Ask HN: I want to leave tech: what do I do?

Buy rural land and live on investments while you start a small business. That's what I'm doing.

I think we need a monthly "who wants to be fired" thread where we share our progress on this.

love this!

If you already have enough investments to not work, why would anyone even work in tech?

Leaving the grind when you already kind or rich is easy mode. Leaving it when your net worth is negative is another story.

Why would anyone work in tech? Because making something that didn't exist before is kind of a thrill. (No, that is not the same as cranking through Jira tickets...)

What kind of business? Most of the dream ones people envision are capital-intensive and failure-prone (speaking as someone who started a capital intensive business that failed)

This is pretty far out of reach for most people, unfathomable if you have debt and/or living paycheck to paycheck.

Off topic, I started working in tech because I enjoyed it. That it was also well paid was a nice coincidence. You can be in the grind and be unaware of that.

Of course people like this still suffer due to overexposure to work and js frameworks; and many eventually grow to dislike tech jobs and want to leave.

Cool, congrats and wishing you good luck and success!

> monthly "who wants to be fired" thread Reminds me of Mad Fientist blog.

Note that this joy is not unique to tech. Carpenters, farmers, painters, etc, all make things that didn’t exist before. Some of them haven’t heard about Jira.

May I introduce you to all of blue collar work.

How to life well as an independently wealthy computer person is an important question to address and I encourage you to continue addressing it because it sounds like you'd give better advice than most.

You might find the messaging more effective if it was declared in more direct terms though, its a pretty different problem than still needing to make a living when computers are your stock in trade.

Please keep us up-to-date on how that goes. It sounds like you are having progress.

Most of the smart and talented people I know that dropped out to create companies abandoned them and ended in someone else’s company later. The two exceptions were salesmen who ended up becoming rich after selling their companies.

I think the problem is the "dream ones" part. Yes, everyone would love to make tons of money with very little work. But that almost guarantees high risks or very high capital exposure. There are countless small business opportunities that you could operate from home with almost no risk or exposure if you have a car and can afford some basic tools. But you won't get rich - or at least you'll have to work your ass off for a while.

That thrill is present in any creative endeavor. If you like tech and enjoy that thrill, yeah, work in tech. At the same time, if you are tired of tech and want that thrill, go make something else. I'm a collector of hobbies at this point, having at least dabbled (if not more) in woodworking, stone carving, jewelry making, furniture upholstery, fused glass, painting, drawing, sculpture, clothing design, and creating nature trails in our forest. They all give that thrill.

Tech pays better, though - so I work in tech to pay the bills, then spend the money on tools to get that creative thrill somewhere else.

^ this.

Even if you don’t live paycheck to paycheck, the life style of owning a place AND living off your investments, is extremely hard to pull off.

You most likely need to be single (or couple both in tech), no kids, making FAANG salary, living frugally (no travel, no expenses outside of food, shelter and necessities). Or you need to use geo arbitrage, which again means probably no kids, while being able to secure a high paying remote job in the US.

I wish it was more affordable, but it’s not. Therefor advice like “buy a house and live off your investments” are equivalent to filling a winning lottery ticket.

Right. That's what got me into tech, too. Turned out to be mostly a lie - most jobs aren't making anything exciting or new (except maybe for the wealthy in the financial sense), and those that do tend to limit your autonomy.

Now I stay in tech for the same reason most people stay in their careers - it's comfortable and pays well, but because that's mostly a function of "time served"[0], it also means that I'm trapped now. I can't just switch fields anymore - at this stage of life, switching is a major multi-year project!

(Also I question whether it would help. Working in some field never looks much like you imagine while being outside of it.)

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[0] - Tech has an unusually large multiplier here, but the trend is the same as with any other job.

Which is crazy. Somehow simple living is a complete luxury

Thank you. I needed to hear that. As someone getting close to retirement (and with a job that's getting more boring), that was very helpful.

No, living on investments is the luxury here

That is true, but it's not out of reach for "most people" who have been paid professional software engineer-level salaries in mid-to-large cities in the US for a few years or more, which I'd guess is a substantial portion of the readership of this site.

Living on your investments, is not "simple" living.

One weird trick: try being rich.

My wife and I moved to a rural area after covid. You're not magically saving money by doing so. And there is a shit load more work in terms of maintenance. I like it but this is such a strange recommendation.

You don't need the "buy the house" part, which is actually bad advice now - renting is now half the cost of home ownership in many areas of the US.

But I strongly believe you're making this out to be much more difficult than it is if you are making decent (not "FAANG level") tech-type salaries. Where I live tech jobs generally pay at about double the amount of people in trades, for example. E.g. a mid-level software engineer is making at least 160-180k, while a trades person (plumber, etc.) with similar experience is making 80-90k.

So obviously if you can live at the level of these trades people, you can save up enough to be able to live without a salary for some time.

The problem is that most people just get used to their standard of living and find it hard to downsize. That's fine, but it's still very much a choice.

Exciting and new doesn't necessarily mean novel. I get quite excited when I build a new bit of code that solves a frequent pain point for someone. It's likely built on a boring framework, in a boring language, wouldn't work at scale, and solves a boring problem only a few people have, but the drug makes for a nice little high, and the small business world has a huge supply.

What you're describing is essentially the whole FIRE movement (financial independence, retire early). While I find adherents to that movement can be "culty"/extreme around the edges, the general advice of living below your means so that you can then have at least some number of years where you can engage in a more meaningful use of your time (doesn't have to be "retire") is good advice.

The problem with what you say is that you need to be in such environment. Not everyone pays good salaries. Europe is far behind US salaries. In US high salaries are concentrated around SF, which in turn means high cost of living, or subpar living conditions (I couldn’t imagine myself living with roommates in my 30s for example, and what do you do when having a relationship?)

And then comes the downsizing. Sure you can live only with necessities, but then question do you want to find yourself in mid thirties, or early forties, without any travel experiences, no relationship, living in your parents basement? I exaggerate a bit, but the math does not work out. You either live very frugally, or you use exploit geo arbitrage (low cost of living area, with a high paying remote job). There are no other shortcuts.

That’s not FIRE. FIRE is keep your tech job, live very frugaly, invest, maybe make some other passive income, then actually retire. OP is rather focusing on getting out of tech to do something else but it is still going to be work. Maybe a lot of work. They’re downsizing lifestyle because they’re also downsizing their pay.

I said to buy land, not a house. Houses are ridiculously overpriced for what you get (one housing unit.)

I don't think it's worth it to "No True Scotsman" this, but there are plenty of people who go by FIRE principles, which are generally to live below your means so you can be more financially independent later (which is exactly what OP was focusing on), without actually retiring completely. In fact, most people don't retire completely because they find they get bored as hell.

Every time this topic comes up, I'm a little astounded how whiny people get.

First, I wholly agree Europe salaries are far worse. But in the US, there are plenty of locales besides SF that pay comparatively high tech salaries (I live in Texas). But the main point is that making a professional software engineer-level salary at a tech company with 5+ years of experience in a mid-to-large American city should put you squarely in the top 10% of American earners. I mean, what you decry as "very frugally" is simply figuring out how the vast, vast majority of Americans manage to get by. It kind of reminds me of those NYT articles that would explain how people were basically living paycheck-to-paycheck on $500k a year: private school costs $X, a nanny costs $Y, Upper East Side co-op costs $Z. I'm like yeah, no shit Sherlock, expensive stuff is expensive, but don't pretend forgoing that stuff means you're living in poverty.

Sure, that's what Github is for. Working in corporate environments is another story.

This is such a developed world comment :)

Because for the rest of the world rural (or a village) means literally rural or a village. What the people from the developed world may never understand is the wide gigantic chasm between urban and rural here, in every aspect of(un)imaginable.

Some examples?

Plumber

Plumber, carpenter, welder, electrician etc. In the countryside where I live, I do all of these when I feel like it for myself, friends and sometimes strangers in trouble (pipe burst, no power). It pays well; I could live of that and save very comfortably here if I did it half of the time, but I only do it the odd few hours while people begging for welding jobs, wooden doors, etc. It can be a nice little business, especially if you can find employees and move on to house building or renovations, but it will never be bigger than that was of course, you would be in the countryside.

It's not whiny, in exact terms, it's something much worse: people not wanting to admit they can have agency.

You see this a ton on social media. People make excuses after excuses of why they can't get out of debt, why they can't lose weight, why they can't…

And, sure, some people have it tough and have the odds stacked against them. But most people would just prefer to swat down ideas on how to get what they want like they're playing Beat Saber.

(And I can be sure that someone will come through and accuse me of being insensitive because I haven't considered someone who has X, Y, or Z that only impacts .5% of the population, and almost never the person making the complaint.)