Ask HN: I feel trapped in my job and city

> many people working in the city who live outside of London, nearby a train station

I can't find the link now, but I remember reading a story about a guy who worked in London but lived in Spain and flew back and forth every day because it was cheaper to commute by plane than to live anywhere near London.

I lived in NYC for about a decade, I did not work in Finance, instead I was a consultant at one of the big consulting companies that has > 200k employees worldwide. I hated it, I would physically dread going to work some days, compounded by the fact that I would have to go out of town to places I didn't want to be. I was miserable, and it was making me physically sick, which I suspect you'll start feeling or already are feeling. Then one day, my partner could see I was suffering, and told me to quit, she was right, and I did a few weeks later when I found a different job.

A few things I took from that experience.

1) If you hate what you do, the money only works for so long until it doesn't matter how much it is and you're getting physically sick. Earning a good living and being healthy is so much more important than retiring early with ulcers or other problems.

2) If the money can't buy you the things you really want, what does it matter if you have more of it but still not enough. This is a really hard one, that took me a while to come to grips with, and I'm probably still coming to grips with. Ask yourself what is really the value of money. for me I want money to live in a nice home (modest by most peoples standards, middle class without the huge mortgage), buy a car that doesn't break down constantly (VW has been great at making these), save some money for retirement and for a rainy day, try to take a vacation once in a while (hello road trip), then I just want to spend time with family and friends.

3) Change is scary, we stay in bad situations a lot longer than we should because we don't know if the alternative will be worse.

4) A similar job at a place with a different culture can massively change things. I currently work as a consultant and it's great, my coworkers are great and one of the conditions is that I don't travel more than one week of every month, although with Covid I haven't traveled at all. This is so much better for me and lets me spend so much more time with my family.

The rest is some advice I would give to a friend if they said the same things you've said to me.

If you can't afford a place in London where you would like to live, you could look to an up and coming neighborhood, in 10 years it will likely look a lot different and you'll be happy you got in when you did. Alternatively you could buy a house in a place you want to retire, you could rent it out or have it as a vacation home on Airbnb, that way if real estate continues to do what it has been doing you'll have a nice asset, and a place you like to visit. Also, your partner sounds like they're really hitting their groove, but they also might grow to dislike their job in 5 or 10 years.

edit: make sure you tell your partner how you're feeling, they might just tell you to take some time off to regroup, sometimes we get so wrapped up we don't see how others are suffering because we're not.

There's a couple of constraints here that seem to be dominating your decisions.

One: early retirement

Two: the idea that the recruiter was right about not being able to find the money elsewhere

You have a PhD in Computer Science, one of the highest academic accomplishments in one of the hottest fields for the last 30-40 years. I want you to know how far ahead you are of people like me who just taught themselves to code and glue web apps together for 6 figures. You need to dispel the notion that you can't find your current salary elsewhere and that recruiter was likely lying to you. Finding meaningful work is a different beast, but you're staying attached to a job for a financial goal that isn't really clear.

Assuming you stayed at this job, how long until early retirement? It might make more sense to enjoy things now and take a break from working, move to a new city with a lower CoL (plus you don't even like London), and try a better work/life balance.

Depending on your flat's rent and joint savings, it might actually make more sense to leave the flat, put that money towards traveling (which probably won't even come close your rent), and figure things out. It's not like you're building capital renting the place anyway.

As a final bit, career suicide is a dead concept in CS. That seems like extremely outdated thinking especially with remote work's popularity now.

You might find working at Google utterly meaningless (I mostly do) but the pay would be excellent and more importantly you would have the potential to work remotely... at least 2/5 days a week and potentially fully remotely as well. And that's just Google. There's lots of companies offering full remote at this point.

With CS and stats in your resume you are well set. Stop selling yourself short.

It sounds like you're bummed out and not feeling great. Much like myself and many other people after this last year and a half. Save a bit of coin, and then go on leave or quit your job, take some time off, go hang with your family, and then try a new job with a fresh head.

99% of what we do as engineers is utterly meaningless. That's why we don't do it for free.