Trust me it's not better on the other side. Followed my dreams and I'll forever be financially decades behind you (i.e I'll never catch up) unless I win the lottery or something. I'm 100% sure if I were in your shoes I too would feel exactly as you do. The lesson here is to be content with what we have and what we've done. At least now you have the financial freedom to spend the rest of your life more or less as you see fit.

This.

For whatever reason (personality, genes, whatever), I do not seem to be one who gets caught up in the envy of greener grass.

https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/grass-is-alway...

I've spent a large part of my life as a high end specialist, consulting, and thus, have had incredibly encompassing exposure to a huge variety of companies.

Whether non-profits, government departments, or corps, it's humans which cause the often ineffectual result, of our loving attempts to being order, and stability to our labourious output.

People are the same everywhere, and thus, so your endeavours will be.

The grass is not greener on the other side.

So what I would say is:

* if you strike out on your own, you can at least move on past things which bore you

* you need true financial independence to achieve this, to become a relaxed garage tinkerer of tech

* right now, we are at a moment of golden opportunity. The markets are down. This is where you buy in. The returns are buying in these times, not in time of feast.

So... maybe this is a good time to reassess. Invest. And plan to retire once you profit?

A long time ago, I had the mindset that I really didn't care about money: I wanted to live my "ideal" life, no matter what. So I frittered away my early twenties being a bum, trying to materialize what I felt was the "dream."

Then I got kicked out of my home and had to work back-breaking jobs, commute 2-4 hours either walking or biking, and at the end of the day barely earn enough money to make any progress (I was lucky that a family member let me sleep in their house, otherwise I would've been living paycheck to paycheck).

During that time I felt like my mind forced me to "withdraw inside myself," so my spirit wouldn't be completely broken. It had seemed that all of my thoughts, feelings, and emotions had been stripped away from me, and the only things left were those needed to "survive."

A little bit later I was lucky enough to get my first software job, making a very good salary, and lift myself out of poverty (and start "financially progressing"); but even though my life had been the best it ever was, I never regained the feelings that I lost.

I think what I lost was my naive worldview: one that was modeled by two decades worth of living upper middle class; where I survived by virtue of my birth, and not because I personally did anything -- detached from reality.

It was a very self-centered existence. I was only concerned about my own pleasure, and escaping from any displeasure ("fat FIRE" was an escape from the perceived displeasure of having to work, and not being able to partake in idle leisure). Other than this, I had no values, nor real "ideals" (but I did have an "ideal" life I wanted to build).

I think that's where my early "dreams" came from: a self-centered pursuit of personal gain and maximization of pleasure. I didn't really care about anything or anyone, nor was my existence driven by deeply-ingrained values that could serve as a bottomless well of direction and energy. I was simply living an animalistic life.

Being thrust into the "real world" destroyed all these notions; or rather, living in reality forced me to restrain myself: my emotions had no structure, and so I was fluttering about to wherever they took me. Having to "box" them in to do something useful and purposeful finally wrangled them in, and "molded" my personality to something other than "do the things I like, and get away from the things I don't like."

I would later have to rebuild my worldview and wrestle with the void in my soul that could no longer be filled with material distractions (a life-long process).

During this process, I realized putting financial considerations as my number one priority would not lead me to anywhere fulfilled (neither would idle retirement). The only thought that rang "true" at the time was that I needed to cultivate values, and those would dictate my purpose.

It's a never-ending process. And it always keeps me busy, but unlike focusing on material things, the fulfillment and sense of goodness I feel is not transient -- it lasts, and has built up through the years.

This is how I went from trying to live an ideal life, to one where I live by ideals.

I know this is a throwaway, but I would like to hear more. Your writing reflects my own life, but I'm in the wrestling part.

Care to expand on this process of cultivating values, the wrestling with the void, where the sense of goodness comes from..

It's great to be able to pull "bonkers TC" and not feel fulfilled than to not pull that TC and still feel a void.

"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind".

And even finding quality volunteering opportinities has been difficult. There's all kind of parasitic behaviour when free money or labor is on offer.

Don't listen to the negativity, Software Engineers are paid handsomely, if you find that your dream path isn't working out you can always return to highly paid work and make up pretty fast.

Sounds like me at 26. I finally walked away from it at 28.

Your window to return to bonkers tech money is wide so you can afford to go away from it a while. But after you do, you probably won't want to return. That's fine! Just sock away enough that you don't feel you have to, otherwise it'll feel like reinserting yourself in the matrix and it SUCKS.

Working on something that feels like it makes a difference can be very rewarding. But my experience is that if it really makes a difference (how do you measure that is probably a book by itself), it is never easy.

For the last 15 years I have worked on things that I felt needed doing. Others agreed. Even though our teams achieve something worthwhile it can often feel deeply frustrating. The challenges of financing something new, that doesn’t fit the box of how it is normally done, at some useful scale, is hard. I don’t want to do anything else, but sometimes it is very frustrating.

In the end, I think there is so much one can work on that really makes a difference in “the story of humanity” as you call it, that there really is no need to take a job that goes against ideals you may hold. Healthcare, energy systems, data for better governance, food tech, Ed tech, the list goes on. There will be something interesting to work on I am certain.

I think Maslow's hierarchy of needs [0] approximately explains what you're experiencing.

This is also covered in the Book of Eccliastes [1]. IMHO it's a good meditation on the issue regardless of one's views on Abrahamic religions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes

What is TC?

Total compensation, that is including bonuses, benefits and various forms of stock.

Was about to ask the same thing. There are ~280 resolutions to that initialism on a random website that I've found, none of which are easily applicable to the context.

One of the things I despise about these jobs is the overuse of initialisms and acronyms. It's literally gatekeeping even if done subconsciously. It also fucks with new hires quite a lot because they have no idea what AC, SOP, PR, NPS, etc mean

Total Comp here, but in the subcontinent it also stands for something vulgar, so clarification or avoiding it is probably best.

Ironically, I don't know what "the subcontinent" refers to. Gatekeeping and in-speak happens naturally in every context.

That one is much easier to Google though, as the expression is really only used to refer to one thing (the Indian subcontinent)

No idea what you could be referring to. I think maybe you're thinking of BC or MC?

Total Compensation, meaning it includes non-salary components such as shares of stock/options, other benefits, etc.

Total Cost

Is there any reason you can't do both?