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I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one thing in common: they didn’t wan

by spaceman_2020 3y ago

I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few older people who really loved their work and were excellent at it. All of them had one thing in common: they didn’t want to retire. Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. All of us are also involved in pretty meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world (five lines of code to a million line codebase is hardly world changing).

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
Is it such a bad thing to dream of a life which values things outside of a workplace? To spend time with friends and family. The older generations cling to positions of power and refuse to make room for the newer generations, so it is upon them to find meaning and purpose through other avenues. Retiring seems important for allowing younger generations to take their place. But if all you have is your work and you've lived for nothing more then I guess it makes sense to cling onto it until the end.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  Its not a value judgement on my peer group for wanting out of the workplace. Its more of a value judgement on the meaningless of so much of modern work. All the people I mentioned above are involved in work that’s probably more gratifying than making giant corporations richer. One is a playwright, one is a professor, one is a top pulmonologist in the country. I don’t know what their day to day entails, but I can’t imagine it being as mind numbing as what I do.
  - JamesAdir 3y ago
    This. My friends' father is approaching 92. He worked in his auto repair shop until the age of 89. He was a pillar of the community, known everyone and their cars, and had generations of customer coming with cars to get them serviced. I don't think he became a rich man from this. He had a house, raised his family, and that's all. He just enjoyed fixing cars.
    - Given_47 3y ago
      Yea I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I think us fixating so much on monetary richness can b harmful to society and too little is made of general “wealth” (drawing some inspiration from pg’s how to make wealth). There’s a lot of folks that make more than ur buddy’s dad, but I’m sure a lot of them are miserable in their jobs. In standard jobs u spend the majority of ur non sleeping hours in ur job. Are you rlly more “rich” if u can splurge on a few things on occasion but everything else is a chore compared to someone with an adequate amount to get by but enjoys the work? Idk I find framing it this way and thinking about the dichotomy between short bursts of gratification and more subdued but consistent well being is interesting
- RangerScience 3y ago
  There’s a big difference between having a purpose in your life, something you love doing, that happens to be done at a work place; and being an employee. IMHO it is absolutely a good thing to dream of a life which values things outside of employment. We just happen to use the same word - “work” - for both kinds of situations.
  - RangerScience 3y ago
    Related - My friend group is a bunch of (predictably) nerds, and describing the times I want to keep working on an interesting tech problem for my employer as "wizarding" has been fairly successful. It's specifically a D&D reference, since what I'm usually doing is figuring out a new pattern ("spell") to add to my repertoire ("spellbook") that I can then use in many other situations. It's... difficult, to convey to people what it's like having a job you like doing, working for people that treat you with respect, when they've pretty much only ever had jobs they didn't like and working for people that treated them poorly.
    - Given_47 3y ago
      Yea it’s pretty disheartening that these r common experiences. Admittedly, I don’t kno a ton about UBI but I’d imagine the idea of giving people more security so they can pursue their interests in careers and not have to suffer thru a daily grind solely for a paycheck is a tenet of it
      - RangerScience 3y ago
        100% yes. I usually think of / describe that aspect of UBI (theoretically) as "the job all other jobs have to compete with." Like - there's a floor on how shitty a job can be, if no job is a valid alternative.
        Given_47 3y ago
        I like that framing, thanks. And thinking about that vision, I think people all too often conflate being a cog in a corporate machine with being “a contributing member of society.” Not discrediting the notion of everyone pulling their weight in a community, but the frequency that I encounter that take in the mainstream always irks me
- moonchrome 3y ago
  > Is it such a bad thing to dream of a life which values things outside of a workplace? To spend time with friends and family. Friends and family are great reprieve between working hours and obligations. I wouldn't want that to be the only thing going on. Stay at home moms and retired people around me are not the image of fulfilment. The few retired people I've met that were happy and engaging are the kind that didn't stop working past retirement.
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    It doesn't have to be work, but instead of word hobby I would use word passion. For me its various sports and activities mostly in the mountains and backpacking around the world. This keeps me sane and cca happy. My father worked an extra year so he could buy his lifelong dream - Harley Davidson. Few years later, he is still very much into it, found new friends and community he enjoys being part of, going out on various adventures. Hobby for me is something I like doing sometimes. Passion is something that defines at least part of me, think about it a lot in my free time, train for it etc. If you have proper passion(s), retirement means just more time for them. Like say rock climbing. The idea of having free time to finally travel around the world in slow pace, or climb rock whenever I want sounds like paradise.
- themitigating 3y ago
  If someone talks about how they love to work and don't want to retire it's not a judgement on any other choices.
lisper 3y ago
It's not work that sucks. It's having to work that sucks.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Bingo. People pay thousands of dollars for the mere option of buying or selling 100 shares of a stock a few years in the future at roughly the price it is now. I imagine there would be folks willing to pay a lot more for their future options, if such an options market existed.
rufus_foreman 3y ago
I think having choices is better than not having choices.
skepticATX 3y ago
Perhaps it is more about the structure of the corporate workplace and less about how meaningful the work is? I love writing code, I don't think I'll ever fully quit, but I also really want to retire early. The problem is that corporate America is riddled with politics and inefficiencies, and offers little to no long term security for all but the most senior employees. From what I've seen the people who never retire are in academia, medicine, own a business, or are just so accomplished that they effectively have corporate tenure.
gravypod 3y ago
> Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. I'm a SWE and I would love to FIRE one day but the goal of my retirement is very different from others. I want to buy some land with a house and a workshop, learn machining, chemistry, electrical engineering, etc and either contract for startups or start my own projects. Also, I'd like to bring some polish to the free software stack by rebuilding some foundational pieces of technology. It is very hard to have the energy to do a full day of work, come home, and do a full night of work. Unfortunately, the market is not set up in a way where creative people (who can transform various verticals) can get funded to do good work.
- egwor 3y ago
  I’ve been asking myself why I’m not already doing this now. Why not spend a bit of time on reading about it now?
  - Zircom 3y ago
    I don't know about you but I'm mentally exhausted at the end of most days once I'm off work. It's relatively uncommon for me to even have energy to invest in my normal hobbies, let alone self-improvement/ learning new skills.
    - computerdork 3y ago
      Agree with this. Am a software engineer and musician (composition). Exhausting to do both. But, have also found you can switch between them if you're a consultant. You work on medium-term length projects, build up a bank, quit, then focus on your other interest for a few months. Need to live frugally, but it is possible (have been doing this cycle for years).
      - herewulf 3y ago
        Very interesting! Any chance you have written more extensively about this somewhere? I am a consultant but it's hard to get my clients to leave me alone for more than a week.
armchairhacker 3y ago
I like some form of “work” but I like to work on my own terms. The more money I have up to a certain amount, the less I have to worry about taking a job I don’t want. I’m currently in academia, so I don’t make that much money but fortunately do make enough. And I get to work on stuff which isn’t quite what I’d like, but close enough; and the job isn’t very demanding and I have free time, so I can also do the kind of work that I want. I do want more stability though, better income means I can save money and academia is opaque and uncertain
losteric 3y ago
The older folks typically also benefited from getting into housing when it was less scarce, riding one or more waves of progress, at a time where healthcare ROI was much higher. My generation faces a different economic situation. I know people in academia that love what they do and dreamed of living a life like Rudy's. In practice, they're stuck - huge debts, dismally low post-grad wages, stuck renting, just hoping for a stable position (luck over merit). K-12 teachers, lifetime musicians, social services, even nurses in similar positions. Is meaning worth that kind of struggle? Not for me. I want to bake as a craft in an owned place of business, then go home to sleep in a bedroom I own. Big Tech is the means to that end. Wake up, Clock in, autopilot, clock out, live. Within ethical reason, I will take any boring meaningless job if it pays well enough. Locals complain about Big Tech killing the quirky unique culture my city used to have... and I agree! But what was the alternative? Pursuing the baking craft on debt and leases, paycheck to paycheck, barely treading water without any savings? That sounds like living a dream, getting sucked dry by parasites. There are public policies that could bring back the vibrancy, but no one wants density or lower property values (a prerequisite for housing the people that seed a vibrant culture)...
- lambdasquirrel 3y ago
  All the folks in my peer group who followed their left-leaning parents mantra of doing something interesting, something that you love, got absolutely screwed. As much as I hate big tech, I cannot blame anyone for pursuing it.
  - bombolo 3y ago
    being a hipster and being a socialist aren't the same.
    - rxhernandez 3y ago
      Kinda hard to be either without being left-leaning
      - flangola7 3y ago
atrettel 3y ago
I would think that the "obsession" your peer group has with retiring early comes more from the realization that they can retire early (they have the ability to if they want) more than anything else. Your observations of your peer group may have some selection bias present. Cast a wider net and you may come to the opposite conclusion. I agree that many people do not find much meaning in their work, but most people also do not make as much money as software engineers do. Most people cannot fathom retiring early. It simply is impossible. A lot of software engineers are going to realize that, hey, if I save up and invest money aggressively for roughly 10 to 15 years, I will have enough to live comfortably for the rest of my life without having to do work that I do not like. However, most professions do not make nearly enough money to achieve the goal of retiring early, so they really have no reason to discuss or even ponder early retirement. It's never gonna come up.
- varjag 3y ago
  Aye, this whole concept is a zero sum game hedging on you earning substantially more than median. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to live off your saved amount as the services rendered by other people would price you out. The returns on investments would have been very modest too with people extracting more value for their work.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  True, but the people I’m talking about are at the top of their fields and can afford to retire anytime. You find this pretty much everywhere with high accomplished people - they don’t want to quit, even when they can afford to. Skilled doctors who keep working, professors who keep teaching, artists who never stop creating - well into their 70s and 80s.
- JSavageOne 3y ago
  I think it's less about ability to retire early, more about realization that being forced to sell one's life and freedom to an employer is not only miserable, but completely unnecessary for society to function (eg. with a UBI society would carry on just fine, and likely accelerate automation). The older generation didn't grow up with technology so perhaps it's not as obvious to them.
gumby 3y ago
I retired at 30 and it didn't stick. The real difference is that I only think about working on things I am interested in working on.
r3trohack3r 3y ago
Retirement !== never working. Personally, I’m pursuing FIRE for the freedom to choose my work regardless of how much (or even if) it pays. Decoupling my work from market incentives. I don’t consider retirement to be sitting around doing nothing. It’s waking up and choosing my own path. It’s freedom.
markus_zhang 3y ago
Most people don't contribute much to the real progress of human societies so it makes sense to FIRE so that they can at least recollect themselves and regain some passion for whatever. I for one is at my 40s but I definitely feel older than the 100yr old in the article. I lost all of my passions of the tech in the previous 2 years and just want out when I have the $$$.
Aperocky 3y ago
> meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world If it generated a stable income for you and the company then it has a measurable impact on the world. The world consists of people, people with higher income contribute to higher prosperity and in turn more resources for what looks like world impact works.
JSavageOne 3y ago
FIRE is about financial independence, aka freedom to work on whatever you want. It'd be nonsensical not to strive for financial independence. I'm not FIRE but took most of the last year to work on projects that I enjoy. There's absolutely no comparison to working for oneself vs. working for a boss for a paycheck. The former has me loving life and my work, the latter will have my questioning my career choice and the system we live in. Probably in 10 years we'll have something resembling a UBI in most major western countries, so finally everyone will have the freedom to work on what they enjoy instead of selling their soul for a paycheck.

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago

Is it such a bad thing to dream of a life which values things outside of a workplace? To spend time with friends and family. The older generations cling to positions of power and refuse to make room for the newer generations, so it is upon them to find meaning and purpose through other avenues. Retiring seems important for allowing younger generations to take their place. But if all you have is your work and you've lived for nothing more then I guess it makes sense to cling onto it until the end.

spaceman_2020 3y ago
Its not a value judgement on my peer group for wanting out of the workplace. Its more of a value judgement on the meaningless of so much of modern work. All the people I mentioned above are involved in work that’s probably more gratifying than making giant corporations richer. One is a playwright, one is a professor, one is a top pulmonologist in the country. I don’t know what their day to day entails, but I can’t imagine it being as mind numbing as what I do.
- JamesAdir 3y ago
  This. My friends' father is approaching 92. He worked in his auto repair shop until the age of 89. He was a pillar of the community, known everyone and their cars, and had generations of customer coming with cars to get them serviced. I don't think he became a rich man from this. He had a house, raised his family, and that's all. He just enjoyed fixing cars.
  - Given_47 3y ago
    Yea I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I think us fixating so much on monetary richness can b harmful to society and too little is made of general “wealth” (drawing some inspiration from pg’s how to make wealth). There’s a lot of folks that make more than ur buddy’s dad, but I’m sure a lot of them are miserable in their jobs. In standard jobs u spend the majority of ur non sleeping hours in ur job. Are you rlly more “rich” if u can splurge on a few things on occasion but everything else is a chore compared to someone with an adequate amount to get by but enjoys the work? Idk I find framing it this way and thinking about the dichotomy between short bursts of gratification and more subdued but consistent well being is interesting
RangerScience 3y ago
There’s a big difference between having a purpose in your life, something you love doing, that happens to be done at a work place; and being an employee. IMHO it is absolutely a good thing to dream of a life which values things outside of employment. We just happen to use the same word - “work” - for both kinds of situations.
- RangerScience 3y ago
  Related - My friend group is a bunch of (predictably) nerds, and describing the times I want to keep working on an interesting tech problem for my employer as "wizarding" has been fairly successful. It's specifically a D&D reference, since what I'm usually doing is figuring out a new pattern ("spell") to add to my repertoire ("spellbook") that I can then use in many other situations. It's... difficult, to convey to people what it's like having a job you like doing, working for people that treat you with respect, when they've pretty much only ever had jobs they didn't like and working for people that treated them poorly.
  - Given_47 3y ago
    Yea it’s pretty disheartening that these r common experiences. Admittedly, I don’t kno a ton about UBI but I’d imagine the idea of giving people more security so they can pursue their interests in careers and not have to suffer thru a daily grind solely for a paycheck is a tenet of it
    - RangerScience 3y ago
      100% yes. I usually think of / describe that aspect of UBI (theoretically) as "the job all other jobs have to compete with." Like - there's a floor on how shitty a job can be, if no job is a valid alternative.
      - Given_47 3y ago
        I like that framing, thanks. And thinking about that vision, I think people all too often conflate being a cog in a corporate machine with being “a contributing member of society.” Not discrediting the notion of everyone pulling their weight in a community, but the frequency that I encounter that take in the mainstream always irks me
moonchrome 3y ago
> Is it such a bad thing to dream of a life which values things outside of a workplace? To spend time with friends and family. Friends and family are great reprieve between working hours and obligations. I wouldn't want that to be the only thing going on. Stay at home moms and retired people around me are not the image of fulfilment. The few retired people I've met that were happy and engaging are the kind that didn't stop working past retirement.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  It doesn't have to be work, but instead of word hobby I would use word passion. For me its various sports and activities mostly in the mountains and backpacking around the world. This keeps me sane and cca happy. My father worked an extra year so he could buy his lifelong dream - Harley Davidson. Few years later, he is still very much into it, found new friends and community he enjoys being part of, going out on various adventures. Hobby for me is something I like doing sometimes. Passion is something that defines at least part of me, think about it a lot in my free time, train for it etc. If you have proper passion(s), retirement means just more time for them. Like say rock climbing. The idea of having free time to finally travel around the world in slow pace, or climb rock whenever I want sounds like paradise.
themitigating 3y ago
If someone talks about how they love to work and don't want to retire it's not a judgement on any other choices.

lisper 3y ago

It's not work that sucks. It's having to work that sucks.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MichaelZuo 3y ago
Bingo. People pay thousands of dollars for the mere option of buying or selling 100 shares of a stock a few years in the future at roughly the price it is now. I imagine there would be folks willing to pay a lot more for their future options, if such an options market existed.

rufus_foreman 3y ago

I think having choices is better than not having choices.

skepticATX 3y ago

Perhaps it is more about the structure of the corporate workplace and less about how meaningful the work is? I love writing code, I don't think I'll ever fully quit, but I also really want to retire early. The problem is that corporate America is riddled with politics and inefficiencies, and offers little to no long term security for all but the most senior employees. From what I've seen the people who never retire are in academia, medicine, own a business, or are just so accomplished that they effectively have corporate tenure.

gravypod 3y ago

> Meanwhile all of my peer group is obsessed with FIRE and dream of retiring early. I'm a SWE and I would love to FIRE one day but the goal of my retirement is very different from others. I want to buy some land with a house and a workshop, learn machining, chemistry, electrical engineering, etc and either contract for startups or start my own projects. Also, I'd like to bring some polish to the free software stack by rebuilding some foundational pieces of technology. It is very hard to have the energy to do a full day of work, come home, and do a full night of work. Unfortunately, the market is not set up in a way where creative people (who can transform various verticals) can get funded to do good work.

egwor 3y ago
I’ve been asking myself why I’m not already doing this now. Why not spend a bit of time on reading about it now?
- Zircom 3y ago
  I don't know about you but I'm mentally exhausted at the end of most days once I'm off work. It's relatively uncommon for me to even have energy to invest in my normal hobbies, let alone self-improvement/ learning new skills.
  - computerdork 3y ago
    Agree with this. Am a software engineer and musician (composition). Exhausting to do both. But, have also found you can switch between them if you're a consultant. You work on medium-term length projects, build up a bank, quit, then focus on your other interest for a few months. Need to live frugally, but it is possible (have been doing this cycle for years).
    - herewulf 3y ago
      Very interesting! Any chance you have written more extensively about this somewhere? I am a consultant but it's hard to get my clients to leave me alone for more than a week.

armchairhacker 3y ago

I like some form of “work” but I like to work on my own terms. The more money I have up to a certain amount, the less I have to worry about taking a job I don’t want. I’m currently in academia, so I don’t make that much money but fortunately do make enough. And I get to work on stuff which isn’t quite what I’d like, but close enough; and the job isn’t very demanding and I have free time, so I can also do the kind of work that I want. I do want more stability though, better income means I can save money and academia is opaque and uncertain

losteric 3y ago

The older folks typically also benefited from getting into housing when it was less scarce, riding one or more waves of progress, at a time where healthcare ROI was much higher. My generation faces a different economic situation. I know people in academia that love what they do and dreamed of living a life like Rudy's. In practice, they're stuck - huge debts, dismally low post-grad wages, stuck renting, just hoping for a stable position (luck over merit). K-12 teachers, lifetime musicians, social services, even nurses in similar positions. Is meaning worth that kind of struggle? Not for me. I want to bake as a craft in an owned place of business, then go home to sleep in a bedroom I own. Big Tech is the means to that end. Wake up, Clock in, autopilot, clock out, live. Within ethical reason, I will take any boring meaningless job if it pays well enough. Locals complain about Big Tech killing the quirky unique culture my city used to have... and I agree! But what was the alternative? Pursuing the baking craft on debt and leases, paycheck to paycheck, barely treading water without any savings? That sounds like living a dream, getting sucked dry by parasites. There are public policies that could bring back the vibrancy, but no one wants density or lower property values (a prerequisite for housing the people that seed a vibrant culture)...

lambdasquirrel 3y ago
All the folks in my peer group who followed their left-leaning parents mantra of doing something interesting, something that you love, got absolutely screwed. As much as I hate big tech, I cannot blame anyone for pursuing it.
- bombolo 3y ago
  being a hipster and being a socialist aren't the same.
  - rxhernandez 3y ago
    Kinda hard to be either without being left-leaning
    - flangola7 3y ago

atrettel 3y ago

I would think that the "obsession" your peer group has with retiring early comes more from the realization that they can retire early (they have the ability to if they want) more than anything else. Your observations of your peer group may have some selection bias present. Cast a wider net and you may come to the opposite conclusion. I agree that many people do not find much meaning in their work, but most people also do not make as much money as software engineers do. Most people cannot fathom retiring early. It simply is impossible. A lot of software engineers are going to realize that, hey, if I save up and invest money aggressively for roughly 10 to 15 years, I will have enough to live comfortably for the rest of my life without having to do work that I do not like. However, most professions do not make nearly enough money to achieve the goal of retiring early, so they really have no reason to discuss or even ponder early retirement. It's never gonna come up.

varjag 3y ago
Aye, this whole concept is a zero sum game hedging on you earning substantially more than median. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to live off your saved amount as the services rendered by other people would price you out. The returns on investments would have been very modest too with people extracting more value for their work.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
True, but the people I’m talking about are at the top of their fields and can afford to retire anytime. You find this pretty much everywhere with high accomplished people - they don’t want to quit, even when they can afford to. Skilled doctors who keep working, professors who keep teaching, artists who never stop creating - well into their 70s and 80s.
JSavageOne 3y ago
I think it's less about ability to retire early, more about realization that being forced to sell one's life and freedom to an employer is not only miserable, but completely unnecessary for society to function (eg. with a UBI society would carry on just fine, and likely accelerate automation). The older generation didn't grow up with technology so perhaps it's not as obvious to them.

gumby 3y ago

I retired at 30 and it didn't stick. The real difference is that I only think about working on things I am interested in working on.

r3trohack3r 3y ago

Retirement !== never working. Personally, I’m pursuing FIRE for the freedom to choose my work regardless of how much (or even if) it pays. Decoupling my work from market incentives. I don’t consider retirement to be sitting around doing nothing. It’s waking up and choosing my own path. It’s freedom.

markus_zhang 3y ago

Most people don't contribute much to the real progress of human societies so it makes sense to FIRE so that they can at least recollect themselves and regain some passion for whatever. I for one is at my 40s but I definitely feel older than the 100yr old in the article. I lost all of my passions of the tech in the previous 2 years and just want out when I have the $$$.

Aperocky 3y ago

> meaningless work that has no measurable impact on the world If it generated a stable income for you and the company then it has a measurable impact on the world. The world consists of people, people with higher income contribute to higher prosperity and in turn more resources for what looks like world impact works.

JSavageOne 3y ago

FIRE is about financial independence, aka freedom to work on whatever you want. It'd be nonsensical not to strive for financial independence. I'm not FIRE but took most of the last year to work on projects that I enjoy. There's absolutely no comparison to working for oneself vs. working for a boss for a paycheck. The former has me loving life and my work, the latter will have my questioning my career choice and the system we live in. Probably in 10 years we'll have something resembling a UBI in most major western countries, so finally everyone will have the freedom to work on what they enjoy instead of selling their soul for a paycheck.