There's a class of "crystallized intelligence" jobs which are about what happened before rather than what you do today. There's an intersection between that sort of knowledge and a certain fluid intelligence to slot it in where things fit.

I'm in one of those jobs right now, where the last six years of what I've read/absorbed is more valuable (as a sort of fast cross-reference in my brain) than what I actually do right now. I'm the guy with the picture that's on puzzle box, rather than having to place each puzzle piece.

I've tried really hard to make myself obsolete and do something else, but it has backfired spectacularly.

I've written down all of this in documents, trained other people to do the same thing over the years, even built tools to replace the easy parts (right now there's an intern doing the next pass of that automation) the effect of which has been to lighten my workload even more & I'm not missed if need to take a couple of weeks on a roadtrip or something.

To do this, I've had to do something which is not volume driven (i.e my output is not a factor of time), so moved away from building web applications to profiling/optimizing all kinds of networked applications, where the ability to cut through the stack is useful, but for any given layer there's someone who does it "professionally".

This is of course not a long-term parking spot for me, but I'm useful and in essence acting as "an elder" store of information about the past & a slightly clearer view of the future.

He told me what most people think of as job security is totally wrong. If you're the only person who knows something, you become a liability. But if you're constantly teaching and sharing that knowledge you become incredibly valuable to the organization. That's when you have job security.

Since internalizing that advice, I always try to work myself out of job by ensuring I share anything I know. And I always pass this advice along to others. As you get more seniority in the organization, the way to have more impact and scale is to work through others by sharing your knowledge and helping them get better.

Unless one joins as an intern at some company, there are gatekeepers in most of the companies, who don't want to train you at all. Instead, they criticize any attempt to find answers as "hand-holding, fake, inexperienced, etc."

You should never tell anyone they 'should not ask such questions', but I will absolutely tell you 'hey, go read this code / documentation and it will help you understand'. Mainly, I just want you to show me that you've at least attempted to solve or research the problem yourself. If you've done that I'm happy to help. Unfortunately a lot of Jrs straight out of school seem to expect to be spoon fed answers, and it makes me wonder if college has changed since I graduated.

A lot of it is intimidation, they’d never seen a printout stack of 50 or 100K eslocs. Kids today never start with monolithics like that but they do get swamped by the fifty layers/packages that change every year.

Or how you have grown since you graduated.

This is fear mongering for the juniors. Most people don't help because they don't get asked. Juniors, reach out and I will help. I'm the kind of person that is sociable and helpful anyway though.

But, if you ask me a question where the answer is in the code, the proper answer you seek, in the detail you need, then I'm going to ask you to read the code first and only ask me what's left.

Perhaps the story is true as retold, or maybe the original guy asked about the right things and read the code for the rest, but people watching from the outside couldn't tell and conflated it all, turning it into a story of ladder-pulling bitterness.

That doesn't really ring true for me because I want coworkers taking responsibility for these odd systems (that they have to find me to ask about). But I don't want to be stuck in the role of their System-X guy who they get to do their changes. This guy's incentive would be to walk the line, educate and hand-off.

Sounds like the VP of engineering was doing his job quite well. Set up new hires to share everything so when their salary becomes a burden you can "sadly let them go" when "necessary downsizing" occurs because they've given away the farm.

Don't get me wrong, I spend a ton of time mentoring those around me, but there's no planet on which I would give a document dump of my personal notes, ever.

They know what happens when you don't hold the company hostage. Nearly all of them retire and then "consult."

Any personal notes are, by their very nature, shorn of the full context you have. They are always data, sometimes information, but never knowledge.

I once left a job where I had taken pains to document everything, to regularly teach what I'd worked on, and to help everyone, even beyond strict software functions, familiarize themselves with the systems in play as needed.

Were they glad I was relieving them of the cost of my salary? No, they were mournful. I would not be there to continue to draw connections between disparate items and serve as a voice of organizational experience. No amount of notes would replace my ability to, mid-meeting, say "That won't work" and explain why. Someone who had invested real time in internalizing those notes might -- might -- get there, but it would be difficult.

Sorry, this is just wrong. You are a liability if someone thinks about you that way. Fortunately, not that many people are like that. In Contrary, if you are the only one to know something then you are regarded very highly and almost untouchable.

And sometimes you know something no one else does, and you want to share the knowledge, but management says no, because having you talk to someone else feels like a loss of time when both of you could be developing a new functionality instead... and then one day you leave, no one reads the documentation you wrote, and your successor ends up reimplementing from scratch everything you already did.

Sometimes it seems to me that the perception of your importance is proportional to the number of bugs in your code. If things keep breaking and you keep fixing them, you are a hero, and the company wants to keep you. If things work flawlessly, company assumes that it is easy and that you could be replaced at any moment by a random person who walks in.

That's incredible, isn't it? it's one of the many possible manifestations of "worse is better", I fear.

If you guard the knowledge to the core application for how the company makes it's money, you're not going anywhere.

If you guard the knowledge to a component used in that core application, which while it's problematic to replace could be swapped out with a lot of effort, you are going to be walking a tightrope. As soon as it becomes more beneficial to replace that component than keep dealing with the problem of it being hard to deal with (because if it wasn't your knowledge would have little value), you're faced with the fact that a large chunk of your value to the company has just been obsoleted with it.

So when taking the hoarding info approach, just how irreplaceable is the thing you're guarding knowledge of? Often it's far more replaceable than people think, and often becomes more so as people hoard knowledge of how to deal with it. Unless you're that guy that's on call 24/7 to immediately deal with a problem, the fact that it all relies on you which is unsustainable will eventually come to light.

1) it was the right thing to do,considering the situation. My approach is always to be open about issues within the business, even if it's my own department. This isn't university liked by my colleagues but appreciated by the CEO, as he knows I'll tell the real situation rather than that with a pink filter.

2) I will move on, sooner or later, and I'd rather have someone in place before that happens. I want the company to be successful in the same way as they've given me tons of opportunities that I successfully used.

3) There's a considerable backlog of things I need to do at any given time,so having more resources would free up my day+ speedup certain developments in the business.

I just recently had my first junior developer assigned to me. Learning how to mentor, teach, as opposed to just getting a task done is harder than I imagined

I've had the good fortune to inhabit a mentoring position twice in my professional career. Both have afforded me opportunities to teach new people as each business expands.

I find mentoring incredibly rewarding. But I also naturally enjoy spreading knowledge (I considered a career change to teach history at the university level, but didn't want to pursue the academic credentials). It's not just teaching the tech that's rewarding. I also enjoy sharing time management techniques, tips for writing solid documentation, and pointing out how to avoid gotchas that I've run into in my personal experience.

What I absolutely don't want is to join the ranks of management. A buddy recently moved up and he now spends almost all of his time in meetings. When he isn't in meetings, he's responding to the many people who need his attention for one thing or another. I wouldn't find that the least bit fulfilling.

This is what strikes me as tone-deaf about the grandparent comment with regard to "loving your job." I love my job because it pays well enough, I like the people I work with, and it doesn't intrude into my "real life." I hated my former employment, where ambition was a thing, because it dominated my life. It paid far better, but I was unhappy overall. What I have strikes the right balance, and that's rare enough that I treasure it.

So I had that philosophy when I was in the Marine Corps, well because I wanted my Marines and myself to survive and carry out the mission.

Sharing knowledge in the business world, never. That's a great way to lose a job.

If you're working at a functional organization that rewards growth, never sharing knowledge will ensure you put quite a low ceiling on your advancement.

I've written countless promotion justifications. Been on countless promotion review boards at several very successful tech companies. Being the best programmer, or what ever, is only going to get you so far. Advancement comes from teaching and leading others. You do that by sharing knowledge.

There was a broad HN discussion about this here on HN late last year [1].

And the top comment [2] is worth repeating here

  Here's some of my learnings about getting promoted for those that really want to play that game:

  - Only the perception of your work matters
  - Attend the social events and get in good with the bosses
  - The countability of your major achievements is important. Make the list long, too long to hold in the mind
  - At the same time the gravitas of your best achievement is also important since that will be the soundbite that is shared about you behind your back
  - Get allies who can proselytize about you behind your back
  - Be the best. The difference between one and two is bigger than that between two and three, as far as promotions go
  - Take credit for your work (use pronouns I and Me when talking about your work, not We) and do not allow others to take credit for your work
  - If it's a teamwork situation with other people on your level, don't do most of the work, because the credit will end up being split 50/50 in the eyes of the bosses even if you did most of it
  - Make a very good first impression
  - Shape the narrative around the role you played in the success of the mission/team/company
  - Get the bosses to make a soft public commitment regarding your competence
  - Even if you have a really good boss, all of the above is still important, because they are fallible humans and aren't omniscient
  - Actually do good work, it'll make the above easier

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24622111

You can progress to a pretty decent level and pay as "the best programmer" up until a high senior role, which most talented folks hit after about 8 yrs of experience. After that, promotions start to depend on the extent to which you influence the direction of your group or even company, which is all about teaching and leading others.

I think of it as three stages:

* Learning: you may be good at completing well-defined work, but you generally need a mentor to guide and help you. in other words, the company at this point is investing in your growth.

* Building: you are now self-directed and able to work independently, capable of being assigned a possibly ambiguous product requirement and being able to solve it yourself.

* Leading: you are now at the point where you can be given a large, complex project with possibly ambiguous requirements and trusted to deliver. you can work with management to form a team, and can design the technical / architectural approach and break it down into smaller pieces which you can delegate to the rest of the team.

And once you hit "leading", it will grow in scope.

So that excludes about 95% of them.

I think that depends on the role and the organization.

Generally organizations do not like to loose valued individual contributors unless the organization is somehow pathological (I know those exists).

A programmer that delivers value is always worth more than his or her paycheck. If you can dump his load to a more junior dev then that's great, there are other, more important things always that need doing. That is, if the business is growing.

The delta comes from my incredible work experiences / organization management in the Marines and then working for selfish and incompetent bosses in the civilian side. (I have had bad luck on the civilian side in the past.)

So, instead of as general advice "never show your notes" - I would rise to a level above - first in good faith, but in a defensive posture observe if your employer rewards co-operation or selfishness - and then choose your tactic accordingly.

Falling under incompetent management is a double injury - the incompetence is both professionally reprehensive and being managed incompetently just hurts.

I see in one of your other comments that you work for yourself now, so this unsolicited advice probably doesn't apply to you. But I'll leave it here anyway.

I've had plenty of candidates ask me how I or the company help employees grow, and what it takes to advance.

I typically see this as a good sign and I explain the career ladder, explain how promotions work. Explain how I would help in their growth.

If they don't have good answers for this, it's quite a red flag.

You can also ask about collaboration and what kind of work is rewarded.

I have been a Sergeant, I have been an officer. I have worked for Colonels and served in combat. Real leaders are hard to find.

I can happily say, you can take your unsolicited offer and well you know what...

I'm lucky now, I work for myself. The whims of the market are my only customer and what cruel customer it is...

At our company, we've had situations where employees automated themselves away or found somebody else to replace themselves. In response, gave them raises and helped fill their extra time with more interesting higher impact work.

My good friend got a year-long internship in banking industry in early 2000s. When I asked him how the real world worked, he was taught to hoard as much knowledge as he possibly could and not share it. Sharing knowledge means someone could do his exact job. He had no desire to learn new skills. He worked with folks who had been with the organization for 20+ years and that's how the workplace worked. He and his colleagues were so afraid that their job would be outsourced.

We are not friends anymore. I bet he still works for the same organization. He may not be wrong about hoarding the knowledge and working in a slower pace industry: Doing so could be an easy ticket to gain job security for life.

This is such a great phrase! It so succinctly captures a situation I think we've all observed many times, but I've always struggled to encode it in words.

> I've tried really hard to make myself obsolete and do something else, but it has backfired spectacularly.

How has this backfired, I'm curious?

I'm imagining that the future-you's fail to seamlessly slot-in, and management types don't have an appetite for broken eggs on the way to an omelette, when they already have an omelette in you?

> I'm useful and in essence acting as "an elder" store of information about the past & a slightly clearer view of the future.

I wonder, do you feel any anxiety about this?

As in, you're valuable at $COMPANY_X, but you're not challenged to better yourself beyond what you already are. Much of your value to $COMPANY_X derives from skills and knowledge that are specific to $COMPANY_X / $INDUSTRY.

For me, the anxiety would come from the question "sure, I have this here and now, but would I be able to reproduce this elsewhere, or what this a fluke?", and it would increase with tenure. :)

Curious to hear your thoughts on this, too.

No, not that way - I took about 9 months off in the last 4 years, which has forced a replacement of my past self.

But there are still problems which are "new".

So in a manner of speaking, but more along the lines of filtering out all the easy problems with automation, documentation, others with similar skills - by the time the buck stops at my desk, I have nowhere to move it to.

Instead of being obsolete, I'm a SPOF higher up the problem complexity.

The more guesswork I do, the better I am at guessing what's wrong and every time I pull off a further "last minute miracle", the more entrenched I become, rather than obsolete.

> For me, the anxiety would come from the question "sure, I have this here and now, but would I be able to reproduce this elsewhere, or what this a fluke?"

The success part of it was a total fluke - lots of bets on me by others which came through.

This seems somewhat inevitable for "high performers". The only way round it I'm aware of is to hitch your wagon to an SPOF further up the chain.

Of course to my surprise me trying to automate away my tasks only increased my value to the companies I worked for and now I, as a manager, try to encourage my reports to do the same thing so that they can focus on more important projects and personal growth.

I've automated so much of what I'm responsible for that it mostly runs itself without issue. There are certainly stretches of time where I work my ass off, but mostly it's days of a couple of hours of light work and then being available to help people via Slack the rest of the day.

And before anyone asks, no we're not hiring. One tradeoff is that it's a very slow growth environment. We don't have VC funds to burn and our business model is very mature.

OP did a great job of saying "Here's what I need." Until that's staked out, you don't know what's too little, enough, and too much.

But generally, minimizing and controlling costs (critically, through city choice) affords you flexibility. High costs = must work high paying job. Low costs = choice between working less, taking a job you enjoy more that pays less, or working more & saving.

I'll probably switch back to a lower paying job in the next 6 months or year, because I'd rather work on something I love, and because I'll have the financial flexibility to do so.

For example, my wife won't let me consider relocating and spends basically all her money on hobbies. This limits my job options to locally available ones (not a great area) and that I can't get a less stressful job because it pays less and I need my current salary to pay all the bills.

I feel exactly like this.

My wife has basically changed what she wants (or stopped hiding it) now that we are married. She wants a big fancy house and she wants to live in an suburbanized and expensive area. She originally told me she wants to live in the country and own land. This area isn't the country and we can't afford land around here.

She doesn't care about her spending. She has never been required to support herself or even live alone. She would rather spend a lot on a her expensive horse hobby than contribute to our kid's college or our shared bills. By expensive I mean she spends as much or more each month than I do on the mortgage. One month of her hobby expenses equals what I spend in an entire year on hobbies, and many of my hobbies have a return on investment (like foraging/cultivating mushrooms, growing a garden, etc).

I've come to accept that I will be stuck here and miserable. I don't see myself living past 50 in this condition, so I just have to endure this until then. I don't really see much reason to try extending that either.

This entire post, if it's anywhere close to objective truth, is wildly alarming!

On top of that if there are any kids he will be required to take up a portion of her only responsibility.

* Statistics-based assumption

My father in law was in a coma for a while and the child support payments stopped and he went broke from the lack of job and medical bills. They arrested him multiple times after that because he wasn't paying. Of course that gave him a criminal record and made it much harder to get a job.

I was in a situation freakishly similar to yours for over 10 years. In late 2019 I left her, and while it was one of the hardest decisions of my life, definitely the hardest day of my life, and the road to a mentally healthy(er) position has been ongoing, it has proved to be a wise decision. I spend far less of my day feeling resentful, unvalued, and unvalidated, both individually and in my new relationship. In my own time and in counseling with a professional, I have learned many lessons about myself, what I want out of life and in a partner, and how to be my own advocate.

I deeply empathize with your position and you deserve to be happier. I hope this experience of mine might give you some vicarious experience to draw from, and I encourage you to consider making a change.

That you're posting this on HN suggests that you would really like to have someone to talk to about this, at the very least to feel heard about it.

From personal experience, consider a therapist for a while - starting just on your own. There's nothing wrong with you, but you're in a sticky situation and are unhappy, and you're worried about the implications for your daughter and your own longevity. It can be really nice to have someone to talk through this stuff with, especially when it might be tough to talk with your wife about it, at least at this point, if she's causing the problem. I don't know about you, but it helps me mentally figure out what to do when I can talk about it, and (good) therapists are good at pulling our thoughts out and letting us think about all the angles.

It's pretty low stakes, and while they do cost some money, it's not a ton (compared to the horses!). And it can really help you think through the particulars of your situation over time, which it's tough for any of us here on HN to do, and when it's time to do the tough stuff - like broaching the subject with your wife - you have got someone in the therapist who knows the background and can help you deal with any fallout.

Good luck. You deserve a happy life. Your daughter deserves a good future. We only get one shot at this.

1) telling her how you feel, in the form of "I feel X when you do Y". For example, "I feel unvalued when you spend more on your horse than we do on the mortgage. I feel scared for our kid's future when you prioritize your expensive horse over saving for his/her education. I feel trapped when you spend the money I make without deciding together how to spend it." It can be hard to know exactly how these actions make you feel unless you've practiced thinking about it, so you might want to write it down and revise it over a week or two. Also, depending on how your wife takes feedback, you might want to have discussions of just one at a time.

2) marriage counseling.

3) setting boundaries: "my standard of being treated is <...>" and take steps to "enforce" them. The easier levels are along the lines of "I want to be talked to respectfully, so I will leave the room when you do not, but when you are ready to talk respectfully, come and get me." I'm not sure how you communicate "I think our budget should look 25% house, 20% food/clothes, 10% retirement, 10% kids education, etc, which leaves $X for optional things like horse; if you need more than that you'll need to get a job" without being unilateral, though. But you have some financial values/boundaries that are being crossed and you need to communicate / enforce those.

4) It would be a bad sign if your wife didn't respond positively to any of the above. However, even in that case you could get counseling for yourself on how to respond healthily, and you are also likely to get insight into why your wife is behaving this way (the counselor might notice consistent signs of co-dependency, for instance).

5) Read pre-modern stories about how spouses handled toxic behavior. (The quasi-mythic ones that start off "There was once a woman in ... whose husband ...") I've read a few Japanese stories about wives that change the incentives for their husbands and they stop being drunkards and start being productive. (There's fewer stories the other way, but those exist, too.) Some of these stories are quite creative solutions; maybe something like that would work with your wife.

Don't just stay stuck and miserable, though. There are many ways to defeat the giants.

Would you want your child to grow up to feel the way you do now? You're giving them the lesson plan right now.

For now, just because you're married doesn't mean you have to have complete sharing of finances. Get your finances completely separate. Create your own bank account; have your salary go there. Cancel any shared credit cards. Lock your credit report so new accounts cannot be made using your social security.

Then, offer to pay 1/2 the mortgage each month; or, better yet, let her pay the full amount from her own wages.

Welp, I know what I'm going to be lying here thinking about for the next several hours.

I've seen couples drift apart pretty quickly once their daily experiences diverge.

If she spends all day working at an office, and he spends all day homemaking and with the kids, then each forgets what the other really does.

"The office" becomes an abstract place that someone just goes and isn't stressful at all. "The home" and "the kids" just magically take care of themselves and don't require much work.

Dual income has its own problems, but it seems a healthier default in terms of reminding people that work is... work.

Relationships aren't 50/50 in each area, but the effort across everything should be similar on both sides. Otherwise someone is taking advantage of their partner, imho.

Another good example is that she said I should keep my nice car and keep doing track days when she found out I was going to sell it. Well, were getting married and having a kid. With what money am I expected to do all this? It had to be sold for the budget to work.

I can be. She complains about our current 1800sf house being too small.

Good relationships require clear communication and some semblance of equality.

If you're serious about staying with her, then you need to balance your needs against hers. It's a perfectly valid thing to say "I hate my job. I'm looking for one I enjoy more that pays less. If that happens, I won't be able to pay for your horse. If you want to keep your horse, we need to find a way to balance the budget."

Either she cares about you and has never developed financial muscles, in which case you two can get through with some hard decisions and be happier.

Or she doesn't care about you, and you should split.

(Said as a child of divorce)

It's tough trying to get someone to see your PoV. Maybe do a spreadsheet with numbers to show her how you could get ahead elsewhere, keeping in mind her hobby. Big houses suck. Literally. Ours is ~2500sf and the upkeep is ridiculous. Maybe sell it as, "we could both do more with our respective hobbies if we had a cheaper outlay every month. We can only be in one room at a time, so having a lavish house is more to impress others than for our own benefit. I encourage you to pursue your hobby (within reason/set a budget maybe). Set a budget for you both outside of essential spending (housing/utilities/medical) and stick to it. I now no longer buy computers. I buy RPis and do things with them. They have a command line. I'm happy. My wife gets her happiness from attending sports games of our children. Her other hobby is gaming. Sell the idea of moving to a cheaper state with less taxes/cheaper property taxes and downsizing but keeping her hobby. It's all about compromise (but not your dignity). Remember, love is not a sentiment or emotion, it's an act of the will. Love wills the good of the other for the other. Find a way to make you both "happy" while giving you both what you want. I'm sure a nice, expensive house with high taxes and ugly upkeep costs would take a back seat to your wife's hobby (at least I would hope it would). Chart it out with numbers and present them. You owe it to yourself to stand up and set the tone, but do so with respect and tangible ideas that you can execute on. Everyone has great ideas, but almost no one can execute on them well.

There is a not insignificant chance your Southern wife will be incredibly miserable in the PNW. It is gorgeous and green but it is also grey, and if your wife has not lived in similar conditions before, it is very possible that the lack of Actual Sun will start giving her heavy seasonal depression.

A huge sun lamp will help. So will regular megadoses of vitamin D. But she may be like me and find that even with that, the urge to kill herself gets louder and louder every winter.

I moved back to my very culturally weird Southern birthplace a couple of years ago and that urge completely vanished.

Good luck finding a way to make both of you happy with where you live. :)

Also, you should keep your eyes peeled for remote jobs.

Nope, the courts will force child support and probably alimony based on the current job rather than some lower paying job one might get during/after any divorce.

Alimony probably isn't going to be a big deal, since I'm assuming by the age of your child you haven't been married for too long.

You should seek out real help, either a therapist or marriage counselor. There's no actual reason for you to stay in your current broken state. Your made up reasons are equal parts bullshit and naivety.

I grew up with divorced parents who were together longer than they should've been and let me tell you, kids know. They absolutely know when their parents are together but can't stand each other and what's worse, they may assume it's their fault.

I grew up with parents who divorced when I was 18 months old when it became clear they did not love each other anymore. But they both wanted the best for me, and didn't do the petty shit I've heard about other couples where they shit-talked each other to the kid or something. They split time with me evenly.

They both eventually got re-married and are very happy and I have no regrets about how my childhood went in that regard.

Edit: "around here" being Australia and New Zealand

Kids are more perceptive than anyone gives them credit for.

You are choosing to be a victim here.

Too many parents don't want to be in the position they're in for whatever reason and didn't take the time to figure out whether they really want to have kids.

You imagine the alternative as staying in the spot you were in, but of course that's impossible. There are all kinds of random encounters and unknown unknowns that would have happened.

So raising a kid who's middle or upper class is actually quite expensive, and that's part of why low income and high income families have more kids than middle income families. https://qz.com/1125805/the-reason-the-richest-women-in-the-u...

As an engineering student, you can also get paid internships each summer (can often pay >$10k) or can be a paid research assistant for a professor during the year for ~10 hours week (pays for groceries each week).

Editing to say that if you make the military a career, you can literally save almost your entire salary if your personal peccadilloes are minimal. I knew guys that decided 4 years was enough and emerged after 4 years with over 50k in savings while paying nothing and they also got the BA/BSc degree on Uncle Sam's dime. They emerged debt free, degreed, and ready to start the next stage of their lives. Doing 8 years gets you a masters all the while doing nothing but work a job with everything paid for. At that rate, you might as well do 20, marry another member and have a steady retirement at 39 or 40 with money enabling you to pursue a job you really love because you can afford to live where you want. Bonus: Tri-Care military medical costs $500 year on retirement. Cannot touch that out here.

As someone who lived off-campus the entire time and regretted it, I do think that spending at least freshman year in dorms is a really good idea to make friends and get to know the school's culture and environment.

if you plan ahead and graduate in 4 years, and if you apply for many local/state scholarships (in my experience the national scholarships are a waste of time).

My advice to my younger self would also be to take more student loans so I wouldn't have to work. I had to work to pay tuition, but working made keeping up with school impossible. Catch 22.

This is counter to my experience. I was able to work part-time jobs just fine, and having that experience made me a much more competitive candidate upon graduation.

I would still have worked most if not all of my summers, but never more than 5 hours a week during the semesters. My job, which I actually really liked, demanded 20, which also required another 6-10 hours commuting on top of 5-8 hours of commuting to school.

I had also worked in tech for a year before starting school, so I was a bit less worried about having experience to list. And in the end it didn't matter because I started a company and ran that for 5 years instead.

You definitely can't pay for everything on 10 hours a week, but it at least pays the bar tab...

I went to a "very respectable" public land-grant university in my home state and today that school costs $15K a year outside of room and board ($35K/year for out-of-state), and students should live on-campus at minimum the first year--so let's say, best case, you're looking at $70K for in-state. Plus living expenses, and despite your claims elsewhere in-thread I can personally attest that part-time jobs even ten years ago took a bite out of but did not solve the problem of food, board, etc.--so we're probably talking closer to $100K when all is said and done.

Even if you assume some defraying of costs, a student loan bill of $50K (which was about what I left school with) is staggering for many non-technical folks, coming out of college looking at salaries closer to $40K than $100K when they can find a job at all. Further, the knock-on effects are financially hazardous. If you end up on income-based repayment because, y'know, jobs are hard to find unless you're a computer toucher and even then there probably aren't enough for everybody, you will be paying less-than-interest, and the principal only grows.

Put frankly, I would advise the cultivation of more empathy for those not as economically advantaged as you or me. This stuff is staggeringly, mind-wreckingly expensive for people who aren't in tech, and yet functionally required because of the structures we have allowed to be built.

> This stuff is staggeringly, mind-wreckingly expensive for people who aren't in tech, and yet functionally required because of the structures we have allowed to be built.

Society has always worked this way. Those who have rare skills get paid the most. Supply and demand and what not. Universities are gateways to advanced skills, especially in traditional occupations where equipment is often expensive (medical, chemical, mechanical, etc). The reason you go to a university is so that you can get advanced skills in order to make an advanced salary. It makes no sense to go to a university by default and come out with a degree that doesn't teach you advanced skills that get you a high wage. If the jobs that your degree are going to get you aren't going to pay for what that degree cost you then you made a poor decision by taking on that debt.

This sort of thing is why I believe basic economics should be a hard requirement in high school. You shouldn't be able to get a high school diploma without understanding the mechanisms of debt/leverage. So many people have screwed themselves over because they don't understand that the only reason to ever take on debt is to use it as leverage so that you can earn even more than the debt you took on. Any other reason is foolish.

It's really sad when you think about it, so many people would be way better off if they knew the definition of leverage. Such a simple concept, yet so powerful (it's funny how knowing about leverage gives one so much leverage in life).

Most of your post is pretty good, but I laughed aloud at this, tbh. The reason you go to a university is because your resume gets thrown out for almost any desk job--hell, for Starbucks--if you don't have a bachelor's.

It is functionally necessary. These aren't "rare skills". These are employer-mandated minimums, and it leaves people with that inflated student debt, encouraged and pushed upon them by their parents and by the expectations of society, to subsidize those employers' demands.

We are middle class and have two kids but our kids have close to no hobby expenses. Our son is vehemently anti-hobby and daughters dance and piano lessons are not really that expensive. On the other hand we have no-one close for whom we should "keep up appearances".

Government will pay for the kids degrees. Ditto for healthcare and the dentists for kids are excellent.

I know some kids play hockey or whatever and that can be a bit steep but never have I felt such would be a mandatory hobby. Neither of my kids really showed interest for any team sports and we gladly obliged not to force introduce them.

Sure you need to buy food for 4 persons and wash a bit more laundry, but that's about it when I think of the "overhead" caused by kids. The necessity for an apartment with a few more rooms is probably the biggest financial burden but loans are cheap.

The fact only one of us is capable of working due to health reasons is a much bigger issue financially than having kids.

You have to figure out how to get food & shelter and follow local laws. Everything else is unequivocally optional. I would argue that "not seen as optional" is just a way of saying "I don't own up to my choices."

Editing to say that kids are not too expensive if they're healthy. If you have children who have medical conditions, then all bets are off. What really pisses me off is the local school district always begging for money. I pay those thieves almost over $5000 year in property tax, since we live in an area with ridiculous property taxes. Whenever I've visited the school and my children have also seen this, they beg for school supplies, but the closets in all of my kid's classrooms are brimming with supplies. They spend more on sports than they do on education, which really irks me. Sports may be important, but nowhere near as education. 1% of 1% go on to play pro sports, but here they act as if sports are more important. Classes are let out early to watch games, yet the school district where we live is a poor performer academically. My own children are fine, but that's because we watch and are involved.

Colleague I knew in London literally spent more on daycare for his two kids than he did on his mortgage.

The other option is that one parent quits their job and stays home, but that is also a massive (opportunity) cost if you're both educated and have a decent career.

Now you may think it's worth 'paying' 100k a year to gain all the non-monetary benefits of staying at home and raising kids, but that is a separate discussion.

As I built my career, my lifestyle inflated, and so did the kid’s expenses. We make in 3 days what used to take us a month.

The kids get to share our lifestyle with us. It’s probably different for us because we’ve never been well off + not have kids.

Also, kids need doctors, interests (books or toys), durable goods (clothes and furniture) and more to thrive.

Editing to say that these are not the $500,000 RVs that retired people holiday in. They are kitchen-sized campers (for lack of a better term) that may be the size of 6-8 cubicles. They need outside water connections which many don't have, and they almost always need propane attachments. Many have composting toilets which the owner needs to clean out, as they cannot connect to the sewer lines.

Kids aren't cheap if you want to keep up with your socioeconomic class. And by far the biggest cost is the extra you pay for a house to be located near other high earners so that the schools your kids go to is filled with kids of other high earners.

I make less money than someone in the US, but daycare for me is 250 euro (it was 500 until 3 years old) and public daycare would be cheaper still. Visiting the doctor for a random virus brought back from school costs exactly 0 (a private visit would be around 100 euros). An orthodontist, if needed, would be the only major expense for a child apart from clothing and food.

University will be about 4000 euros a year at most (and would be cheaper if I earned less).

I’ve never known a doctor to charge less than $200 per visit with or without insurance.

You may say, oh well they can just get loans, true, but you can only get so much in federal loans before you have to get private, non dischargeable loans for ~ 7% interest.

Alternatively, you might say oh, they can just join the military. Only problem is the Air Force and Navy don't want little Johnny and now he's getting blown up doing patrols with the 3rd ID in Iraq (I lost my childhood best friend this way).

TLDR: If you don't want to help your kid pay for college or trade school, just don't have them. No one should have to go deeply in debt or put their lives at risk to earn a decent living.

Except, the minute you make any money, you lose this.

You can supplement with part-time work but that only gets you so far. As soon as you start making money on disability, you lose 1 dollar for every two. And the most you can make is $1260/month. At that point you lose Medicaid and any progress you've made is lost because insurance is way more than you are making.

You effectively top out at $1263 + $1260/2 = $1893/month. Rent is going to claim 1/3 to 1/2 that.

Where are the fade outs, and the incentives that will reward you for getting off the system, rather then punish you? It's a subject for a different thread at a different time.

For example in Pennsylvania:

https://healthbridges.info/hearing-aid-insurance-coverage-fo....

You can't get non-state insurance for hearing aids for kids, and they aren't cheap.

In complex technical niche fields jumping from gig to gig is not that easy, though.

I was perhaps overtly bleak in the above for the benefit of clarity (it's ok not to love your job, but it's also ok to concentrate on things you love and the thing does not need to be your job).

I hope you find a way to chill through life.

Is your hobby/"passions (which are not monetizable)" expensive? And are you 100% certain they are not monetizable?

In today's world, I have yet to see something which is not monetizable. Unless you are referring to something which is too competitive - even that can be monetized....though monetization itself might require too much work which goes against your requirement so I understand.

I learned that once I try to monetize my hobbies, there’s a very real risk that they become stressful and no longer fun and invigorating. Sometimes it’s best to keep hobbies as just hobbies.

Or, at least, make sure you have some hobbies that will only ever stay hobbies. Nothing wrong with trying to do monetize something you love, just don’t let it be the only thing you love to do, so you still have something when you have a stressful day doing the first thing.

So I picked up sleight of hand card tricks a few years ago as something to do that had nothing to do with computers and last year I started to learn to play the guitar. I have no intention of ever trying to monetize either of these hobbies. They're purely for fun, to relax.

I have other hobbies too, but too many revolve around computers or tech and after a long day in front of the screen, its good to get away and do something completely different.

For OP: it's OK to not want to monetize everything you do, even if those things might potentially be monetizable (which most things are, as the parent comment mentioned) - past some point, the incremental value of really, truly enjoying more of your time can have way more value than even fairly large amounts of additional money.

Where that point lies exactly is a matter of debate, and probably depends greatly on how you place value on intangible experiences vs. tangible things. From experience, many people in the tech industry are well past this point but don't realize it, largely because we have a cognitive bias towards comparison with those around us. (Also, the above framing suggests strongly that we can learn to change where that point is for ourselves.)

Plenty of artists out there who love making art, and yet their art is simply not sellable. For many people this would be a source of disappointment, but for a lucky few they may realize they just enjoy creating art for its own sake, and not to sell it.

This is the attitude that causes people like the author of The Great Suspender to sell out and betray the trust of everyone.

https://github.com/greatsuspender/thegreatsuspender/issues/1...

I believe that uBlock Origin fundamentally cannot be monetized without violating the spirit of the extension itself. It's meant to fight back against predatory monetization practices. We can only hope that gorhill will never believe the mantra that anything can provide a source of revenue if you just put your mind to it.

A topic like chess might take 60 hours a week of video editing over the course of years just to get to 4k/month in income IF you beat the nearest 10,000 competitors who are trying to make similar channels.

Really not a realistic option for most people.

What about working on free software without compromises like ads or dual licensing (which does not usually help anyway)?

Colleagues have spent days in jungles building bridges to drive cars over them, have got to know people living in random villages from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and share in their culture, have met and quizzed world leaders, have been to Antarctic bases, and have exposed and brought down criminal networks making lives miserable for thousands of people.

I guess you'd define that as "glorious toiling", but I could have 10m in the bank and never have to work again, but get to do very little of that.

I had a similar job once, where I worked in TV coverage of final table of WSOP (World Series of Poker). I was around the poker celebs at the time, preparing talking points for my boss who interacted with them, even have somewhere a photo of me sitting at the final table. My ultimate conclusion is... so what? Beyond a cool story to share with people interested in poker, there's little value in that for me, and I was a poker nerd then.

But if you actually enjoyed living in those stories, then how can the ultimate conclusion be "so what?" Having an interesting and rich life that you enjoy is clearly a goal for many.

You value different things at different times in your life, but looking back I'm glad I got to experience those things because most people don't get the chance.

By "toil" I did not mean a thing without a worth - a thing you find worthwhile is intrinsically valuable. I don't believe you can compute economic value to life experiences.

I would call toil anything that does not enable you to rise to the stage of self-actualization in Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

But like I said my intent was not to present such a non-self actualizing job as bad, quite contrary.

Cool.... so what do you do?

Most of it is sitting at home making sure everything runs fine -- today I was looking into a supposedly resilient SRT connection that's dropping every few days - incoming packets from two different suppliers stop at the same millisecond, but the far end (not mine) insist they are coming from two different devices (which I can't believe)

And as for weddings about a million people lined the streets of London when Kate + William got married. Might not be your cup of tea, but horses for courses.

> TV Ratings: 22.4 Million U.S. Viewers RSVP to Royal Wedding

It's clear that if we decided to let everyone's basic needs of food, shelter, healthcare, and transport be met unconditionally, the world would look very different. It would not cost us much, maybe even less than we pay in taxes now, but I feel certain it would make everyone's lives significantly better. The lack of unnecessary stress and "soul-destroying toil" that anyone would be forced to endure is surely worth it.

The only downside I see is that no one could get as extraordinarily rich as a very few people can today. I don't see how most of us can't be fine with that.

I too hate failing. And many times end up working extra to get things done properly. This keeps me in very different position where my manager, team relies on me, praises me but end of day it takes toil on other parts of life. I have seen many people in my career, who just don't work, don't bother about product at all, do things at last moments, have literally zero affection for the craft and still survives in industry. I really envy them.

I am grateful to have good paying job in pandemic while many people laid off. But these days what I really need is to close my laptop at 5 pm WITHOUT ANY WORRY.

I think a lot of people can actually relate to this. IMHO, a good way to think about it is to consider that there's more granularity to work than a black-or-white "I like my job" / "I hate my job". Maybe you dislike meetings, but enjoy the feeling of triumph after fixing bugs, or maybe it's vice-versa. Maybe you enjoy helping coworkers get unstuck with your expertise despite working on a crappy stack. Maybe you take satisfaction in seeing the burndown chart go down each week, or maybe thinking about how to be a better tech interviewer is something that interests you. There's usually _something_ - even if it's a small trivial thing - that is nice about your day to day.

I often think of it in terms of parallels to meditation: honing self-awareness skills lets you realize small things that you might not have been aware of before. Walking to the supermarket might be a tiring chore, but hey look I never noticed that tree blooms beautifully in march, or hey I started to notice a small difference in my stamina, etc. You are in charge of your (limited) attention span, and you can choose to focus on the positive things - no matter how small - and let the rest naturally fall by the sidelines.

This was something I have been "feeling" to be true recently, but really needed some independent validation.

How beautifully put.