5 ms·

I retired, after 30-some years. Actually, I was forced to retire, by folks that don't think us greyheads should be working. Fortunately, I had the means to reti

I retired, after 30-some years. Actually, I was forced to retire, by folks that don't think us greyheads should be working. Fortunately, I had the means to retire. Those means had nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly, and stayed at a job for a couple of decades. But I have been doubling down on my tech work. Once the knuckleheads were removed from the soup, the flavor improved markedly. I love this tech stuff. Oh, and I have been using AI. It just helped me to find a nasty crashing problem, and I hope that it will help me to determine the best way to fix it.

pyrophane 5mo ago
Yeah, I've realized that the things I don't like in tech have everything to do with the culture and politics. When I've been able to work with a small team of people I really like and respect, I've generally been quite content.
- SlightlyLeftPad 5mo ago
  Any tips on finding this again? I had a great situation turn sour in exactly this way once growth and leadership change came.
  - skeeter2020 5mo ago
    nothing tactical from me, but I've fostered a strategic approach over the years that's lead to a deep appreciation for the real-time experience. You can probably recognize when it's good (and bad) once you've worked for a while, and you really need to consciously pause and remark "If this isn't nice, what is?"^1 at those times when it is good. A decade of consulting had me always ready to wrap my engagement at the end of any day, and (for better and worse) I carried this with me to future jobs. I always miss (at least some of) the people, but never the situation when it turns sour and I leave. The good news: you often get a chance to work with the good ones again (even if that's because you entice them away to your next gig). ^1 https://archive.org/details/ifthisisntnicewh0000vonn/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ifthisisntnicewh0000vonn/mode/2u...
  - simgt 5mo ago
    Same here, it has always been a state transition. There's always that snake showing up who forces everyone to watch their back and eventually disband. A tech coop seems like a good option, but it's almost exclusively web dev.
- hylaride 5mo ago
  I've rekindled by passion by working for a startup again. My previous employer (which I also joined as a startup) ended up in a situation where the head product manager became VP of engineering (it's a complicated story - don't ask). We also had a yes-man director of Eng and together they went all-in on very orthodox scrum, where they sat in the sprint planning/point meeting and overrode every decision of what to take off the backlog and enforcing "themes" of each sprint to ensure that only product work got done. It was very rare that any tech-debt work got dealt with, and security work was only done if it burned down CVEs or other "quantifiable" metrics that were contractually obligated. I ended up ok as there was eventually an exit, but the core experienced engineering team all left within 6 months. Now I'm not only allowed, but encouraged to take initiative and while of course I do product work, I can also take a step back before taking two steps forward again.
  - xp84 5mo ago
    Good for you. It’s so exhausting dealing with these people who are constantly chasing a fantasy that through some process, or through sheer force of will, we can achieve a system where all the feature work gets done super quickly and we never have to pause or slow down to handle engineering concerns because they simply don’t exist.
    - dreamcompiler 5mo ago
      The only thing worse is when they expect you to do all the above after they cut your budget in half. I'm so sick of hearing "Do more with less." "Yes we want you to build a faster-than-light spaceship. Your energy budget is this candle." Why do we give managerial control to insane people?
      - anonymars 5mo ago
        I think to paraphrase Plato's Republic, who else would want it?
      - xp84 5mo ago
        I think they get that control because they promise this nonsense to whoever hires them. Essentially, they're flim-flam men. They low-bid to get the contract and then try to make their underlings make good on the promises they made. I'd never be hired as a CTO because I'd probably tell them "Yeah, you can have 95% less bugs, just stop trying to ship 100 features a quarter. Maybe do half that. Or you can ship twice as many features as you do now, just put up with way more bugs and instability! Instant "Strong No Hire."
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
tasuki 5mo ago
> [...] nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly [...] Textbook FIRE strategy.
- Xirdus 5mo ago
  I'd say it's missing the FI part and the RE part of the FIRE strategy. Even if they did retire early with financial independence, it's never been their goal and they never actively worked toward it. The reason regular saving and regular humble living look a lot like FIRE saving and FIRE humble living is that an average person can only do so much to increase their net worth, so the possible variance between any two people is very limited.
  - jimbokun 5mo ago
    > Even if they did retire early with financial independence, it's never been their goal and they never actively worked toward it. He did work toward it by saving and living frugally.
    - Xirdus 5mo ago
      But not actively. At best, they passively worked toward it. They never consciously took any steps to ensure they have FI or can ever RE. It just happened to them while they were working on other goals.
- embedding-shape 5mo ago
  "Lived humbly" is vastly different from "reduce expenses and maximize savings" which FIRE is all about. I've basically always earned more than I could spend, although I thought nothing about saving money, does that mean I'm doing FIRE too, or just happened to be "living humbly"?
  - sph 5mo ago
    "reduce expenses and maximize savings" simply means spend less than you earn. Live below your means. We call that 'living humbly' in the modern world, when you're not buying the latest phone and watching the latest movie at $50 a pop.
aurareturn 5mo ago
The best position anyone can be in 2026 is having financial freedom so you can leverage AI to build whatever you want. The worst position is working in a company with non-technical and AI psychosis management.
- chrisweekly 5mo ago
  Figuring out what you want to build isn't necessarily easy.
  - aurareturn 5mo ago
    Absolutely. AI lets you prototype much faster and financial freedom gives you time.
  - coldtea 5mo ago
    Being unemployed and unemployable with depleting savings is even less easy however. So being financial independent even if undecided on what you want to build is still way better.
  - jimbokun 5mo ago
    Which is why you need the financial freedom to spend time figuring it out.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jebarker 5mo ago
    What does it even mean to say you want to build something but you don’t know what it is?
    - VectorLock 5mo ago
      Building is fun, but deciding what to build can be difficult. "Maker ennui."
- rootsudo 5mo ago
dlev_pika 5mo ago
> Those means had nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly, and stayed at a job for a couple of decades. Finally some real talk for common folk. Godspeed, friend
RobRivera 5mo ago
I will admit, when it came to brainstorming sources of crashes with threads, AI has helped me find sources I hadn't considered (as a systems guy, multi threading real experience is something I am sprinting through)
- ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
  Basically, my app is a memory hog. I went all-in on performance, and neglected frugality. Lots of caches, local copies, and pass-by-value. I suspect the best solution will be architectural, which promises to be a pain.
  - RobRivera 5mo ago
    Yea, one cant go all in on performance, and then not co soder architecture. A language choice is a starting point but you have to know the techniques of architecture learned.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
      It looks like it wasn't too painful. I just kept a couple of array references too long. The LLM gave me some threaded crap, and I now need to make sure to let go, before another thread grabs the PC. That's the issue with the new "memory is cheap" model. I cut my teeth with 256 BYTES (not KB or MB) of space for the program, the stack, and the scratch. But I've gotten sloppy, over the years.
gosub100 5mo ago
Fwiw we hired a "gray head" earlier this year and it was a huge mistake. guy has solid Linux knowledge but has absolutely zero motivation to get work done. If you don't constantly prod him on his progress he will just sit there and stare at the code. No longer am I going to be dazzled by someones 30 year tech resume.
junon 5mo ago
Man as a not (yet) greybeard, I wish we had more of them in the teams I've been on in the last ~10 years.

pyrophane 5mo ago

Yeah, I've realized that the things I don't like in tech have everything to do with the culture and politics. When I've been able to work with a small team of people I really like and respect, I've generally been quite content.

SlightlyLeftPad 5mo ago
Any tips on finding this again? I had a great situation turn sour in exactly this way once growth and leadership change came.
- skeeter2020 5mo ago
  nothing tactical from me, but I've fostered a strategic approach over the years that's lead to a deep appreciation for the real-time experience. You can probably recognize when it's good (and bad) once you've worked for a while, and you really need to consciously pause and remark "If this isn't nice, what is?"^1 at those times when it is good. A decade of consulting had me always ready to wrap my engagement at the end of any day, and (for better and worse) I carried this with me to future jobs. I always miss (at least some of) the people, but never the situation when it turns sour and I leave. The good news: you often get a chance to work with the good ones again (even if that's because you entice them away to your next gig). ^1 https://archive.org/details/ifthisisntnicewh0000vonn/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ifthisisntnicewh0000vonn/mode/2u...
- simgt 5mo ago
  Same here, it has always been a state transition. There's always that snake showing up who forces everyone to watch their back and eventually disband. A tech coop seems like a good option, but it's almost exclusively web dev.
hylaride 5mo ago
I've rekindled by passion by working for a startup again. My previous employer (which I also joined as a startup) ended up in a situation where the head product manager became VP of engineering (it's a complicated story - don't ask). We also had a yes-man director of Eng and together they went all-in on very orthodox scrum, where they sat in the sprint planning/point meeting and overrode every decision of what to take off the backlog and enforcing "themes" of each sprint to ensure that only product work got done. It was very rare that any tech-debt work got dealt with, and security work was only done if it burned down CVEs or other "quantifiable" metrics that were contractually obligated. I ended up ok as there was eventually an exit, but the core experienced engineering team all left within 6 months. Now I'm not only allowed, but encouraged to take initiative and while of course I do product work, I can also take a step back before taking two steps forward again.
- xp84 5mo ago
  Good for you. It’s so exhausting dealing with these people who are constantly chasing a fantasy that through some process, or through sheer force of will, we can achieve a system where all the feature work gets done super quickly and we never have to pause or slow down to handle engineering concerns because they simply don’t exist.
  - dreamcompiler 5mo ago
    The only thing worse is when they expect you to do all the above after they cut your budget in half. I'm so sick of hearing "Do more with less." "Yes we want you to build a faster-than-light spaceship. Your energy budget is this candle." Why do we give managerial control to insane people?
    - anonymars 5mo ago
      I think to paraphrase Plato's Republic, who else would want it?
    - xp84 5mo ago
      I think they get that control because they promise this nonsense to whoever hires them. Essentially, they're flim-flam men. They low-bid to get the contract and then try to make their underlings make good on the promises they made. I'd never be hired as a CTO because I'd probably tell them "Yeah, you can have 95% less bugs, just stop trying to ship 100 features a quarter. Maybe do half that. Or you can ship twice as many features as you do now, just put up with way more bugs and instability! Instant "Strong No Hire."
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

tasuki 5mo ago

> [...] nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly [...] Textbook FIRE strategy.

Xirdus 5mo ago
I'd say it's missing the FI part and the RE part of the FIRE strategy. Even if they did retire early with financial independence, it's never been their goal and they never actively worked toward it. The reason regular saving and regular humble living look a lot like FIRE saving and FIRE humble living is that an average person can only do so much to increase their net worth, so the possible variance between any two people is very limited.
- jimbokun 5mo ago
  > Even if they did retire early with financial independence, it's never been their goal and they never actively worked toward it. He did work toward it by saving and living frugally.
  - Xirdus 5mo ago
    But not actively. At best, they passively worked toward it. They never consciously took any steps to ensure they have FI or can ever RE. It just happened to them while they were working on other goals.
embedding-shape 5mo ago
"Lived humbly" is vastly different from "reduce expenses and maximize savings" which FIRE is all about. I've basically always earned more than I could spend, although I thought nothing about saving money, does that mean I'm doing FIRE too, or just happened to be "living humbly"?
- sph 5mo ago
  "reduce expenses and maximize savings" simply means spend less than you earn. Live below your means. We call that 'living humbly' in the modern world, when you're not buying the latest phone and watching the latest movie at $50 a pop.

aurareturn 5mo ago

The best position anyone can be in 2026 is having financial freedom so you can leverage AI to build whatever you want. The worst position is working in a company with non-technical and AI psychosis management.

chrisweekly 5mo ago
Figuring out what you want to build isn't necessarily easy.
- aurareturn 5mo ago
  Absolutely. AI lets you prototype much faster and financial freedom gives you time.
- coldtea 5mo ago
  Being unemployed and unemployable with depleting savings is even less easy however. So being financial independent even if undecided on what you want to build is still way better.
- jimbokun 5mo ago
  Which is why you need the financial freedom to spend time figuring it out.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- jebarker 5mo ago
  What does it even mean to say you want to build something but you don’t know what it is?
  - VectorLock 5mo ago
    Building is fun, but deciding what to build can be difficult. "Maker ennui."
rootsudo 5mo ago

dlev_pika 5mo ago

> Those means had nothing to do with a FIRE strategy. I just saved, lived humbly, and stayed at a job for a couple of decades. Finally some real talk for common folk. Godspeed, friend

RobRivera 5mo ago

I will admit, when it came to brainstorming sources of crashes with threads, AI has helped me find sources I hadn't considered (as a systems guy, multi threading real experience is something I am sprinting through)

ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
Basically, my app is a memory hog. I went all-in on performance, and neglected frugality. Lots of caches, local copies, and pass-by-value. I suspect the best solution will be architectural, which promises to be a pain.
- RobRivera 5mo ago
  Yea, one cant go all in on performance, and then not co soder architecture. A language choice is a starting point but you have to know the techniques of architecture learned.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
    It looks like it wasn't too painful. I just kept a couple of array references too long. The LLM gave me some threaded crap, and I now need to make sure to let go, before another thread grabs the PC. That's the issue with the new "memory is cheap" model. I cut my teeth with 256 BYTES (not KB or MB) of space for the program, the stack, and the scratch. But I've gotten sloppy, over the years.

gosub100 5mo ago

Fwiw we hired a "gray head" earlier this year and it was a huge mistake. guy has solid Linux knowledge but has absolutely zero motivation to get work done. If you don't constantly prod him on his progress he will just sit there and stare at the code. No longer am I going to be dazzled by someones 30 year tech resume.

junon 5mo ago

Man as a not (yet) greybeard, I wish we had more of them in the teams I've been on in the last ~10 years.