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.

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

^ 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.

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.

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.

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.