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I'm 42 and have stopped paying attention to titles and all the traditional organizational paradigms that are losing relevance. I feel like the ability to work

I'm 42 and have stopped paying attention to titles and all the traditional organizational paradigms that are losing relevance. I feel like the ability to work from home in my sweats on simple problems as a senior engineer and receive a 75th percentile income relative to my neighbors in one of the best neighborhoods in my new home state is the most societal progress I will ever experience in my lifetime. I'm a lifelong bachelor by choice. Why bother striving for anything career wise when I am on track to retire comfortably to focus on my mostly free hobbies no later than the age of 50? For a house with a 3rd bedroom I don't need? No, best to appreciate what I have and leave the striving for the next generation of engineers.

peakaboo 5y ago
I'm also just gathering money at this point, doing simple stuff at work with no stress. Highly recommended for a comfortable and enjoyable life unless your ego needs to compete with others to feel worthy.
bjornsing 5y ago
Sounds great, if you can retire at 50. In the EU you can’t (or at least not in Sweden where I am), so you have to think about how sustainable this approach is past 50… and to me it doesn’t really feel sustainable.
- askonomm 5y ago
  I feel like as a software engineer, in most of the western world, if you actually save money (and invest!), and don't make stupid financial decisions, you can probably retire by 50.
  - jspaetzel 5y ago
    If you've been doing it for most of your career, certainly. But a lot of people start their careers later or make dumb decisions with money for a chunk of the time, those things can totally push retirement well past 50.
    - askonomm 5y ago
      For sure! I was merely saying that it's not a unicorn, it _can_ actually be achieved with high probability and lots of effort, as opposed to being flat out impossible for the minimum wage workers, for example.
  - iso1210 5y ago
    If you're pulling a 6 figure salary then sure. If you've been earning on a typical career - say £25k/yr starting in your mid 20s, £35k-£45k through your 30s, perhaps getting upto £60k by the time you're into your 40s, you won't have saved enough to pull even £20k a year for a few decades. https://uk.indeed.com/company/Precision-Microdrives/jobs/Software-Engineer-01b57b2204ac4840?fccid=ac2e4d8cef116119&vjs=3 https://uk.indeed.com/company/Precision-Microdrives/jobs/Sof... https://uk.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=62dc4988a0e4f36b&fccid=0de01f2ba89cfd39&vjs=3 https://uk.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=62dc4988a0e4f36b&fccid=0de01...
    - nly 5y ago
      That second job (£70K senior) isn't bad. It's remote, so you could easily live somewhere dirt cheap and be better off than someone in London on £100K+ (the difference in take home pay is only £1450/mo, which could easily be the difference between a 2 bed at £2K/mo in London vs £550/mo in, say, Durham... also buying property outside London would be way more doable)
      - alexandargyurov 5y ago
        Imagine that (£70k senior), but instead of somewhere else in the UK, it's somewhere in Europe. In Munich, Germany (one of the priciest cities in Germany), the overall average rental price is €700 for a one-bed apartment[0]. Compared that to London, a one-bedroom apartment rent is going to cost you over £1000! €1178.48 euros![1] In Eastern Europe, you can have a very good quality of life for even cheaper. The only problem is the language barrier. I live in Sofia, Bulgaria, and pay €340 euros for a 2-bedroom flat in a pretty nice area of the city. A coffee costs around 2 лв (about €1), average pint around 3.80 лв (about €2). With a London software engineering salary, I save a drastic amount of money compared to London, and can usually afford to go to more restaurants, bars and outdoor activities (Love that I can ski just 20 mins away in the mountains!) I assume it would be similar for people who can work remotely for a San Francisco company but live in a different state? [0] https://www.expatrio.com/living-germany/costs-living-germany/costs-housing-germany https://www.expatrio.com/living-germany/costs-living-germany... [1] https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/housing-and-land/improving-private-rented-sector/london-rents-map https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/housing-and-land/improv...
  - xupybd 5y ago
    I think you underestimate the difference in pay across the western world.
  - nly 5y ago
    It's definitely not feasible for most Software Engineers in Europe without extreme sacrifice, and fairly low expectations wrt to standard of living in retirement. Retiring at 50 is extremely risky in terms of sequence risk[0], so you'd want a low withdrawal rate on your pot. You're also likely to want a higher income initially while you're still young enough to enjoy it. So let's say your target is €2M for a €60K/yr income until you die, after a 25 year career. That gives you a couple years of fucking around after college / some bad years / gaps. To achieve that over a 25 year, investing in to a smooth 7%/yr bull market, you're going to need to invest €2,500/mo. That's something along the lines of €50K/yr of gross income (assuming 40% tax). Most software engineers in Europe probably don't even make €50K/yr... and we haven't even taken in to account taxes on gains, raising kids, buying property, or just enjoying life throughout your career! [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sequence-risk.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sequence-risk.asp
    - robocat 5y ago
      Sequence risk matters the most in the first decade. So long as you have a backup plan where you can restart working, even at reduced rates, then you can protect yourself against sequence risk. Older and in an economic downturn means that finding work could be difficult, so one would probably need to keep the backup plan “warm”: for example continuing to do a day or two of consulting work or a non-technical role, preferably in an industry that is counter-cyclical.
    - rsanek 5y ago
      The bond tent [0] is an elegant option to deal with sequence risk. It does mean though that you'll need to save a bit more to offset the years your money is out-of-market and not making those 7% returns. [0] https://www.kitces.com/blog/managing-portfolio-size-effect-with-bond-tent-in-retirement-red-zone/ https://www.kitces.com/blog/managing-portfolio-size-effect-w...
    - franciscop 5y ago
      > So let's say your target is €2M for a €60K/yr income until you die > Most software engineers in Europe probably don't even make €50K/yr These two statements do not mix well together, if someone doesn't make 50k/yr it's unrealistic to expect to retire with 60k/year. Let's see more realistic numbers. You make 50k/yr, getting 35k after taxes. COL is around 25k, but that varies wildly; with a partner and each one's COL is lower, but with kids and it's higher. Of those 25k/yr, 15k are for rent. You save 830/month, which gives you 630k after 25y, or 25k/yr at a safe 4% withdrawal rate (gross, so not enough). But also let's say instead of paying rent you get a mortgage at that price, so when you own the place that is reduced drastically. Suddenly you find yourself with a COL of 12-15k/yr net, making 25k/yr gross from what you've saved previously. Sure it's tight, but these numbers are without extreme sacrifice that you mention. Get lucky and make 60-70k/yr, or find a cheaper place, or inherit something (a lot more common in EU that USA I'd think), and it now seems possible.
  - swix 5y ago
    Don't just live for the future. Life happens now, not at retirement. In my experience talking to people who has retired, many are bored and are struggling with purpose. Sure, there are certainly many exceptions. I just mean, don't forget to live right now, this is it, it happens now.
  - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
    And then the student loan payment hits. Graduated in 2004 (right after the dotcom crash) with $70K in debt, mostly private loans. I didn't get that usurious gorilla off my back until 2014. In hindsight I was dramatically underpaid the first 5 years, but still. I made that financial decision at 18. First in my family to graduate college. Nobody knew better to tell me not to do that. A lot of other people are in the same boat.
- trulyme 5y ago
  When you say "you can't", I assume you mean retire officially? I imagine that having a few million euros in the bank (or in different assets) would mean that work is optional.
  - jstx1 5y ago
    You don't just get a few million through work. Salaries aren't high enough to save that aggressively.
    - asdfman123 5y ago
      I make like $320k, my wife makes $70k. Our rent in the bay is $2800/mo and we spend about $4000/mo on other expenses. I just moved to the bay from the enterprise world, so my net worth is 400k. At this rate, assuming very conservative raises and 6% on all investments -- including already reserved stock units -- I'll be worth $2.2m in five years (age 40). $7.5m by 50. And that's just assuming I hit $400k-ish in the next few years and stay there for the rest of my life, and my wife gets no significant raises. If I get higher, which is entirely possible, I'll make even more. Or maybe at some point I'll try for a startup and go for the really big money. Maybe not. Of course, many of those assumptions could not work out. But the kind of exponential advantage of saving a large fraction of your paycheck eventually overcomes any disadvantages. Worst case scenario is tech goes bust and US stock market turns into Japan's in the 80s, but in that case I'll still be better off than most because I have a lot of savings and I'm not addicted to the paycheck. I think the plan will be to do this for a few more years and consult part time. Full retirement would be too boring.
      - spiderice 5y ago
        This is the most out of touch thing I’ve read on HN in a while. When did we start talking about whether couples bringing in $400k/year could retire at age 50. You are clearly an outlier, even when compared to software engineers in the states, let alone Europe.
        5y ago
- yellow_lead 5y ago
  I know it's a little off topic but why is this? Do you mean this is the case due to salaries or is there some other reason?
  - filleokus 5y ago
    Not OP, but salaries (esp post-tax) in Sweden are “low” compared to e.g the US. If you make 1M SEK/year (~100k USD) you are in the very very very top of IC’s in Sweden, and your salary post-tax is roughly 68k USD. Of course you can save a good chunk. Save roughly half, and still have the median post-tax salary. (And you can save in a less taxed private retirement scheme which can be drawn from at age 55, but at the same time there are implications of not working at the end of your career for the government sponsored pension)
    - franciscop 5y ago
      If you invest 50% of your take-home pay, you can roughly expect to retire in 16-17 years: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
  - bjornsing 5y ago
    It’s a double whammy: lower salaries and higher taxes. The whole society is really structured for people to keep working until 65 or so. E.g. taxes are really progressive, so saving in a high income year and living off that money in another year (with no taxable income) is super expensive. There are tax exceptions for retirement savings but you can’t access that money until 60 or so. Also, the state pays your base pension, but you can’t access that money until 63 or something.
asdfman123 5y ago
I feel bad for people who aren't saving and investing a decent chunk of their income as a dev. I think you can be a productive dev well into advanced age, but I think once you get to 40-ish the career becomes more like treading water until you retire. And if you're the kind of person who doesn't like meetings and wants to go back to being an IC, you might not have that option anymore because you can't take a paycut.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  I feel bad for people who believe that age beats talent.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    GP did not say this.
    - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
      I didn't reply to GP, did I?
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        My GP.
        MisterBastahrd 5y ago
        It's literally in the second line.
  - WJW 5y ago
    Age doesn't beat talent but experience can. Not only that, but you can be experienced and still have all the talent you had when you were young. There is a big tendency for young, talented devs to assume they are the smartest person and/or the best coder in the room because up until now they've always been (even in college), but at some point in their progression that stops being true. I'll even go so far as to suggest that if you are still the best coder in the room you should probably go out and find a better room.
notacoward 5y ago
That's sort of my attitude too, though I'm a bit older. I was able to retire, a bit earlier than most, a little over a year ago. The main reason I actually did was a lack of significant overlap between what I enjoy doing, what I felt needed doing, and what the company insisted engineers at my level should do. I wasn't willing to give up all enjoyment on one hand or my professional conscience on the other, so I gave up the reviews and paychecks. The prevailing attitudes in this industry make me not want to work in it. People who have never reached either that level or that longevity will surely say I should have stayed in, played by the rules better, and built up political capital so I could make more positive change some time in the future, but you know what? I had already paid those dues many times over, and I wasn't interested in paying them yet again. For all but a few, that promise of a rosy future is just bait that employers use to justify their BS in the present. I'm not that much of a sucker. Now I'm comfortable and my time is my own, and that's the only victory condition I care about.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

peakaboo 5y ago

I'm also just gathering money at this point, doing simple stuff at work with no stress. Highly recommended for a comfortable and enjoyable life unless your ego needs to compete with others to feel worthy.

bjornsing 5y ago

Sounds great, if you can retire at 50. In the EU you can’t (or at least not in Sweden where I am), so you have to think about how sustainable this approach is past 50… and to me it doesn’t really feel sustainable.

askonomm 5y ago
I feel like as a software engineer, in most of the western world, if you actually save money (and invest!), and don't make stupid financial decisions, you can probably retire by 50.
- jspaetzel 5y ago
  If you've been doing it for most of your career, certainly. But a lot of people start their careers later or make dumb decisions with money for a chunk of the time, those things can totally push retirement well past 50.
  - askonomm 5y ago
    For sure! I was merely saying that it's not a unicorn, it _can_ actually be achieved with high probability and lots of effort, as opposed to being flat out impossible for the minimum wage workers, for example.
- iso1210 5y ago
  If you're pulling a 6 figure salary then sure. If you've been earning on a typical career - say £25k/yr starting in your mid 20s, £35k-£45k through your 30s, perhaps getting upto £60k by the time you're into your 40s, you won't have saved enough to pull even £20k a year for a few decades. https://uk.indeed.com/company/Precision-Microdrives/jobs/Software-Engineer-01b57b2204ac4840?fccid=ac2e4d8cef116119&vjs=3 https://uk.indeed.com/company/Precision-Microdrives/jobs/Sof... https://uk.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=62dc4988a0e4f36b&fccid=0de01f2ba89cfd39&vjs=3 https://uk.indeed.com/rc/clk?jk=62dc4988a0e4f36b&fccid=0de01...
  - nly 5y ago
    That second job (£70K senior) isn't bad. It's remote, so you could easily live somewhere dirt cheap and be better off than someone in London on £100K+ (the difference in take home pay is only £1450/mo, which could easily be the difference between a 2 bed at £2K/mo in London vs £550/mo in, say, Durham... also buying property outside London would be way more doable)
    - alexandargyurov 5y ago
      Imagine that (£70k senior), but instead of somewhere else in the UK, it's somewhere in Europe. In Munich, Germany (one of the priciest cities in Germany), the overall average rental price is €700 for a one-bed apartment[0]. Compared that to London, a one-bedroom apartment rent is going to cost you over £1000! €1178.48 euros![1] In Eastern Europe, you can have a very good quality of life for even cheaper. The only problem is the language barrier. I live in Sofia, Bulgaria, and pay €340 euros for a 2-bedroom flat in a pretty nice area of the city. A coffee costs around 2 лв (about €1), average pint around 3.80 лв (about €2). With a London software engineering salary, I save a drastic amount of money compared to London, and can usually afford to go to more restaurants, bars and outdoor activities (Love that I can ski just 20 mins away in the mountains!) I assume it would be similar for people who can work remotely for a San Francisco company but live in a different state? [0] https://www.expatrio.com/living-germany/costs-living-germany/costs-housing-germany https://www.expatrio.com/living-germany/costs-living-germany... [1] https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/housing-and-land/improving-private-rented-sector/london-rents-map https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/housing-and-land/improv...
- xupybd 5y ago
  I think you underestimate the difference in pay across the western world.
- nly 5y ago
  It's definitely not feasible for most Software Engineers in Europe without extreme sacrifice, and fairly low expectations wrt to standard of living in retirement. Retiring at 50 is extremely risky in terms of sequence risk[0], so you'd want a low withdrawal rate on your pot. You're also likely to want a higher income initially while you're still young enough to enjoy it. So let's say your target is €2M for a €60K/yr income until you die, after a 25 year career. That gives you a couple years of fucking around after college / some bad years / gaps. To achieve that over a 25 year, investing in to a smooth 7%/yr bull market, you're going to need to invest €2,500/mo. That's something along the lines of €50K/yr of gross income (assuming 40% tax). Most software engineers in Europe probably don't even make €50K/yr... and we haven't even taken in to account taxes on gains, raising kids, buying property, or just enjoying life throughout your career! [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sequence-risk.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sequence-risk.asp
  - robocat 5y ago
    Sequence risk matters the most in the first decade. So long as you have a backup plan where you can restart working, even at reduced rates, then you can protect yourself against sequence risk. Older and in an economic downturn means that finding work could be difficult, so one would probably need to keep the backup plan “warm”: for example continuing to do a day or two of consulting work or a non-technical role, preferably in an industry that is counter-cyclical.
  - rsanek 5y ago
    The bond tent [0] is an elegant option to deal with sequence risk. It does mean though that you'll need to save a bit more to offset the years your money is out-of-market and not making those 7% returns. [0] https://www.kitces.com/blog/managing-portfolio-size-effect-with-bond-tent-in-retirement-red-zone/ https://www.kitces.com/blog/managing-portfolio-size-effect-w...
  - franciscop 5y ago
    > So let's say your target is €2M for a €60K/yr income until you die > Most software engineers in Europe probably don't even make €50K/yr These two statements do not mix well together, if someone doesn't make 50k/yr it's unrealistic to expect to retire with 60k/year. Let's see more realistic numbers. You make 50k/yr, getting 35k after taxes. COL is around 25k, but that varies wildly; with a partner and each one's COL is lower, but with kids and it's higher. Of those 25k/yr, 15k are for rent. You save 830/month, which gives you 630k after 25y, or 25k/yr at a safe 4% withdrawal rate (gross, so not enough). But also let's say instead of paying rent you get a mortgage at that price, so when you own the place that is reduced drastically. Suddenly you find yourself with a COL of 12-15k/yr net, making 25k/yr gross from what you've saved previously. Sure it's tight, but these numbers are without extreme sacrifice that you mention. Get lucky and make 60-70k/yr, or find a cheaper place, or inherit something (a lot more common in EU that USA I'd think), and it now seems possible.
- swix 5y ago
  Don't just live for the future. Life happens now, not at retirement. In my experience talking to people who has retired, many are bored and are struggling with purpose. Sure, there are certainly many exceptions. I just mean, don't forget to live right now, this is it, it happens now.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  And then the student loan payment hits. Graduated in 2004 (right after the dotcom crash) with $70K in debt, mostly private loans. I didn't get that usurious gorilla off my back until 2014. In hindsight I was dramatically underpaid the first 5 years, but still. I made that financial decision at 18. First in my family to graduate college. Nobody knew better to tell me not to do that. A lot of other people are in the same boat.
trulyme 5y ago
When you say "you can't", I assume you mean retire officially? I imagine that having a few million euros in the bank (or in different assets) would mean that work is optional.
- jstx1 5y ago
  You don't just get a few million through work. Salaries aren't high enough to save that aggressively.
  - asdfman123 5y ago
    I make like $320k, my wife makes $70k. Our rent in the bay is $2800/mo and we spend about $4000/mo on other expenses. I just moved to the bay from the enterprise world, so my net worth is 400k. At this rate, assuming very conservative raises and 6% on all investments -- including already reserved stock units -- I'll be worth $2.2m in five years (age 40). $7.5m by 50. And that's just assuming I hit $400k-ish in the next few years and stay there for the rest of my life, and my wife gets no significant raises. If I get higher, which is entirely possible, I'll make even more. Or maybe at some point I'll try for a startup and go for the really big money. Maybe not. Of course, many of those assumptions could not work out. But the kind of exponential advantage of saving a large fraction of your paycheck eventually overcomes any disadvantages. Worst case scenario is tech goes bust and US stock market turns into Japan's in the 80s, but in that case I'll still be better off than most because I have a lot of savings and I'm not addicted to the paycheck. I think the plan will be to do this for a few more years and consult part time. Full retirement would be too boring.
    - spiderice 5y ago
      This is the most out of touch thing I’ve read on HN in a while. When did we start talking about whether couples bringing in $400k/year could retire at age 50. You are clearly an outlier, even when compared to software engineers in the states, let alone Europe.
      - 5y ago
yellow_lead 5y ago
I know it's a little off topic but why is this? Do you mean this is the case due to salaries or is there some other reason?
- filleokus 5y ago
  Not OP, but salaries (esp post-tax) in Sweden are “low” compared to e.g the US. If you make 1M SEK/year (~100k USD) you are in the very very very top of IC’s in Sweden, and your salary post-tax is roughly 68k USD. Of course you can save a good chunk. Save roughly half, and still have the median post-tax salary. (And you can save in a less taxed private retirement scheme which can be drawn from at age 55, but at the same time there are implications of not working at the end of your career for the government sponsored pension)
  - franciscop 5y ago
    If you invest 50% of your take-home pay, you can roughly expect to retire in 16-17 years: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
- bjornsing 5y ago
  It’s a double whammy: lower salaries and higher taxes. The whole society is really structured for people to keep working until 65 or so. E.g. taxes are really progressive, so saving in a high income year and living off that money in another year (with no taxable income) is super expensive. There are tax exceptions for retirement savings but you can’t access that money until 60 or so. Also, the state pays your base pension, but you can’t access that money until 63 or something.

asdfman123 5y ago

I feel bad for people who aren't saving and investing a decent chunk of their income as a dev. I think you can be a productive dev well into advanced age, but I think once you get to 40-ish the career becomes more like treading water until you retire. And if you're the kind of person who doesn't like meetings and wants to go back to being an IC, you might not have that option anymore because you can't take a paycut.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
I feel bad for people who believe that age beats talent.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  GP did not say this.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    I didn't reply to GP, did I?
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      My GP.
      - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
        It's literally in the second line.
- WJW 5y ago
  Age doesn't beat talent but experience can. Not only that, but you can be experienced and still have all the talent you had when you were young. There is a big tendency for young, talented devs to assume they are the smartest person and/or the best coder in the room because up until now they've always been (even in college), but at some point in their progression that stops being true. I'll even go so far as to suggest that if you are still the best coder in the room you should probably go out and find a better room.

notacoward 5y ago

That's sort of my attitude too, though I'm a bit older. I was able to retire, a bit earlier than most, a little over a year ago. The main reason I actually did was a lack of significant overlap between what I enjoy doing, what I felt needed doing, and what the company insisted engineers at my level should do. I wasn't willing to give up all enjoyment on one hand or my professional conscience on the other, so I gave up the reviews and paychecks. The prevailing attitudes in this industry make me not want to work in it. People who have never reached either that level or that longevity will surely say I should have stayed in, played by the rules better, and built up political capital so I could make more positive change some time in the future, but you know what? I had already paid those dues many times over, and I wasn't interested in paying them yet again. For all but a few, that promise of a rosy future is just bait that employers use to justify their BS in the present. I'm not that much of a sucker. Now I'm comfortable and my time is my own, and that's the only victory condition I care about.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]