Personally, my goals are to have an interesting job (i.e. using a modern tech stack), have the resources to pursue my hobbies, and have the autonomy to be eccentric if I want to.
However, meeting those goals require a lot of money. This is especially the case since interesting tech jobs, access to niche resources, and tolerance of alternative lifestyles are all associated with living in a large city.
Therefore, I find myself in a situation where making a lot of money isn't my goal, but I feel that I have to do it if I want to achieve my goals.
> Personally, my goals are to have an interesting job (i.e. using a modern tech stack)
I always wonder why using a modern tech is interesting? Let's say there's a job where you're using J2EE 1.4 or some other outdated technology from the early 2000s. The thing is, I remember when that technology was hot shit and people considered working on it very interesting. So, it looks like, over the course of time, doing the very same task, with the same day-to-day activities, went from interesting to uninteresting?
I think it's a heuristic signal. Old tech stacks are usually used in old projects that solve old problems.
I doubt the OP would mind building a J2EE project from scratch to solve a novel problem. But nobody does that -- usually if there is a J2EE job, it's maintenance, which can be less interesting. And if there is a novel problem, it will likely be solved with the current status quo ("modern") technology.
Sorry for the delayed reply. I had missed your guys' posts.
For me it's couple of things:
My experience has been that newer languages and frameworks tend to be more user friendly. In particular, I tend to enjoy the abstraction and design aspects of programming more than the nuts and bolts technology aspects. So, for example, I find the low level aspects (e.g. memory management) of C annoying and I appreciate that React lets me use all of the abstractions that a programming language provides to define UI.
I tend to like functional programming techniques and dislike object oriented ones. FP techniques seem to be popular with the current generation of tech while the previous generation seems to have been dominated by OO. Of course that's not true in every domain and could change in the future.
This is a stereotype, but I tend to associate older tech stacks with companies that are more conservative, less innovative/more established, and/or less technology focused.
Finally, like you guys have mentioned, newer tech is associated with less maintenance work and greater future job prospects; even if that's just signaling as opposed to being inherent to the technologies themselves.
I think it's mostly job security. I've worked on many technologies that I really enjoyed despite the flaws that every tech has (Flash for example) that have 0 jobs 10 years later.
Oh yeah, I agree with that - but that's not job being "interesting", that's just job security.
I wrote my comment because I felt some disingenuity in the OP saying that jobs with modern tech stacks are interesting for him. It means that he's either genuinely intersted in following the tech frameworks threadmill, and jobs with modern tech stack allow him to do that - or, he's lying to himself that he's intersting in it, to make getting up for work every day a little bit easier.
Therefore, I find myself in a situation where making a lot of money isn't my goal, but I feel that I have to do it if I want to achieve my goals.
Can't you work remotely? There are a lot of smaller cities (at least in Europe) that have a great vibe, are welcoming to all kinds of people, and do not have extreme housing costs.
I live in such a city, a large chunk of the population are students, so there is a vibrant social and nightlife. But the city is too small to have a lot of 'big city problems'.
I'm working remotely but living like a nomad. A month at most in different villages across India. I now miss the city life, and am also considering moving to Europe, perhaps a small city in Germany.
Can you share more about these smaller cities? What was your criteria for choosing the city you are in presently?
What was your criteria for choosing the city you are in presently?
We lived in Tübingen (Germany) for five years. But the city was just a tad too small for my taste. There are only few stores (outside tourism-focused stores) and it there is fairly little to do in terms of concerts, etc. It is part of the Stuttgart metropolitan area, so there are a lot of work opportunities. I loved the scenery of Southern Germany, but Germany is too hierarchical, conservative, and old-fashioned for my taste (of course, there are exceptions, such as Berlin). It's really a drag that you can't do groceries on a Sunday, people expect you to pay with cash everywhere, internet connections are somewhat mediocre, etc. Oh, and there is almost no biking infrastructure in cities (outside cities it's quite ok). That said, a lot our our friends/colleagues there like Tübingen/Stuttgart area.
We moved back to Groningen, The Netherlands (where I studied + did my PhD and my wife did her PhD). It may be somewhat remote for some people. But I love it, there are multiple concert venues (including the legendary Vera), there are plenty of tech-related activities. We have fiber to home. We can shop on Sundays (handy when you work throughout the week). Bicycles are the primary form of transportation. Our 5yo daughter clearly enjoys school here more (used to be in Kindergarten in Germany). The largest downside of Groningen is that there is not a lot of challenging local work (outside the university).
If my wasn't offered a job in Groningen, we would have considered Nijmegen, perhaps Utrecht (+ nearby towns) or Leiden. I have worked several months in Amsterdam, but it is too busy for me ;).
> It's really a drag that you can't do groceries on a Sunday,
In America I can buy groceries any day of the week, but as someone who often works odd hours, I find it a drag that almost none are open past 10 or 11pm. The buses don't run after midnight~1am, either, so if I need a dozen eggs at 3am, I have to get in my car and drive.
I feel that's not the sort of behavior that a city with aspirations should be encouraging. If you want interesting things happening in your city, you need people working at all hours to make it happen, and many will be on wages that don't support living downtown. You don't want every worker driving a car. It's simply not scalable.
> people expect you to pay with cash everywhere
I'm the opposite. I only pay by card or check for regular pre-planned purchases (like rent, or insurance). It's well established that people buy less when they pay with cash! I'm disappointed by all the trendy new shops that are card-only.
"In America ... I find it a drag that almost none are open past 10 or 11pm"
I used to live in Atlanta and there was a 24-hour Kroger right across the street from my townhome. One night at 2am, I bought a gas grill at that Kroger on a whim. Good times.
Now I live in Silicon Valley and there are quite a few 24-hour grocery stores according to google map.
Smaller cities present issues in Germany (and Europe as a whole) for a multitude of reasons, for example healthcare[0], reliable bandwidth, older populations[1], etc.
Choosing a small city with a train station, however, can dramatically improve your access to most of these things as the trains typically imply population, which typically begets services such as internet, pharmacies, etc.
So honestly my first recommendation is filtering small cities by that.
Smaller cities present issues in Germany (and Europe as a whole) for a multitude of reasons, for example healthcare[0], reliable bandwidth, older populations[1], etc.
Well, Nentershausen is very small ;). We had weekends with friends in Nentershausen for a couple of years. It's a village, not a city.
I was more thinking along the lines of (random Dutch/German university cities): Heidelberg, Tübingen, Ulm, Erlangen, Nürnberg, Nijmegen, Groningen, Leiden, etc.
I've had good experience in the outskirts of Berlin.
It's a big city but it's so spread out that living in one of the outlying districts can be like living in a small town near a big city (in many ways Berlin feels more like an agglomeration of many smaller cities than e.g. Vienna).
It's also (still) a relatively affordable city, especially outside the central districts.
How eccentric do you want to be? What exactly are your hobbies? This doesn't seem very hard to pull off with a pretty middle-of-the-road tech job and living pretty much anyplace, but maybe I'm suffering from a failure of imagination.
However, meeting those goals require a lot of money. This is especially the case since interesting tech jobs, access to niche resources, and tolerance of alternative lifestyles are all associated with living in a large city.
Therefore, I find myself in a situation where making a lot of money isn't my goal, but I feel that I have to do it if I want to achieve my goals.