I had a bit of a mental shift after I turned 30, realising I'd spent the best part of a decade building up my career in various ways.

I'm still in the typical 9-5 job since I'm way too young to retire (and we don't get paid the crazy money in the UK that software engineers in parts of the US do), but I've been able to settle on what I want and what I don't want so I have the power to walk away.

In the simplest terms, I just need to be at a place working on something I give a fuck about, which pushes me to smaller upstarts. This sometimes incurs a bit of a paycut but I see that as a worthwhile hit to take if I don't feel like I'm selling my soul to people I realise I don't want to work for.

Just gotta avoid the lifestyle creep so a temporary downsize doesn't contribute to mental distress.

Building up career is a trap.

The system is designed to capture everyone as a wage slave and every year there are more barriers put to keep the "pleb" in their lane.

The only way to build wealth (independence, freedom) for one's family is through starting a business that you can scale.

If you go to work at a company always think how you can use the knowledge gained there to start something of your own. Use salaried work as a paid for education, not a mean for living, otherwise you'll get trapped forever.

30 is a turning point, where most people realise about the situation they are in and look for escape.

> In the simplest terms, I just need to be at a place working on something I give a fuck about

That would always be one's own business.

If you are not in a position to run one, always ask for true equity in the business you want to work in.

Definitely not true. If you keep your expenses down and your compensation up (FAANG, etc.) you can easily make enough to retire early.

“Just be one of the vanishingly few to 1.work at FAANG + 2.as a L6-or-greater SWE + 3.in the Bay Area” is not a realistic strategy.

Yes, if all those miracles come true that lottery winner can retire early, but I don’t think that is a broadly applicable plan.

It's not even just FAANG anymore. Plenty of places pay over 350k for a senior.

And Seattle is probably a much better place with respect to taxes and cost of living. Most other cities where FAANG will employ are fine. Don't have to be #1 to win.

Still a lottery winner with respect to the global employment market. But if you graduated with a US software engineering degree, you can make this happen.

You also need to be okay working at a FAANG.

After working in a 4k person org, I don’t think I could stomach working at another giant company.

And for those who were born outside the US, none of this is applicable (unless you are young and can try emigration), and the advice to be an entrepreneur is correct.

EDIT: There are some people here who claim you can earn that kind of money outside the US, but they never give details when pressed, or describe some kind of very specific set of life circumstances you will never be able to replicate.

I will bite. L4 Google in Zürich, Switzerland. Base: 163k CHF (very low, just promoted), 15% bonus, 50k USD GOOG / year. Not counting stocks, I net 9k a month while maxing retirement account (aka Roth IRA but with less returns) at 2.7k CHF / month. Rent: 2.3k / month in city center, Health insurance: 350 CHF / month. No other significant expenses.

I invest 3.8k CHF / month from base only. All in all, I save ~100k CHF a year counting bonus and stocks.

> If you go to work at a company always think how you can use the knowledge gained there to start something of your own.

Pro tip: avoid highly specialised knowledge that can only be used in particular firms e.g. highly capitalised or regulated entities. Yes you will be paid well above market rates but it will be very difficult to convert those skills into a business because you won't have access to the market as a solo entrepreneur.

Time and again I'll see that the people who start successful lifestyle businesses started off in a lower paying, more general career e.g. web development. It works because you'll encounter problems that apply to a huge market, and you'll have past customers you can tap into to sell your product that addresses those problems e.g. WordPress plugins or invoicing software particular to your region of the world. Boring but high demand software.

Wouldn't having deep specialisation in a particular field help you to gain a competitive advantage when deciding to go it alone and starting a company in that area?

Absolutely, but the more specialised, the more likely your skill is one part of a much bigger structure and therefore you're less likely to be able to leverage it as a solo entrepreneur.

For example, you spend 15 years becoming a lead engineer for a vehicle manufacturer. But there's very few ways you can then that into a solo business, other than consulting (which is no longer the same work).

Many countries - like UK - have restricted consulting type of business, where it's not possible to make profit, as consulting engagement has to be taxed as deemed employment, even if it is a legitimate business, when service is provided by the owner of the company. Pulling the ladders etc.

That's why I'm not that upset that no one wants to work with an old guy (that's me), and I was forced to retire.

I still get to play with software, but on my own time, and on my own schedule.

The difference is amazing.

Amazing given you can maintain your standard of living.

I had enough saved, to allow myself to do OK. I wasn't planning on retiring for another ten years, but I wasn't really given a choice.

How old are you?

I am now 61. I was 55, when I left my last company.

Hold on. You couldn't find a job at 55 because you were perceived as too old?

Oh, yeah. I hear people in their thirties, complaining about being treated as "old."

When the CEO is 26, then it's easy to have a young workforce. In The Days of Yore, the C-suite was generally folks in their fifties, and the youngsters were forced to work with their chronological seniors. The older folks had the money and power, but they needed the creativity and energy of the younger workers.

If the workforce is all older folks, you get shipping product that no one wants. If the workforce is all younger folks, you get ... FTX.

Look at some of these "full team" photos, for many of these new companies. You won't see a grey hair anywhere, and, if you do, a bit of research usually shows them to be a Principal.

I fully admit that it's a world that doesn't want or need people like me. It really pissed me off, at first, but, in the aggregate, it has resulted in the first truly happy work that I've done in decades, so it's all good.

That said, some of my former employees are near my age, and were able to find work, but it took each of them, several years, and they didn't have the baggage of being a former manager.

What places are you working where executives are 26 and 55 is too old? My experience is very very different.

Hearing experiences like these make me glad I never got a job at a startup or smaller “tech” company.

That's the thing: I'm not working there, because they'd never hire me.

In my (limited) experience (about five years ago), the recruiters were always engaging, helpful and friendly. However, as soon as one technical person (usually young) got involved, the temperature dropped about thirty degrees.

I may not be God's gift to programming, but I'm not that bad. I do, for example, have over thirty years' experience shipping extremely high-Quality products, in very challenging environments. In many fields, that usually commands a tiny bit of respect.

> or need

They do need you, but they don't know it, yet.

I'm not recommending this as a strategy, but someone I trust told me this story.

They were a hiring manager. Candidate looked good on paper. Invited for on-site interview. At the on-site, the candidate didn't want to answer questions. They just stated that their race and gender were discriminated against in this field and if they weren't offered the job, then they would sue. My friend consulted with their boss and the lawyers and they decided to offer the person the job. They were qualified and they turned out to be good at the job.

How is that not actionable discrimination?

I’ve given a hundred people advice on handling discrimination at this point, and the thing I always stress is that it only matters what you can prove, not what happened.

Protecting yourself against discrimination doesn’t mean trusting the courts. It means being willing to lie or mislead people into thinking you aren’t in the category of people who gets discriminated against, making yourself too much trouble to fire, and finding open-minded employers.

If you’re in a disadvantaged group, you need to pick your battles, and accept that life isn’t fair.

Pure Wisdom!

You do not often get an email to tell you you were not accepted for a position (unless you made it far in the process)

Businesses have pushed heavily for at-will employment; this means that businesses don't need to say why people are fired.

So they don't have to write down why you were not hired, nor why you were fired.

So you have to prove that you were not hired/or fired for being in a protected class. This is extremely difficult short of a recording of the interviewer saying e.g. "so you're pregnant?" => can possibly argue discrimination, but it's still difficult. This kind of stuff works in a panel interviews or bad work environment when you can compel testimony from other workers who would rather risk their job over jail... but doesn't work well in 1:1 or 2:1 situations where one or two people just need to lie to avoid the lawsuit.

Or, not even lie, but just be unaware of the subconscious biases influencing them. Then they can say with a completely straight face that your group had nothing to do with it, even if that isn't true.

Something being illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

I imagine it’s a lot harder to sue an industry for not hiring you than it is to sue your employer for firing you.

You call it discrimination, they call it employment at will.

I assume it's not that easy to prove, so most people don't take legal action.

Personally, I don't take legal action even if I think I can win the case, because it's just too much time and effort, and I don't want my life to focus on said legal procedure for the next n months.

I assume other people also think they need to choose their battles.

If they're in the US, only provable discrimination is actionable, and you'd have to hire a lawyer.

because they say “not a good culture fit” and you can’t prove anything

Yup. Also, the entire industry pretty much actively supports and accommodates ageism. It's not like a few "rogue actors." Everyone is in on it, and it starts from the top.

Also, I found out that some younger folks really hate us. A number of folks used the interview process to try humiliating me, and taking out their personal animus.

After a few of these, I decided "Bugger this for a lark," and just accepted that I shouldn't bother looking, anymore.

But I think people are being hoist by their own petard. I'm seeing folks in their forties, that never had any issue, finding work, hitting the wall. These were people that did it to others, when they were working.

We can't become other races, and we [usually] can't become other genders, but we all become old, so each of us will have a turn at the wheel.

We just hired a guy out of retirement a few years ago. Retired after 30 years of C dev but wanted to keep busy in the small town we're based in. He's beloved by all of the software devs and the cyber team (we're basically two companies in one). The first week he was asking questions about how git worked. Then like a week later he was explaining why massive amounts of python code we wrote for running simulations was inefficient and how it could be fixed.

Same thing here we hired a retired domain specialist, sure he had issues with all current dev environments, tooling etc. But that's still a really clear net positive. There is no way we could have built this without the decades of knowledge he has.

Have you tried the indie software thing like this guy? How has that been going? I feel like I have enough saved now that even if I can't get corporate work anymore due to age (which I kind of doubt due to the age of people I've worked with in FANG, and the fact I'm already pretty much a manager of managers, which tends to run older) that I would be pretty happy doing the indie thing too.

I'm working on apps for nonprofits that can't afford people of my caliber. I don't charge for my work, but take it every bit as seriously, as if I were. It's actually part of the satisfaction that I get from the work.

Keeps me busy and up-to-date, and is extremely gratifying.

I'm getting ready to release an app that is a top-to-bottom system, involving a couple of servers that I wrote, along with a fairly robust native iOS frontend.

Works a charm. I've enjoyed it. Of course, I have to keep my scope humble, but I've always been able to punch above my weight, so it's working out.

Do you invoice them anyway and zero out your fee, or just do the work for free and don't invoice them?

I don't invoice them. The outfit is really small. I am an officer of the 501(c)(3), though.

I've found that most non-tech folks don't have any idea how much it costs to have real talent working for them (or even crap talent). I don't feel like arguing about it. I can't declare it, so it's not worth the agita.

I had an org in NYC offer me a Director of Product role ... for $90K.

FWIW: For your non-profit work, I'd recommend charging full price as donation if your tax jurisdiction allows this.

Sadly, it does not. We're not allowed to declare "sweat equity."

If I was able to declare it, I'd never pay a dime in taxes.

I have heard that Steve Kamen, who wrote the "I Love New York" jingle, gave full rights to the state, and never has to pay state taxes. I haven't found anything that corroborates this, but it could very well be true.

The work I do, is for a demographic that tends to be ignored. I doubt there's any tax breaks, headed my way.

You might be able to donate the copyright. That’s worth basically as much as the labor.

I have this cynical recurring fantasy that when the Unix epoch rolls over and every legacy system is broken, they’re not going to have anyone left in the workforce who knows the difference between the stack and the heap, and who can debug through disassembly when the binary has no symbols; so they’ll hire us graybeards out of retirement to save the day. Then I wake up and admit that what’s more likely to happen is the 25 yr old Directors of Engineering would rather rewrite all the software in JavaScript rather than admit they need us.

Or: "Thank you for your time, we decided to continue with another candidate."

And half of the companies simply ghosting unwanted candidates with no response after the interview.

It's not worth trying to force people to work and share income with anyone they deem ugly. It will add cognitive load / dissonance and hurt their performance. Lookism is not okay, this is not about endorsing these kinds of behaviors, but nor it is something that can be instantly nullified by just coming up with the labeling.

Maybe isolating cubicle walls, snail mails, audio-only telephones, and non-engineer sales representatives were good things. And possibly VR avatars in the future too.

But anyway, the point is, threatening someone who hates you(for any reasons, not limited to their bigotry) to work with you is not the path of least resistance.

You have seen the light. Thing is it’s doable. Keep pushing.

My goal in life is to amass enough assets and investments that the monthly return adjusted for inflation equals a good salary that I can live comfortably off of. The ultimate in fuck you money is fuck you monthly cash flow. No doubt it's rent seeking but it's the only rational thing to do in this economic system we all live under.

Rent seeking implies using laws or market power to profit without providing any value. Depending upon your assets and investments, you may well be providing value to companies and society.