
Ask HN: What are your long-term goals? - regular_dev
Do you have a career related or other long-term goal? How do you work towards achieving it?
======
contingencies
My philosophy is "find interesting work that contributes something to society
and makes money without screwing over other people or the environment". Thus,
in a small way, leave the world a better place.

Other than that, develop my current venture to a successful exit and watch my
kids grow up.

I do have some more out there, what if, pie in the sky type long term ideas...

Sail with my family around the Caribbean for a couple of seasons (too much of
Sid Meier's _Pirates!_?).

Finish editing and publish my social/anthropological documentary on a weird
community I used to be part of.

Publish my photographs.

Open a museum to Ecstasy in the place of its original synthesis, Darmstadt.

Open a museum for the Australian ACMS historical computer collection.

Digitize and classify my antique postcard collection (20,000+) and allow
others to upload.

Spend a few decades in one place gardening and enjoying the results.

Make more art.

Help others, especially smart and motivated young people, to achieve their
goals. Might like to do something accelerator/VC/mentorship related here. Or
maybe take a leaf out of Alan Kay's book and focus on education for awhile.

Might be fun to re-read this in 10 years ;)

~~~
regular_dev
A lot of awesome ideas! Good luck! BTW I was thinking about a museum myself -
antique cars, but that's just a thought. Anyway thumbs up and thanks for
sharing.

------
agentultra
Something I've become passionate about in the last couple of years is
reliability in software and professionalism in software development.

I feel like we're at an inflection point where the cost of developing formal
specifications is coming down enough for more teams to be using them in their
practice. I'd like to continue that trend to allow more developers to use pure
maths to solve their problems and use computers to verify (and maybe
synthesize) their work.

I don't know what five years from now will look like but I'd like to either be
working on or finishing a maths degree or starting a company to work on
developing tools to work with formal specifications and proof automation and
consulting with teams to help them write specifications for their critical
components.

> How do you work towards achieving it?

I spend my free time working on problems in predicate calculus and writing
specifications in TLA+ or Lean. I look for opportunities in my day-to-day work
that would benefit from those skills. When it is time to think about my next
position I will look for jobs that will help me get to that next level. Right
now that means looking for opportunities to work on projects where reliability
is highly desired and complexity is also quite high.

When I conduct 1-on-1's with my team I try to get people to think about their
career. I like to encourage people to think strategically about their future.
What do you want to be doing, in an ideal world, 2-3 years from now? What can
we do now to set you up to be ready for that opportunity when it comes up?

~~~
hasana
This is something I think about from time to time as well, I haven't been able
to see how to actually implement this in a real project. When I studied
Computer Science, I had a particular interest in formal design, (studied
Eiffel breifly) but haven't seen that aspect of it translate into my work. I
work in enterprise web application development, and the way projects are
estimated, resourced and budgeted (in my experience) doesn't seem to offer any
opportunities to try this. (Or I just haven't been smart enough to make a
plan). How would you go about creating a formal specification, to build
something like a Facebook Messenger bot for an e-commerce store? Or something
simpler like a Angular driven warehouse catalog application?

~~~
Jtsummers
If you're new to it, focus on formally specifying parts and not the whole
system. These sorts of specifications can become very complex very quickly.
And if you're modeling them, the time to execute a model could take an
inordinate amount of time.

For your two examples, rather than modeling how you communicate with Facebook
for the bot, focus on how the bot gets data to and from your e-commerce store
and how they stay synchronized or consistent. Your communication with
Facebook's services may not even make it into your model. For the angular
driven warehouse catalog application, same thing. You don't need to model
angular and the UI. You need to model how the data gets to and from the UI and
stays consistent with the warehouse catalog.

~~~
agentultra
> If you're new to it, focus on formally specifying parts and not the whole
> system.

This.

Many detractors of formal methods will claim that software to too complex to
specify formally and so it's no use.

I believe they are right. Software is quite complex. And that's why you should
use tools to help you manage it. When you start building an event-sourced
system architecture for your e-commerce system that scales up automatically
and never goes offline during a deploy or single component failure... how will
you know your design is correct? How will you measure your success?

(Yes, TDD encourages a sort-of informal "specification by example" and
integration tests catch a lot of errors... but the kinds of things formal
specifications have been proven to catch cannot be imagined by a mere
mortal... despite the illusions of power programming has given us it is
helpful to remember that illusions have no real power. You can write a
specification to verify your design is free from race conditions given some
context but you cannot anticipate all of the state-transitions that can lead
to a race condition if all you're thinking about is the code)

This is why I think formal methods are useful and why you don't need to
specify the whole system. Nobody is going to care if you have a formal proof
that you can copy a file. What is going to be interesting is if you have a
high-assurance specification that you can check which demonstrates that given
any number of clients and command-dispatching processes eventually an order
will be completed and no event will be recorded twice, out of order, or
dropped (given that there are at least N dispatcher processes running and
what-have-you). It is quite impressive if you can write a proof that if you
write your program to maintain certain invariant properties then you do not
need to have a lock in your program.

You can't prove those things with a bunch of boxes and lines.

My advice is to start small and try to work on a specification of a particular
component or protocol that matters the most. I like to think about it in terms
of risk. I'll ask myself questions like: _what is the worst thing that could
happen if we get this part wrong?_ or _what part of this system do we have to
absolutely ensure is right for the project to succeed?_

If the answer the first question is not, "maybe someone will be annoyed or the
business will find it annoying" then I increment the risk counter in the back
of my mind. If the imaginary actuary assessing my project says that the cost
of insuring the project against its risk is out-pacing what I can make from
completing the project or potentially bringing harm to the business (or
people) then I'll take a step back and consider ways to de-risk the project.
There are many levers I can pull and I'm glad I have formal methods as I think
that the cost of doing that work pays off in spades. Combined with other
techniques and tools at our disposal it is much cheaper today to write highly
reliable software than it has ever been.

------
Radim
By the illustrious Prof. Jordan Peterson:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vAat1HQU0M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vAat1HQU0M)

Some brilliant advice there on breaking down long-term, often vague plans
("save the planet") to practical, actionable steps and expectations ("clean up
your room").

~~~
ak39
I see your Mr Peterson (whom I love), and I raise you with the inimitable and
sporadically brilliant Slavoj Zizek - whom I fucking hate so much that I love
too.

Happiness is an unethical "cut-ay-gory":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U88jj6PSD7w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U88jj6PSD7w)

(For those you aren't aware of his tick, don't watch, just listen)

------
kostarelo
TL;DR: I don't have long-term goals. I am setting short-term goals (at most a
decade) and then re-evaluate my life purposes and begin again.

I don't really have goals longer that one decade from now. I don't really know
what I want to have by the age of 80(im currently 29) so I am not
concentrating there. I do know a few things I would like though and those are
money and to still be working with interesting things that I love doing
(programming, business running, hobbies, family, friends). So what I do is I
set short-term goals that are making me work towards those life purposes. I am
aware though that these purposes may change so I wouldn't like to work for two
decades on making money and then suddenly realize that money was not what I
really wanted.

So I set a goal 10 years ago and was stating that I wanted by the age of 30 to
be a highly-paid (to fulfil my need for money) software engineer (to fulfill
my need to do something that I love doing). I am very happy with my progress
so far and I am still waiting for the time that I would make piece with myself
and sit down to set the next goal which will also be short-term, something
like "build a buisness by the age of 35 and marry your girl".

~~~
Simon_says
> I don't really know what I want to have by the age of 80

I do know what I want to have: my health. Health is kind of relative at that
age, but I'm working now to be the healthiest 80 year old I can be.

~~~
kostarelo
Alright, so this kind of values I am constantly trying to have regardless of
the current goal I am in. Wealth, health, education, etc are on my schedule
every day.

------
hliyan
Develop a framework for teaching people (and children) critical thinking,
mental discipline and emotional control. The first part is relatively easy,
the second, harder and the third, the hardest. How am I going to do that?
First, I suppose I need to get to a point in my career and personal life where
my finances are good enough that I don't have to decide where I spend my
effort based on the income it'll bring me.

~~~
codepie
>First, I suppose I need to get to a point in my career and personal life
where my finances are good enough that I don't have to decide where I spend my
effort based on the income it'll bring me.

This. Waiting for the right moment to start working on your long term plan is,
according to me, not a good idea. Instead of taking a giant step after some
point of time, consider taking small steps on a regular basis.

I really like your idea, would you like to discuss how are you planning to
approach this problem?

~~~
hliyan
Well, recently I find myself approaching every problem of psychology with the
starting point: "The human brain is a neural network, therefore..."

I'd like to somehow develop some new techniques based on this (as opposed to
all the prevalent ones you find in self-help books). Right now I can't afford
the time, but I should be able to make some headway next year. _fingers
crossed_

------
121watts
It has been my experience that if I I focus on emotional well-being,
everything else follows.

~~~
nuna
I tend to agree

------
inp
I recently decide to read and understand the famous book of Hardy
"Introduction to the Number Theory". It is a big book and my strategy is to
read it slowly but with perseverance and patience. I think these two points
are very important and maybe the key to achieve all our goals. Nowadays, every
thing go fast and we forget to take time to learn or to understand ideas,
concepts, etc. Each time you have some free minutes, do things that help you
to achieve your goal. Small steps are very important.

------
cygned
My long term goals: build a house ([https://www.huf-
haus.com/](https://www.huf-haus.com/)) and concentrate more on the study of
Buddhism. In addition, learn to ride a horse (my wife has two, but I never had
the time to ride them). So I guess my plan is to end my career as soon as
possible.

I am working on it; wo of my companies will have an exit within the next five
years, so at the beginning of my 30s I should have the foundation to work less
and study more.

------
sidlls
I have two goals that I'm working on in parallel: advance on the technical or
management track at the company I work for and build two side-businesses to
the point where my after-tax income from them exceed my day job. For me "long-
term" is 5 years (or less): I want to be quit of the software industry as soon
as I can be.

For the first goal I split time at the company I work for between engineering
work (design, implementation, mentoring junior engineers, etc.) and building
relationships with product, marketing, and engineering leadership.

The two side-businesses are boring and use technology, but unlike my day job
where I work in machine learning (up and down that "stack", from data
engineering through research and model development) technology isn't the
focus. I spend time in the evening after my kids have gone to bed developing
or sourcing the supporting technology and working on product ideas and
marketing and sales efforts.

------
david-gpu
Lifetime goal: being kind to everybody at all times.

Means to achieve it: first, became aware of every time I am not being kind;
later, analyze the circumstances that lead to that behavior, so that I can
prevent them in the future. This sometimes requires undoing bad habits.

I do have other goals, but they are much less important.

~~~
taway_1212
This. If only 10% people had such goal (and did half-decent job at it), maybe
it would spread like a virus and transform humanity for the better?

------
jMyles
To establish freedom and justice in the information age.

Particularly, to end the American prison system and the policies of drug
prohibition.

------
hugs
The main goal: Make more art. Specifically, the kind I call "art you have to
plug in" \-- kinetic art sculptures that include light, motion, and
interactivity. I work towards achieving it by having my own company with a
workshop full of the tools (3D printers, CNC mills, soldering stations, etc.)
needed to make the art. The company uses those same tools to make products
that solve problems for other companies. A portion of profits goes into
funding the art projects. The technical skills needed to make the for-profit
products are the same ones needed to make the art.

------
pg_bot
Reduce health care spending in the US by 50% without decreasing quality of
life or life expectancy. Started a company that is trying to achieve those
goals.

~~~
hodder
The answer is fairly simple if we look at the examples available to us -
health metrics and spending per capita of of all other first world nations.

The answer seems to be universal single payer health care.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
There are a wide variety of health care systems in other first world countries
that are not single payer systems that don't have spending that is vastly
higher than the countries that have single payer systems. For instance,
Switzerland and the Netherlands both have mandatory private health insurance,
similar to the way ACA was designed to work. Germany's system is based on a
public option rather than being purely single payer.

I think instituting a single payer system in the US would be a good first
step, but it is unlikely to completely solve our problems.

------
TheAdamAndChe
Career-related: I want to get and keep a good job with actual growth
potential. I am finding that it is incredibly tough to get into the IT field
when you don't work in a tech hub of the country.

Family-related: I want to create and manage a family emergency fund, something
that my close relatives can dip into if they run into trouble. I'm still
trying to think of a way to structure it. Poverty is an issue in my area, and
I'm finding that many of my relatives would be better able to create and meet
medium- and long-term goals if their short-term situation was a little less
precarious.

Retirement-related: I want to save $2.4 million as quickly as possible. That
would give me a safe annual withdrawal rate of ~$60k, meaning any money saved
or earned beyond that per year could go towards charities, family funds, or my
kid's 529 plan.

------
sethetter
I've seen a couple comments on emotional well-being and kindness, and I
couldn't agree more. Life is about people, and when we optimize for our
relationships, life is better for everyone, and everything else falls into
place.

As for professional goals, I'm often too aware of the fact that new
information over time causes me to change my goals, but that's a natural part
of the process and I try not to resist that. Instead I just try to make sure
I'm learning and growing in _some_ way or another.

One struggle I've had along the way is balancing what I choose to learn about
between what I _think_ will make me more employable or better at my day-to-day
work and what I am genuinely interested in. Trying to lean more towards the
latter, it's much more rewarding and generally still pays off career-wise.

------
brad0
My long term goal is to be continually bettering myself.

Funnily enough until recently I was trying to do that a bit too hard, which
was actually making it harder for me to get better.

Reinterpreting the way I pursued this goal has actually gotten me out of the
plateau I was previously in.

------
ThankYouByeBye
re-enter the gene pool and then exit.

~~~
PacifyFish
You want to have a baby then kill it?

------
izolate
Be as strong, confident, hard-working, charismatic, and happy as I possibly
can be. On a good day, I'm running at about 80% on those attributes.

------
djellybeans
I'm not sure how I'd go about stating it, but I would like to see and make the
job interviewing process in software jobs to be as objective as possible. Lots
of people say the hiring process is broken in most places, but it's hard to
discern possible solutions for it. Plus, not everyone is interested in taking
the building-a-business/self-employed route.

------
akulbe
I have a goal to grow my business in such a way that I can do more work _on_
it, that _in_ it.

This is going to require more customers, and more help.

Like user "inp" said about his goal, it applies here too. Perseverance and
patience.

One has to play the long game, for sure.

I do it by breaking things down into smaller and more manageable pieces. This
helps prevent becoming overwhelmed.

------
petercooper
A quite simple one: Build up enough of a nest egg so I can work solely on what
I want to, when I want to. How? Build my company's revenues to a point where
the industry multiple means I can sell and have the right amount, or.. just
keep taking profit out until I have the right amount saved. It is as boring as
that really.

~~~
icebraining
You're missing the second question :)

~~~
petercooper
Thanks. I have now edited this in.

------
raleigh_user
I have a few:

1\. Grow my company to 20 or so employees. 2\. Use $$$ from company to fund a
large portion of other investments, interests. (my company isn't VC funded.
Goal is for it to be a cash cow) 3\. Level up personal brand enough to
speak/travel a few times a quarter and see some cool places. Use that $$$ to
pay for kids college.

~~~
nickpp
Aren’t you worried that the extra revenue will fund so many distractions that
your focus on your business will falter thus driving it to fail?

~~~
amingilani
Learning to say no and focus on the task at hand is the best thing I ever
learnt to do.

------
djellybeans
Forgot to add (since I can't edit my other comment): Working in space
exploration, to be a contributor to it in some way. For now I'm expecting to
go approach it as a web developer, and then maybe expand into other
programming domains once I have established some presence in space-related
work.

------
mistermann
Move my family out of the increasinly bizarre western world to somewhere in
Asia. Working towards it by saving as much money as possible and trying to
forge some longer term reliable business relationships that could offer
ongoing remote work.

------
sghiassy
To become fiscally sound (not rich) so that I can focus my time and energy
helping others.

------
mattbgates
Running my own business, having customers or clients, going into may day job,
and realizing: It's a place I want be at, not a place I have to be at, like it
would just be extra money, while my business is my primary means of income.

------
k__
Next year: Going full-stack to remove other devs from my projects and make
more money per hour. Also getting the skills to build a whole product myself.

After: Founding something myself.

------
dennis_jeeves
Achieve perfect health. Grow younger and more capable if the medical
technology gives us those benefits. I have absolutely no intention to fix
healthcare.

------
megamindbrian2
Use notebooks to keep track of my life's work. Write less code. Transform
social media to be more transparent.

------
CroMkd
To follow the Ten Commandments, to be a productive and a creative person and
to contribute positively to society.

------
miguelrochefort
Retire by 40

~~~
madengr
I thought the same thing, but I’d have no idea what to do without work. If I
didn’t have to save for kids college, I could retire now at 46. Other problem
is 401k can’t be accessed until 60.

Retire for me just means enough FU money, but I’ll probably work till I drop
dead.

~~~
ThePadawan
Europe-based engineer here: Is a 401k completely unaccessible until 60?

I am currently resident of Switzerland, which has similar restrictions on the
tax-free part of retirement savings, but allows earlier withdrawal for reasons
such as

* purchasing a home (restriction: you have to live there yourself

* leaving the country

~~~
awinder
The US has a first time homebuyer withdrawl carve-out (which I think is
defined as someone who hasn’t bought a house in 8 years?). There are also
hardship exemptions. Technically you can withdrawl for any reason but you pay
taxes + a 10% penalty.

~~~
dunham
I believe you can also take a loan from your 401k, but have to pay it back
when you switch jobs.

------
erkanerol
die without pain

~~~
sshine
At least it isn't your short-term goal.

------
cryoshon
long term goal: found a nonprofit institution dedicated to free education in
matters of critical thinking

other long term goal: build my business to the point where i can trust someone
else to take on some of the grunt work

------
neom
Terraforming!

------
gioscarab
This is a quite critical personal information, I would share it with care on
the internet.

------
beavis2
World domination

------
b6
To see what the Buddha saw, leading my brain to do the reassessment that
causes freedom from suffering. I meditate daily and study related books like
_The Mind Illuminated_.

------
hungerstrike
Long-term: I plan to die.

Short-term: I plan to use my very short time on this planet to enjoy as much
as I can.

------
maneesh
Yes. I run the behavior-change company Pavlok[1] -- our goal is quite massive
-- to help 100% of people achieve 100% of commitments they set. That means,
ending addiction, 100% adherence to diets, etc.

We create technology (the Pavlok wearable, and the Shock Clock at this
moment), offer coaching, create courses, and much more to build the world's
first truly effective behavior change platfom.

I wrote a FB thread about our mission and how we broke it down recently. "For
the rest of my life, I'm committed to one mission.

 _Upgrade Humanity_

It becomes one goal, broken into two parts, and 3 stages.

One goal: invent the vaccine that cures humans from not doing what they say
they will do. Absolute (100%) success --- or I have failed absolutely. (same
success rate as the smallpox vaccine)

Broken into two parts:

1) End addiction

2) change the meaning of money from "money is what other people pay me to do
what they want me to do" to "money is where i get paid when I do the things I
want myself to do"

And the 3 stages are encapsulated into our mission statement: "Upgrade
Humanity."

1) Break bad habits that hold us back

2) Form good habits that help us become who we could be

3) Create new sensory inputs (sixth sense technology) to augment and increase
human capabilities

Anything that isn't in line with that mission needs to move the fuck out of my
way. "

[1] [https://pavlok.com](https://pavlok.com)

~~~
maneesh
I am awfully intrigued by the downvotes here!

~~~
GrinningFool
I think it's that the response was all about the company's goals, but the
question seemed more addressed to elicit discussion around personal goals.

~~~
maneesh
Ah. My personal goals are fully aligned with my company goals.

