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Ask HN: In mid 40s. What non-tech job can I do?

• spicyusername 4y ago
  Public Schools are looking for STEM teachers.
  • plim8481 4y ago
    How would you break in to this without going through school again to get certified?
    • LarryMade2 4y ago
      If you have the knowledge they might hire you as a teachers assistant helping the teacher with curricula and teaching the subject.
    • dsr_ 4y ago
      In almost every school district, there is an emergency rule that says that a bachelor's degree in an appropriate field is enough. That said, unless you have a passion for teaching and an enormous tolerance for people making mistakes, I would avoid this.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • Jtsummers 4y ago
      Many school systems (in the US) will hire on a provisional basis, especially for STEM teachers because they are often so desperate for them. You usually get 1-3 years to complete some certifications and then move into the regular CLP style continuous learning after that.
    • laomai 4y ago
      Become a substitute teacher first. I've heard good STEM substitutes are hard to find. (and frequently rebooked) It'll also a low bar way to test out whether you enjoy teaching, and which age range you prefer to teach.
      • the_only_law 4y ago
        How does that pay though? I know OP mentioned they’re fine with a paycut, but I my understanding was subs tend to get a low per-diem pay that would probably end up much less than 1/3 of what they were getting in tech. Most subs I remember tended to be rather old and I imagine they were mostly supplementing other income.
        • germinalphrase 4y ago
          In the upper Midwest, somewhere between 100-200 per day is typical.
        • SoftTalker 4y ago
          Just be ready to get called at 5AM for work at 7AM at a school that could be an hour away, and then get treated like shit by the staff and the kids. You could not pay me enough to do that.
    • blowski 4y ago
      It's a huge amount of work, but I've met a couple of people who set up their own out of hours "school" and have been running it for years. That said, they lost money on it and even now it only breaks even in a good year, so it depends whether you're looking for a worthy occupation to fill your time, or something to do.
  • trashface 4y ago
    Possibly not great for men: "One of my sons works in early education. He can talk quite movingly about the stigma that you'll face as a man. People will question your motives. At worst, some people will suggest, either jokingly or not, that you might be motivated by pedophilia. "What is it about young kids that appeals to you?" is the kind of question you hear. There are some quite nasty stereotypes around men in those professions." https://www.upr.org/npr-news/npr-news/2022-11-04/men-are-struggling-a-new-book-explores-why-and-what-to-do-about-it https://www.upr.org/npr-news/npr-news/2022-11-04/men-are-str...
    • blowski 4y ago
      ...and repeating such stereotypes like this only serves to further them. Let's not spread such nonsense.
    • elvis70 4y ago
      I hope you are exaggerating
    • mlyle 4y ago
      Early education --- preschool and perhaps early elementary --- is admittedly a tough place for men. On the other hand, someone who's spent a lot of time honing technical skills probably belongs not teaching preschool & kindergarten but in upper elementary, middle school, or beyond. And I've found that a perfectly welcoming place as a middle school & high school teacher (and running after-school programs for upper elementary). A dirty little secret, too, is that men often have a much easier time with classroom management, etc, because of cultural biases.
    • nopenopenopeno 4y ago
      A close friend just moved across the country and back because what he thought would be his dream teaching job turned out to be laced with dramatic and patently insane identity politics as described. He is himself a socialist passionate about helping poor working class people, but his coworkers were snotty out-of-touch liberals with no conception of class divisions at all. They were intent on dividing society along gender lines.
• gsatic 4y ago
  Content moderator for large corp. They look for ppl with more life experience apparently.
  • dehrmann 4y ago
    You see some shit in these jobs. Horrific things you can't unsee.
  • humanistbot 4y ago
    If you're facing burnout, content moderation is the last job you want.
• PLenz 4y ago
  If you have a ability to not work for a few months I would look at the Volunteer in Parks program with National Park Service.
• ispo 4y ago
  Start a PhD.
  • ekhaliul 4y ago
    Did that.. and a postdoc. IMHO it's a waste of time and does not get you any closer to your goals. Exception could be when you end up on a project that could become a startup business idea, but that is not what OP is asking.
    • ispo 4y ago
      The OP will easily get a tenured job in any tech related branch after a PhD, while just going directly for teaching (as others advised) would result in long term socioeconomic downgrade.
      • hackyhacky 4y ago
        I have a feeling that you haven't worked in academia. There are no tenured jobs that are easy to get, for the simple reason that firing tenured faculty is intentionally difficult. Tenure-track positions at any reputable university, and even disreputable ones, are highly competitive are require a history of research, in addition to the PhD. Mostly fresh PhDs need to do at least one post-docs in order to be considered for tenure-track. In particular, the offer of a tenure-track position is contingent on the expectation of future research output, which is not consistent with the OP's goal of taking a few months off.
        • abeyer 4y ago
          Nor with the fact that OP is approaching retirement age... if you figure 10 years from beginning a PhD program to tenure (which certainly isn't a hard limit, but probably isn't an unreasonable basis to start from) then they might have only 10-15 working years left after 'getting there'. While hiring and tenure considerations would word it _very_ carefully to avoid the appearance of age discrimination, I suspect that would factor into any such decisions.
• hackyhacky 4y ago
  I took some time off to teach. Years later, I'm still doing it. I teach computer science and programming. This is a good field to go into, because (a) it applies my knowledge acquired from my earlier life as a developer, and (b) is always in demand. If you want to teach this, you will have no trouble getting a job at a high school, community college, or university. I would also argue it's not, strictly speaking, a technology job. Teaching is a people-oriented job, regardless of the subject.
  • hunter-gatherer 4y ago
    I seem to have a different definition of "tech work" than most people here. When I dream of taking a sabatical I think about being a baker or barrista for $10/hour.
    • guenthert 4y ago
      I inquired at a local bakery and was told that the bakers start their shift at midnight (!) so that the products can be sold by 4 or 5am. Mad respect for all bakers!
    • chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
      I actually did this, I was laid off a few months ago and went to work at a bakery part-time. The shift wasn't crazy early, I was working 6-9am 3 days a week... this was still too early for me, I ended up moving to helping close up and prep for the next day, so 1-3pm or so. Working at a place like this is totally doable, so many bakeries and cafes are desperate for workers that are more competent than high school kids. The work is busy and technical but much lower stress than resolving on-call incidents.
  • nunez 4y ago
    Much more emphasis required on the "people-oriented"ness of the job. My wife has taught at the high school and community college levels for almost 15 years. Given ten years of her stories and experience (that's how long we've been together; DAMN TIME FLIES!), this is what I have to add: 1. Spend time at /r/professors and /r/teachers in Reddit. Read their stories. Ask questions. Warning: those subs are overwhelmingly negative for a reason. 2. I wouldn't recommend teaching CS at the high school level unless you have complete (and I mean COMPLETE) control over your schedule and curriculum and REALLY REALLY REALLY love teaching growing children. Because most school districts don't offer the former since they teach to national standards, the latter is much more important here. 3. Regardless of the level that you teach at, you'll essentially be casting a huge net hoping to catch a handful of fish. Lots of people only go to school because they have to. They don't care about learning and will suck up a LOT of your time, energy and patience. The only teachers/instructors/professors that universally get lots of love from students are the ones that give easy A's, which given the way that education as a whole is going, might not be a bad idea, unfortunately. (Much more profit-driven, even at the comm college level.) This is less likely to happen if you teach upper-level courses, like CS2xx or 3xx courses. The students taking them are much more invested and want guidance. At community college, those students are almost-certainly trying to get into a four-year and want to improve their chances of a transfer. They'll be more receptive of your content, and you'll feel more fulfilled teaching it. 4. You probably won't be teaching CS2xx or 3xx levels. At many schools, there are three rank levels: adjunct, staff, and full-time. Adjuncts are basically 1099s (contractors for the non-US folks) that get paid peanuts with no hope for career progression. Unlike tech, staff is essentially adjunct++. they take the schedules full-time faculty don't want, work as hard if not harder than them, and get paid less to much less for all that trouble. full-time faculty is where you want to be. you make your own schedule, get all of the time off, and get paid the best (though it's still peanuts relative to tech). Academia is insanely gatekeeper-y about full-time faculty positions. Four-year colleges require Ph.Ds for those roles, no exceptions. Most large comm college networks do as well. Some smaller comm colleges are fine with just a Masters or Bachelors in a related course of study. As far as I understand it, colleges are often fine with hiring staff-level professors with industry experience alone, but you probably won't ever become full-time and will probably not have control over your schedule, courses, and students. Also, most colleges relegate the upper-level stuff to full-time faculty only. TL;DR: Do a LOT of research and ask lots of questions before becoming a teacher or instructor. Way more work than people think. Also, sub to /r/professor and /r/teachers on Reddit.
• jmclnx 4y ago
  As others said, teaching may be a viable option. But many teaching jobs require a Masters Degree even for grade school (which I think is nuts). But I know a few co-workers did well opening up a pizza shop :). That was many years ago. In anycase, owing a business will even eat more time than working in tech.
• dsr_ 4y ago
  Consider: * technical writing * QA * office manager (Put everything into a ticketing system with reminder alerts. Don't give anyone else access. Nearly everything an office manager does is a ticket with a deadline and a series of subtasks. The difference between an excellent office manager and a terrible one is their attention to detail. Outsource that to a computer.) * Logistics/shipping management. (Everything I said about office manager, but with more phone calls.)
  • drewcoo 4y ago
    If you want to get away from coding, either QA or tech writing will make you want to code again because you'll deal with other people's coding problems but have no ability to fix the problems.
• poulsbohemian 4y ago
  I've observed several people in my network leave tech and go into financial planning or real estate. I've also seen people go into teaching and/or into endeavors like small scale agriculture and custom furniture. Depends a lot on your personal skills, motivation, location, and savings.
  • markoman 4y ago
    I too have had dreams of leaving tech for those fields, esp. financial planning but they're both sales-oriented & have high wash-out factors. Going for CFP certification in financial planning could improve one's chances, but the training will take some time & isn't free. There's a lot of demand for good financial planners, but not sure about real estate sales now that interest rates are on the rise.
• toddm 4y ago
  Health and fitness. Get certified (about $500, NASM or ACE) and become a personal trainer/group fitness coach/similar. I haven't done this myself but it's at the top of my list when the time is right.
• LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  Become an entrepreneur. You can start your own business from scratch or look for local businesses for sale.
• quijoteuniv 4y ago
  Start looking in how you do things rather in what you do.
  • pcurve 4y ago
    would you mind elaborating?
    • quijoteuniv 4y ago
      You can change the circumstances in your life but often the same problems will follow to the “new” circumstances. If you look into why and how you are in the circumstance you are, you might not even need to change it. Mindfulness, meditation, anything to bring you to the present moment. Warning: you might find things you do not want to see and you might have ignore for long time.
• blowski 4y ago
  Personally, I found the problem isn't engineering. I do that for free in my spare time. It's dealing with corporate bullshit that grinds me down. As such, helping worthy causes with their technology problems can be hugely rewarding.
  • tda 4y ago
    What helped for me was switching from a 5000 employee company to a 50 employee one. I really loved my previous job, but just witnessing the politics made me want to quit, and I'm glad I did.
    • pcurve 4y ago
      Anything you miss about the 5000 employee company?
      • blowski 4y ago
        I've done a similar move, so for my part, I'd say that I miss the learning opportunities. Large companies usually have people with a deep knowledge in one particular skillset, whereas small companies are more likely to be made up of generalists. One person, for example, had worked for 2 decades only in securing IT processes for insurance companies. Another was a project manager with a real gift for spinning a positive story from what I saw as a disaster. I learned a lot, even from people who otherwise mostly frustrated me. That being said, I've filled that gap with meetups and deliberate networking. I have no regrets about making the trade-off.
      • curun1r 4y ago
        Not the person you’re responding to, but having worked both… The obvious thing is the perks. When I worked in an 8000 person company, I got to go to any tech conference I wanted, got to attend leadership training courses, had more $200/person meals than I’d ever had before in my life, they’d rent out large venues like the Academy of Sciences for company events and just a lot higher comp. At the 30-person company, there just wasn’t the budget for that stuff. Which isn’t to say that large corporate job is better…none of that stuff makes up for the soul-sucking parts of those big companies, but that doesn’t mean you don’t miss all that excess when you no longer have it.
• im_down_w_otp 4y ago
  Bicycle mechanic. At least that's what I'll probably do next whether my current startup is a wild success or colossal failure. Either way... bike mechanic. :-)
  • loeg 4y ago
    Expect way less than 1/3 pay, though.
    • solardev 4y ago
      Is it really that bad? Where I live, I earn about $50 an hour as a dev. The McDonald's here pays around $20/hr. Hopefully bike mechanics don't earn less than fast food...?
      • jhpaul 4y ago
        My perception is that very few specialized hourly jobs start above $20-25, and when I hear business owners talk they seem to feel that's robbery (it isn't). Without any research or context, I'd expect a first-time bike mechanic job to pay $18-22 depending on the city. The ski shops nearby are advertising ski tech jobs around $16 and calling it "better than competitive pay"
      • googlryas 4y ago
        Depends. If you are your own boss, with no store front or inventory, and have word of mouth advertising, and do quality work, it can be a good living. But if you work in someone else's retail bike shop you will be getting paid in the 20-25$/hr range if you're in a big city in the US.
    • im_down_w_otp 4y ago
      True. Though honestly I'd definitely end up taking my technical & entrepreneurial experience into it and doing something with it in that field. When I was a teenager, 25 years ago, I used to CNC my own bike parts and also worked as a local bike mechanic. I've only accumulated a lot more fabrication, software, and business experience since then. Though of course I'd vastly prefer this particular industry transition to happen on the tails of https://www.auxon.io https://www.auxon.io being wildly successful than not.
• ljf 4y ago
  There are so many non-technical jobs in tech companies, which are so much better in the hands of someone that understands technology. Consider the skills and knowledge you have, and see where else you can apply them. Often these roles are far less stressful
  • leethomas 4y ago
    > Often these roles are far less stressful What did you have in mind specifically? I can’t think of anything myself that doesn’t seem just as or more stressful and with less flexibility.
    • umeshunni 4y ago
      Technical Writing is an example.
    • ljf 4y ago
      Product Owner, Product Manager can be loads of fun and very creative at the right company - though both can be high stress in the wrong team/company. Project Management can be fun if you are organised, Programme Manager if you want it to be a more senior role Business Analyst can be great - and can get pretty senior. In some companies the step out of programming and into architecture can be a very different pace, but all companies will vary. In my current company it seems full on but at the last it seemed a great role. Strategy is really important and loads of people and companies do it poorly - great opportunities to do it well! Can be a lot of board papers and socialisation of ideas, but the pace will be very different, and while there can be some stress, will not be consistent. Obviously ymmv - find a good company that you like and things will be a lot easier. Important jobs don't have to be high stress.
      • c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
        I wouldn't recommend PO or PM roles if you're looking for low stress. That's not to say these roles aren't fulfilling or rewarding, but they come with stress. When things are going well, praise and recognition goes to the teams. When they aren't, you're the head on a spike. I'd agree that the stress of Product roles varies with company. Dealing with clueless, egotistical executives and HiPPos is never enjoyable.
• unpopularopp 4y ago
  OnlyFans, Etsy, Fiverr, start streaming on Twitch (if you can travel then IRL is basically a gold mine)
• nokeya 4y ago
  Carpenter
• ww520 4y ago
  Farming? Modern farming is more like project management, hiring management company, hiring operation company, corps planning, taking to banks, managing finance, managing subcontractors, sales, etc.
  • goostavos 4y ago
    I imagine the upstart costs are astronomical (especially when weighed against the low returns) here for anything other than personal garden level? Or is that perception wrong? Is it possible to start a new farming operation and be minimally viable / profitable?
    • solardev 4y ago
      Weed?
      • moistly 4y ago
        (Legal) Weed is not hugely profitable, as the over-hyped Canadian weed producers are learning. Consolidations and bankruptcies galore.
    • pragmatic 4y ago
      This. There's no way to break into "family" farming (500-2000 acres basef on location/crop/animals) "Low returns" lololol Farming is incredibly profitable (b/c good crop prices and the government makes sure it's very hard to go broke, although some people definitely try their hardest) so you will pay top dollar for land (purchase or rent). I kinda dreamed about taking over our family farm, but the rents my retired parents are getting makes it unlikely to be profitable. You really need to be farming 20,000 acres with the latest technology. A 500 acre farm is just not going to pencil out except as a hobby farm.
• mkmcde 4y ago
  Beekeeper
• baxtr 4y ago
  Consider finding your “Why” first. Then decide what to do. The method is really sound and you can do it within 2-3 hrs together with another person. There is a book outlining the method. It’s called “Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team“. I did it with 2 friends. It was pretty eye opening for them.
  • yucky 4y ago
    I would second this. Also known as the Golden Circle I believe, but it basically boils down to everyone knows what they do (make widgets), and many people know how they do it (through mastery of some tricky to operate widget making machine), but very few people know why they make those particular widgets. Hint: it's not money.
• keepquestioning 4y ago
  Dedicate yourself to learning finance and FIRE appropriately. Take up Options Trading.
  • throwaway5959 4y ago
    Haha those two sentences are the opposite of each other.
• rsync 4y ago
  I love being a UNIX sysadmin and there is nothing else I've ever wanted to do. However, if I were in your position and didn't want to do this work I think I would either get formally certified as an electrician and do electrical work or I would get certified as a paramedic (not merely EMT/EMR) and work as a firefighter. I think electrician is an easier route - especially if you are not very physically robust - but the firefighter route typically has a very good pension 20 years later.
  • SoftTalker 4y ago
    Apprentice electricians need to be in good shape. You'll be out on job sites, in buildings under construction, climbing ladders, pulling wire (long runs of wire are heavy, etc. possibly in cold or windy or rainy weather, etc. This is true of most trades, except maybe machinist. That is what I'd look into, personally. If you're a programmer, you can still continue that by learning CNC programming. I honestly don't know how easy it is to get into trade work in your 40s with no experience though. I think most people in those jobs start straight out of high school.
    • javajosh 4y ago
      I enjoy some machinist porn, especially youtube.com/mymechanics. That guy is amazing. I'd be curious to know how he got to where he is, because that gear and those skills didn't come to him overnight.
  • jrnichols 4y ago
    I'm a current Paramedic that is also fire certified, and was a unix system admin previously for quite a few years. I was a part time EMT while working as a sysadmin, then moved into EMS full time, became a paramedic, and finished fire academy as well. the pay in fire/ems is not always as high as people think it is, outside of some big cities. getting into a pension firefighter job after age 40 is extremely difficult. Some manage to do it, yes, but it's an uphill battle from the start. In some states where many of the fire jobs are civil service, you cannot even apply after age 36 and the law has upheld this. it's frustrating to say the least.
• pwh 4y ago
  Follow your hobby or curiosity, not other people's advice. You'll probably make less money, but is that the most important thing for you now? I started helping my wife baking as well as setting up business selling baked goods online and at the farmers market while zooming with my tech friends on the other side of the planet at night and helping them at the margin with their new startup. The baking business has been growing that demand is far surpassing our capacity. Right now having hard time hiring people to help in the kitchen. My knee is hurting because of standing and walking in the kitchen for at least 12 hrs non stop at least 5 days a week for the last few months. It's been highly therapeutic and very satisfying though.
• senko 4y ago
  Don't run away from tech. Run towards something you like. What that is, depends on you.
• mynameishere 4y ago
  Start a lawncare company.
• javajosh 4y ago
  Be a scrum master. That has got to be the easiest job on the planet.
  • guenthert 4y ago
    I don't know. Keeping a straight face during that theater takes some effort.
• pigtailgirl 4y ago
  -- know tech guy who now drives uber and LOVES it --
  • solardev 4y ago
    This is our future, driving cars for our robot overloads when they need to take a break for a firmware upgrade or whatever.
• ansy 4y ago
  Why leave tech? Just imagine what you want to change about your job and find an employer that fits that criteria.
  • slotrans 4y ago
    Employers lie. Every manager out there trying to hire tech employees -- unless they are literally at FAANG et al -- is struggling. All the good talent is being hoovered up by companies paying twice what you can pay. Your company makes something boring so candidates aren't excited. You really, really need someone on your team... so you sell it. You talk about fun tech you're thinking of using as if you were actually using it. You downplay the mountain of tech debt. You pretend your systems aren't constantly on fire. You do everything you can to Close. The. Hire. I don't know why anyone thinks this will work... maybe it does? Maybe the belief is that once you've got someone on board, and they've changed their insurance and set up their new 401k, and learned everyone's names, that they somehow won't notice that you lied to them? Or perhaps they'll tough it out for a year just to give it a fair shake, even though it's clearly not what they signed up for. I just don't know. But it happens. It happens ALL THE TIME. It would be great if we could find employers that are a good fit for what we, as technologists, want to spend our effort working on. But the employers are adversaries in that quest, not allies.
• michepriest 4y ago
  I started in finance and got into tech. Was a product manager. After my last lay off I decided not to go back to being employed. I’m creating info products (ebooks, online courses, digital products) and doing micro-coaching (unstuckin15.com). I love that I own my own time and can create whatever I’m inspired by. I highly recommend mixing with freelance work in the beginning until your projects cover your income. If you explore this, join Daniel Vassallo’s community. It’s full of solopreneurs. With your background there’s probably tons of products you can create.
  • fakedang 4y ago
    Looks like I'm following the same trajectory. Started off my "career" in finance (not even the quantitative kind), then set up a family office, converted it from a long-short shop to a quantitative one with the help of a very technically confident partner, and just "retired" last Friday. Career in quotes because I cofounded a startup in university which we sold off. Retired in quotes because I'm such a bad coder that the code base has evolved to a level that requires much more competency than I can contribute. I have always thought of becoming a Data Engineer, since it seems super interesting (and relatively slow paced). Also, it was so hard for us to recruit a competent one (we finally did though), but it seems all the DE job listings want people with 5+ years of experience - there just isn't room for companies to take on a junior data engineer apparently :(. Currently, I spend my time just building stuff to help real problems, something I've done in my spare time the past few years. For example, I just built a very small applet for my city's transport authority, and if the integration goes well, it might be used by around 300k travelers. It's wild, because three years back, I never would have thought that I would be able to have such outsized impact just by learning some front-end code.
    • michepriest 4y ago
      That sounds amazing! Congratulations Do you still want to be a data engineer? I wouldn’t let HR “requirements” stop me. There must be a way. 5+ year DEs once had 0 experience
      • 4y ago
• baremetal 4y ago
  I got into construction and organic high intensity farming. Life is great, low stress. And I don't have to take any guff.
• ilaksh 4y ago
  Maybe consider working for yourself instead of a regular job. Bootstrapping your own startup, or working for a startup. Especially if you are flexible about pay, you can find much more relaxed and less political projects.
• pram 4y ago
  Have you seen videos of people who clean concrete with a power washer? Looks very relaxing and therapeutic, so maybe get certified in applied surface cleaning imo
• netsharc 4y ago
  How about life/career coach? If you have any passion in the area of human psychology, obviously.
• Glench 4y ago
  Maybe you'd find the story of how I transitioned out of tech into psychotherapy interesting: http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/ http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/
• kgodey 4y ago
  If you're burned out now, you're not a good place to be making decisions about what you should do next. Since you've already planned to take at least a 6 month break, don't start thinking about what to do next for at least 3 months. You'll be able to consider what you want from your work with a clearer mind. If you've been working for 20 years nonstop, the idea of a break or not knowing what to do is probably utterly alien to you. Take some time to get comfortable with it. In case my personal experience helps: I worked for a startup for a few years and it was an awful experience, I was totally burned out. I did some interviews immediately after because "I need a job" and it was a terrible experience for both me and my interviewers because I was resentful of everything and everyone. I ended up taking a few months off and realized that I still enjoyed technology, just not the startup and agency environments I'd been in. My career ever since has been focused on non-profit open source projects and it's been great.
  • Beaver117 4y ago
    Have you sacrified pay to go into that field and how do you deal with that? You may still know people in the startup space, maybe some of them got quite wealthy while you are strolling along with your nonprofit (no offense, I just assume you wouldn't be paid as much). For me this issue is hard to deal with because I used to work at a FAANG, I burned out but don't think I could go back to tech at a tiny fraction of the compensation.
    • kgodey 4y ago
      I'm sure I could be making 2-3x what I'm making but my quality of life is at _least_ 10x better so it's worth it. More money is not worth the stress – quality of life is what matters. I also live in a low cost of living area (small town Ohio) but work remotely, so that helps.
• mancerayder 4y ago
  For all those who successfully transitioned: Did you already own your home? I live in a HCOL area, and rent. Time off or transition to hobby-job that pays less, even if I have a lot of savings, means risking my ability to find a new rental if I need to move. Landlords want to see cash flow or they suspect you. Also rents are going crazy in the US.
• lakomen 4y ago
  None, why do you think I'm doing it? Because it's so much fun sitting at a computer alone day in day out?
• bb88 4y ago
  One tech guy I know fizzled out and went to grow mushrooms.
• FlopV 4y ago
  Find an ecommerce company to work for. You'll ship much faster and have a huge impact.
• ankaAr 4y ago
  Get a forge, tools and iron. Forge swords, axes, knives. Why? A SWORD, made by you, using your muscles that maybe you don't know you have. It must to be fun. Or do gardening. Or as I talk with friends when I'm burned out: a fruit store with no more technology than paper and a pencil to do maths.
• TheAngryCanuck 4y ago
  My post tech dream job is working the returns desk at Costco. Oh you ran this suit case through a wood chipper? Cool. Here is your money back. Low stress and hopefully good benefits.
• plasticchris 4y ago
  I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season
  • widg3t 4y ago
    You're my hero, assuming you're not being facetious (I'm not).
    • plasticchris 4y ago
      It’s a quote from soul of a new machine that has haunted me for years.
• p0d 4y ago
  I started teaching in further education when I turned 50. I'm really enjoying working with people again as I see it. It has it's own challenges. In saying that, if I contacted a colleague in the evening or the weekend they would assume I was either sick or had to attend a funeral the next day ;-)
• tim333 4y ago
  There's always landlording. Buy a tatty place, do it up a bit, rent it out, remortgage, buy another. It tends to be fairly part time so you can spend time on other things too.
• amerkhalid 4y ago
  I have a friend who took time off around same age and became a commercial pilot. He enjoyed it but came back to dev eventually as he missed tech pay.