Hi there, old person here. Tomorrow is my 65th birthday. I had vowed to myself that I would completely and totally retire, Finally, at 65. But then, this "thing" cropped up and the day after tomorrow, I am pitching my 3rd startup to investors. I wonder, am I crazy. But I feel passion for this project. So, I am throwing myself into the fray again, there is no logical reason to do so. So, Rudy, I understand.
> the day after tomorrow, I am pitching my 3rd startup to investors.
I'm still pretty active (58) but there is no way I'm going to do another run, I'm happy tinkering with stuff, spending time with kids and working on average 3 to 4 months per year. I always saw money as a means to an end, just another tool in the toolbox. I don't need more of it so that part of the drive is gone and I'd much rather spend a day playing piano or fixing something than that I'd want to be worried about metrics, investors, customer acquisition, payroll and the bi-annual whack over the head from the fourth dimension that throws all your carefully laid plans into disarray.
But I do very much wish for you to succeed at whatever endeavor you've got lined up and I'm curious to hear about it. Much, much good luck with your plans.
I am sort of blown away by the response to my post. I feel like I need to respond. But the posts from so many people are so amazing. I have "retired" a couple of times, but I keep coming back because, this is fun.
The thing I want to do, it has to do with a new technology that would revolutionize LEOS technology, at least, that's what I think. And, I have some models that support that. Who cares? Millions of people who can't afford a decent internet connection, or one at all. If I say more, I could spoil it.
But what if we could do both. Turn a small reasonable profit and provide connectivity, well, everywhere. And decently. That's my dream. It's OK to laugh. I do too. But heck. What else am I supposed to do. Why not take a shot with a kooky idea. So here I go, fingers crossed and all that.
This situation/attitude is exactly the thing that great people end up in. As I've mentioned previously I have known a lot of people that developed enough wealth over time to "retire."[1] And by retire I mean choose to work on what they wanted to work on, and not work if they didn't want to. I once explained as "being a consultant with infinite days of paid vacation." Some folks like Jacques and the GP author are "old" (as in > 50 yrs old, (me too)), some I know are "young" in that they are under 40.
In very general terms I see three "types" as most common, the first type are what I think of as "score keepers" who equate bank balances with their "score" in life and a bigger score than their peers mean they "win" life. This is not a point of view that I really understand, but I generally think that is because in my younger years I lived in Las Vegas and knew other kids whose parents were professional gamblers. Their life was really random in terms of how much money was available that year/month/week/day. Money came and went based most on luck, and less on skill. As a result these folks understood money wasn't the definition of how "good" they were, just how lucky. That is how I translated equity earnings from stock options / grants. If you happened to get lucky then you got some wealth, if not well it didn't change the quality of your work or your abilities.
I see this a lot in the second type of person which is they are happy to not have to worry about money, but they don't "need" to generate any more. So they follow their passions which can be very different. One friend of mine became a patent attorney because they really liked the law and how that system worked.
The third type is the person that "fails" at retirement (I put it in quotes because I don't think of it as failing, just a different path) and they miss the technical/intellectual challenge and the camaraderie of being in a group working on tough problems. If you get to be senior enough you come to realize that you can get more done as a group of blended skills than you can as individuals. Recreating that in a non-company way is hard.[2] As a result people often "go back to work". My favorite example of this is Guido Van-Rossum, who "retired", got bored, and then went to work for Microsoft.
Tenured professorships are excellent for this third type as well. There isn't an industrial equivalent (there used to be, tech companies would have the title of "Fellow" but the grind of MBAs on margin over innovation has pretty much killed those in most places).
[1] Not a flex, I just happened to be part of a number of companies that were generous with stock options and grew into larger companies. These are not founders, they are regular employees whose stock options ended up being worth enough that they could diversify them into something they could live off of.
[2] I proposed a member-benefit type company arrangement that would address this need but have so far not pushed the idea into existence.
Basically the concept is to create a company that does the "house keeping" (in the USA a company health plan for example, managing tax requirements) and a record keeping system of "points" related to work product of members, and an annual distribution of profits proportioned strictly on a point basis.
Because this was originally conceived for people who "could retire" but chose not to, employee pay would be $1/month plus medical coverage for the member and a spouse that is all paid for[1], office space, "lab" space if the space in the office is insufficient, and shared high-expense infrastructure.
Revenue sharing based on points and other work products (such as consulting and training classes).
There is also an "investor" option where for every $1M you put in you get $3M back. The trick though is that in the early stages it is unclear how quickly you would get your $3M. Later when rates of return are better understood that ratio could be reduced.
[1] Given the tax laws, there is also a requirement to include money to cover this "income" (US considers anything you give an employee income) so there is also a cash amount to cover those taxes. From the members perspective, they get $12/year "take home" pay, and if they did nothing else could file a tax return with $0 tax required. (caveat existing government tax shenanigans)
> record keeping system of "points" related to work product of members, and an annual distribution of profits proportioned strictly on a point basis.
This is hilarious :) It is so close. I called them 'stakes' but otherwise it is pretty much the exact same thing. I wonder how many other implementations of this idea there are out there.
The company that is running using this idea is 'Infocaster', a project company in Arnhem, NL. One of the founders put his own spin on it with a whole pile of automated administration but he's - as far as I know - yet to farm it out beyond that one company. He also wrote a book about it.
Good ideas are good ideas :-). Infocaster wins though for releasing a product, so far I haven't done that.
Everyone I've talked to about it (and that has been quite a few people) have all nodded their heads and said "Wow, that is a really good idea, let me know when you kick it off!" But at the same time there is a chicken/egg problem of initial runway to initial payout. I've looked at a couple of lean ways to kick this off but so far none have come to fruition.
The way we figured to best approach that is to simply create a set of tools that would allow others to use the core principles and then to see where they take it and adapt as requests come in.
There is a potential legal issue that I have yet to find a good solution to: whether you call them points or stakes doesn't really matter, but what does matter is that they take on some properties of stock and that means that in the eyes of the regulators they may end up being stock. And I haven't found a convincing way to argue myself out of that. This was pointed out to me by a notary public here in NL that otherwise thought that the idea had merit but had serious doubts about whether that part of it would fly, especially if it was employed at scale because essentially you'd be creating a new kind of legal entity out of thin air, a company that behaves in all but one sense like a traditional one but then there are 'shares' and 'points' and somehow the shares then end up calling the shots.
This flies in the face of what the whole thing should stand for and by working hard to say 'stakes' (or points) rather than 'shares' you end up in an undefensible position. I even caught myself once or twice thinking 'shares' rather than 'stakes' so he was making a very good point.
Yes. They are absolutely securities. I explained them to a finance lawyer as basically a zero coupon bond without a fixed maturity date. So basically a variable yield. They quickly understood this and also understood why people would be somewhat reluctant to "invest" in something like that. My particular system had three types of points, one was investment points (weird zero coupon bonds), patent/inventor points (one revenue stream was licensing the portfolio of patents assigned to the company), and the third were service points.
Service points were for vendors, where a vendor contracts for say $100K of services and will be paid $200K for those services (so double their rate) but based on the payout of points vs monthly billed. Interestingly the lawyer I talked with thought this would be popular with law firms. The way that would work is that the vendor would invoice against the point up to the max value of the point. And annually they would receive a payout value of one point (what ever that happened to be) up to 2x what had been billed against the point so far.
The problem here in NL with this scheme is that if they are stock and they are not traded on the open market (which would require an IPO) then all of the transactions would be required to be passed through a notary, the fees alone would wreck the plan.
There are no other ways to sell stock in an unlisted company. And yes, law firms would be a good candidate. As would almost any project based business. I wonder how the Mondragon company manages to work their way around such restrictions.
That would be painful, perhaps you could argue that patent points were not securities, just record keeping (I mean you could literally derive them from a select on a database of patents held by the company). Investor points would be infrequent so fees there probably not as big a deal. Do you have to buy bonds on the open market in NL? Service points work a lot like having a tab at a bar rather than securities as well.
There is this thing called a shareholders registry which you are supposed to keep up to date and at the company offices which lists each and every shareholder in a privately held company. While there is no legal limit to how many shareholders a dutch BV can have there are practical ones: the typical shareholder registry does not anticipate more than low double digit shareholders and the fees really add up when you start doing many transactions, especially small ones. Every modification to the shareholders registry is notarized, and there are strict requirements with respect to KYC/UBO and AML/ATF that each of these transactions is subject to.
The 'record keeping' argument was shot down based on several (good) arguments, the basis of which is that if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck that it is probably a duck. The main points of interest: profit division, endurance beyond the work done for a particular job, the ability to trade them with others (possibly outsiders) and the fact that for taxation purposes they would likely be seen as shares. Having 'investor points' is a neat variation, but would probably be seen as a different class of shares.
Finally, there is a big problem in case the 'real' shareholders suddenly declare the points system invalid (because they have a big incentive to do so, for instance to be able to sell their 'actual' shares at a much higher valuation) to capture the profits themselves. This would likely result in a lawsuit where the points holders would take the position that their 'points' are shares and that suit would probably be lost based on the expected behavior.
So I can see many reasons why 'points' === 'shares' and only a few limited and ultimately broken ways in which they are not. The question then becomes 'is it possible to create a low-fee way to trade shares without going public?', and to me that one is still open. If the answer is 'no' then I think the idea is DOA, if the answer is 'yes' then it becomes a lot more interesting.
Bonds are traded on Euronext here (one of several major exchanges here), a retail investor would have to go through a bank or a broker and can't buy them directly.
> I proposed a member-benefit type company arrangement that would address this need
Funny, I did this too (the Modular Company is actually named for the idea). Some people are actually running their company along a loose version of it and are moderately successful, it's not exactly the Mondragon Corporation but they're still alive and ticking over well after 16 years in business.
I sincerely think that the present corporate culture can suck the air out of anyone's life and force to seek contentment elsewhere very soon. Doing a research work and solve problems, where one does not have to seek approval (easier when you NL next to your name), on a daily basis can keep one engaged and energized.
Your comment is entirely centered around money and how, since you have enough, you will not bother with startup stuff. You are mistaken about why people create startups, and I do believe you missed that this is not the reason the top poster is knee deep in a startup at 65, otherwise you would not have made the comparison, or you would have acknowledged the situation was different. In a way, you tried to one up the top poster by presenting yourself as someone beyond the need for money.
I see you went into my comment history. The one comment you mention, I have to admit, is not written well. My point was simply that you cannot turn your hobby or passion into your main activity if that activity does not earn you enough money to make a living.
I think it is you that is focused on the money. I merely wanted to illustrate that money is no longer a driving force for me, without any relation as to whether or not the GP was doing what they were doing was for the money. Since they indicated that what they were doing was by choice, not out of need I assume that they weren't in it for the money but I'd rather let them speak for themselves.
The reason why I said that I'm not motivated to do another start up and I clearly indicated that for me making a living always was only a partial drive, the other one being that I like interesting tech, is that my health is failing me in many different ways and I don't have the energy for that level of engagement any more. So I consider myself very lucky that I don't have to do any of this. Though, if something really interesting rolls around (a few months ago that nearly happened) I would be sorely tempted but would probably still refuse. Because I know the price of running a start-up isn't measured in dollars but in time and stress.
Finally: you are putting a lot of words in my mouth and thoughts in my head and making all kinds of statements about me. You probably would do better if you asked questions instead of making all kinds of weird inferences.
I’ll be frank, I read your message carefully and I am stil pretty confident about the inferences I made. However, I see your point, my statements are too forceful. I acknowledge that I should have been more graceful and phrased them as questions. Thank you for the advice. Furthermore, I am sorry to hear about your health and I hope there’s a way for things to get better for you in the future.
The poster above says he has enough money, so that’s why he does not want to bother with investor, acquisitions, metrics, etc. The underlying assumption is that money is why you want to get into startups, which I think is not correct.
If I go cut trees in the forest, it'll just be for the money, because I like computers and sitting down.
For someone that loves physical exercise and the outdoors, and has an appreciation for falling trees, it'll be their passion.
I can describe a situation where I decide to not cut trees if I don't need the money without passing judgement on others that do it for love. Assuming they are connected was your mistake.
It's possible to share something about one's life candidly even if it's different without thinking less of the other.
EDIT : I found the message about being beyond money to be patronizing, but I regret that I couched my comment in a way that was not charitable. Hence this edit.
Not really, I can see why you see it that way but I don't. The guy shared his path in life which was similar but then diverged, gave reasons why, seemed genuine. Was an interesting anecdote to me.
Budd : They say the number one killer of old people is retirement. People got a job to do, they tend to live a little longer so they can do it. I've always figured that warriors and their enemies share the same relationship.
I read it as 'moving' (emotionally stirring) picture (a common-use colloquial for 'movie'; A film – also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick)
and that it is -- definitely emotionally stirring. It was amazing to me, having watched it many years previous, that it was essentially a 1:1 representation of my widowed father.
when I watched it recently it was less funny than I had remembered it, much sadder. I think that's because I had realized that it wasn't as much of a satire/parody than I had thought originally.
The audience is rescued from the sad moments by letters to Ndugu. I remember a couple times being on the edge of tears, only to cheer up when I heard, "Dear Ndugu."
Because arguably it reduces demand for the next generation to do their thing. And if too many do it then it also becomes a necessity for more in the same age cohort to afford housing and transportation.
Not suggesting people go off and die, or be thrown off a cliff. Rather that they consider there are some downsides to society at large if they unnecessarily work late in life. FWIW, I was responding to the question "why not? [keep working]".
The available data[1] suggest that society at large benefits from increased productivity regardless of whether the individuals driving that productivity are 65 or 25. Fortunately, we live in a positive-sum economy where working harder and longer not only grants you a bigger slice of the pie, it increases the size of the entire pie itself.
Be careful extrapolating macro scale effects into the micro scale. GDP is a function of a huge number of things and its correlation with positive outcomes doesn’t mean everything that boosts GDP is a net positive. Many forms of economic inefficiency end up boosting GDP.
Older people helping to make more products/services is a downside to society at large?
I would understand if “working” was a competition for limited resources. But if it is, in fact, a value generating activity, how does it harm society at large?
e.g. Having more doctors work until later, if they are capable, is not a net positive for our society’s ability to provide healthcare?
Some demand for workers scales well, virtually unlimited. Yet many are not. And as tech quickly takes more and more jobs, older workers contribute to the competition for shrinking demand for human labor.
Now advances in tech may continue to increase demand for workers elsewhere, once training and workers catch up. Or maybe not as much as roles are lost.
> older workers contribute to the competition for shrinking demand for human labor.
Posted a similar request elsewhere, but I think you need to substantiate this claim.
Furthermore, if you're claiming that tech destroys jobs in the general economy, then the consistent position would be that young or old should stop working in tech, not just older people. But the research I've seen shows that tech jobs generate non-tech jobs on net.
So what if demand scales differently. Should foreigners go back home to leave jobs to nationals? Should women stay home to leave jobs for men? Unless you answer yes to those, why would you choose another arbitrary category like age to do the same?
I hope you're never old with people around you that think the same as you think now. Either you can do the job or not.
I didn't choose the category, the question was why not work late in life. I proposed one likely downside.
As to immigration and women and others, it can be argued the end game of every able bodied adult working until death is quite dark -- even if it begins with most of them finding some enjoyment in it.
When I'm old I hope my family encourages me to find joy and meaning outside employment, once the finances have been secured for retirement.
I think your world model is a bit off here. Each tech job creates multiple non-tech jobs on average (1.5-2 in the bay area, last I checked). It's true we're coming out of a mini-recession in tech, but in general over the past 10 years there have been way more job openings than workers.
Someone experienced continuing to work in tech is a net benefit to society; they contribute way above median taxes and their economic activity generates jobs. It's not zero-sum; the more people working in tech as senior engineers, the richer society gets.
The only case I think you could actually point to net downsides is that within tech, it's possibly easier for a more junior to get a job replacing a more senior when the latter retires, from reduction of competition. So from a selfish perspective of "I want your job" sure it makes your life easier if a senior engineer retires.
I'll put a [citation needed] on your claims around downsides to society and leave it at that. Judging by the downvotes it seems others don't agree with you either; if you want to persuade people I think you need to provide some concrete evidence.
Given the demographic situation nearly everywhere in the world, there’ll be no shortage of work for the young, and a pronounced need for the old to keep working.
Now you're questioning if human nature and pursuit of "better" can be changed. That's like asking "can't we all get along" and get rid of police and armies, which obviously doesn't work.
"Stepping aside" makes sense if you are in a singular position, like the CEO of a company.
Most positions are not like that. Even though tenured positions in a university is a finite resource, having a highly productive professor on such a position is beneficial, no matter the age. The problem here is in they way science is financed, not in the glut of Nobel laureates refusing to leave.
It does, however, create a pipelining problem: there's very little reason for someone who wants to become a professor to stick through literal decades of adjunct hell to maybe get a tenure-track position when somebody decides they're finally ready to let go of theirs (and the paycheck that comes with it, which is not large but certainly incentivizes staying a long time).
Tenure is a great and necessary phenomenon, but it is one of the best examples of the folks who get it needing to be more broad-minded than themselves.
I have this theory: Humans have a spectrum for "worrying about things" or "things deemed important", let's call it 0 to 1. Things you don't worry about are 0. During normal life you worry about some things, and stuff surrounding work may even approach 1. Normal, because your family's well-being may depend on it. Then you retire or become unemployed and the 0 to 1 spectrum starts to drop in scope, the spectrum starts to cover a much narrower reality. Soon you worry and get annoyed by your neighbor not taking good care of his lawn or kids skating through the park... I've seen it happen to people retiring, I was once unemployed for 10 months and I felt it happen to me too.
I then thought: Perhaps for me the working life, life filled with intellectual challenges, may never loose its appeal?! I will just have to make sure to make work more fun by getting rid of the boring parts and focus on the the fun parts. Then, at 67, why would I stop if I got to an almost "pure fun" state? Of course what is fun is also determined by what you are good at so I have no idea what that "work" will look like.
I’ve taken off a year and a half from work and similar to your theory, I have the same amount of stress in my life, I just apply it to non work parts of my life.
Yes, that's indeed how I felt. Idk, I do think there are people that don't experience this effect or perhaps less.
In general I've felt best when I was making or doing something I felt was really worth doing. Happy clients, difficult work (by my own standards, but also, I like to think by humanity's), lots of time spend highly focused.
I am 59, and this is my seventh new company, third startup with external funding. We just closed a €1M Euro grant for our work and are well placed for the next funding round during the autumn.
You are not crazy, if it is something you are passionate about. I tend to work on things I expect to take a decade or so before I step off. I really don’t feel that being a bit older is a detriment. I work smarter than I did and I get to work on things that really mean something for me, and maybe the world at large.
Depending on the context of course - retire from a career to pursue one's passions.
Retire as a software engineer, pursue business ideas. Tinker. Maybe build wood cabinets and chairs.
Picture someone that just spent the last 30 years writing C, C++, Java (whatever) code, and maybe doing various lower level management roles. The age of AI has broken into an open gallup; said person is 55-65 years old, maybe now is a good time to have fun with their capabilities instead. So now they're learning Python instead of punching a 9-5 time clock, messing with LLMs or Stable Diffusion extensions. You get the idea.
We have hit an inflection point the scale of the World Wide Web circa the mid 1990s. There's a lot to do. Vast new territory to explore and it's moving fast. It feels a lot like the mid 1990s did in terms of speed. It feels like "internet time" has returned. It's damn exciting again.
For younger people here that are completely unfamiliar with the phrase "internet time." Vaguely the idea or sense of experience that development online circa the 1990s was moving abnormally fast compared to everything else (this is from 2001, when people still understood the original context of the phrase):
On the opposite note, I'm planning to retire the day before my 30th birthday that's coming soon. Not that I'm going to be completely divorced from my firm, but I've delegated most of the day to day work. I'm planning to spend the rest of my time working on some startup ideas, as well as focusing time spending with family and friends (especially some close ones who have less time than me).
I originally planned on getting my MBA from HBS, but due to some of the above circumstances, I decided to delay those plans. They were very understanding though.
The prof sounds like a great guy in a great situation. I assume he has a spacious office on a beautiful campus and in full control of the work he is pursuing. I get the same feeling reading he is working at 100 as when I see a loving group of friends and family egging on a married couple celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary to get them to kiss. You just want to pinch their cheeks so hard…
Should working to 100 be aspirational, or even thought desirable, for 99.9999% of the population? Of course not.
Is it admirable to continue to work in a job where others (who you may or may not respect) determine the nature of the work and work environment…for one millisecond longer than you must? I don’t think so, not beyond a personal sacrifice to be made if the work is of unique critical importance to the direct well-being of people and the planet. Even then, think really hard about it.
Is it admirable to take up a slot in a fulfilling career area when so many young deserving candidates are knocking at the door? Not to me.
Should you pursue your personal passions in any way that suits you in your golden years, when economic issues are not a priority? Absolutely.
But who is this self-identified “old person” who is only now turning 65? Just a young punk I say. Take your hippity-hoppity music someplace else…
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).
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)...
This is almost always due to a couple trying to settle in a neighbourhood or school district or home beyond their means, at least in the US.
Even a tenured professor at Columbia, who won the Nobel prize and loves their work and has a wife earning a matching compensation, would have a pretty miserable life if they insisted on mortgaging a large Upper East Side townhouse.
Not according to the metrics I've seen. The total acreage of all desirable neighbourhoods in the US beyond the reasonable means of a couple with MANGA compensation is not even 1000 square miles.
I live in New Zealand.
The average house price is nearly NZ$900k, with the big cities being more. The median wage is about NZ$63k.
Jobs, family etc are around the cities. There is a minimum deposit requirement before you can get a mortgage (at 20% or less it’s hard but possible. Below about 5% no one will lend).
Houses are way overpriced and average quality is low (insulation, heating/cooling, water tightness etc). Paying for a house on a single income is out of reach for huge swathes of the population and would also leave a household vulnerable if the earner was unable to work.
Your ideal of paying for a house with one wage is something left behind in 1950 New Zealand. Jobs, children, lifestyles etc are all dictated by rent and mortgage requirements. It’s depressing how inflated housing costs are.
There just aren't that many unusually desirable neighbourhoods, most are clustered around the average. Obviously, most average families can't actually end up living in neighbourhoods of above average desirability by definition.
I think the reality is if you can't afford to live on a single income the chosen area you want to live in isn't where you should be. If you can't get a singular salary which affords you to live in an area then you're selling yourself short.
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.
My parents are on the far right. It was only after I ignored their rugged individualism Ayn Rand style beliefs that I got anywhere in life and now I'm doing fine. That's probably why I consider it to be such a scam. YMMV.
My point was more that following your dreams will get you to about the same place as gumption, hard work and keeping your head down.
Instead you need to understand power dynamics, social arrangements, how to negotiate, things like that.
For instance, your success as an artist in say the 1960s could come much easier if you spent your time becoming close friends with Peggy Guggenheim instead of working on your brush stroke.
Next time you see a stupid startup get funded, go research who the founders are and invariably you'll find like, their parents are hedge fund managers.
Now you could call me a cynic, complain it's unfair, or you could go out and meet some hedge fund managers with your time (this option works the best!)
How did they get screwed? I feel like I kind of got screwed going into SW. I have friends who make 1/3 the money as athletic trainers, but just seem to love their life so much more. Maybe when we’re 60 things will change, but seems like a bad tradeoff.
There are happier because their work is finite. They do athletic sessions, they are done, their time then is their own. As software dev/lead/manager/pm you are never done, there is always next thing to do.
This why some devs become SREs - your shift is over, you are done.
I'm not sure about SREs - it probably depends on company, but where I work, if you aren't oncall, you develop projects similarly to a SWE - so you can still think about work after you clock out.
Sounds more like a generational thing than anything connected with political affiliation.
In my corner of the world it's the economically conservative crowd that advocates this - assuming money will follow because that's what happened to some of them in the 90s, when we were fresh out of communism.
Anecdotally speaking, I don’t ever see myself being right-leaning because really, what do I have to conserve to be conservative?
I don’t have much wealth, I can’t buy a house for the foreseeable future, I will be done paying off literally all my debt including student loan next year, I have a wife and no kids. So yeah… I just want to do what I like and screw making another person or company richer, they’ll be fine.
The main reason an academic career seemed infeasible to was because I would never comfortably afford the housing. I went broke my first summer living alone and decided to become a software engineer.
Color me skeptical. By the time you’re retired, you probably want your own place with minimal expense. Renting means you’re at the mercy of landlords and at that age I don’t think you’d be happy with that kind of arrangement.
> 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.
Almost every person I know has the same goal about learning all these new hobbies. What happens instead is people do what they are passionate about and if you never learning X all your life you probably won't start at 65.
It doesn't. Most people I know didn't have plans to ski jump when they are old because they know some physics and have been in the world more than 5 minutes.
Probably because most of us have feelings similar to what was expressed by the parent:
> It is very hard to have the energy to do a full day of work, come home, and do a full night of work.
I really enjoyed school, and I always thought I’d be the type to continue education via MOOCs, self-guided study, what have you. But it’s hard to fit it in after a full day of work and family time!
Same for me with learning new language (french) after long day at work... theoretically it should be fine and I know I should do it, but often the motivation is not there anymore at the end of the day, and you need some semi-constant momentum to get anywhere in these sustained efforts.
And once you get kids, they are more effective than black holes with sucking out any time you could have for yourself. Its well spent time, don't get me wrong, most probably the best way to spend it for a parent, but personal efforts suffer correspondingly. And next day is not gonna be different. Same for weekends and holidays. All year, every year.
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.
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).
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.
Haven't written on this, but can give you the important details of my form of consulting:
1) I tend to work at medium to large companies (Stubhub, Atlassian...) from anywhere from 7 months to 1.5 years. The reason being, as mentioned, that it's tough to do two things at the highest level at the same time. So I prefer to completely commit to one thing at a time - seems like for you, you have a lot of longterm clients that are constantly hitting you up for work. Guessing you're going to have to say no to new projects once you're ready to focus more on your interests.
2) So, when I'm working on a consulting job, it is my primary focus, and they get the best of me. And, I try to do at least 7 months of work, so that I do a substantial amount of work for them and they feel good about it - also, if you do too short a period, it will make it harder to get another job later on.
3) Although, it's important that while working at a consulting job, to keep up and improve your skills at whatever your outside interest is. Because if you don't, wow, you can really lose your skills and when your switch back to your interest, will need a ton of time to refreshing yourself. For me as a musician, this means would spend an hour a day practicing before work, specifically "sight-singing" as it is one of the most important skills for composition. In fact, would actually not just maintain the skill, but got a better at it over the course the consulting job.
4) When you have enough money and finish your consulting job, quit and switch back to your main interest. Will typically need to spend some time getting back up to speed. Sometimes this can take one month, other times (if you did a really long consulting job or you find a new skill you want to learn as is often the case for me) it can take a few months.
5) Now, fully focus on your main interest. You need to treat it just like regular work because it requires a ton of discipline, because it is so easy to get distracted and not do anything (I say this as I write this comment to you as a distraction from practicing:) For me, need a weekly work schedule (work mon - friday) and a daily routine to keep on track.
6) And just a suggestion about any outside interest. Work on smaller projects rather than trying to shoot for the moon. Because everything is takes a lot more work to do it at the highest level. Yeah, if I aim to create a music composition that I think will take a couple month, it often takes 3 or 4 times that, especially if I'm trying out a lot of stuff that I've never done before. I'd rather create something small that is really good than work on something large that I'll never finish.
7) And at least in my opinion, using this method, the quality of my compositions is quite high (at least to my standards) as they are my primary focus for months at a time.
8) Oh, and live cheaply. I used to live in SF, but moved way outside the city to save money (saved like 40% on rent, which went from $1350 to $700 - living with roommates in both situations).
Yes, you are right about my clients. And while the difference is subtle, it sounds like you are doing more of "contract jobs" than "consulting". But no matter what it is called, clearly it fits your goals, so that's great!
This year we're actually taking advantage of my work better than ever before with foreign travel and "make a schedule around weather/fun activities". I don't have any concrete plans to do what you're doing but maybe someday. It's a very interesting idea.
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
That isn't how welfare works. You're actually presenting the "welfare queen" argument even if you're saying it's good, but it was bad because it wasn't true.
Welfare is good because people like being employed and supporting them gives them more time and resources to find a better job. It increases employment because of this. (this is search/matching theory.)
Conversely, the kind of non-working people who are poorest and most need support are children and the elderly, not early retirees.
Do you think that full employment is necessary in today's society? Note I did not use the word economy. I wonder if people who have "welfare queen" adjacent perspectives believe that people would not be happy in a situation where we have a smaller economy and a society where the average person isn't forced to compromise their values or submit themselves to abuse just to afford rent and food.
I think it's the only choice because entropy exists. "Everyone should be retired" doesn't work when you need sewage workers, or even sewage robot maintenance workers.
That said, you don't have to work 120 hours a week just because you're employed, and hours worked has also been trending down over time.
> the average person isn't forced to compromise their values or submit themselves to abuse just to afford rent and food.
This is what happens without full employment; full employment means you don't have to do this because it's hard to hire new people (they're all already employed) so it's easy to change jobs.
Just because you'd be uncomfortable working on sewers when you could be sitting on your couch watching TV doesn't mean we will run out of sewer workers.
Full employment comes with a whole host of other problems for the kind of economy we inhabit today -- a sure enough sign that things aren't working under the current paradigm. We need a change if something like 'full employment' is expected to be a positive thing.
Near-full employment and full employment are very different, in the same way that carrying a 95% full glass of water and a 100% full glass of water are very different.
The "cushion" of unemployed people, according to economists, is very important for staving off runaway effects that drive bad macroeconomic dynamics.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 $$$.
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.
> 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.
I add like to sense of stability there as well. If there is the nature unpredictability involved, waking up everyday is quite a challenge. Unless you consider unpredictability into your framework, getting paid to do things you love doing can be quite difficult. The person has achieved the highest accomplishment in his field, he has tenure and thus from the outside perspective he is living a much more stable and routine life.
Someone mentioned a paper a while ago examining whether retirement was actually what caused death, rather than retirement being caused by ill health. Perhaps someone here can link it.
This study [1] seems to suggest that there are quite a few negative effects that can be associated with retirement itself rather than age alone. But the effects are rather small and it also seems like they can be offset by maintaining a social life and physical exercise after retirement. So yeah, being alone on the couch all day is bad for physical and mental health. But that holds for any age, retirement only exacerbates it for some people.
one thing i remember pretty vividly about my grandfather is that he started to age in front of my eyes after he retired. It's ironic that people are almost encouraged to wind down at a point when they need an active life the most to fend off senescence.
Look up Blue Zone groups. Researchers study groups of people that live the longest and how they live. Of course diet and exercise is a big component, but a reason to live is another. There are other interesting factors as well.
Wow, such a winner: Long, healthy life full of accomplishments within a community where he is liked and he likes them back.
I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it, would he consider Rudy Marcus a "winner", maybe bigger one than himself? I recall something about Thiel looking down on the life choices and motivations of scientists.
> I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it
The people I know who look down on modern academics, tend to dislike a set of changes that started happening in the mid-late sixties and ramped up through at least the 2010s.
I'm not sure that's applicable to someone who got their PhD in 1946.
I am a bit too lazy to go back into Thiel talks and find the relevant quotes, however, if I recall correctly He talks about Einstein and similar physicists on how they were not compensated correctly and not being billionaires despite their huge contributions to the society and how they made wrong life choices.
> > I wonder what people like Peter Thiel have to say about it
Who gives a fuck? He's just a guy, much like this guy is just a guy.
Don't waste space and give me your take as opposed to mentioning other people, because they are not here and they cannot debate, while you are and can.
Realistically, Peter Thiel would praise the guy. He's talked before about our current level of stagnation and how the US needs to prioritize real advances in technology, especially in fundamental areas like physics. A Caltech Nobel Prize Winner who won his award for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions would naturally help advance that agenda.
This is the way, I aspire for this. One of my goal in life is to have a long fulfilling healthy life doing the things that I love to do, and hopefully see the 22nd century. written human history has only been for 5,000 years and the progress of engineering and technologies has been exploding for the past 100 years. I wonder how it will be in the 22nd century , it must be unimaginable to us right now. And I hope I will live long enough and have the luxury of a healthy brain to comprehend the beauty of technologies in the 22nd century.
I like the work of Blueprint by Bryan Johnson, though it's not replicable for most and felt a bit too much. For now, my lifestyle include eating clean, weightlifting, cardio, and good sleep. This is it or there's more to it? Appreciate any other resources/readings to pursue a long life
>“The main thing is finding something that you enjoy doing, that preferably doesn’t harm others, and that tests whatever aptitude one has, that tests one’s ingenuity,”
If today's scientific community were as functional as Rudy Marcus' we'd still be progressing. The key moment of his career was prediction of an inverted trend in an unexplored experimental regime. In today's academia, he would have hopped to a startup rather than struggle for tenure with foreign ideas that don't support anyone else's old stack of fluffy papers.
Progress is brought forward by people who are 'out there' and are 'out there' enough to let the whole world to know that they are.
But you cannot confine it to science and academia, rather it's the general background 'out there-ness' of the whole planet which then finds its way in various sectors.
In other words you don't get the Einsteins without the Hitlers and you don't get the Richard Feynmans without the Charlie Mansons
> “The main thing is finding something that you enjoy doing, that preferably doesn’t harm others, and that tests whatever aptitude one has, that tests one’s ingenuity,” he said. “It’s almost like a kind of a game. You against nature.”
You, sir, are winning that game. See you "at work" because in 59 years I also want to be productive still!
How does one keep going so long with the same passion, energy and excitement? Is it because of working in academia? Corporate life with its politics has exhausted me and sucked all the passion out of work. My cognitive abilities are declining due to the constant pressure to show (fake) impact and tout my own horn to move up.
A tenured professor pursuing their scientific passion vs. a cog at a for-profit corporation who's mission is to serve shareholders, in an industry that had over 150k layoffs in the last year, where you have no freedom over your work, have to play politics and constantly justify your value and why they shouldn't fire you, you're easily replaceable, and little of your work is particularly meaningful or benefits society.
Not really a mystery why one of these entails passion, energy, and excitement at age 100 while the other doesn't.
Not really. There's a long tail of self-employed people in various capacities, who are happy with the freedom that comes with being a contractor, sole proprietor, or fiscally responsible low expense individual. The petit bourgeoisie were a thing long before tech startups.
Every context is different. You can’t measure yourself against someone in a totally different context. I doubt the professor has been fighting the same battles as you. Talking about his love of puzzles and games, I suspect his work is more flow state than yours.
So you can accept your current burn rate or change to a context that burns you out less. Personally I’m in corporate job (senior eng at sp500 company) and I also don’t have the same fights you do. I have a lot of flexibility and zone time and no politics.
I love my work and I’m darn good at it, but I definitely want to retire. I hope to teach my grandkids (fingers crossed) how to program and take an active role in homeschooling them (again fingers crossed).
Apart then that I have a very fun and rewarding hobby: growing heirloom apple trees and making my own cider.
Nothing wrong with working, but I’ll be glad when I never have a google calendar reminder again.
Presumably there's a bunch of teaching assistants in their 60s who have been waiting for him to die/retire for the past 30 years so they could get a crack at the job.
Nobel prize winners show up to teach classes, even if they're 100, because they expect others to aspire to greatness. That's what most would call purpose.
Perhaps controversial, but after 65-70 continuing working is fine but the type and focus of work should change because if not, the work will be at the expense and harm of the next generation.
After a certain point the focus should no longer be on doing work first hand, but should be working to help, mentor and advise others to provide them a path instead of occupying the top.
Fostering the next generations should be the goal, not occupying career space until the grave.
It’s like comparing US presidents vs the English king/queen. There’s been a heck of a lot more people reach the top in the US. When there is turnover at the top, more people can have a career at it. Otherwise it’s very stagnant at the top. Look at Charles, he had to wait until normal retirement age to advance. If people don’t shift into mentor ship roles and instead cling to the top roles until they die, then it’s pretty obvious the next generations are going to be held back in terms of achievement.
Look I get it, he’s passionate and loves what he does. But there’s something about not even taking a day to step back on your 100th birthday that just doesn’t sit right with me.
Although from the sentiment in this thread I guess that makes me the minority. I’m also not a Nobel laureate, to each their own I guess.
Apropos of Oppenheimer coming out, the guy who invented the H-bomb currently works as a covid researcher. (Or at least an amateur one, not sure what he’s actually doing.)
Wikipedia: "[Dick] Garwin received his bachelor's degree from the Case Institute of Technology in 1947, and two years later his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago under the supervision of Enrico Fermi at the age of 21."
"Invented" is an overstatement. He authored the first detailed H-bomb design, but he didn't invent the design concept that it embodied: Teller and Ulam did. Teller instructed Garwin to produce a detailed bomb design based on the Teller-Ulam concept.
My mother recently retired. She was working since 16. Nobody does that anymore most enter the workforce at 25 now.
Anyway she spent 40 years working as a psychiatric nurse and later as a therapist and got tired of the sex abuse stories and all the other horrors our lovely society produces to make people go insane so I don't blame her for retiring.
Some people have real jobs.
Good for him! I hope to be working until I no longer can't.
What's really the killer is the 5 days a week 8 hour grind.
My work gives me quite flexible working hours and days - sometimes I work a lot, sometimes it's quite chill. If I was stuck in an office with the same routine year in and out, probably I would hate work.
Hmm, that seems extremely reductionistic, and sounds like you do not know anyone with bad or unpleasant lives. It also sounds like you're probably pretty young.
Life is by definition good. No other definition of good has any coherence.
The fact that in the vast majority of cases, people who are faced with life-threatening adversity, struggle in an effort to overcome it rather than consigning themselves to death, suggests this is the overwhelming perception held by people.
Natural selection ensures that the perception that life is good will always be the dominant one amongst any species.
There is an 80-year old astrophysicist at the local government research observatory here. The government doesn't pay him anymore, but he has his own grants. He is almost certainly the most productive person at the facility, running circles around people half his age.
And he does everything. Is a leader, guide and mentor for all the young scientists. He does serious intellectual work. Sometimes spends all day out in the sun, improving/fixing/maintaining telescopes. They held a conference in his honor last month.
The lesson is not to judge people's productivity using just their age as the gauge.
He's a professor at Caltech and did Nobel laureate-level work. He might be less productive than his prime and still be competitive with other professors, particularly since he brings deep understanding of the history of approaches in his field.
Why would it be illegal? It clearly is something he wants to do, and something his employer wants him to do.
In the US, various forms of age discrimination against people over 40 have become illegal over the years, including mandatory retirement. So the law is moving the other way.
