You know I used to be so busy with learning things when I was younger but now I've started watching football at the weekends. Finally experiencing the normie life :D
> Now I feel obliged to work even harder to make a few million dollars out of it before I'm 35.
35-year-old here, with a similar box of CS knowledge floating around. Comfortably sub-million, but with a nice house and a couple dogs.
You really aren't obliged, and you don't really need to "make some money" out of it. More money would be nice, don't get me wrong. But you said you learned it because you enjoyed it. Which I did, too. I got my money's worth out of the learning.
You are not obligated to financialize everything you enjoy. It's super important to understand that.
The mortgage anxiety--I get that too. YMMV, but for me, all it took was practice. I don't think about the mortgage on my house. I've owned it for about five years. The money goes out every month. I work on renovating a room or building some furniture or going for a walk with my dogs. It need not be a terrifying specter; it'll either get paid in due course or I'll die and won't have to worry about it.
I think there are a lot of brains (and mine is definitely one) wired to make a bigger deal of things than necessary to provide a sense of direction and meaning, but this one is so abstract and so luck-based that, for me at least, it was deeply valuable to fight against it. I kicked it into the back of a closet, and for me it's a lot easier now to just live.
With your career you are trading time for money. It makes complete sense to optimize that. Most of the professional work you do will not be what you would work on in your free time anyways, it’s work to make some other person rich.
Maybe? Like--define optimize. VC-chasing (alluded to by the great-grandparent poster elsewhere in-thread) is almost certainly less optimized from an EV perspective.
If it's one's dream, absolutely chase it--but it should not feel obligatory because you absolutely can have a lot of happiness now without precluding later happiness, too, if you so wish.
If you're only trading time for money in your career, IMHO, you don't have a career, you only have a job.
At the least you should also be trading your time for expertise, networking, and accomplishment, although I would also recommend some degree of self-actualization and everyday enjoyment (if you're in a position to seek for those).
This ties back really well to the OP. The most important thing in interviewing is dividing people into these two categories. 10 years of experience clocking-in and clocking-out is no experience at all. I'll hire some kid who is a go-getter over that.
Unfortunately in academia it only matters if you hit your grades, which are gamed to hell and back. So you really can't tell at a glance if an A student is going to be good or bad, I hired based on a transcript once and got burned so badly that I'll never do it again.
Aiming to make a few millions (presumably in savings) before you are 35 is extremely ambitious and will most likely not happen. Why set yourself up with such a goal, and how do you know it will even correlate with happiness in the end?
You are much better off developing a specialty that you enjoy. Money is a side-effect of happiness and persistence.
Frankly the answer is expensive hobbies and/or hobbies requiring space. And "Money doesn't buy happiness" is only said by people who have enough of it to not worry.
Yeah "money is not everything" but I'd be able to do more things I like if I had house and spacious garage. But that's $$, $$$ if I also want to live in place with reasonable commute
> but I'd be able to do more things I like if I had house and spacious garage. But that's $$, $$$ if I also want to live in place with reasonable commute
My house is 2000 square feet. I have a recording studio and a wood shop and too many 3D printers. I am getting a garage permitted for another ~800 square feet. The place cost $480,000 four years ago and is around $620,000 now on Zillow. I am a fifteen minute walk from a train and can be in downtown Boston within the hour.
There are ways to get what you want other than "be an extremely unlikely curve-breaker of a success". It frequently means "not being in San Francisco or New York", granted, but...you've got options.
Are you really promoting your half a million dollar home lifestyle as the affordable and approachable way? And it appreciated how much over four years?
Im glad for you but I don't think you are making the point you intended.
It is absolutely affordable—for a software engineer. Boston salaries aren’t SF, but you aren’t going to be hurting. Other folks? No, and that’s an entirely different problem we need to be solving. That’s why tomorrow night I’m going to a town meeting to argue in favor of a new 500-unit apartment building that my neighbors don’t like. (I bought this house to live in. Add more supply, bring down those prices!)
But I don’t expect the person to whom I replied to be concerned with individually solving it either, and so while I think we can solve our own problems while being mindful of our society’s, the latter didn’t seem appropriate here.
Really? I'm in a similar situation outside of Vancouver and my house price doubled since I bought it. The salary we pay for the position that I used to purchase it went up maybe 10% in the meantime, while the financing costs went up by 100%.
You don't really need a graph to understand that change...
Good on you for fucking with the NIMBYs though, they're the reason house prices went up by an insane amount.
I haven't been out that way in years but my understanding is that Vancouver is a SF-tier disaster though, no? Huge influx of semi-speculative money into real estate.
My house, on a 30-year, 10% down, if bought today at the Zillow valuation + my property taxes and insurance, would be about $3800/month. That is absolutely not nothing, but the same square footage in Alameda, CA--a better substitute in some ways, esp. re: transit--is in the $1mil to $1.25mil range, which would be more like $7500/month (if you could make the 10% down at all).
Given that staff+ compensation in the Boston area is pretty reliably north of $200K these days, these are much friendlier numbers. And again, Boston is still an expensive area! There's lots of places in the country that are cheaper. I use Boston as an example because even on the edge of the suburbs there's still decent-to-good public transit. Go just down the road to Providence, which has a thriving local scene of its own and is still on the commuter rail to Boston but otherwise kinda lacks local public transit, and you can get a house like mine that's roughly as walkable to the basics (restaurants, supermarkets, etc.) for like $380K. And if your job is in Boston you can still be at South Station in under an hour and a half of sitting on a train that, IMO, beats BART and CalTrain pretty solidly, let alone driving (which I've known a lot of people, historically, to do from Providence--and that seemed awful).
Me, I work mostly-remote, so I'm not tied to being here in the first place. I just like it here. But realizing that there are significant options is important.
Average home price in the US is $375k. If you add a $100k-$200k to that price, a SE should be able to save and afford a house.
My hobbies take up a lot of space so I understand what you want. We had to move out of an in town location to get the house we wanted. A 1,000sqft in town house the same size as our duplex rental wasn’t going to cut it.
Luckily I was able to find jobs in an area 45 minutes away from downtown with virtual worker status (3-5 days a month in office max). I changed jobs and was able to find many other ones in the same area.
Unfortunately, in a group made up of myself and Jeff Bezos, our average net worth is $90 billion. Jeff does a lot of work in that average though. In the same way, it's very possible this person is in an area where the cost of life is absurdly high and the actual price of homes where they are is not reflected in the average, due to the dream that software engineering is massively profitable, which increases the cost of life, which makes the need for a massive salary higher, which...
This phenomenon is real, and the best way to combat it is to Go Elsewhere. I'm still in a pretty expensive spot. But I'm very comfortable having somehow managed to never work for a big-tech-payin' big tech shop.
There's a lot of great places out there. Believing that we have to all cluster around a few cities is pretty bad for us.
Why are you living in the high COL area? There are more developers working outside of Big Tech/FANG/West Coast than inside.
The West Coast does have a higher employment of Software Developers per 1,000 people. Especially SF/San Jose. Texas seems to be increasing more than other areas outside of California and Washington.
It doesn't. Money buys comfort, power, prestige, security, ..., but not happiness. A happy person is a happy person. An unhappy person is an unhappy person. It sucks in a way but from a different pov it is a wonderful equalizing fact of human experience (like the bliss of orgasm, available to poor and rich alike).
> Money is a side-effect of happiness and persistence.
A million is a lot but my first reaction to your comment was this is something only wealthy people can afford to say. Especially in the US where we don’t have universal healthcare.
Just typing this made me realize I need concrete, achievable goals though so I appreciate your comment. I am not the gp but this is something I expect a lot of us need to work on. Something like:
1. What are my financial goals?
2. Is it realistic to have those goals?
3. How do I know if I am on track? If not, what can I do to correct my course?
Money is largely a product of working, but broadly uncorrelated with time or effort. If you think this is untrue, try working a minimum wage job or two for a while. This shouldn't stop you working hard for returns. but it should offer a reality check.
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it can remove stressors. However realistically this is linked to income-outgoings / debt. Earning a lot but being highly leveraged and living an expensive lifestyle ends up not being much less stressful.
I may work until I'm 70. I may be dead before I'm 50. I don't want to be miserable today in order to live a mythical good life in the future. So I plan assuming the most important thing is being content day in day out.
I guess I have a high discount rate. It's not obviously right!
Using a discount rate is a decent start, but it is a vast simplification of how people think. If we want to make it a little more nuanced to capture more of the human condition, I would suggest:
1. Allowing one's discount rate to vary with age.
2. Varying the time horizon.
Exponential decay probably doesn't map very well to how people think across different phases of life.
For many people, their discounting may change roughly as follows:
- When you first pop out, life is only the present.
- When young, e.g. 2 or 3 years old, kids may want things very soon, within seconds, minutes, maybe hours.
- Young'uns start to understand money. They might look towards saving for their first bicycle. Now time horizons look more like 1 to 12 months.
- As people start to develop educational and professional goals, they allow more deferred gratification: preparing for their career or buying a house. This horizon might be around 1 - 10 years.
- Somewhere in a career, people might start planning 5 - 50 years out, often for for kids and retirement.
- As people approach their end of expected lifespan (or face a life threatening illness), they probably care a lot about:
-- personally, living in the moment. This might mean checking off the bucket list as well as high quality relationships
-- financially, allocating money away from themselves towards emphasizing long-term, inter-generational goals, like providing for their family or donating to charity. These goals have 20+ year horizons.
- The ultra wealthy have the means to create charities with 50+ year time horizons via an endowment.
Why would not achieving the goal correlate with happiness? Aiming for something high only is a problem, when you tie your happiness into getting there. I find the reaching alone very fulfilling.
As a side note, finding and focusing on developing a speciality that I enjoy is a lot harder than making a lot of money. For me at least.
Happiness is not something you achieve by fullfilling some dream. What counts is the day-by-day, or "the journey"... once you get there, trust me, it will just feel pretty empty after perhaps a day or two of excitement, and you'll just have to find a new "dream". Just enjoy the little things. Difficult to quantify but I bet that watching a football match where your team wins (if you're a football fan, and obviously through no action of your own other than just sitting there watching) makes you feel much happier (for a few hours) than any dream you could fullfill by your actual actions. Doesn't make sense, but yeah, humans don't make sense a lot.
With the outrageous tech salaries, if you live in a low CoL area, I don't know that saving a million or two by the time you're 35 is such an ambitious goal.
And don't pretend your way is the only way of looking at things. "Money is not important" is something people say if they have a lot of money.
> "Money is not important" is something people say if they have a lot of money.
Well if money was key to happiness, why would people with money say that? Wouldn't you expect the opposite? The reality is money helps with lots of things in life, but it's never more than a means to an end. You should always be striving to enjoy what you can in life as you go, because cultivating a happy life requires being present. Otherwise you'll blow right by the stuff around you, and by the time you get the money you were seeking you may be on an island. That's all people mean when they make that statement.
Sugar, booze, drugs, video games, social media, television, etc. are destructive. Those are unnatural things which are engineered to give a dopamine rush. I've been healthier in periods of my life when I did. Going "clean" is stressful, but lands me in a healthier place. I can't usually do that because of family and social ties.
The odd item on your list is sex. Sex -- in the context of a permanent, stable relationship -- builds social bonds and helps emotionally regulated. Studies show that too.
I'm not going to generalize to anyone else, but for me:
- Casual sex is psychologically harmful.
- Regular sex with e.g. a spouse is healthy.
I find that it (1) Builds a close emotional bond. Conflicts don't seem so important. (2) Emotionally stabilizes me and makes stress go away.
As well as a number of additional positive effects. The older I grow, the more I agree with conservative, traditional cultures about sex: One lifetime partner is ideal. A small number or zero is okay. A large number is bad.
I'll mention: I'm not drifting conservative overall. Some places, I'm to the left of the left, some to the right of the right, some off-axis, and some at the center.
I have been cultivating this mindset for 10 years.
I'm into month 6 of semen retention now and finally have zero urges or frustration at this stage. I eat one meal of meat, eggs, butter a day. Have finally been able to isolate and clearly see the effect listening to music has on my dopamine and happiness (its very bad for it). All of my belongings fit into one suitcase and a backpack. I live in an apartment by the beach. My hobbies are simply short walks in the morning, emotional movies in the evening, programming and reading in quietness during the day alone. Eliminated playing videogames for the most part, Hobbies are reverse engineering and decompiliation modding of childhood N64 games, coding my rts game engine from scratch, coding my programmable bot platform im creating. Reading. Finally i reached that peace you know about. Would love to hear a few things about your routine and how you spend your time or be e-friends e___cr___@gmail.com replace the first ___ with nda and the second ___ with aig :)
I find setting "happiness" as an explicit goal reduces my happiness.
A good book -- more mainstream than most of these comments -- is "Man's Search for Meaning" by Frankl. It has been listed as one of the ten most influential books in the US a few decades ago, although has fallen somewhat by the wayside in recent years. I believe the core thesis. It's worked well for me.
Leading a meaningful and purposeful life, having good relationships, helping people, doing interesting things, learning, and growing tends to be a more effective path to emotional well-being than searching for happiness.
To answer your question directly: My high-level goal is to leave the world a better place than I found it and to have a positive impact on the lives around me.
I don’t understand the need/urge to shit all over someone’s dream. If you don’t agree, why not just leave it? What does anyone actually gain from your negativity??
Do you understand the need to give people realistic expectations, so even if they wish to proceed, at least they understand the chances, and not put all their eggs on something unlikely?
Or everybody should be left to live oblivious to some statistical facts, lest they be hurt?
Most SWEs at the majors are bringing in a few million prior to the 35. If you save your salary it should be pretty trivial.... but it's more a savings challenge than an income challenge due to lifestyle creep.
My circle of friends has three self made 8 digit millionaires in their 20s. I've honestly been slacking.
I don't think I can do it in 1 year. 5 years is perfectly possible.
We live in the golden age of computer science entrepreneurialism.
Venture capital has never been easier to get. The low hanging fruit is largely still unpicked. And, with full remote, hard working highly capable talent has never been easier to hire (hire Europeans, they're overeducated and underpaid).
IMO, not starting a business in the next 5 years would be remarkably foolish.
Just have to write a 35 page business plan, get it reviewed by capable people, have a good idea, and execute.
35 pages! I worked for an IPO where the CEO made the 40 under 40 from a business plan written on a napkin. The fact that you have something written on paper and hopefully not in crayon would have likely snagged you a $10MM valuation in SV a couple of months ago. Times have changed but I hope you are successful.
>I worked for an IPO where the CEO made the 40 under 40 from a business plan written on a napkin
Then it wasn't on the merits of the business plan, but the idea, niche, timing, connections, delivery, and several other factors besides...
Millions can scrible some startup idea on a napkin. Getting a VC to take you seriously is another matter, even with a fully fleshed presentation, a prototype, and a well written and researched business plan.
If that's what will bring you happiness, then don't let anyone stop you. However I just want to give you a little nudge, to think about if you really have no time outside this pursuit of wealth to enjoy yourself. You're only young once :)
> We live in the golden age of computer science entrepreneurialism.
no we don't, not any more. the disruptors are now the ones to be disrupted, and they're trying awful hard to keep that from happening.
like, sure there are still new businesses starting, that's true in a lot of fields. but SVB imploding is a fantastic sign as to what is truly happening to startup culture.
> The low hanging fruit is largely still unpicked.
Given that I'm not one to balk at writing 35 pages and an 8 digit bank account is relevant to my interests could you throw out a few of the low hanging fruit? I assume you won't be angry if I take one.
I've spent at least 30k on my hobbies over past 10 years, since graduating college. I still have a mortgage, I'm still in debt. But, my hobbies have given me something to enjoy outside of work. I love programming, but I consider myself lucky when my work and passions actually align. Sometimes I get to solve interesting problems. That's a luxury. But you know what is always there for me when I clock out? My family, and my hobbies. When the weather is nice, I can look forward to a motorcycle ride. I enjoy going to the gym, learning jiu jitsu, gardening, cooking, repairing things. Yes, it costs money. But, I'm in my 30s, in good shape, happy, and in debt. I see people that maxxed out their work life, and neglected their personal lives, and they tend to be miserable for one reason or another. Getting in shape and being active gets harder as you get older. Relationships take time and work as well. Money is not going to buy you a happy relationship, it's not going to buy you friends, and it's not going to buy you health. It absolutely helps, but it's not the priority. Work so that you can live well, not so that you can accumulate numbers.
If I've learned anything over the years, is that technology moves so fast day to day that, that to keep up with absolutely everything all the time is a fool's errand.
You need to pick an area that you really like and focus on it and I think the money will come when you improve and specialize your talents in that area.
That area, of course, should preferably coincide with the jobs available in your area in order to make it easier on yourself, but nothing says you can't apply for remote jobs.
"Hard to enjoy my hobbies when I'm in debt to the bank and my mortgage isn't paid."
You are young and worried for a mortgage to complete... and that prevents you to enjoy what you like in life?
What will you say when you get older and have sick relatives, dying parents, troubled teenagers, health issues... and so on? Life is not about waiting for the end of the storm to be happy. It is about learning to danse in the rain.
Be sad when it is time, manage crises when you have to... And collect and share as much joy as you can the rest of the time. No matter what, don't wait and enjoy your life!
Aiming to make a few millions (presumably in savings) before you are 35 is extremely ambitious and overall, you will most likely greatly exceed your current expectations, but perhaps not on exactly the timeframe you set.
>Honestly, I've spent so much time learning computer science trivia. I truly enjoyed learning all that computer science knowledge in my spare time.
Now I feel obliged to work even harder to make a few million dollars out of it before I'm 35.
Bad news: computer science knowledge has rapidly diminishing returns past a certain point in the real world.
Nothing quite turns the 'work' part of the brain off like a live sporting event.
Fast-flowing games work better, soccer is particularly great because it has 2x 45 minutes of solid action. NFL has too many breaks where my brain can start thinking about other things.
As an avid American Football fan, I agree; condensed replays are great, especially when you are interested in, but not deeply invested in a particular game (for those, I prefer to watch long-form).
