41–50 of 197 posts
The author obviously doesn't live in London. I could never afford to pay rent without a job. The article is idealistic bullshit.
Engineers don't make that much money. Yes, I live a middle-class lifestyle. But even without owning a car, not having a child, etc. After saving for retirement and eating healthy food, I simply don't have that much savings to start any business that requires a decent amount of capital to get going - at least not without burning through everything fairly quickly. At most I could take a couple of months off and destroy…
>>I don't get why the world thinks software engineers are so rich...
Last year I lived in Austin TX, owned a car, ate healthy, lived 15 minutes from the city center and made 29000 before taxes. Of which I managed to save 15000.
The world doesn't think software engineers are so rich, we think anyone above 50K is rich, because for a lot of us thats double what we make a year, and many of us are supporting families on that. The idea that some one making 75-100k could be living paycheck to paycheck is fucking baffling to the half the population making less than 42k per household.
I did this. I advise against this. I had money saved up, and for visa reasons had to spend a year outside the USA. Seemed like a perfect time to indulge in some risky ideas, especially those which were a little idealistic. It ended up being incredibly depressing and I got very little done. It's hard enough to build a product when you're in a startup or a smart team. In my opinion it's nearly impossible if you're goin…
Working by myself, without any deadlines or goals, I become unmotivated and pretty depressed.
I did this. I advise against this. I had money saved up, and for visa reasons had to spend a year outside the USA. Seemed like a perfect time to indulge in some risky ideas, especially those which were a little idealistic. It ended up being incredibly depressing and I got very little done. It's hard enough to build a product when you're in a startup or a smart team. In my opinion it's nearly impossible if you're goin…
Working by myself, without any deadlines or goals, I become unmotivated and pretty depressed.
Engineers don't make that much money. Yes, I live a middle-class lifestyle. But even without owning a car, not having a child, etc. After saving for retirement and eating healthy food, I simply don't have that much savings to start any business that requires a decent amount of capital to get going - at least not without burning through everything fairly quickly. At most I could take a couple of months off and destroy…
Everybody know how much a programmer makes in Silicon Valley, and think everyone in the industry is paid accordingly. Also, high cost of living in SF area is not that well known (or at least, not understood to be correlated) by the masses.
It's a bit like saying every football/basketball player is a millionaire. Those that play in the professional leagues, yes. The ones that end up coaching pee-whee teams, not so much.
Two words make this difficult. Health Insurance.
Not in most European countries where this is handled at the national level, instead of by each company. I.e. switching jobs (or having none) doesn't affect whether a hospital will treat you or not.
From an american perspective, that sounds like some sort of unattainable utopia.
I did this. I advise against this. I had money saved up, and for visa reasons had to spend a year outside the USA. Seemed like a perfect time to indulge in some risky ideas, especially those which were a little idealistic. It ended up being incredibly depressing and I got very little done. It's hard enough to build a product when you're in a startup or a smart team. In my opinion it's nearly impossible if you're goin…
I gave up after 8 months and got a job. Now all I have to show for it is some source code, and a gap on my resume to explain.
> Luckily, there’s a corner of the Internet dedicated to breaking the link between “comfort” and money. The problem with this is that it moves in the wrong direction. You spent all this time learning how to earn more money for your time. Then what do you do after you earn a bunch of money? Figure out how to trade your time for money again, just in different arenas? Why, so you can avoid having to spend more time doin…
Tim Ferriss' extremely valuable skillset is being a flim-flam man / borderline scam artist who markets questionable pesudoscience nonsense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Ferriss#BrainQUICKEN