> 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 it better than the vast majority of humanity. I feel guilty hating my job, I won’t complain to people IRL because how could I? I have it made by all accounts. This guilt completely consumes me and adds a special level of self hatred, if I’m not happy with this, maybe I never will be?
Unlike the author though I can’t just quit, so endure it I must.
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 happy if they finally get that new car, or that new house, or that new TV.
All of it comes from the same place: assuming that happiness is something you can find by simply changing your circumstances.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are absolutely good reasons to want to change those circumstances! But it's critical to understand that oftentimes there is no one change of circumstances, one decision, one thing that will result in happiness.
I know it's a cliche, but I think I'm old enough now to confidently say that, yes: Happiness really does start from within.
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.
What does age have to do with it? You're one person. It's anecdotal data.
I'm old enough now (5 years later) to confidently say that, yes: Quitting my last job really did make me happier.
That was my life for years. Then I changed _everything_. Quit job, broke up with my girlfriend, sold my flat and most of my possessions, different job, became a "digital nomad".
Now I'm "happy". I found a job that doesn't have all the things I hate about working. I can do sports I enjoy much more frequently, I'm not stuck in a loop where everyday is the same.
I guess I agree that _one_ thing most likely won't be the key to happiness. I think the key is figuring out what makes you happy(I think a lot of people don't know) and what makes you unhappy(this is usually easier to identify). Then doing more of the things that make you happy and less of the things that make you unhappy.
I'm not sure if that's what "happiness starts from within" means, but that's what worked for me.
Edit: I guess being happy also depends on the definition of the word. Depending on the definition, maybe I'm not happy.
I don't believe this take is fair or correct. FANG-like jobs are designed to depersonalize workers, compell them to work extremely long hours, force them to be constantly on and available, and basically live for the company, only to be pushed out of the company by design and get fired as disposable canon fodder at the slightest bump on the calendar.
The pay might be good, but it resembles a deal with the devil.
Have you ever wondered why the average tenure at some top tech companies is measured in months, and reaching a milestone like 4 or 5 years is lauded as a major achievement? I seriously doubt that so many people is just "externalizing their happiness". Sometimes it's really the job that kills you inside and does so by design, don't you think?
For two reasons: 1) it contradicts my lived experience and 2) it contradicts research.
Let's start with money. I used to be poor and now I'm not anymore. I used to have all kinds of anxieties about money, surprise surprise, once I put my nose to the grind, earned more of it, and developed a healthy financial cushion, those anxieties disappeared and I became happier.
My anecdote isn't the only data point, there's research out there which indicates that more money correlates with more happiness (though the effect has diminishing returns once you hit the upper middle class).
There are at least three really big external factors I'm aware of which are correlated to happiness in a big way.
1. Money
2. A supportive network of family and peers
3. Health and fitness
Every time we look we find that as people improve their circumstances in these areas, they report greater happiness and fulfillment in their lives.
I'm not saying that striving for inner peace and all that is necessarily a waste of time. It has its benefits. But frankly I think if you want to be happy you can do a lot worse than busting your hump to sort out the three things I just mentioned. If you're broke, sick and alone, inner peace isn't really a priority. Working on those problems is.
The circumstances of my work make a large difference to my happiness. I know because I've been in a number of different circumstances and my happiness has varied greatly.
Yeah in the limit you can't achieve capital-H Happiness with a change in physical circumstance but I don't think that's what's at stake here.
Thankfully I learned years ago this doesn’t work and got past this mindset. Changing circumstances has never significantly improved things for any length of time.
> Happiness really does start from within.
I’ve also never had any luck with this and am increasingly convinced some people aren’t destined to be happy.
A recovering alcoholic friend of mine once told me this syndrome is well known in 12 step programs. They call it "doing a geographical."
i’ve had jobs that didn’t feel like work.
not sure if you intended by you come off defeatist.
if i was again at a job that was making me sad or angry i’d:
1. list things i hate
2. list things i don’t mind
3. work to do more of 2 and less of 1
if after a year it’s still unbearable look for a different job. talented people have more options than they realize.
If anything, getting older is strongly moving me away from your mindset. To the extent that well-being is intrinsic it seems to be more about the causal relationship to environmental factors. Some people are better at managing workload, setting boundaries, avoiding stressful situations and finding a "scene" that fits their values and abilities. I've seen these people do very well.
There are plenty of people out there ready to tell you that happiness and well-being are all about attitude. But when I look at the people in my own life who have said this none of them have been particularly happy or seem to have figured things out for themselves. And it's no coincidence that some of the strongest advocates for "individual responsibility for happiness" are bad bosses and abusive spouses who have a vested interest in keeping people in bad environments.
To me, stories like this one read more true to life: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34406760#34409368.
You can change your circumstances in another way. Reduce your expenses despite all the money that's coming in. Then find something important to you. It feels like it should be something altruistic. Funnel money to it. But also funnel your time and energy.
Buy some property in Detroit and build a safe house there. Fly in once a month to be involved, actually forming concrete, or roofing, or whatever. Then be involved in forming the management team, and be the board chair or something.
Or found an IT version of a farmer's market. Whatever that means.
Design and build a cylindrical windmill that stinks, but can be installed on balconies to harvest $5 of energy per month. Then invite people who know what they're doing to teach you how to get that up to $20/month and cost only $50 to build. Refine it until you can distribute kits.
Launch a wheelchair repair service. Coach a 4H club.
I know recent events have made altruism look bad, but I'm not advocating... well, I guess maybe I am. I never really looked into it, so I don't know. But I know it feels kinda good to shovel a neighbor's driveway every so often.
100% - and for some people to excel in connecting with themselves, they need a calmer environment - or just more simplicity.
But his sentiment reminded me right away of the book "The Quest of the Simple Life" by William James Dawson.
Doubling my salary and being paid what I am worth by doing what I wanted to do brought me a peace of mind I never had in the last five years (since I immigrated to a new country). I do not have to worry about so many things anymore, it's truly amazing and liberating. I can focus on what truly matters. I can take risks. I can plan for the future without having to go to the depression realm of looking for a better paying job.
Did I hate the jobs I did before? Some of them, but the money aspect stressed me a thousand times more than the work itself. When you don't like your job and do not have the money, you have to worry about both. When it's only your job, you know what to focus on and if you have enough savings, you can be bold and take risks.
A few years ago, I read this NYT article titled "Your Job Will Never Love You Back" [1] and that tagline is stuck in my head since then. Your work doesn't define you and even your dream work will have boring parts.
I'd suggest to go to therapy to focus and work on yourself. Better days are yet to come!
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/business/your-job-will-ne...
On the flip side, it has never been easier for parents to ensure prosperity to their children. For some people, if your parents [and or spouse's parents when applicable] have saved enough to de-risk your [and your siblings'] financial situation; are there anecdotes of how to leverage that to exit the rat race [or probably not enter at all]?
One way or another I will leave, it remains to be seen what that will actually mean. For now all I can do is keep putting money away and praying I get lucky.
I think there’s a huge difference in the value we feel ourselves contributing based on our own interests and what our company does.
I am working in the world of peer reviewed research now, and I think that’s one of the best places I can contribute to. I’m proud every day to start working because I know I’m helping, even in a small way, the many researchers around the world moving human knowledge forward.
I used to work in avionics development, mostly for defense purposes. Some people would hate it. I liked it for awhile, and then I reached the end of learning new things there. I left shortly after that to start my own company, the peer review research-focused one.
I never want to work for ad tech. That’s not the right answer for everyone, but I’d I was working in ad tech, I’d probably feel similar to you.
What do you work on, and how does that sync with your world view?
What happens if you take a 90 minute bike ride each day without changing your hours at all? Would anyone notice? Would they care?
Work is about dollars per hour. Salary is a trick.
How does one frame the other way. Ie I don't care if only a 1000 users experience it, but I'd rather be part of a 10 person team pushing out while features used by 1000 users for hours each day.
I dunno if such roles exist and pay reasonably enough and are sustainable? And how does one politely disregard other kinds of impact in favor of this?
Their response left me flabbergasted: They thanked me! Personally, by email. They actually took out time of their own busy life to write a simple thank you note.
Never in my professional life have I experienced a response anything like this. Not as a researcher, being harassed and scolded by reviewers. Not as an embedded dev, by users or contractors being blissfully unaware of my existence. Not as an open source dev, hidden behind a pseudonym and fake "professionalism" in Github bug reports. The closest thing was perhaps professional recognition amongst colleagues.
I'd rather make a big personal impact on a small number of people than a small incremental impact on a large number of people. It's way more satisfying. Come to think of it, teaching and mentoring work similarly.
I work 40-ish hours a week, have ample vacation, and am paid enough to own a fairly basic condo in Boston, all by my late 20s. It’s not glamorous, I don’t earn $300k+ a year, and it’s certainly not a prestigious resume entry, but hey, I like my life so far. It’s definitely sustainable. Enough so that my wife and I will probably start a family soon.
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.
Maybe this is something related to older generations, but I for one have never been happier. Of course my life isn't perfect, but I would never in a million years go back to my childhood/teens/yearly 20s. I have so much more freedom to express my self, to move in the world, to see and experience things and just in general do whatever I want. I never had the capital necessary or capability to do any of these things when I was a kid.
>I despise being a cog in a huge corporate machine, it’s like the job was designed to be as unappealing as possible.
Of course I can't speak for anyone else, but I think this is part of the "dream job" myth i.e. "if you work a job you love you don't need to work a day in your lift". This is pretty much garbage advice and only works for few rare people. I accidentally fell into my niche. I don't think I would have ever applied for position such as mine, but as new graduate I got an offer that was too good to pass by (however I expected to work here for couple years, gain some money, and then move to a bigger city and find job in my actual field), but when I started I just decided that I was going to be the best in my team/department. I took couple hours every day from work time to study and I became a professional. I wouldn't say I love my job, but I'm good at it and that makes my proud which in turn gives me joy. I've been doing pretty much same thing for almost a decade now and I've never been happier.
How much of your unhappiness is your job, or more so a function of having a continually growing list of responsibilities that can become to feel suffocating (e.g., marriage, kids, managing people at work, etc).
Because it can be a taboo subject, I’ve seen people misattribute their unhappiness to a single thing when it’s really a culmination of many things … and their isn’t a way to “fix” the unhappiness (you can’t “un-have” a kid)
The idea of fathering a child is legitimate nightmare fuel for me. I already feel trapped as it is, though thankfully there’s no risk of it happening.
I have none of the other, suggested, confounding factors. Quitting my last job was fantastic and 100% the best thing I could have conceived of to improve my life.
I also had a very similar sentiment re: cog+machine, although found it more of a combination of amusing and tragic (rather than unappealing).
The ONLY thing that is real is how YOU feel.
I grew up in a rural place, no mountains but we substituted beaches, marshes, and ocean. When I go back to visit I can't believe how beautiful it is. But, I prefer to live in the city where I can walk to coffee, pizza, chinese, mexican, etc. I never visit city parks, the grass and trees don't speak to me at all of nature and as an engineer I see beauty in architecture and construction and (after studying economics) the dynamism of human striving.
It's fine to decide to drop out of the hurly-burly, but don't call your fellow city dwellers rats, they're people making a go of it. The carbon footprint of the average New Yorker is among the smallest in the world, that's what population density gets you, and rural areas? they're filled with human suffering, don't kid yourself.
Could you point to exactly where you think the author did that? I didn't see it.
At most there was, "Every storefront specifically engineered to attract me inside with gimics like flashing lights." Which may be true of London, though I can't say personally.
> don't call your fellow city dwellers rats
"The rat race" is a well-known, long-standing metaphor. "The term is commonly associated with an exhausting, repetitive lifestyle that leaves no time for relaxation or enjoyment." "The earliest known occurrence is 1934." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_race
I know, that's my point, that's why the headline was all he needed, everything after that was belaboring the point. I watched the video and I read the rest because I imagined something new would be said, but nothing was.
In reality it's the opposite. Coming to terms with the fact that the world is screwed up rather than you is a much scarier prospect given the implications.
If you blame yourself you can hit the gym, lawyer up, buy some meditation apps, everyone will applaud you on your great self-help journey etc. Of course a student of economics would love this story, it's very profitable!
Right? London is a great city. If you can't enjoy it, maybe it's just not for you. Try a different one.
Where does that come from? I struggle to see how any person living in the first world could be amongst those with the smallest carbon footprint.
But it’s not less than, say, someone living off the land without electricity and subsistence farming.
Maybe among smallest in the world for a large city?
1. https://www.livescience.com/13772-city-slicker-country-bumpk...
2. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/23/city-dwe...
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 $40k/year for the next 40 years ($1.6m). You can always freelance or do extra work on the side if you want to splurge on a vacation or major purchase.
And I "enjoy" my job. It is comfy and interesting most days. But it is just such a massive time sink, after accounting for the chores of life and the "ramp up" and "ramp down" time before work, it honestly feels like I have maybe 2-3 hours a day on the weekdays of time that I can honestly say is my own. I can't imagine doing this tradeoff for another 15 years, but we'll see.
Props to the OP for having the courage to do this. I hope I can muster up some of the same courage soon.
$300k / yr is the new $100k / yr, and I'd hate to project what it'll be 20 years from now ($2m / yr?)
200K in some places won't let you have a nice apartment in a safe place, 100k in some places and you can live in a king with your own private kingdom.
The 4 hour work week has a far better treatise on this than I could ever write and I highly recommend reading it. You’re incredibly resilient in your 20’s. I’d rather be coming out of prison as a 20 something than be a millionaire in retirement.
Maybe I'm in denial, but I'm not super worried about getting another job right now. I'm enjoying the time off and reevaluating my priorities. There's even a work-related benefit: the extra time / lack of stress has allowed me to read up on tools etc that I haven't been using (although lately I've been tuning out of career stuff entirely).
Of course is not that simple. I won't bore you with my life history, but I spent most of my career living paycheck to paycheck, and only got a high paying job recently. With the double wammy of moving to the US and stock plummeting, my life savings are paltry. I'm still renting and I project it'll take me 2-3 years to save for a down payment.
In fact I'm confident that if you graduated 3 years ago and have been working in tech in the US, you'll likely have more wealth than me.
Not everyone stick in a company for 10 years. Some take sabbaticals, some have medical bills, some go travel for 2 years.
I was earning peanuts up until my early 30s. Also if you are not in US and not in Tech which is lets face it, majority of people - you are nowhere near these numbers.
Survivorship bias at its finest.
I was/am that person. I actually did quit and retire for a while. But then I went back. Mostly out of guilt. I felt guilty not working and building up my kid's trust fund during my peak earning years. It felt like I was betraying my family by not continuing to bring in income while I could.
- a lot of the people who are in their 40-50s today never saw the packages we are seeing today (well, until two years ago)
- some of them carry a family with kids. You will only understand the math behind it until you’re in it.
- life does not work like an xls spreadsheet. It’s not like you « decide » to live of $40k/year. You meet people, things happen and the next thing you know, your « basic » needs require 50% of a significant salary.
- people need a purpose in life. I have seen plenty of people with FU money keep going with their job if they like it. Not everyone dreams of creating a company or living in the countryside.
But I’ll note that $40k/year isn’t nearly enough to live on for people in their 50s unless you’re unusually healthy or someone is subsidizing your healthcare. Healthcare gets much, much more expensive with age.
My employer spends $20k towards my family’s overall healthcare consumption, and we still spend $10k out of pocket.
Regarding taking a break: what have you got to lose?
No programmer I know whose resume says “I took a year or two off to travel the world” has had any trouble getting a new job when they come back. Hiring managers will be jealous, perhaps, but not upset by your choices.
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.
I quit at 33, didn't work for 3 years, had the best time of my life.
Then I got a fun, flexible job that paid below market, but more than paid the bills, and didn't take up all my time and still allowed me to do what I wanted with a decent-sized chunk of every day.
After a couple of years of that, I ended up with an adult job, and my hours are no longer flexible, but it is fully remote and pays about market for a HCOL area, while I can live anywhere I want in the USA.
Quit around 30, didn't work for a full year.
Then worked 20h/week for about 2y while I invested the rest of my productive time into hobbies or pet ideas.
Then I went back to similar job different company. Took me about 2y to get career back to where I left it, but remote and live somewhere I've always dreamed of.
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.
I don't want to live in self inflected poverty in Tulsa, and I enjoy my work enough that I'd rather find something else to work on that I find interesting.
Good luck keeping up a resume for freelancing.
Also, I have nothing better to do than work.
Not because I didn't save more, but because I wasn't able to save more. I do look brightly towards the future and hope I'll turn for the better.
You will then owe 20% (pretax, 30% post tax) of your "imputed" salary for the kid, as well as possible alimony. If you don't come up with 20% of your generous salary you git tossed in a cage, even if the kid only needs a tiny fraction of that for a decent life. For many it's impossible to step down their career without being tossed into prison, as the judge uses "imputed income" to calculate what you owe based on what you can potentially earn. That is if say you go from engineer to carpenter, you may now owe over 100% of your salary for support.
Obviously just one data point and divorce rates are high. Do you have any data on this specific case: depressed about job, quits job to be happier, results in divorce. It seems quiet possible that given the circumstances, quitting the job might decrease the chance of divorce by helping remove so much stress from work.
The ones who really succeed in "quitting the rat race" don't show up because they have next to no interest in discussing this with you, or anyone else online.
I don't mean the silence from HNW individuals, I mean the real quitters, who are sitting round a version of Thoreau's Walden pond NOT WRITING ABOUT IT
The "FIRE" community are the front edge. Once they get there, they stop obsessively telling people how they did it.
The best choice I made was closing out my socials. I do wonder why I keep HN open (as I am sure, do many people who choose to read what I write here) and I suspect it's also going away, when I turn off, tune out, and drop off.
My superannuation (pension in UK speak) is vesting out inside 6 months. It's not HNW. I won't be in lambos. It is more than enough for me and my partner, to be quiet, and sufficiently comfortable in our declining years.
If I misjudged the market I'll either go back to work, or not. "it depends". It might be in this field, it might be in another. A surprising number of older (and not so old) retirees work because they want to (I know many work because they have no choice)
This is the tricky part. If you're in the rat race, the feelings you get in the mountains are way more intense.
If mountains become your life, it won't be long until they become the norm, making you flee back to some urban jungle.
It's the contrast in your life that matter.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/01/06/happiest-...
That's a really bold claim. I fail to see any evidence of it.
Anecdotally, it's not true at all. A huge portion of my city dweller friends are miserable and constantly talk about quitting their jobs or moving. I cannot think of a single friend in the mountains who is as miserable. None of them want to move to a big city removed from nature.
Anecdotally, this is somewhat true for me. My wife and I moved to a rural location last year and every few of months we make a trip to "civilization" (e.g. a major city) to "recharge". Waking up every day surrounded in nature and breathing in the sweet air of a pine forest is great, no doubt. But being able to walk to a pizza shop or bike to a park are something we really miss too.
We're in bit of a pickle though, our daughter will be starting school in a couple of years but the public schools here are not very good. They have some of the lowest scores in the state and the state's scores are some of the lowest in the country...
I have mostly heard this from folks who have been there over a decade, often with young kids. Everywhere has its problems, of course; pick what matters to you.
The "happiness trifecta" still seems to be a sense of purpose, autonomy, and expertise. Money just helps remove stressors.
I'd like to see more stories of people working to open a path in a system where it didn't exist before. Like, "how I carved out a new position at this huge company that gave be a better sense of why I do what I do". Everyone tends to think they need to go to a small place to have a big impact, but I think you can bend the world wherever you are a bit if you know how to define the targets, and get there slowly, one day at a time.
Big career changes are sometimes worth it, though I wouldn't follow this guy's lead. I found this experience from a woodworker who left architecture much more interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQoqGPnRLbU
I posted this late last night (BST) and I’m shocked to wake and see it was so heavily read and discussed. Thank you everyone!
The post received some justifiable criticism for making it sound like I’m about to disappear in to the mountains to live like a hermit in a poorly thought out, idealistic middle finger to society.
In reality the change I’m making is to move to a much smaller place where I still have people and the urban environment around me, but with a much healthier balance of the things I value: family, nature, and quiet. Importantly, I’ll be a 15 minute walk from the seaside and a short drive away from the mountains - so I’ll be able to escape to them as often as I want.
I also want to find or create more meaningful work, even though this means my income may be lower.
I don’t have FU money from working at a FAANG company, so my personal runway is ~6 months. I won’t be taking significant time off.
The most ironic thing is that change isn’t immediate. It’s going to be six weeks before my obligations here expire and until then, life continues as it has done previously. As I write this comment I’m standing in a packed train on the way in to the city, but today with a little smile on my face.
My only humble suggestion is to write a journal of your experience being "off the rat race". And maybe share some of it.
Good luck.
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”.
You're still in the race, but instead of burning everything to get in front and "win" (win what ?) you're just taking a stroll at the back, enjoying the view while chatting with your friends
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bradbury
(burning out and quitting definitely removes that possibility)
If instead of "rat race vs not" we frame it as a tradeoff between possibly conflicting attributes, which may vary person to person and at different points in life, I think we'd have a more fruitful conversation.
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.
Most family and friends I’ve spoken to are completely fine and generally supportive.
Even when I quit my $1m/yr job, people were like - “if it feels like prison and is making you miserable - do it. Life is too short.” I took up another job at a 60% paycut. That turned out to be terrible too. So now I’ve not been working since June and traveling and living in different areas. They’re all supportive cause they’re like, “you’re living the dream. No responsibilities. You have money to live off of. Do it!”
It’s hard to imagine finding anyone who isn’t supportive of retiring early and is actually your friend.
We wish the author well in his endeavors.
A college grad who joined FB in 2012 would have made more money at FB than any other likely alternative including founding their own firm. The same was true for at least a dozen large firms. These big firms came with the added benefit that one didn’t have to worry that your 12 hour days of toil would lead to a layoff at the end.
But yes, good for him. I also like the mountains.
At some point I realized that without this massive dehumanizing system to fire me regular income, the alternative is that we are out in the wild fighting for survival every minute, not knowing where my next meal is coming from.
What our system gives us seems decidedly better but man, it can be mentally tough to keep trucking along.
We are social animals, and many of our goals are the defaults set for us by our social cohort. Very seldom do we take the time to think deeply about what we really enjoy, much less have the courage to act on what we might think in a way that would mark us as different. After all, any rejection of the defaults is a subversive threat to undermine the entire system!
Good for you, Mr. Barry. I for one am very excited to hear more from you in the future!
- coworkers
- working culture
- autonomy
- sense of ownership
- sense of impact
- how much you actually get to code
- whether the coding you're doing is interesting
I think a lot of software engineers need to hang out with more people who are less well off than them. Befriend the grocery store clerk, talk to the mechanic fixing your car. If you're in a bubble of wealthy people, it gets really hard to appreciate the benefits that you have simply because you stop seeing them as benefits and see them instead as the status quo.
Where did this come from? It wasn't in the linked article.
It resonated with me, right up until the "on Twitter" part.
A few weeks shy of 20 years ago, I was a fed-up high school student and made probably the best decision of my life so far. I loaded my stuff in to the back of a beat-up Nissan 720, drove it over to the high school to return their books and sign a few papers to drop out, continued driving a few hours down the road to Georgia where I unloaded stuff in to storage the next day, then started walking the Appalachian Trail...
Just a few minutes ago, I got off the phone with a friend from 500-odd miles in to that walk; he recited a line from Thoreau about most men leading a life of quiet desperation.
My friend had to cut our call short, as a childhood friend of his was on another line, presumably with news about their recent stage-4 cancer diagnosis. We're talking about a canoe trip, and I very much hope we actually make it happen. But, in the meantime, I have an infinite list of bugs to work on.
I had ~30 people reach out to me in DMs on twitter.
Some were people who feel in a similar position but don't know what to do. Others were people who have been where I am and offered advice.
Twitter is just a tool to connect with people outside of the immediate circle I have around me, I don't think there's any problem with using it as such.
In the post, you wrote a paragraph starting with `Almost everything around me is designed to addict me.`, which seems incongruous with communicating through Twitter. I'm glad it has worked out well for you and those ~30 other folks anyway.
Mainly I intended to say that I have exited and successfully re-entered the rat race (actually, a few times), and fully support others in doing so. Do it while you can!
Many commenters clearly don't get it, and probably never will. But, I do, and I don't have a Twitter account.
I sacrificed a lot of value and security.
I have many more worries today, some more serious than any problem I had at that job.
But I feel enormous relief, I sleep better, and between the most extreme hurdles that come by, I am far far happier.
I don’t think there is any simple rule for when to change one’s outlook or change one’s scenery. Both are important tools!
I think I’m lucky because I get to live in a very walkable suburb in Melbourne AU. Feels less like a race, and more like a stroll. Instead of quitting and moving to the mountains, maybe just move to a place that’s a bit more liveable and work a job that’s a bit more flexible.
In short, you might experience flow outside of your day-to-day life (i.e. work). It becomes such an addicting feeling that you try to revolve your entire life around that new sensation.
It's funny, because much of the time it happens when people do something a bit difficult and outside of their current skillset. For software types it tends to always be something with nature or woodworking.
If you don’t like what you are doing, do something else. I don’t know if it’s worth trying to project your personal dissatisfaction into some broad diagnosis of social ills. Many of the alternatives to the rat race are pretty dismal.
In LA, I have the luxury of clean water, sewage, medicine, a decent cocktail, and, like OP, make a decent living. It's easy to decry modern society because you're not "happy" but, imo, that says more about you than it does about what you do.
Don't think the mountains, or the oceans, or the deserts are an idyllic virginal untouched Eden. You're going to end up getting yourself killed like the Into the Wild guy.
99% of people in the UK would take years of their life for the opportunity (even in other cities in the UK). Not for happiness, for the fast cars, nothing like that...to eat, to not worry, to have children, to live somewhere safe. Again, being in the race is a privilege, most people aren't racing, there is no sport...they are getting run over.
I love being in the wilderness. I love the quiet, the beauty of nature, the fresh air, the opportunity to stretch my legs and challenge my body.
And I love the city. I love good food and municipal garbage collection and plowed roads and the company of friends and family within easy reach.
I've often thought about buying a property closer to the Canadian Rockies (I'm close, but not as closed as I'd like), and then I remember that I'd have to maintain my own septic system, and invest in equipment to clear my own roads, and, and, and... and then I realize maybe my life ain't so bad after all. :)
Imagine breaking a leg on a massive property, no roads to where you are, no cell service. What do you do? If you want to live, you crawl. If you’re strong enough, have enough will, and are lucky — you make it. Else, the coyotes eat you. Hell they might eat you anyway.
Addendum: just last week I was surrounded by the local pack of wild dogs. They were hungry and I saw one circle behind me. I drew my sidearm and yelled and they ran off. The point being, I had no help. None. If they were hungry enough, it would be me or them.
You should always carry a gun as well.
The lesson I think to learn is to be true to yourself and try and be objective when assessing life. I grew up in extremely rural, a very nature heavy childhood and there are parts of it I believe are fantastic. Meanwhile as I grew older, I found there were things denser populated urban centers could offer me. Every now and then I look back nostalically about how simple life was but there were a lot of tradeoffs in that context I wouldn't just get rid of now.
For me the compromise is to find a moderately densely populated area with access to densely populated resources. I have most all the access to nature quiet and sanity where I live, meanwhile within a 15 minute drive I can do most everything one has access to in say LA or NYC as far as things I care about and am interested in.
As with many things in life, I don't think the extremes are where happiness tends to lie, it's some compromise or mixture in between.
With an investment into some technologies, you could live fairly nice. Dropping everything with no investment and just living off the land is a fairytale dream.
Yes: historically, the presence of tons of people on "the wild" periphery to grow and sell them their food, so they can live off of them...
The wild without that? It’s wild.
A more balanced approach is to move to the country-side and work remote. Many people do that. But I guess that wouldn’t be too novel to get Twitter and social media attention.
When I wrote this, I had no idea it was going to receive so much attention. It was immediately after a call with my boss where I committed to leaving.
I have learned a valuable lesson: how important it is to be crystal clear with the words you choose and the message you convey.
Reading my post now, I agree it sounds like I'm naively planning on going to live in the mountains where I'll immediately die in a storm or get eaten by a bear. I also wrote "I'm the least fulfilled I've ever been". I should have written "this is the least fulfilling work I've ever done".
I am leaving an unfulfilling job, and an unfulfilling place, to move to a smaller settlement where I am a short walk from the seaside and a short drive from the mountains. I'll have a way higher quality of life, being able to do the things I love (hiking in the mountains and other general outdoor pursuits) at the cost of losing a significant amount of income.
This is a trade I'm willing to make, and it reverses the decisions I've made over the last few years. This is an important learning I hoped to share with others who may be in a similar predicament.
I don't have FU money, I still want to work as a software engineer and will have to very soon. The difference is that I will not trade quality of life for money, and I will try to find or create work on the terms that maximise happiness for me. These terms are different for everybody, so my solution is unique to me.
The TL;DR of my original post is "don't optimise for income over quality of life".
> The TL;DR of my original post is "don't optimise for income over quality of life".
On this, we can 100% agree!
I don't think they're mutually exclusive. One can think of wild places as paradise while taking the necessary precautionary measures to survive there. I've camped next to a lake with hippos in it that passed a few meters from me as they strode past at sunset. A cape buffalo has done the same thing. I know what these creatures are, I know to anticipate disaster. And yet these places are still the closest thing to paradise I've ever known.
I do my adventures without medical insurance, looking up nearby clinics, and there is no embassy to turn to and no emergency contact. I try to be careful, but if there was an accident I’d accept this is the end of the journey.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/10/27/what-japan-makes-o...
Mountains, beaches, deserts, forests are all amazing. But you do get used to them and then miss the cool city life and convenience. But wherever you go, you bring your problems with you.
The drugs, alcohol,etc... in that video are solutions for the rat's unhappiness. It isn't the race that is the problem, it is the person.
There is wisdom in balance. Make a lot of money with the least amount of work-time and spend that money by traveling or living somewhere nice. Doing fun things. But none of that will solve the sickness of the human soul.
Having lived in multiple major cities — they aren’t ideal. Particularly, for children.
With the advent of starlink and wireless networks I think increasingly (I hope) children will be brought up with space. I know with remote work I moved and built a homestead, we are nearly breaking even while supplying all our food. I know me and my family are happier with the space, being outside, etc.
Less pollution, less noise, better air, better food, and generally safer.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-w...
Excerpt:
"In the past century, the American conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers to callings—from necessity to status to meaning. In an agrarian or early-manufacturing economy, where tens of millions of people perform similar routinized tasks, there are no delusions about the higher purpose of, say, planting corn or screwing bolts: It’s just a job."
Not judging harshly because I did nearly the same as the author years ago! Only I found a pot of emptiness at the end of the rainbow. I hope he really REALLY likes mountains ;)
Who's going to tell him that ALL the water on Earth has been recycled many, many times.
As a professor once said: "All the air you're breathing and all the water you're drinking was the same stuff the dinosaurs consumed and shit into."
I guess if he wanted to avoid recycled water he could collect and purify water from animal aerobic respiration or hydrocarbon combustion. Even then the oxygen and hydrogen could have been used before.
That makes the post ring rather hollow to me. It sounds like they want to monetize their experience of quitting and rejoining nature. Which basically reads like another version of selling the secrets to a 5 hour work week kind of deal.
I don't really understand the problem or the solution. Is this sustainable? Will the begin to feel unfulfilled in the mountains? What is fulfillment? Could a steady cadence of vacations to the mountains have bridged the gap? Does it require such an 'all or nothing' solution?
It's true by definition. One experience is not like the other.
The tone hints at what OP prefers but it's rather easy to come up with a statement pointing in the other direction. "Nothing has made me feel anything like that feeling when you get out of a nice warm bath, dress up nicely, walk to your favourite local restaurant with your mates and get a your favourite meal with a nice glass of wine." Or whatever tickles your fancy.
> The best part about those things is that there is no booking system. There is no door security choosing who gets in because there is no door. It’s all there, ready to be experienced, and free.
There are many other free things out there. Starving in the African heat. Freezing under shelling somewhere in Ukraine. Dying of incurable disease.
At the same time, there are many things ready to be experienced that are not free but, I'm sure, OP can easily afford. A nice meal in a good restaurant, a movie, a coffee with a friend, a book, comfort of his home, a trip to wherever his childhood was.
I suspect, even his quitting is not entirely free. It probably comes from his privilege to be able to not work for a while and be able to afford all the gear he needs for mountaineering. It's not a critique of his choice. I'm glad he has the option to choose and doubly so that he's happy with the choice he made. I'm critical though of OP implying that that option is the best. That it's obviously betters, and free on top of everything, but somehow overlooked buy everyone.
I understand how big city can be overwhelming. Referring to it as "Rat Race" is a little dramatic, I'd say. The toon paints a bleak picture that reflect only one side of the modern city life. Retreating to mountains is only one way to deal with it, too. And it's on the more severe side of possible solutions spectrum.
I recently also submitted my own resignation, except I've figured out that my current savings could last me around 3-5 years, so my plan so far is to take one year off work for personal projects, books and other ways of upskilling myself, as well as handling various larger events, such as moving to the city from the countryside (healthcare or even getting to the store is problematic otherwise), as well as just hang out with friends occasionally and visit some museums.
Though maybe my plans are too much work and too little play.
This article is just another reminder that techbros making bank can afford the luxury to save-up a few years, and spend years contemplating their self-realization. I'm glad the author was able to finance their perspective-changing journey, but reading this is less of a lesson, and more of reading that someone won the lottery.
You can only leave the rat race if you can afford to... The rest of the earth can't do this and the author is writing from a place of great (earned) privilege. Must be nice.
As though the person saying it wish they were a technologist, so they could earn more.
I was told "Go away, old man. No one wants you.", in, pretty much, those words.
Hurt like hell, but after I got over my sniffles, I learned to "lean into" my exile.
I just released a new kernel for the app I'm working on. I budgeted two months for it, but got it done -at much higher functionality than planned- in five weeks.
The difference in my development velocity and product Quality is nothing short of astounding.
This was always insane to me, I always had my vacations and visits to family planned out well in advance, I never had anything left over.
Maybe it means something, maybe not.
It was a great covid experience, but it's not quite something I want to repeat soon.
Me, best time in my life, commuting in Tokyo to my jobs working on a project I loved with people I loved. All the ads on the trains were eye candy to me. I didn't buy anything that I remember but I did find out about museums, concerts, and other events around town as well as various obscure services which I never used but was amused to read about.
Drinking with my buddies, including work buddies about once a week was great. Clubbing, going to restaurants, and going to events of the kind that generally only happen in giant cities was lovely.
I like the occasional trip to nature but as for me I'll pick the city and the public transportation. I love it!
It reads like you are stating a fact, but really, it is a matter of opinion. Perhaps, you can just say what you like without invalidating what others prefer.
I was visiting London and took the train in the morning to the airport (this is a really bad idea), and saw that exact thing play out. Some girl was smushed into the crowd in train by someone outside so she could make the train, like a cartoon character.
Definitely convinced me I couldn't do a 9-5 after that
Do not let your job become a part of your identity.
I work just as hard at my new job as I did at my last one, but in my mind, they're just a client I'm choosing to offer services to at this time. I've made many good friends through work over the years, but now my loyalty to my friends is independent of my loyalty to the companies for which we work. I used to use the demonym of my place of work to tell people about myself; now I describe myself by my hobbies, my beliefs, and my aspirations.
Did that solve everything? Of course not. Late-stage capitalism is still riddled with bullshit. But I do sleep better at night.
I disagree. People should strive for a fulfilling job that allows them to express their identity. Just try not to be so picky that you end up with so few options.
"I'm quitting! But I'm not telling you anything about how I plan to pay for life."
The message mostly resonates with me, right up until they leave out the most crucial part of the post. How do you escape the rat race, and still pay for things like health care, food, rent, etc.
Even if you're making $100k+ a year, those costs aren't insignificant. No how do you handle them making $0k a year?
I quit the rat race in my late 30's. I saved and lived a frugal life while earning a great FAANG salary during a time of economic growth. I used my savings to buy income producing rental properties and aggressively payoff mortgages. I now do woodworking most days and love it. The pay is low, but at least the hours are long.
I used to work on some of the most popular applications in the world. I would see my work in keynotes and read about my work here on HN, but none of that compared to making an urn for my cousin when my uncle passed away. Or selling a few items at a winter market at my kid's elementary school.
Please see this comment where I've hopefully answered your questions: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=34426360&goto=item%3Fi...
Couples routinely live like this for $2k/m, so it is possible.
'The mountains' are wonderful while you still have a pile of cash to pay 'friendly locals' to help support your dream, but eventually you will get older, and it will run out...
By any definition these people are not rich but they are definitely happier than most city-dwellers IMO. I think there are 6 series now.
Society won't let you unless you go full drifter and only certain people have a personality for it.
I was just cursing a pile of sticks that were too damp to light and I was being deprived of the bonfire I had assembled and was preparing to light, and I was laughing because in the words of Buckaroo Banzai, "wherever you go, there you are." I've achieved a kind of temporary exit for as long as my means permit, and I can say that the real that the rat race conceals is not for everyone.
My trip up the hedonic treadmill was such that I even wrote professionally about the sort of things one might buy in the hopes of finding a there there, pitching stories about exotic experiences one could have for the price of a vacation. There isn't a there there. There is no yacht long enough, club exclusive enough, view stunning enough, or achievement great enough that it makes you any different from the person standing on the subway platform. You will be the same person. I guarantee that if you flame out of your job, cash in your savings and manage to summit Everest, the first thing you will do when you get to the top is check your phone. The things that seemed so important were only symbolic. Pursuit of symbols specificially disqualifies us from attaining the meaning they represent. Maybe the humility is worth it, as yeah, the things I achieved were symbols that don't mean the same things now that I have them, but that's the treadmill, the pursuit of symbols and representations - affect.
I can say with some confidence that you only actually have what is yours to share, not all of it is good, and meaning only exists in the moment of sharing it. I can also say that unhappy people are not lonely, as their misery and self involvement keeps them from noticing it. I think to really understand what it means to be lonely, you need to find some happiness first, then when you move to share it with someone who isn't there, that's the feeling. That absence of no one in particular, but with the sense of having lost someone close. It is truly a rarefied experience I am glad to have been able to appreciate, but it's not a solution to anything. If you want to exit the rat race, try camping first, maybe a longish canoe trip, or read some good literary fiction. Ultimately, it's just you.
This is all to say, we invent the conditions we impose on our choosing happiness. They are symbolic and representations, they are not the real, and the real is not far or exotic. It's perhaps easier to believe we are unfufilled by our successes, and that there is another life out there if we just leave all this behind, as it puts off recognizing that we're probably just idiots in profoundly difficult ways.
Second, I do feel the pain of corporate life, and I switched to working for a non-profit because of it. Leaving the city… nah. Just moved to the perimeter and now I can drive 10 minutes to downtown or 20 to the mountains. Why get a septic tank, a well, my own water treatment, and all this other stuff if I need not do so?
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.
This is the exact realization I had that lead me to quit London as well.
All you're doing is giving yourself a brief reprieve from an environment that drains your energy. You'll build up a bit of the energy over the break, but as soon as you come back you'll start getting drained again, possibly even worse than before because of the contrast of having to be back in that environment.
Breaks are important but if your environment is fundamentally draining you day after day, they're not going to move that needle.
It's one of the most beautiful places I've seen. If you have the opportunity to visit, I recommend it highly.
But, rural living is vastly less sustainable on a per capita basis than city living. The elegiac tone of a rural paradise lost is a familiar one throughout the past few centuries. It’s an aspect of “blood-and-soil” nationalism (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_and_soil) and Boomer-era environmentalism and of Tolkien (so, I guess that’s in order of most to least problematic). It is easy to feel the longing, but it’s also worth some critical thinking.
I’ve got a place in the country that I go when I need to get away from the city (and, yes, putting a lot of time and effort into making it sustainable…). I find myself doing a lot of programming there. And then I go back to the city to talk to people about the code, and find out what they’ve been coding.
i'm glad you were able to quit. i did see that video recently and found it a bit cliche but well made.
-Kirsten Hacker