week) and in the long term - vacation time that was hard or impossible to actually take. Overpromising and understaffing/tooling led to constant crunches, corner cutting, rushed low-quality deliverables, and constant fear - either that a client would be lost and blame would be placed, or that a bad client that should go would be retained to the teams detriment. Often all of this was paved over by toxic positivity. You point out the problems and they say "Look on the bright side. You are being too negative. It'll all shake out". Just pure gaslighting bullshit.

After the 3rd such place, and a complete inability to effect change - I threw in the towel and started my own agency 2 years ago. From the outset I made the purpose of the company to be quality of life, not profit. Fewer clients/hours per team member, more time to execute and put out work you are proud to hang your hat on. No assholes (teammates OR clients).

For the entirety of the past 2 years, including the hard bits of actually getting it off the ground and getting those first few customers, the difference has been night and day. My stress levels are the lowest they've been in years. My relationship with my wife is better. I never dread Monday, and rarely pine for Friday. Sometimes it really is the environment, and sometimes that environment is pervasive in a particular industry.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#276
I resonate with this as I type this from NYC, a city significantly more nature-starved than London. I was pretty impressed with the parks and greenery in London. My friend there bought a unit in the first floor of a townhouse with a backyard in a peaceful but convenient neighborhood. Such an apartment would cost at least double in NYC and those sort of places are rare.

I'm definitely not a rural person, but I do think that living in nature has a strong correlation to happiness. I don't think the average person in a concrete jungle like NYC is happier than in a random village in the Amazon jungle or the Swiss alps. I don't regret my time I lived in NYC though other than that I stayed too long. It's fun for a time in one's life while one is young, but it's not a forever place for most people.

Most jobs suck. "Find your passion" is bullshit career advice because a job by definition means selling your freedom (if the job was so much fun they wouldn't need to pay you because people would do it for free). Unfortunately the reality is that we must make money to afford a modern lifestyle, and thus if you want financial freedom you will probably need to get a job (yes you can create your own business, but until that takes off you need to pay the bills somehow).

I quit the rat race and left NYC to travel the world. After 1.5 years of traveling I started to run amount of money and I reluctantly decided to start working again - this time remotely. But to my surprise I found that I actually enjoyed the new job and had missed having that sense of responsibility (or maybe I liked finally seeing my bank account balance go up and was trying to rationalize it, who knows). But eventually the job started to suck as I realized it was a deadend job and felt like I wasn't respected. I was miserable and performing the job was a chore, but I stayed because I didn't have the courage to quit a job that paid so well for so little work - the same position I was in in NYC before my world travel.

Finally that contract ended, and I was again free from work obligations. This time I set my goal to create my own tech projects with the hope of eventually monetizing them and living off of that. Finally I enjoyed programming again because I was building whatever I wanted.

A job fell in my lap with another startup, and I initially didn't want to take it because my focus was on my own work. But in the end I decided to give it a chance as I figured it could be a valuable experience, and I can always quit if I don't like it. The job turned out to be awesome. Awesome people, interesting problems, and I get a front row seat at an early stage startup. The downside of course is that I have not been able to put as much time on my personal projects as I'd like, but I am still working on it on the side, and we'll see if I can manage them both.

Leaving the rat race to travel the world led to some amazing experiences with high highs and low lows. I went from being sick of software engineering to wanting to build my own tech startups - which is my main work goal now. It took me traveling so much I got bored of it until I got inspired to want to build tech things again to solve my own problems. But maybe you'll leave forever and prefer being a park ranger in the words - who knows. We're all different.

In any case I think people should do whatever the hell they want, as no money is worth wasting one's life in misery. Worst case scenario you don't like living in the nature and can return to London to work at another bank with a renewed sense of gratefulness. Of course most likely you probably won't ever return to the same exact old life. Maybe you'll work remotely for a startup from the woods, or become a writer, or go completely offline and just live a simpler life. Who knows. It doesn't matter as long as you're doing you.

Either way best of luck on your journey, from one rat rat escapee to the next.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#277
post #78

I’m pretty sure the romanticizing of the idea of “quitting the rat race” is one of the largest motivators to play the game. If you want to quit the rat race you’re going to have to sacrifice a lot, unless you checks notes “[work] at a top tier investment bank as a software engineer”.

Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good, yeah. If you can manage to work four days a week, or live halfway up a mountain in a weird semi-commune sharehouse and work from home, that's not perfect, but maybe it's a lot better than working 60 hour weeks for 20 years then retiring.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#278

I am in my mid 20s. I have about $200k saved and I think about quitting everyday, even though it would probably be disastrous for my career. I look up and I see colleagues in their 40s-50s. 20-30 years of experience in the industry, with the performance of their RSUs they probably easily have $2m+ net worth. I really don't understand why they don't quit. Just a naive example: Buy a cheap house ($250k) and live off of…

> I look up and I see colleagues in their 40s-50s. 20-30 years of experience in the industry, with the performance of their RSUs they probably easily have $2m+ net worth. I really don't understand why they don't quit.

I'm at the very young end of that range. My answer is, when you have a couple of young kids and you live through the past year of inflation and stock/real estate devaluation, you scale up the retirement number by a pretty large multiplier to feel safe. My early retirement target is now around 10M (HCOL, want optionality to send kids to private school, got accustomed to nice things) and I'm not there yet.

Fortunately the trajectory is looking good, so I'm starting to ratchet down the time and effort I spend on work. As I do so, the stress is starting to melt away and I find myself able to better tolerate and sometimes even enjoy my job now. I don't need the job so I can take a risk here or there, drop a few balls on the floor, take some random days off to spend with the kids or get through some yardwork, etc.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#279

I am in my mid 20s. I have about $200k saved and I think about quitting everyday, even though it would probably be disastrous for my career. I look up and I see colleagues in their 40s-50s. 20-30 years of experience in the industry, with the performance of their RSUs they probably easily have $2m+ net worth. I really don't understand why they don't quit. Just a naive example: Buy a cheap house ($250k) and live off of…

I took 18 months off of work to travel when I was 25/26 (2018-19) and had a job within 2 weeks of starting to look again. If there’s any line of work where it wouldn’t be disastrous it’s probably being a software engineer.

Re: Quitting the rat race

#280
post #209
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I told my family and friends my plan to leave my great FAANG job to retire early very few of the responses were positive. It was really disheartening after working so hard for so many years towards that goal.

You are the status quo. By leaving, you are breaking their new (since FAANGs are a recent thing) social structure. They’d definitively not support you.

Jealousy and resentment as well
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