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This is a fallacy. I'm 42 and have been working in tech since I graduated with my computer engineering degree in '99. I only just paid off my student loans 2 ye

This is a fallacy. I'm 42 and have been working in tech since I graduated with my computer engineering degree in '99. I only just paid off my student loans 2 years ago. I have no retirement, and just burned through my savings over some health issues related to burnout. Things are going to be even worse for millennials. Seriously, anyone reading this should be thinking about what they want out of life and how we could/should organize an economy and culture so that everyone can work sustainably and thrive. If something doesn't change soon, and especially with looming challenges like whole industries being automated, I fear that we are headed towards a future of perfect wealth inequality and 21st century feudalism.

esoterica 7y ago
Millennial devs at least have it better than any other generation. At no other point in history has a 20-something year old been able to make a 1%er income writing code. But you can in the enchanted playground that is the modern Bay Area. There’s no telling how long this was last though; maybe at some point in the future there’ll be a reversion to the mean and programmers will go back to making 80k/year like all the other mid-skilled white collar office drones. Which is another reason to drink from the firehose and squeeze every last venture capital penny out of the system while you still can instead of worrying about work-life balance.
- zackmorris 7y ago
  Location really is everything. I have a Bay Area idealism but I live in Boise, Idaho. Which for the last 20 years was more like the scenery of Napoleon Dynamite than say, Austin or Boulder. But it's been gentrifying extremely rapidly for the last 5 years or so. There's talk of it being the next Silicon Valley. But good news feels like bad news for me, and I'm in mourning about the loss of heritage.
  - boring_twenties 7y ago
    I wouldn't get too excited. There are many tech companies here in Salt Lake City, but they all pay shit. The last ad I looked at was offering $40-60 an hour... for an "expert" in both C++ and Rust. LOL
0xffff2 7y ago
Your single point of annecdata doesn't mean it's not possible. As a counter-point, my brother started working as a full-time software engineer at 27 and is currently on track to be able to retire at 40. I've made the financially dubious choice of taking a government R&D job (and started even later), so I certainly won't be retiring that early, but I'm still well on the way to a comfortable retirement. That's two millennials that are having not trouble at all making it work.
souprock 7y ago
Something odd happened there. I also graduated in '99 and, with a BS CS degree, pretty much did computer engineering. In just two years I paid off my loans, paid off my wife's loans (she didn't work), and bought a somewhat fancy new car. Since then, I've paid off a house and had 12 kids. I guess things go badly if you paid full price for an expensive school, used private loans with high interest, never paid more than the minimum demanded for your loans, missed some payments, and gave most of your money to your landlord. None of that is required. Somewhere, something went very wrong for you. Your situation isn't typical for a person with that degree.
- zackmorris 7y ago
  You're telling me. The gist of it is that I have the knack for perfect storms. Moved back in with my dad after graduating, had a couple of the most memorable years of my life. Went into business with one of my best friends growing up, made a bunch of shareware games but never made more than a few thousand dollars here and there. Worked for hp for a year as a contractor, it was wonderful but was going through a turbulent time in my life after the death of a friend so didn't stick with it. Struggled through the dot bomb and housing bubble. Worked as a Mac repair technician. Flipped a bunch of broken Macs for 6 months when nobody anywhere had any money. Worked a few years as a contractor, scraping by on several failed projects for every one that made it into the app stores. Had $20,000 in the bank when Bitcoin was $10, ended up spending it on making good on fixed price contracts I underestimated. Worked as a backend and mobile developer for 4 years for a major consulting agency in town, had a falling out after we realized I wasn't a good fit for the last project I was on. I realized too late in life that I do poorly with negative reinforcement. So the things that I work the hardest on, when they fail, I sort of shut down and lose hope. All we have as developers is our mental health. If/when that declines, it's devastating. I look back on my career, at the hundreds (thousands tbh) of unfinished programming projects on my hard drive, and I see that I am the poster child of unrealized potential. It's reached a point where I can't really write about or discuss my life because people find it too depressing. I have unusually high empathy and creativity (statistical outlier INFP) which tend to sabotage my analytical work in programming. I feel the pain and suffering of these times acutely and find it difficult to focus on the problems before me, which tend to be mundane and symptomatic of a world gone wrong. In other words I (like so many over the hill midlife crisis programmers) have come to see much of my work and most trends in computer science in general as a waste of time. It might be too late for me. I'm trying to put on a brave face and laugh about the whole thing, but I just don't know if my heart is in programming anymore. Imagine what you're doing right now, what you're most passionate about. Then imagine you wake up one day and it's like you had a stroke - you go to do the thing and feel a knot in your stomach, a realization that you'd rather be doing anything else at all. And the feeling lasts 6 months or more. That's what I'm facing now, even though I have so much inspiration to work on inventions and side projects. It's like the well has run dry, and I spend the entirety of my time now coping with daily life, trying to scrape up some money for living expenses, and letting other people's priorities take priority over my own. I wish there was an alternative economy, some other way of living more like Star Trek. Maybe I should have stayed in academia. I can't even imagine the life I might have had. It's a strange feeling to be able to solve any problem easily, except how to take care of oneself. But that's all I've known for some time now.

esoterica 7y ago

Millennial devs at least have it better than any other generation. At no other point in history has a 20-something year old been able to make a 1%er income writing code. But you can in the enchanted playground that is the modern Bay Area. There’s no telling how long this was last though; maybe at some point in the future there’ll be a reversion to the mean and programmers will go back to making 80k/year like all the other mid-skilled white collar office drones. Which is another reason to drink from the firehose and squeeze every last venture capital penny out of the system while you still can instead of worrying about work-life balance.

zackmorris 7y ago
Location really is everything. I have a Bay Area idealism but I live in Boise, Idaho. Which for the last 20 years was more like the scenery of Napoleon Dynamite than say, Austin or Boulder. But it's been gentrifying extremely rapidly for the last 5 years or so. There's talk of it being the next Silicon Valley. But good news feels like bad news for me, and I'm in mourning about the loss of heritage.
- boring_twenties 7y ago
  I wouldn't get too excited. There are many tech companies here in Salt Lake City, but they all pay shit. The last ad I looked at was offering $40-60 an hour... for an "expert" in both C++ and Rust. LOL

0xffff2 7y ago

Your single point of annecdata doesn't mean it's not possible. As a counter-point, my brother started working as a full-time software engineer at 27 and is currently on track to be able to retire at 40. I've made the financially dubious choice of taking a government R&D job (and started even later), so I certainly won't be retiring that early, but I'm still well on the way to a comfortable retirement. That's two millennials that are having not trouble at all making it work.

souprock 7y ago

Something odd happened there. I also graduated in '99 and, with a BS CS degree, pretty much did computer engineering. In just two years I paid off my loans, paid off my wife's loans (she didn't work), and bought a somewhat fancy new car. Since then, I've paid off a house and had 12 kids. I guess things go badly if you paid full price for an expensive school, used private loans with high interest, never paid more than the minimum demanded for your loans, missed some payments, and gave most of your money to your landlord. None of that is required. Somewhere, something went very wrong for you. Your situation isn't typical for a person with that degree.

zackmorris 7y ago
You're telling me. The gist of it is that I have the knack for perfect storms. Moved back in with my dad after graduating, had a couple of the most memorable years of my life. Went into business with one of my best friends growing up, made a bunch of shareware games but never made more than a few thousand dollars here and there. Worked for hp for a year as a contractor, it was wonderful but was going through a turbulent time in my life after the death of a friend so didn't stick with it. Struggled through the dot bomb and housing bubble. Worked as a Mac repair technician. Flipped a bunch of broken Macs for 6 months when nobody anywhere had any money. Worked a few years as a contractor, scraping by on several failed projects for every one that made it into the app stores. Had $20,000 in the bank when Bitcoin was $10, ended up spending it on making good on fixed price contracts I underestimated. Worked as a backend and mobile developer for 4 years for a major consulting agency in town, had a falling out after we realized I wasn't a good fit for the last project I was on. I realized too late in life that I do poorly with negative reinforcement. So the things that I work the hardest on, when they fail, I sort of shut down and lose hope. All we have as developers is our mental health. If/when that declines, it's devastating. I look back on my career, at the hundreds (thousands tbh) of unfinished programming projects on my hard drive, and I see that I am the poster child of unrealized potential. It's reached a point where I can't really write about or discuss my life because people find it too depressing. I have unusually high empathy and creativity (statistical outlier INFP) which tend to sabotage my analytical work in programming. I feel the pain and suffering of these times acutely and find it difficult to focus on the problems before me, which tend to be mundane and symptomatic of a world gone wrong. In other words I (like so many over the hill midlife crisis programmers) have come to see much of my work and most trends in computer science in general as a waste of time. It might be too late for me. I'm trying to put on a brave face and laugh about the whole thing, but I just don't know if my heart is in programming anymore. Imagine what you're doing right now, what you're most passionate about. Then imagine you wake up one day and it's like you had a stroke - you go to do the thing and feel a knot in your stomach, a realization that you'd rather be doing anything else at all. And the feeling lasts 6 months or more. That's what I'm facing now, even though I have so much inspiration to work on inventions and side projects. It's like the well has run dry, and I spend the entirety of my time now coping with daily life, trying to scrape up some money for living expenses, and letting other people's priorities take priority over my own. I wish there was an alternative economy, some other way of living more like Star Trek. Maybe I should have stayed in academia. I can't even imagine the life I might have had. It's a strange feeling to be able to solve any problem easily, except how to take care of oneself. But that's all I've known for some time now.