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Join the Engineering Leisure Class

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Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#51

Post by vinceguidry »

ChrisLoer wrote: post #26
vinceguidry wrote: post #21

> 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…

MMM definitely makes most sense for people who enjoy doing the sorts of things MMM enjoys doing. I happen to really like a lot of the around-the-house type DIY projects, so it's a good fit for me, but I don't think there's a moral imperative to it. MMM sets the "$30k/year" bar for frugal family living with his DIY lifestyle, but there are plenty of people who do it differently. My wife's extended family are for the m…

I actually like doing those sorts of things too. But as my engineering skill-set grows, I also start to really notice the opportunity cost to doing them. You can keep doing them, for awhile, sure. But if you're actually pushing your personal productivity and value flywheel, those costs are going to weigh ever heavier and eventually you're going to have a decision to make. Outsource the things that aren't adding momentum to those who would be happy to take them off your hands or stop gaining momentum. Because as the flywheel gains momentum you have to push ever harder on it to make it go faster.

It doesn't just apply to household stuff. A business has to be able to scale beyond your personal efforts as well. To do so you have to be able to remove yourself from a lot of equations. Large impacts to society and the world don't really happen without institutions, and institutions can't get built any other way.

What I love about engineering is the personal value curve is so steep, that it starts making sense a lot sooner to outsource drudge work. It becomes a question of, how big do you want to grow, and how fast do you want to do it?

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#52

Post by gwern »

rifung wrote: post #16

This is actually exactly what I want to do, although I just started working so for obvious reasons it isn't a reality yet. How long does it take to save up enough money that you wouldn't need to work though? Also, it seems like eventually you'd run out of money unless you can just retire early, in which case, you have the issue of explaining why you've been out of work for so long and proving you still are up to the…

> I want to continue studying piano, but pianos cost money, getting a house costs money, and lessons cost money.

Given the difficulty people experience in getting rid of pianos, and the constant flood of pianos, a piano might not cost you much money; you might even be able to get paid to take a nice piano off someone's hands: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/arts/music/for-more-pianos...

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#54

Post by dionidium »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #29

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…

Because even in the midwest it's not difficult for an individual engineer to make twice the median household income. That doesn't make you rich, but I have no idea how anybody could think that's not well off.

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#55

Post by jsprogrammer »

tomblomfield wrote: post #43
neilk wrote: post #8

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…

Totally agree. I get my energy and focus from working with a (small) team of people, usually under time-pressure. Working by myself, without any deadlines or goals, I become unmotivated and pretty depressed.

Sounds like it would help you to set your own deadlines and goals if you want to successfully work by yourself.

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#56

Post by dionidium »

Avshalom wrote: post #42
dreamdu5t wrote: post #29

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…

>>But even without owning a car, not having a child, etc. >>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 w…

What's happening is that upper-middle class families really do run out of money after saving for college, sending the kids to private school, both driving two new cars, and so on. They think of those things as basics and forget that those basics are unattainable to most.

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#57

Post by mavdi »

neilk wrote: post #8

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…

It pretty much depends on your personality too I guess. I myself can go years without the need to interact with any other soul.

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#58

Post by falcolas »

vinceguidry wrote: post #21

> 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…

Yeah, the MMM manifesto would never work for me - it basically says that I would have to be setting aside over 90% of my income (given my salary range), which wouldn't allow for things like a newer car, owning a house over 300 sq. ft., or traveling to Arizona to visit relatives.

Personally, I refuse to give up my life today for the possibility of a life tomorrow. There's too few guarantees that there will be a tomorrow.

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#59

Post by scribu »

> You’re not limited to small ideas, either: part-time volunteers in the open source community have built huge parts of the modern world.

Am I wrong in thinking that, in fact, all major open-source projects continue to thrive because there are big established companies supporting them? Where corporate support is lacking, the project doesn't do too well in the long term (I'm mainly thinking of the OpenSSL case from a few months back).

Re: Join the Engineering Leisure Class

#60

Post by dilap »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #23
geebee wrote: post #22

"An engineer earning an amazingly-not-uncommon salary of $100k/year ends up living in an expensive place like San Francisco, starts spending money on some admittedly lovely luxuries, and quickly becomes convinced that her spending is just about right for a comfortable life." Certainly, one way to manage all this is to not live in a place like San Francisco. But I think it is important to make sure people know that lo…

> I'm not trying to be hard on the author of this piece, but I do think it's important for people to know that engineers in SF even in dual income families struggle with housing and child care payments, not with luxury cars, expensive vacation, lovely luxuries. Choosing to work in a locale where a median home price is a million dollars is a luxury. Engineers could pick from other metro areas, and get fairly close to…

Most of my family is here in SF. Since when is "living near your family" a "luxury"? Fuck that.
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