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My reasons why I am maniacal obsessed (yes, I think about it many times a day, every day) about early retirement (more like financial independence than retireme

My reasons why I am maniacal obsessed (yes, I think about it many times a day, every day) about early retirement (more like financial independence than retirement), in order of importance: 1) Grew up dirt poor and I have a constant fear of ending up there again (suffered a lot as a child/teenager when I didn't even have $3 for discretionary expenses, I was incredibly envious of my peers who were better off). 2) (Forced) ageism in the industry: it's incredibly true, regardless of the few outliers who will post here on HN saying "not true, I'm 89 and still professionally coding my life away". 3) Constant stress due to learning: I absolutely love this field and programming is the thing I'm the most capable of doing, but the amount of study I have to do to keep up with what goes on actively eats into my personal life and free time, I have to dedicate many hours a week just to be aware of what is happening in my areas (e.g. frontend development, devops, ...). It's very stressful, to the point where if I could go back I would choose to pursue a more "stable" highly-paid field (e.g. medicine) and keep programming as a hobby. 4) Corporate politics in big companies: it's insane how much of your time will be spent on useless stuff just to drive your manager's personal agenda, think about it. I've being victim of spending months on useless refactory of some even more useless application in big co. 5) Employees treatment in startups: startups tend to have interesting work, but absolutely truly horrible financial incentives, horrible risk/reward and horrible mechanics around equity compensation (and I speak as someone who has been relatively lucky in this field, since the first startup I was in made me ~$100k in equity, and the other one about ~$1M in equity, still less than what I would have made in FAANG, for which I had very lucrative offers, but didn't accept for the bullshit of the previous point). I'm 32 btw.

natalyarostova 8y ago
>if I could go back I would choose to pursue a more "stable" highly-paid field (e.g. medicine) I'm fine with the first part of that sentence. But medicine is an awful awful example.
- deanmoriarty 8y ago
  I should have clarified: by stable I didn't mean "reasonable work life balance" or other definitions, I meant the knowledge in the discipline you're practicing is itself stable. Several of my high school friends are not physicians and, while they have to generally keep up with the latest best practices in their specialty, most of the knowledge they acquired in school never changes for the entirety of their career (so ageism doesn't basically exist), which isn't even remotely true in software engineering and it's a constant source of stress like I initially described.
  - natalyarostova 8y ago
    That's true, you're right, ageism Doesn't really exist. I will say though that seeing my dad, an aging surgeon, there are other stresses. Doing emergency surgery at 3am is a lot more stressful as a tired 60 year old compared to an energetic and confident 35 year old. I'm always reminded when I'm at his house, and he's on call, how much higher and stressful the stakes are in his line of work.

natalyarostova 8y ago

>if I could go back I would choose to pursue a more "stable" highly-paid field (e.g. medicine) I'm fine with the first part of that sentence. But medicine is an awful awful example.

deanmoriarty 8y ago
I should have clarified: by stable I didn't mean "reasonable work life balance" or other definitions, I meant the knowledge in the discipline you're practicing is itself stable. Several of my high school friends are not physicians and, while they have to generally keep up with the latest best practices in their specialty, most of the knowledge they acquired in school never changes for the entirety of their career (so ageism doesn't basically exist), which isn't even remotely true in software engineering and it's a constant source of stress like I initially described.
- natalyarostova 8y ago
  That's true, you're right, ageism Doesn't really exist. I will say though that seeing my dad, an aging surgeon, there are other stresses. Doing emergency surgery at 3am is a lot more stressful as a tired 60 year old compared to an energetic and confident 35 year old. I'm always reminded when I'm at his house, and he's on call, how much higher and stressful the stakes are in his line of work.