I made the decision early on in my 20s to bust ass and drive hard, and then retire when I’m 40. Then I would have all the time in the world to coast and do what I want. Trouble is, I’m over 40 now and still busting ass just to keep head above water. There is something about software that makes it so workaholism and burnout is the median, normal track.

What are you trying to accomplish right now, other than to keep your head above water? Why do you think your tenure of roughly 20 years hasn't been good enough to carry you into a better point in your career?

I think a lot had to do with moving to the Bay Area for job security. After being unemployed after both major tech recessions, I wanted to move somewhere a little less risky. Moving to Bay Area is kind of a Faustian Bargain [1]. You gain better job security and access to companies that you absolutely wouldn't have in FlyoverTown, USA. But you also gain extremely crushing cost of living (eliminating financial benefits of higher salaries) and a workaholic-as-normal culture.

Another thing I realized was that I was simply wrong. Busting ass isn't what lets you become financially independent by your 40s. The peers I know who retired early, largely were lucky in the startup lottery. Some busted ass, most simply lucked into the right company.

1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Faustian_bargain

Also probably depends on the vision of your retirement. If you want to retire with high five-figure (or God forbid, six figure) yearly spending, then it's not that easy. If, on the other hand, you're ok with living like a median American, you don't need that much money. I'm just about to retire in Poland at 40 by this logic, and I didn't even work all the years between college and now! (took a total of around 4-5 years in between-jobs breaks).

> I've been noticing this too. Everyone wants to hire an ambitious go-getter who aspires to become Top Hotdog Ultra Tech Lead or CEO someday.

Everybody wants to hire that one person that's crazy about software engineering and will transfer the way team works and tremendously improve product's architecture. While I've worked with such people, they're rare, so most companies settle for people who can just competently deliver without being a crazy trailblazer. What is important is following the latest popular technology trends though - there's never enough people on the market who know these, so if you know them, you're good. Also probably leetcode/whiteboarding if you're in the US, but I can't speak much to that cause I'm in Europe and it's rarely practiced here.

What is the general interview process in Europe?

In my experience, for seniors it's a conversation about past experience, deep dive on a selected project/technical problem of candidate's choosing, and sometimes some quizzing on the technologies the candidate claims to particularly experienced in, that are of interest for the company. For juniors, it's quite often coding something very simple (non-algorithmic, no gotchas) in an IDE to verify if the candidate really has experience with the stack they claim to have.

I've been interviewed in dozens of places and the only leetcoding/whiteboarding I've experienced was in American corps (Google, Palantir), in Sony games division (which from what I've heard is arguably an American company) and in one wannabe-cool startup in London that paid shit anyway. Nobody I know in Europe grinds algorithms in their free time...

Depends on the company (and country). At least here in Stockholm (SE) take home coding assignments and/or whiteboard problem solving seems pretty common for both junior and senior positions.