Why I hate the weekends (2017)

So by your logic you can work 80 hours a week but because you’re inside an office and not a barn you lose you’re right to want a better work life balance? Where is the cut off for not being able to complain or is it like a spectrum? 20k wage with kids is bad you say what about 30k with 1 kid? Is that too easy? Cop in a good neighborhood? How good does the neighborhood have to be before you can’t complain anymore? You said a few hundred cows at 6 am is rough? What about 99 cows at 7am?

People can be overworked in all kinds of jobs. Who are you the complaint police?

Some possible solutions:

1) Ask for a 30 hour work week, or find a company that can offer this. Your salary should still be high enough to aim for a comfortable retirement at 65.

2) Adopt a more frugal lifestyle and increase your savings rate.

You need to save a few million dollars to retire with $40-$80k in investment income. It should be very possible to do this with a backend developer's salary over a period of 10-15 years, and then you should be able to retire in your 30s or 40s. You should also aim to increase your salary by changing jobs every few years (or get a job at a FAANG.)

3) Build side projects or a startup and try to get some passive income (or an exit)

Write all your startup ideas down and keep looking for opportunities. It can be hard to build products in the evenings or weekends, especially if you're already burnt out from your normal job. So this option works best when combined with part-time freelance work:

4) Become a freelancer and work part-time while you work on your own projects

Bonus: Move to a place with a very low cost of living.

Working 10-20 hours per week gives you a lot of free time and much longer weekends. But it also gives you a lot of time and energy to work on your own ideas.

Note that working 10 hours per week is a terrible idea if you just spend the rest of your time working on hobbies that don't make any money. If you do that, then you won't even be able to retire at 65, and you probably won't be able to save money for emergencies. Only do this if you spend the rest of your time trying to build a business.

If you can't get anything to work after ~10 years of trying, then you should still have plenty of time to go back to a full-time job and save for retirement.

> You need to save a few million dollars to retire with $40-$80k in investment income.

You need a lot less than a few million dollars if you're willing to live at a more reasonable retirement income. I mean, you won't have to commute anymore, or buy all those services that did things you never had time for, or pay for daycare, or live in an overpriced city, etc. Hell if you move to a country with a lower cost of living, as you suggested, you'll need even less.

You would be surprised how little of what you consider "necessities" of your lifestyle you actually need, or miss when they are gone.

Developers and other people with great jobs know very well how privileged they are. That doesn't mean that they're not allowed to have problems and be stressed.

I certainly don't hate weekends or days off here and there generally. That said, if I were to take more time off (and I get reasonably generous for the US time as it is) I would definitely want it in a form where I could use it for extended travel time rather than extended weekends.