I have a 10 year old daughter with a very rare genetic condition. She has no one to care for her if I pass away. She can't yet talk and operates at a 2year old level, autism is just one of the side effects of this genetic condition. She has learning challenges as well, can't read, write or understand very well.
I need to leave behind substantial assets or money for her for her long term care.
I would love to retire early too but I don't seem to have that luxury because if I do, I don't know what I will leave behind for my daughter's care. I've switched several jobs over the past decade only to find that there is nothing fulfilling from a job perspective. Nothing that adds value to other people's lives or even to my own, aside from a paycheck to pay for my own funeral and my daughter's future care. When the time comes I don't know how my daughter would manage my funeral and which bad people will try to take away everything that I leave behind for her for her care.
I can't afford to give away 30% of my worth to law firms that will allegedly guarantee my daughter will be safe from some money hungry assisted living centers or other such nasty organizations and opening a special needs trust fund is equally expensive.
I think I'll work my whole life or whatever is left of it, I'm 43 and also work in tech and this is a dying industry with AI taking up so many jobs like automation did in the automotive industry.So I'm not sure how many more good years I'll be able to work for, so I'm just going to put my head down and work humbly while I can.
Just had a cancer diagnosis (bile duct, I'm 53). Surgery in a months time will hopefully see me healthy again after it, but I've already decided to make changes even if it has spread and I only have a much shorter time to live.
I always thought I'd contemplated life and death before this (I am not religious), but having had several weeks of genuinely not knowing if I only had a week to live, I think you only really do this fully in that kind of situation. Even if I am cured, my life and attitude will never be the same again.
My mother suddenly passed from cancer last year at 68, that harrowing experience violently reshifted a lot of my life philosophies.
This was perhaps exacerbated by both my grandparents on mom's side also passing just a couple years prior back to back.
Among other things violently reshifted:
* Time is finite, grows more valuable as I age, and I do not have as much as I think I do. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* Time is money and money is time. Money in hand can be spent for others' time so I don't have to spend mine, and money can be replenished while my time cannot be. Money can also be borrowed, but I cannot borrow more time. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* Take nothing for granted. Social Security being the prime example; my mother waited until 65 to start taking it and so she barely enjoyed only 3 years of it. I refuse to repeat that, I am taking Social Security at 62 ASAP and screw anyone trying to tell me otherwise for any reason. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* People here today might not be here tomorrow, for any or no reason. The experience of spending time with them can only be had today. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* Small problems are not worth the time of day, it is fine to resolve them in the quickest and easiest way possible. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* Most of the goings-on in the world will come and go time and time again. If something comes up, it too shall pass and come up again in due time to pass again. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* When I'm finally gone, I'm gone. It is not worth the time of day today to care about what happens after, I will be dead and literally can't care or interject. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
How have these things tangibly changed your life and behavior? Do you have things you could share as an example? I never know what that looks like. Everything I want to do in life to enjoy it requires money I do not have.
Welcome to the club nobody wants to join. I had a similar experience 12 years ago. Pls email (address in bio) if I can be of any assistance (e.g. book recs). In any case, good luck w/ your surgery!
It’s funny, I’ve always just been kinda waiting for death. Probably need meds but never felt like changing “who I am”. I’m curious to see what happens to me when that cancer day comes for someone so apathetic to the whole life experience.
The premise that your life should be work until 65 and then you can finally do what you want is so depressing to me. I have goals beyond just doing what I want, but it all just seems like an endless rat race i can never win as I chase money/prestige in order to accomplish those goals or those things serve as a nice but ultimately meaningless byproduct of accomplishing those goals while my life slips away.
The system wouldn't work otherwise and your overlords won't like it. We already had the pandemic and people had a slice of that taste. Came back with harsh interest rate hikes and tightening of the job market to get everyone back in line.
Scrum, Agile and management in general have beaten the fun out of me. I can imagine doing some coding for fun when retired. But I don’t want to work for a corporation.
At this point I think most jobs have good days and bad days and there's some enjoyment/pride in being productive and valued in a job environment. I'm not full r/antiwork or anything but when you take a 10k foot view and realize almost no one on their death bed wishes they had spent more time working / on their computer it's hard to not feel like it's all a big miscalculation on our parts.
On my deathbed I probably won't wish I had spent more time at the gym either, but that doesn't mean the gym is not good for me to engage with more often now. Heck it might even delay my deathbed if I put in the work now.
I've retired early and gone back to work voluntarily. I find the first 15 to 20 weekly hours are good for me, and I genuinely enjoy employing people and working on projects with them. Like yourself, not every week is exhilarating. Lots of weeks are dogshit and make me feel like going back to 100% life again. But over time, it's worth trying to contribute to keeping this big ball of mud spinning. I will surely reconsider that position when I become the Buddha, but not sooner.
The only people with that premise are those that want a higher defined benefit pension via Social Security, perhaps because they don’t have sufficient wealth otherwise. That age is going up to 67 in 2025.
Nobody with sufficient passive income to satisfy their desired quality of life works longer than they have to.
I'm contemplating retirement. I find myself ostensibly in a workplace of high personal relevance, but it's going in the wrong direction, largely I think due to layers of disconnected professionalization that are supposed to have the answers, but the result is just a race to the bottom.
I'd like to have more cash before retiring, but it'd be ok with a bit of restraint. It's mostly up to finding a good lifestyle.
Thing is, I still enjoy 'tech;' the activity of programming, writing tests, designing things (even building workstations), constant learning, and the larger potential it brings to more than technical people, tied in with the sometimes distant idea that a more participatory world can be fairer and more peaceful.
I wonder if an engaging hobby will appear that combines elements of free software, wikipedia, non-dominating personal perspective, and problem solving. People like solving puzzles, maybe we can help solve other people's puzzles too.
I'm surprised it hasn't happened so far, but contributory culture has been abducted so many times, and the intentionally free/open world hasn't been very good at course correction. Which isn't surprising considering other powerful interests, including professionalization and the way "startups" took over with their compartmentalize and cash-out energy, the tech giants, and now of course AI (which could be part of a helpful system). "Sensemaking" was a thing for a while, but it's not really talked about anymore.
The main issue with turning the dial to "life" early is that your peer group usually hasn't. My peers spend most of their time on work: sometimes to pay the bills, sometimes for status laddering, sometimes for reasons I don't get.
I have found friends that are less focused on work - sometimes because they have more control over their hours and sometimes because they are past retirement age and sometimes because they don't work for other reasons.
I'm looking forward to the next decade+ as maybe more of my peer group friends will choose (or be able to choose) to do less work hours/days.
I quit a gig that was great in a lot of ways — great product, great peers, great potential — primarily because of of an "overachieving founder mode startup" individual. This person was exquisitely talented and inspiring but ultimately the only way to participate in the company was to overdrive yourself to the point of misery.
I stayed longer than perhaps I might have because that person was young enough to learn and change. And they definitely learned and changed over time, but not the lessons I thought they should learn. This doesn't make the direction they took objectively wrong, but eventually I and all the engineering peers I valued bailed out.
It was frustrating because I remain convinced it didn't have to turn out the way that it did. But leaving was absolutely the right thing to do and I'm much happier now.
We work to survive, I would not call this living for the vast majority of us. There is no possibility of re-assessing our priorities because not working is death. Anyone that has the ability to re-asses their priorities can only do so from a place of extreme privilege that most will never have access to. Plenty people with a cancer diagnoses just die because they cant afford any other option.
Most of the time, those over-achievers from the outside lead a very unhappy, constantly unfulfilled life. I've met few of those up close (former girlfriends, close friends) and oh boy its a sad view once you see full picture. Success is never really enjoyed for long, there is always next target to chase. Close people around suffer accordingly.
Then when you know what signs to look for, you see it a lot more among those 'very successful'.
There is one success for me - living a good life that one is happy to have lived when looking back old/dying. Good, sometimes hard moral choices instead of less moral shortcuts. A lot of people put themselves a lot of such baggage over years and from young happy folks they are grumpy envious older ones (there are many more reasons for such of course). Whatever such success means to you, all the power to you. For most of us, work achievement are pretty low in that list, so look for success elsewhere in life.
From experience, I can say that If you were conditioned from a young age to believe that achievement and status were important in life it’s an incredibly hard instinct to let go of. You’re totally right that it’s damaging for those around you and can lead to bitterness as you age. It’s something I have to grapple with everyday and it’s exhausting.
I think this is a curse that gets inflicted on far too many “gifted” children. While young they get lots of praise for their accomplishments and outcomes and it can drown out any intrinsic motivation to do things that make them happy.
Exactly, and well put. I have a hard time identifying those things that really make me happy without any external influence and an even harder time comfortably sitting with the idea that objective of my life should be personal happiness.
Reading or seeing things like this on the internet also makes me reflect on my life and think about what my priorities should be, and I'm not really in a financial position where I can just retire and turn the dial all to way to "life" but the best thing I can learn from this is to appreciate the little things in life. Like living in a first world country, having food to eat, hot showers, a bed, good health, etc.
I’m very sorry to hear that. It’s always sad to read posts like this one, as the time goes by, it hits me how I’ll relate to it sooner or later. Apologies for rambling below —
I’m much younger (late 20s), don’t have too many worries in life as my parents, albeit older, still alive, my siblings are fine, friends are okay, don’t have that many financial troubles either at this point.
That being said, a couple of years ago I got a text about a high school friend of mine passing away after years of fighting cancer. It was one of the weirdest emotions I’ve ever felt in my life, and I couldn’t (still can’t) understand why. I’ve seen my grandparents passing away in front of me, I’ve been to funerals, yet this one hit like a brick. At that point, it would’ve been about 10 years since I’ve talked to that friend of mine, maybe just exchanging some happy birthday messages from time to time. But we were fairly close in middle school, and later in high school as well, just the life drifted us apart, living in different cities and etc. Yet I remember the moment I read the text how he passed away. I remember being on a plane, and my entire mind being completely clouded for a week afterwards.
It’s like a sudden realization of how life can be very short for some of us, and you can lose people out of nowhere. I understand I’ve been lucky enough to never experience it until that point of my life, but it really sucked. And it just sucks knowing how it’ll happen more and more, or might even happen to me.
Anyways, it’s been about 2 years now, and I’ve lost all of my ambitions wrt my career. Took about 6 months off as well, which made me realize how small and fun the world is. I know for a fact I won’t be able to enjoy it as much in 30 years. But unfortunately I’m not at the point where I can do whatever I want yet.
Until then, every work day is just a repeat of things I don’t care about, followed by 10-20km walks to feel something. I wish it wasn’t the case, because I consider myself slightly above average in terms of skills and getting things done. Every morning I wake up thinking if I found just one thing that I could throw my life or at least a couple years at, I would do a decent job. But it’s hard to convince myself that anything matters. Then I remember how people that I hold dear to myself might be gone as well, and it becomes another day of spiralling.
Anyways, sorry for Sunday morning trauma dumping, but reading the OP’s story made me reflect on myself for a minute. Thank you.
> I am taking my work/life balance and turning the dial all the way to “life”.
That is an awesome way to put it.
We don't often hear about everyone's troubles and trauma. And seeing it written down is surely nothing compared to living through it. But there is a lot of it out there, whether we know about it or not, so when people go through it... I heartily approve of recognizing that life is more important than work, and knowing when to adjust that dial.
Recognizing when life is more important than work? Did you miss the part where his wife died BEFORE "tuning the dial to life"? The lesson you should get from his post is not to make that mistake.
This forum is absurd. I don't need a cancer diagnosis to tell me I'm not living to complete OKRs and quarterly goals.
I'm a good employee and a dedicated worker but my goal since day one has been to do the least shitty job I can land, retire as fast as possible, and get on with the good parts of life. I've had the dial as far to life as possible forever.
But I'm working class, so I can't just retire when I realize the value of my life due to a medical emergency. Being able to do that is not a virtue that should be praised like this forum is doing, it is a gift that should be appreciated for the privilege that it is.
I only pray I can earn enough to turn my dial all the way to life, sometime before my body gives up on me
That sucks, what he went through. That happens to a lot of people. As we get older, it tends to happen more often.
Sounds like he made exactly the correct choice. I support him in continuing to make correct choices. This is but the first of many.
I did it, myself, but not by choice. I was "frozen out" of the tech industry, after leaving a very long-term job.
It absolutely infuriated me, at first, but, in the aggregate, it has turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It also coincided with close family members having some health issues, so my being available has been beneficial.
In my case, I really enjoy programming and tech; just not when it is being ruined by terrible managers and coworkers. I was really starting to hate what I did, and having full control of my own process, made all the difference.
For one thing, it showed that I was usually right, in my personal philosophies, which were regularly disparaged by said managers. When given the chance to practice my own personal Process, things have been going very well, indeed.
So I get to work for free. It's a blast. I've gotten more accomplished, in the seven years, since I was pushed out, than I did, in the thirty preceding years.
In my case, I am involved in organizations that constantly surround me with people with whom I have very intimate relationships. Socializing isn't a problem; but I understand that it can be a real issue for retired people. This goes double, for ones that have the means to wall themselves off from others.
I do know a number of folks that preceded me, in retirement, after long, lucrative careers. Most, were dead within five years of retirement.
> ...I did it, myself, but not by choice. I was "frozen out" of the tech industry, after leaving a very long-term job...It absolutely infuriated me, at first, but, in the aggregate, it has turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me...
I would say i'm about a decade or maybe a decade and half before i can freely retire...But, already i see signs of the possibility of being frozen out of tech. Its such a fearful thing, and even moreso at a latter age! I quite enjoy technology both in isolation but also connecting proper tech to solve human problems...But so often it feels that at my $dayjobs, it always feels like we are solving the wrong problems...like chasing whatever some senior leader added into their presentation...as in, a goal for them, but not always something that is sustainable for the org, substantially helpful to people, etc. Its clear to me that while i still have the enthusiasm of my 25 year old around tech and genuinely helping people wit tech, i am so much more cynical about corporate use of tech. Nowadays, i'm at the point where i am seriously considering leaving tech, and trying to get some other job...and then only having fun with tech on the side, such as contributing to open source projects, playing on my own home lab, volunteering with orgs on digital divide, etc. I figure those sort of "hobbies" or side projects can also help me transition whenever the time comes for me to retire, of if/when i get pushed out. Now, i just have to ensure my costs are down so i can weather any salary hits.
@ChrisMarshallNY Sorry that you got impacted by a freezing out...But glad to hear that you're getting started on a new phase of life for you, and hoping it keeps being positive for you! Cheers!!!
> Now, i just have to ensure my costs are down so i can weather any salary hits.
That’s the key.
I have always lived extremely humbly, and haven’t carried any personal debt, beyond a mortgage on a very small house, since 1995. I maxed out my savings, and deferred stuff I couldn’t afford.
I’m still doing that now, and my savings generate more than I spend (for now). I’m hoping to have the ability to help my family, after I pass. They'll need as much help as possible.
If there's a bilionare here willing to give me a basic income until I pass, let me know. You could even give me a condition like doing social or creative work. The corporate world is tiring, and time flies by.
Always enjoyed this blog. The post on thermal throttling stands out as a fun one, but there were many others. Hopefully Bruce comes back to writing at some point after some recovery time.
Or hopefully he finds anything at all that helps. I lost my mother just a little over a year ago and it was (is) hard. In addition to the pain of loss though losing your spouse has to be even more disruptive to moving forward with your life.
First of all, truly sorry to the author for what happened to them, it is devastating, and something that indeed will shake your world and priorities.
Any advice for people who are not finding the courage to quit, despite probably having the financial means to do so?
I came from very humble origins and moved to Silicon Valley from another country and have a gained a fairly solid financial situation, by having accumulated $5.5M liquid with expenses of around $50k (no kids, no mortgage, just a loving girlfriend).
I am so unhappy with work. I have changed 3 employers over the past 4 years and I’ve been more and more depressed with each transition. I spend my life in a state of immense disappointment about having to work. I am not even passionate about software anymore, so it’s not only the corporate madness (meetings, offices, coworkers, bosses, pressure to perform, code reviewers, etc). My weekends are filled with anxiety about Mondays.
I haven’t quit yet because everyone is telling me not to: my parents, still living in another country, are telling me to milk it until I am 45 (38 now), the few close friends I have are telling me not to squander the opportunity to earn until I get to $10-$15M due to real estate/healthcare/lifestyle costs going up (especially if I revisit the decision not to have kids, which I don’t think I will), and even financial communities like bogleheads/fire subs are telling me it’s not time yet and that I need to accumulate more given my privileged position.
I’ve tried a couple therapist but it didn’t work for me.
I also do not have anything to retire to: no particular passions, or hobbies. I just dream of spending a life of slow breakfasts, hiking on Monday mornings to celebrate a new week, reading books, slow traveling, and spending more time close to my aging parents.
You've got plenty of money, you're living on 1% of your savings, which is great - controlling expenses is significant.
You should be able to invest the money with the goal of beating inflation and grow your pile. There's people who retire with a lot less. There's tools to help, where you can play with the numbers, investment returns, inflation rates, etc.
It's difficult to predict the future. You might wish you had more money a couple of decades from now, or you might get hit by a bus next year and wish you had lived it up more when you had the chance. Eventually the stress of your current job is likely to affect your health. It takes a while to get over being burnt out.
The safest option might be to look at your money as a wonderful cushion, giving you options that others only dream of. You can find a different job that you like, even a lower paying job preserves a lot of your savings. You can take time off, maybe doing something along the way that looks good on your resume. You can work on and off. You can change careers. Maybe figure out what you'd want to do if money were not the object. You are way ahead of the game. The world is your oyster!
It can take a while to figure these things out. Best of luck!
If you don't mind leaving the US, there are lots of places around the world that will make that 5.5m go way further. Keep a very modest/middle-class lifestyle. Never upgrade and you'll have ultimate peace of mind.
What is the reason to suggest that a break from work, as opposed to a retirement (more similar to the author’s path), is more appropriate for my situation? Is it a concern about financials/age?
After reading several people describing their experience (even in this thread) as “once you taste the freedom of not working, you will never be able to go back”, I can totally identify myself in that, so I like to think that the decision of “just take a 3 months break” would become a much more serious one.
I am pretty young, so take this with a grain of salt, but the motivation seems simple to me: If it is burnout, then a short break might put things into perspective, and help him decide whether to retire, switch jobs, do something on his own etc.
I'll give you my perspective having gone through something similar. I was in a pretty similar pit, hit rock bottom, and only then did every high achiever in my life open up to me that taking a sabbatical was the best thing they had done for themselves.
Your original comment especially about not enjoying things, not knowing what your hobbies are, etc, are indicating that you've just lost yourself a little bit. I was in very much the same place. It takes some time away from what occupies most of your thoughts/attention (work) to re-learn who you were and who you are now.
For me, I took 3 months away from work. For the first 2-3 weeks I basically did "nothing." And it was only after that initial period did I start to remember things I enjoyed to do and felt motivation to go do them. After that, the remainder of my sabbatical was spent finding every minute I could spend with friends and family that I could.
I came out of that sabbatical with a, still fuzzy but a bit clearer, understanding of what I wanted but I was still the same ambitious person I was before. Chances are, you would still be too. If you're going to do it, think of it less like a 3 month break and instead as giving yourself 3 months of room to think and experience and re-introduce yourself to yourself.
As an aside - if you're feeling and thinking these things, your partner likely notices too. I have no idea what your relationship is like but can guarantee that all this definitely has an affect on y'all and you won't see what it truly is without said room to think and contemplate.
> I just dream of spending a life of slow breakfasts, hiking on Monday mornings to celebrate a new week, reading books, slow traveling, and spending more time close to my aging parents.
That sounds like a lot to retire to if you ask me. And $5.5M seems like quite a lot to me. Probably especially if you move back to your home country or almost anywhere else in the world outside Silicon Valley.
Myself, I do have some hobbies but I'd probably go nuts without the structure of having a formal job. If I were you, I'd try and find work that I actually enjoy and find meaningful; you probably don't need to worry about money so much, but if you had a job that covered your expenses, you could let the principle you've already accumulated grow.
> If I were you, I'd try and find work that I actually enjoy and find meaningful
Thanks. That’s easier said than done.
A big reason why (but not the only one) work is so depressing is because, in every single job I had (consulting included), I ended up pretty quickly despising and being highly resentful of my managers, I just don’t like being told what to do, “being coached”, “given feedback”, “pressured”, and oh God those 1:1, I hated every single 1:1 I ever had throughout my career.
Naturally I always put up the right facade to allow me to perform, but good luck finding a job without a manager.
I realize this says more about me than my managers, but this is still the reality.
FWIW, when I’m not working or depressed about the thought of work, I’m actually a pretty happy person.
I think you should try a hand at running your own business, being your own boss. You seem to have enough money and the industry experience to take a shot at it.
I am inclined to agree with your parents/friends, you still have a lot of human capital (read: your youth) to build financial capital with today so you can have an even more fulfilling life tomorrow when you no longer have all that human capital (read: old age).
This isn't to say you shouldn't life your life now, of course. I wrote in another comment here that living today and not tomorrow is imperative[1]. But to refuse to make money during your prime money making years is also folly, because that money today will save your time tomorrow.
I retired early this year. My advice to anyone seeking to do so is think clearly about it. Because once you do it, you can never go back to that world. The world of waking up early, having a boss tell you what to do, going to meetings that mean absolutely nothing, running on that hamster wheel, seems so trite and meaningless afterwards. That's a good thing, but you can never go back. Then it becomes time to concentrate on what life is really about- your health, your relationships, having fun and discovering what life is like without that tether on your ankle. Everyone isn't cut out for that, some need that hamster wheel. The best people are cut out for it. :)
That sounds like a terrible year. I feel sorry for the poster. Life can come at you fast and sometimes I feel like I’m just bracing myself for such a life changing event.
I too was at Google. But for 7 years, not 10. And my employment terminated in April, not because of a life event like his.
But the feelings he expressed resonate with me. I stopped enjoying work and my performance tanked coinciding with a reorg and manager change.
I did not miss my job which just a couple years ago I actually enjoyed.
I wasn’t seriously thinking of leaving my job. Being pushed out forced me to evaluate what I do if that happened - which it did. And that evaluation is that I’m a lot happier and can reset what I want from life - it doesn’t have to be full on retirement.
I have always thought about life in the long go term. What legacy do I want to leave, how do I want to spend the last years, what do I want the late years to look like with my wife.
Sometimes it takes the outside world to force you into the next thing. Life does not discriminate but the best you can do is take a big step back and try to find a new lens to look at it through. There are many lenses.
I have a 10 year old daughter with a very rare genetic condition. She has no one to care for her if I pass away. She can't yet talk and operates at a 2year old level, autism is just one of the side effects of this genetic condition. She has learning challenges as well, can't read, write or understand very well. I need to leave behind substantial assets or money for her for her long term care. I would love to retire early too but I don't seem to have that luxury because if I do, I don't know what I will leave behind for my daughter's care. I've switched several jobs over the past decade only to find that there is nothing fulfilling from a job perspective. Nothing that adds value to other people's lives or even to my own, aside from a paycheck to pay for my own funeral and my daughter's future care. When the time comes I don't know how my daughter would manage my funeral and which bad people will try to take away everything that I leave behind for her for her care. I can't afford to give away 30% of my worth to law firms that will allegedly guarantee my daughter will be safe from some money hungry assisted living centers or other such nasty organizations and opening a special needs trust fund is equally expensive. I think I'll work my whole life or whatever is left of it, I'm 43 and also work in tech and this is a dying industry with AI taking up so many jobs like automation did in the automotive industry.So I'm not sure how many more good years I'll be able to work for, so I'm just going to put my head down and work humbly while I can.
Just had a cancer diagnosis (bile duct, I'm 53). Surgery in a months time will hopefully see me healthy again after it, but I've already decided to make changes even if it has spread and I only have a much shorter time to live.
I always thought I'd contemplated life and death before this (I am not religious), but having had several weeks of genuinely not knowing if I only had a week to live, I think you only really do this fully in that kind of situation. Even if I am cured, my life and attitude will never be the same again.
Back in ‘96, I had a brain tumor, operation, and learning to walk and chew gum again.
Kind of a bummer.
At the time, I wasn’t ready to retire, but if it had happened 20 years later, it probably would have resulted in my retirement.
My mother suddenly passed from cancer last year at 68, that harrowing experience violently reshifted a lot of my life philosophies.
This was perhaps exacerbated by both my grandparents on mom's side also passing just a couple years prior back to back.
Among other things violently reshifted:
* Time is finite, grows more valuable as I age, and I do not have as much as I think I do. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* Time is money and money is time. Money in hand can be spent for others' time so I don't have to spend mine, and money can be replenished while my time cannot be. Money can also be borrowed, but I cannot borrow more time. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* Take nothing for granted. Social Security being the prime example; my mother waited until 65 to start taking it and so she barely enjoyed only 3 years of it. I refuse to repeat that, I am taking Social Security at 62 ASAP and screw anyone trying to tell me otherwise for any reason. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* People here today might not be here tomorrow, for any or no reason. The experience of spending time with them can only be had today. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* Small problems are not worth the time of day, it is fine to resolve them in the quickest and easiest way possible. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* Most of the goings-on in the world will come and go time and time again. If something comes up, it too shall pass and come up again in due time to pass again. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
* When I'm finally gone, I'm gone. It is not worth the time of day today to care about what happens after, I will be dead and literally can't care or interject. It is imperative I live now, not tomorrow.
How have these things tangibly changed your life and behavior? Do you have things you could share as an example? I never know what that looks like. Everything I want to do in life to enjoy it requires money I do not have.
Great thoughts, thanks for sharing.
Welcome to the club nobody wants to join. I had a similar experience 12 years ago. Pls email (address in bio) if I can be of any assistance (e.g. book recs). In any case, good luck w/ your surgery!
It’s funny, I’ve always just been kinda waiting for death. Probably need meds but never felt like changing “who I am”. I’m curious to see what happens to me when that cancer day comes for someone so apathetic to the whole life experience.
The premise that your life should be work until 65 and then you can finally do what you want is so depressing to me. I have goals beyond just doing what I want, but it all just seems like an endless rat race i can never win as I chase money/prestige in order to accomplish those goals or those things serve as a nice but ultimately meaningless byproduct of accomplishing those goals while my life slips away.
The system wouldn't work otherwise and your overlords won't like it. We already had the pandemic and people had a slice of that taste. Came back with harsh interest rate hikes and tightening of the job market to get everyone back in line.
I actually enjoy my job (well, mostly anyway). I would probably do it for free tbh (except for some of the BS parts)
Scrum, Agile and management in general have beaten the fun out of me. I can imagine doing some coding for fun when retired. But I don’t want to work for a corporation.
At this point I think most jobs have good days and bad days and there's some enjoyment/pride in being productive and valued in a job environment. I'm not full r/antiwork or anything but when you take a 10k foot view and realize almost no one on their death bed wishes they had spent more time working / on their computer it's hard to not feel like it's all a big miscalculation on our parts.
On my deathbed I probably won't wish I had spent more time at the gym either, but that doesn't mean the gym is not good for me to engage with more often now. Heck it might even delay my deathbed if I put in the work now.
I've retired early and gone back to work voluntarily. I find the first 15 to 20 weekly hours are good for me, and I genuinely enjoy employing people and working on projects with them. Like yourself, not every week is exhilarating. Lots of weeks are dogshit and make me feel like going back to 100% life again. But over time, it's worth trying to contribute to keeping this big ball of mud spinning. I will surely reconsider that position when I become the Buddha, but not sooner.
(do go part-time as soon as you can, it's great)
> almost no one on their death bed wishes they had spent more time working / on their computer
And old age isn’t needed to figure this out. Even middle age will do. When I reflect on my life, I almost never think about past work.
(Yet, I remain mostly working.)
Don't accept that premise!
The only people with that premise are those that want a higher defined benefit pension via Social Security, perhaps because they don’t have sufficient wealth otherwise. That age is going up to 67 in 2025.
Nobody with sufficient passive income to satisfy their desired quality of life works longer than they have to.
I'm contemplating retirement. I find myself ostensibly in a workplace of high personal relevance, but it's going in the wrong direction, largely I think due to layers of disconnected professionalization that are supposed to have the answers, but the result is just a race to the bottom.
I'd like to have more cash before retiring, but it'd be ok with a bit of restraint. It's mostly up to finding a good lifestyle.
Thing is, I still enjoy 'tech;' the activity of programming, writing tests, designing things (even building workstations), constant learning, and the larger potential it brings to more than technical people, tied in with the sometimes distant idea that a more participatory world can be fairer and more peaceful.
I wonder if an engaging hobby will appear that combines elements of free software, wikipedia, non-dominating personal perspective, and problem solving. People like solving puzzles, maybe we can help solve other people's puzzles too.
I'm surprised it hasn't happened so far, but contributory culture has been abducted so many times, and the intentionally free/open world hasn't been very good at course correction. Which isn't surprising considering other powerful interests, including professionalization and the way "startups" took over with their compartmentalize and cash-out energy, the tech giants, and now of course AI (which could be part of a helpful system). "Sensemaking" was a thing for a while, but it's not really talked about anymore.
The main issue with turning the dial to "life" early is that your peer group usually hasn't. My peers spend most of their time on work: sometimes to pay the bills, sometimes for status laddering, sometimes for reasons I don't get.
I have found friends that are less focused on work - sometimes because they have more control over their hours and sometimes because they are past retirement age and sometimes because they don't work for other reasons.
I'm looking forward to the next decade+ as maybe more of my peer group friends will choose (or be able to choose) to do less work hours/days.
Sadly it often takes a devastating life event to make us rethink our position and priorities in life.
We work to live, not live to work, and don't you let any overachieving founder mode startup bro sell you otherwise.
Sorry for the author's loss.
I quit a gig that was great in a lot of ways — great product, great peers, great potential — primarily because of of an "overachieving founder mode startup" individual. This person was exquisitely talented and inspiring but ultimately the only way to participate in the company was to overdrive yourself to the point of misery.
I stayed longer than perhaps I might have because that person was young enough to learn and change. And they definitely learned and changed over time, but not the lessons I thought they should learn. This doesn't make the direction they took objectively wrong, but eventually I and all the engineering peers I valued bailed out.
It was frustrating because I remain convinced it didn't have to turn out the way that it did. But leaving was absolutely the right thing to do and I'm much happier now.
We work to survive, I would not call this living for the vast majority of us. There is no possibility of re-assessing our priorities because not working is death. Anyone that has the ability to re-asses their priorities can only do so from a place of extreme privilege that most will never have access to. Plenty people with a cancer diagnoses just die because they cant afford any other option.
Most of the time, those over-achievers from the outside lead a very unhappy, constantly unfulfilled life. I've met few of those up close (former girlfriends, close friends) and oh boy its a sad view once you see full picture. Success is never really enjoyed for long, there is always next target to chase. Close people around suffer accordingly.
Then when you know what signs to look for, you see it a lot more among those 'very successful'.
There is one success for me - living a good life that one is happy to have lived when looking back old/dying. Good, sometimes hard moral choices instead of less moral shortcuts. A lot of people put themselves a lot of such baggage over years and from young happy folks they are grumpy envious older ones (there are many more reasons for such of course). Whatever such success means to you, all the power to you. For most of us, work achievement are pretty low in that list, so look for success elsewhere in life.
From experience, I can say that If you were conditioned from a young age to believe that achievement and status were important in life it’s an incredibly hard instinct to let go of. You’re totally right that it’s damaging for those around you and can lead to bitterness as you age. It’s something I have to grapple with everyday and it’s exhausting.
I think this is a curse that gets inflicted on far too many “gifted” children. While young they get lots of praise for their accomplishments and outcomes and it can drown out any intrinsic motivation to do things that make them happy.
Exactly, and well put. I have a hard time identifying those things that really make me happy without any external influence and an even harder time comfortably sitting with the idea that objective of my life should be personal happiness.
Reading or seeing things like this on the internet also makes me reflect on my life and think about what my priorities should be, and I'm not really in a financial position where I can just retire and turn the dial all to way to "life" but the best thing I can learn from this is to appreciate the little things in life. Like living in a first world country, having food to eat, hot showers, a bed, good health, etc.
This is the person who was in the news a few years ago for commuting to Google campus using 19 different methods in 19 days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZWftDrwY2U
I’m very sorry to hear that. It’s always sad to read posts like this one, as the time goes by, it hits me how I’ll relate to it sooner or later. Apologies for rambling below —
I’m much younger (late 20s), don’t have too many worries in life as my parents, albeit older, still alive, my siblings are fine, friends are okay, don’t have that many financial troubles either at this point.
That being said, a couple of years ago I got a text about a high school friend of mine passing away after years of fighting cancer. It was one of the weirdest emotions I’ve ever felt in my life, and I couldn’t (still can’t) understand why. I’ve seen my grandparents passing away in front of me, I’ve been to funerals, yet this one hit like a brick. At that point, it would’ve been about 10 years since I’ve talked to that friend of mine, maybe just exchanging some happy birthday messages from time to time. But we were fairly close in middle school, and later in high school as well, just the life drifted us apart, living in different cities and etc. Yet I remember the moment I read the text how he passed away. I remember being on a plane, and my entire mind being completely clouded for a week afterwards.
It’s like a sudden realization of how life can be very short for some of us, and you can lose people out of nowhere. I understand I’ve been lucky enough to never experience it until that point of my life, but it really sucked. And it just sucks knowing how it’ll happen more and more, or might even happen to me.
Anyways, it’s been about 2 years now, and I’ve lost all of my ambitions wrt my career. Took about 6 months off as well, which made me realize how small and fun the world is. I know for a fact I won’t be able to enjoy it as much in 30 years. But unfortunately I’m not at the point where I can do whatever I want yet.
Until then, every work day is just a repeat of things I don’t care about, followed by 10-20km walks to feel something. I wish it wasn’t the case, because I consider myself slightly above average in terms of skills and getting things done. Every morning I wake up thinking if I found just one thing that I could throw my life or at least a couple years at, I would do a decent job. But it’s hard to convince myself that anything matters. Then I remember how people that I hold dear to myself might be gone as well, and it becomes another day of spiralling.
Anyways, sorry for Sunday morning trauma dumping, but reading the OP’s story made me reflect on myself for a minute. Thank you.
> I am taking my work/life balance and turning the dial all the way to “life”.
That is an awesome way to put it.
We don't often hear about everyone's troubles and trauma. And seeing it written down is surely nothing compared to living through it. But there is a lot of it out there, whether we know about it or not, so when people go through it... I heartily approve of recognizing that life is more important than work, and knowing when to adjust that dial.
I would gladly work for 1/2 the money to work 1/2 the hours. Like 30 actual hours per week.
Recognizing when life is more important than work? Did you miss the part where his wife died BEFORE "tuning the dial to life"? The lesson you should get from his post is not to make that mistake.
This forum is absurd. I don't need a cancer diagnosis to tell me I'm not living to complete OKRs and quarterly goals.
I'm a good employee and a dedicated worker but my goal since day one has been to do the least shitty job I can land, retire as fast as possible, and get on with the good parts of life. I've had the dial as far to life as possible forever.
But I'm working class, so I can't just retire when I realize the value of my life due to a medical emergency. Being able to do that is not a virtue that should be praised like this forum is doing, it is a gift that should be appreciated for the privilege that it is.
I only pray I can earn enough to turn my dial all the way to life, sometime before my body gives up on me
That sucks, what he went through. That happens to a lot of people. As we get older, it tends to happen more often.
Sounds like he made exactly the correct choice. I support him in continuing to make correct choices. This is but the first of many.
I did it, myself, but not by choice. I was "frozen out" of the tech industry, after leaving a very long-term job.
It absolutely infuriated me, at first, but, in the aggregate, it has turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It also coincided with close family members having some health issues, so my being available has been beneficial.
In my case, I really enjoy programming and tech; just not when it is being ruined by terrible managers and coworkers. I was really starting to hate what I did, and having full control of my own process, made all the difference.
For one thing, it showed that I was usually right, in my personal philosophies, which were regularly disparaged by said managers. When given the chance to practice my own personal Process, things have been going very well, indeed.
So I get to work for free. It's a blast. I've gotten more accomplished, in the seven years, since I was pushed out, than I did, in the thirty preceding years.
In my case, I am involved in organizations that constantly surround me with people with whom I have very intimate relationships. Socializing isn't a problem; but I understand that it can be a real issue for retired people. This goes double, for ones that have the means to wall themselves off from others.
I do know a number of folks that preceded me, in retirement, after long, lucrative careers. Most, were dead within five years of retirement.
In my case, I feel that I'm just getting started.
> ...I did it, myself, but not by choice. I was "frozen out" of the tech industry, after leaving a very long-term job...It absolutely infuriated me, at first, but, in the aggregate, it has turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me...
I would say i'm about a decade or maybe a decade and half before i can freely retire...But, already i see signs of the possibility of being frozen out of tech. Its such a fearful thing, and even moreso at a latter age! I quite enjoy technology both in isolation but also connecting proper tech to solve human problems...But so often it feels that at my $dayjobs, it always feels like we are solving the wrong problems...like chasing whatever some senior leader added into their presentation...as in, a goal for them, but not always something that is sustainable for the org, substantially helpful to people, etc. Its clear to me that while i still have the enthusiasm of my 25 year old around tech and genuinely helping people wit tech, i am so much more cynical about corporate use of tech. Nowadays, i'm at the point where i am seriously considering leaving tech, and trying to get some other job...and then only having fun with tech on the side, such as contributing to open source projects, playing on my own home lab, volunteering with orgs on digital divide, etc. I figure those sort of "hobbies" or side projects can also help me transition whenever the time comes for me to retire, of if/when i get pushed out. Now, i just have to ensure my costs are down so i can weather any salary hits.
@ChrisMarshallNY Sorry that you got impacted by a freezing out...But glad to hear that you're getting started on a new phase of life for you, and hoping it keeps being positive for you! Cheers!!!
> Now, i just have to ensure my costs are down so i can weather any salary hits.
That’s the key.
I have always lived extremely humbly, and haven’t carried any personal debt, beyond a mortgage on a very small house, since 1995. I maxed out my savings, and deferred stuff I couldn’t afford.
I’m still doing that now, and my savings generate more than I spend (for now). I’m hoping to have the ability to help my family, after I pass. They'll need as much help as possible.
If there's a bilionare here willing to give me a basic income until I pass, let me know. You could even give me a condition like doing social or creative work. The corporate world is tiring, and time flies by.
Always enjoyed this blog. The post on thermal throttling stands out as a fun one, but there were many others. Hopefully Bruce comes back to writing at some point after some recovery time.
Hopefully he finds the writing is the recovery.
Or hopefully he finds anything at all that helps. I lost my mother just a little over a year ago and it was (is) hard. In addition to the pain of loss though losing your spouse has to be even more disruptive to moving forward with your life.
Sorry for your loss. Not that saying it makes it better, but I am.
Financially, you can retire. one less thing to add to the destruction.
First of all, truly sorry to the author for what happened to them, it is devastating, and something that indeed will shake your world and priorities.
Any advice for people who are not finding the courage to quit, despite probably having the financial means to do so?
I came from very humble origins and moved to Silicon Valley from another country and have a gained a fairly solid financial situation, by having accumulated $5.5M liquid with expenses of around $50k (no kids, no mortgage, just a loving girlfriend).
I am so unhappy with work. I have changed 3 employers over the past 4 years and I’ve been more and more depressed with each transition. I spend my life in a state of immense disappointment about having to work. I am not even passionate about software anymore, so it’s not only the corporate madness (meetings, offices, coworkers, bosses, pressure to perform, code reviewers, etc). My weekends are filled with anxiety about Mondays.
I haven’t quit yet because everyone is telling me not to: my parents, still living in another country, are telling me to milk it until I am 45 (38 now), the few close friends I have are telling me not to squander the opportunity to earn until I get to $10-$15M due to real estate/healthcare/lifestyle costs going up (especially if I revisit the decision not to have kids, which I don’t think I will), and even financial communities like bogleheads/fire subs are telling me it’s not time yet and that I need to accumulate more given my privileged position.
I’ve tried a couple therapist but it didn’t work for me.
I also do not have anything to retire to: no particular passions, or hobbies. I just dream of spending a life of slow breakfasts, hiking on Monday mornings to celebrate a new week, reading books, slow traveling, and spending more time close to my aging parents.
You've got plenty of money, you're living on 1% of your savings, which is great - controlling expenses is significant.
You should be able to invest the money with the goal of beating inflation and grow your pile. There's people who retire with a lot less. There's tools to help, where you can play with the numbers, investment returns, inflation rates, etc.
It's difficult to predict the future. You might wish you had more money a couple of decades from now, or you might get hit by a bus next year and wish you had lived it up more when you had the chance. Eventually the stress of your current job is likely to affect your health. It takes a while to get over being burnt out.
The safest option might be to look at your money as a wonderful cushion, giving you options that others only dream of. You can find a different job that you like, even a lower paying job preserves a lot of your savings. You can take time off, maybe doing something along the way that looks good on your resume. You can work on and off. You can change careers. Maybe figure out what you'd want to do if money were not the object. You are way ahead of the game. The world is your oyster!
It can take a while to figure these things out. Best of luck!
If you don't mind leaving the US, there are lots of places around the world that will make that 5.5m go way further. Keep a very modest/middle-class lifestyle. Never upgrade and you'll have ultimate peace of mind.
It sounds to me like you hate work more than it’s warranted in normal circumstances. Work-life balance aside, there might be something else in there.
This sounds like classic burnout. You just need to take a break from work, try 3 months or so.
What is the reason to suggest that a break from work, as opposed to a retirement (more similar to the author’s path), is more appropriate for my situation? Is it a concern about financials/age?
After reading several people describing their experience (even in this thread) as “once you taste the freedom of not working, you will never be able to go back”, I can totally identify myself in that, so I like to think that the decision of “just take a 3 months break” would become a much more serious one.
I am pretty young, so take this with a grain of salt, but the motivation seems simple to me: If it is burnout, then a short break might put things into perspective, and help him decide whether to retire, switch jobs, do something on his own etc.
I'll give you my perspective having gone through something similar. I was in a pretty similar pit, hit rock bottom, and only then did every high achiever in my life open up to me that taking a sabbatical was the best thing they had done for themselves.
Your original comment especially about not enjoying things, not knowing what your hobbies are, etc, are indicating that you've just lost yourself a little bit. I was in very much the same place. It takes some time away from what occupies most of your thoughts/attention (work) to re-learn who you were and who you are now.
For me, I took 3 months away from work. For the first 2-3 weeks I basically did "nothing." And it was only after that initial period did I start to remember things I enjoyed to do and felt motivation to go do them. After that, the remainder of my sabbatical was spent finding every minute I could spend with friends and family that I could.
I came out of that sabbatical with a, still fuzzy but a bit clearer, understanding of what I wanted but I was still the same ambitious person I was before. Chances are, you would still be too. If you're going to do it, think of it less like a 3 month break and instead as giving yourself 3 months of room to think and experience and re-introduce yourself to yourself.
As an aside - if you're feeling and thinking these things, your partner likely notices too. I have no idea what your relationship is like but can guarantee that all this definitely has an affect on y'all and you won't see what it truly is without said room to think and contemplate.
Yeah, grandparent post should just take a year long sabbatical and come back when they’re feeling it.
> I just dream of spending a life of slow breakfasts, hiking on Monday mornings to celebrate a new week, reading books, slow traveling, and spending more time close to my aging parents.
That sounds like a lot to retire to if you ask me. And $5.5M seems like quite a lot to me. Probably especially if you move back to your home country or almost anywhere else in the world outside Silicon Valley.
Myself, I do have some hobbies but I'd probably go nuts without the structure of having a formal job. If I were you, I'd try and find work that I actually enjoy and find meaningful; you probably don't need to worry about money so much, but if you had a job that covered your expenses, you could let the principle you've already accumulated grow.
> If I were you, I'd try and find work that I actually enjoy and find meaningful
Thanks. That’s easier said than done.
A big reason why (but not the only one) work is so depressing is because, in every single job I had (consulting included), I ended up pretty quickly despising and being highly resentful of my managers, I just don’t like being told what to do, “being coached”, “given feedback”, “pressured”, and oh God those 1:1, I hated every single 1:1 I ever had throughout my career.
Naturally I always put up the right facade to allow me to perform, but good luck finding a job without a manager.
I realize this says more about me than my managers, but this is still the reality.
FWIW, when I’m not working or depressed about the thought of work, I’m actually a pretty happy person.
I think you should try a hand at running your own business, being your own boss. You seem to have enough money and the industry experience to take a shot at it.
I am inclined to agree with your parents/friends, you still have a lot of human capital (read: your youth) to build financial capital with today so you can have an even more fulfilling life tomorrow when you no longer have all that human capital (read: old age).
This isn't to say you shouldn't life your life now, of course. I wrote in another comment here that living today and not tomorrow is imperative[1]. But to refuse to make money during your prime money making years is also folly, because that money today will save your time tomorrow.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41757791
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I retired early this year. My advice to anyone seeking to do so is think clearly about it. Because once you do it, you can never go back to that world. The world of waking up early, having a boss tell you what to do, going to meetings that mean absolutely nothing, running on that hamster wheel, seems so trite and meaningless afterwards. That's a good thing, but you can never go back. Then it becomes time to concentrate on what life is really about- your health, your relationships, having fun and discovering what life is like without that tether on your ankle. Everyone isn't cut out for that, some need that hamster wheel. The best people are cut out for it. :)
That sounds like a terrible year. I feel sorry for the poster. Life can come at you fast and sometimes I feel like I’m just bracing myself for such a life changing event.
I too was at Google. But for 7 years, not 10. And my employment terminated in April, not because of a life event like his.
But the feelings he expressed resonate with me. I stopped enjoying work and my performance tanked coinciding with a reorg and manager change.
I did not miss my job which just a couple years ago I actually enjoyed.
I wasn’t seriously thinking of leaving my job. Being pushed out forced me to evaluate what I do if that happened - which it did. And that evaluation is that I’m a lot happier and can reset what I want from life - it doesn’t have to be full on retirement.
I have always thought about life in the long go term. What legacy do I want to leave, how do I want to spend the last years, what do I want the late years to look like with my wife.
Sometimes it takes the outside world to force you into the next thing. Life does not discriminate but the best you can do is take a big step back and try to find a new lens to look at it through. There are many lenses.
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