My second year without a job

https://shilin.ca/my-second-year-without-job/

by true_pk • 2 years ago

688 911 2 years ago

dyauspitr5• 2 years ago

I was unemployed for a year at a point and honestly it was the best year of my life in a long time. Yes I went through about $50K but I was able to pursue hobbies, play sports, weightlift, hike, travel, write, play music, spend a lot of time with my wife and daughter and I built an entire second home on my property (all by myself)! That’s honestly how life is meant to be lived but it’s too bad we’re not at UBI levels in society yet.

dingnuts3• 2 years ago

Yes, that sounds very nice and you are very privileged and lucky. Leisure is definitely a lot nicer than work, but there's a lot of work someone has to do. You can choose to pay people to work, or not, but if you pay people to not work you have to figure out some other incentive for workers or the necessary work won't get done at all.

I do prefer living in industrialized society to subsistence farming and slavery, personally, so maybe let's try to keep the incentives in place and NOT copy the Soviets, yeah?

And implying that there's a way we're "meant" to live implies we were created by a conscious being with intent, and I think you'll find that's a controversial view

dyauspitr5• 2 years ago

I get it, to have a functioning society we need people to work. There is some paradigm in the future where a lot of the labor can be automated, we’re just not there yet.

dinkumthinkum2• 2 years ago

A controversial view is a view that has been held by a majority of humans that have lived in the last few thousand years? Ok, I guess that checks out.

kbutler2• 2 years ago

I appreciate that you used that time to build that second home.

Any estimate on the value creation from building that home vs the $50k consumed?

dyauspitr5• 2 years ago

It’s a full fledged home with 2 bedrooms. I spent ~$75k on materials (outside of the $50k I spent on living expenses). It probably added atleast $100k of value if not more.

billy99k• 2 years ago

"That’s honestly how life is meant to be lived but it’s too bad we’re not at UBI levels in society yet"

This sounds great. My question is why should I have to work and pay for you to do what you want all day?

dyauspitr5• 2 years ago

With UBI you would receive it too. I presume the person that pays the cost is large industrialists with automated factories with billions in profits.

overcast• 2 years ago

Welcome to the club!

Findecanor• 2 years ago

Two years is nothing ... Gold membership card holder here.

processing2• 2 years ago

Exact same situation - 2 years deep here but at a breaking point cannot continue this trajectory.

to-too-two• 2 years ago

I'm depressed studying computer science. Been thinking about quitting seeing how people with years of experience can't even find work.

unsupp0rted2• 2 years ago

What’s a better alternative?

shreddit• 2 years ago

“Can’t find work” can have different meanings for different people. Maybe they just haven’t found a job with the pay grade they want.

processing2• 2 years ago

if you love computer science don't quit - I'd definitely triple down on real world projects/output rather than just studying though.

I intentionally left to work on projects I wanted to pursue, built a startup that isn't currently covering costs (1 customer on an annual plan), lived in Thailand for 6 months (with kids going to to school there), the burn rate on return has taken it's toll (California)...but yeah recently put feelers out for potential work and see it's going to be quite the mission to find work (personally).

coldpie2• 2 years ago

There's jobs out there. My company has turnover, which means people are going somewhere, and we're hiring, too. Make Connections!! Any kind of foot in the door is leagues better than cold-applying.

bdangubic7• 2 years ago

Absolutely do not quit. The loudest people are ones that cannot find a job, people that do are not going to be writing blogs like "My 27th year as a hacker" - no one will read that shit.

There are roughly 1.5 million software developers alone in the United States. If you love computer science you will excel in this industry for many years after you graduate. Quit only if your heart is not in it, the worst people I've worked with in my 27 year career are ones who obviously went with this career only because it can be a decent way to make a living.

But worry not, if you are end up loving what you do you'll be great at what you do and people that are great at what they do will always be wanted.

raddan2• 2 years ago

CS professor here. Don’t quit. CS has been one of the most enlightening experiences of my life. I have made many friends along the way, been able to participate in inspiring projects, and felt like I worked in a vibrant field that gave me a powerful lens on the world. Yes, it is hard work. But the work is worth it.

Since coming to CS my highs have been higher and my lows lower than in other disciplines. And I came late. I started grad school in my thirties. But something that I learned when I was young, from well before my time in CS is true in this discipline too: if you do good work, people eventually notice. There will be a snowball effect.

It’s true, it doesn’t work out for everyone. But nothing does. And if you don’t take the opportunity to do something difficult, you’ll never know if you could have done it. I personally could not live with that thought. Those who do not try cannot succeed. But those who try—and retry when things don’t work out—probably will not fail either.

raister• 2 years ago

The way I see it, it's not CS per se, it's about solving problems.

You hone that skill, and it will shape your future, whatever field.

You'll never be jobless having that particular skill.

Don't give up.

enasterosophes• 2 years ago

Computer science opens the door to a wide range of work. The lower end of that range is indeed insecure and doesn't pay very well. However, get into the right industry, and you can match a lawyer for income -- without all the hastle and hurdles that junior lawyers have to go through. We're talking easily the upper 4% of income as a junior, eventually going up to 2% or 1% as you gain seniority.

The reason is, there are some skills which are highly in demand, and few people are strong in those skills. In particular, I am thinking of HPC engineering and cloud computing infrastructure engineering. Companies and institutions own large server fleets, we're talking hundreds or thousands of servers. They want whatever is running on those fleets to have high performance, security, and zero downtime.

This kind of work requires strong Linux systems administration and programming skills, an understanding of enterprise networking and storage technologies, confidence with at least one orchestration stack such as OpenStack or Kubernetes, and strong CI/CD and IaC skills (look up GitOps.) As a junior, you don't need to tick all these boxes, but people should be able to see that you're able to learn whatever you're missing.

These skills don't usually come directly from a computer science degree. However, a computer science degree is the primary way to get your foot in the door with building those skills. If you want a junior job in cloud computing and are cold-calling because you don't know anyone yet, then it will help if you have good marks in a computer science degree (although it's possible to prove your chops in other ways, like having a history of strong contributions to open source.)

Later, after you build some experience, and you prove that you can keep learning, you get the job done, and you can get along with people, you'll eventually have recruiters chasing after you, and companies willing to listen to whatever income you pitch to them.

StressedDev5• 2 years ago

You will find work. One thing to keep in mind is the job market goes in cycles. Right now, finding work is hard but things will eventually pick up. Here is some advice for job hunting:

1) DO NOT GIVE UP 2) You don't need every skill the employer is asking for. What you need are the major skills the job requires and the ability to pickup the rest on the job. 3) Only apply for jobs where you are a good fit. 4) While job hunting, spend time each day learning a new skill. It can be a programming language, a technology, or something interesting. 5) Once you get a job, save lots of money. It helps you make it through lean times and sets you up for a nice retirement.

One last thing. If your depression does not let up after 6 months, I strongly recommend seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist. I wish you luck. Things will get better.

bawolff4• 2 years ago

Tech job market flucuates like any other field. Its in a downturn right now. Won't be forever.

Still, you have to do what is right for you. The downturn might end tomorrow. It might take a decade. Nobody knows.

LouisSayers4• 2 years ago

If it helps, I have years of experience and got 2 offers (good ones too) after applying to a handful of companies in March this year.

If you are skilled, can talk to people and aren't afraid to put in the yards to prepare for interviews you'll do just fine.

rsynnott3• 2 years ago

At least in the original post, my reading was not that they couldn’t find work, but that they had quit to go do startup stuff.

The (tech) job market is definitely not great at the moment, but I do think people are overstressing how bad it is a bit, and in any case these things are cyclical. I started a CS degree in 2003, just after the dot-com crash, and finished in 2007, just heading into the financial crisis. Both of those kind of cratered the job market for a bit, but it recovered.

vivzkestrel• 2 years ago

try 10 years because i havent made a dime since 2016

StressedDev5• 2 years ago

If this is not by choice, I hope you solve your problems and I hope things get better. Please do not give up.

oldpersonintx• 2 years ago

go work at Costco

its money

skwee3576• 2 years ago

I had a period of 6 months when I was unemployed burning through my savings.

It was one of the best times of my life. Like the author, I focused a lot of entrepreneurship, my mental and physical health, and traveled a lot.

But unlike the author, I came back to the workforce. I don’t know what’s the end game for the author, but I kind of feel torn here.

On one side, I’d say that it’s way easier to focus on building a business when you don’t have a job. On the other side, not having money to live on would stress me so much that I’m not sure I’d be able to do sport or engage in hobbies, let alone build a business.

true_pk• 2 years ago

Hi! Author here. You are very much on point. I only recently started looking for part-time jobs, and perhaps I should have mentioned it in the post. It's precisely what you said -- financial stress started impacting my hobbies and sports, and that's where I don't feel as comfortable anymore.

skwee3576• 2 years ago

Wishing you the best! I think if you will be able to find a part time job that will cover your lifestyle financially, while dedicating the other half to entrepreneurship and hobbies/sport, it’s the best

chr15m• 2 years ago

Good luck man, glad you had a great two years, thanks for sharing!

Also, keep operating costs super cheap so you can keep the side hustle going and watch it grow over years. Don't shut it down unless you have to.

To make $600/m you would have to invest $180k at 5%, so from that perspective you have created something valuable already.

chasd00• 2 years ago

unemployed burning through my savings.

did that include retirement savings? Are you behind or on track for when you're inevitably too old to work?

skwee3576• 2 years ago

In fact, I touched only cash in the bank, I never sold any stocks, nor I ever touched the pension (not that I believe in pension too much, but I also can’t withdraw it without paying a hefty penalty).

Being “on track” is kind of an illusion to me. I believe it’s impossible to plan for more than 2-3 years ahead, let alone 20. I live below my means, invest as much as I can while finding a healthy balance between enjoying the moment and planning for the future.

UncleOxidant3• 2 years ago

But unlike the author, I came back to the workforce. I don’t know what’s the end game for the author, but I kind of feel torn here.

His timing wasn't great. The tech job market is pretty dismal right now and will likely be dismal for a while. Unless we get back to a hot tech job market like circa 2020-2022 it's not going to be easy to find a gig after being out for 2 years.

JesseTG• 2 years ago

You're telling me...

itake10• 2 years ago

I've taken a similar path:

I probably will continue bouncing back and forth for the rest of my career.

declan_roberts3• 2 years ago

If anyone else finds themself in this position, I highly recommend you sell what you can, pack the rest up into a storage unit, and travel, 4 or 6 months in each location.

$80k can easily last you 4+ years of very comfortable living in much of the world. Enjoy the food, really try and learn some of the local language, and enjoy yourself.

You can do it, and there won't be another window.

skwee3576• 2 years ago

Not only you suddenly will get the entire week for yourself, to do whatever you want, and you will be able to travel, but the other benefit is reviewing your relationship with material possessions.

I did that (sold everything, and went traveling), and now I own very little stuff. Apart from the mandatory laptop I need for work, and clothes, I couldn’t care less about everything else.

Before selling everything, I had a sick setup of dual monitors, and external DAC, speakers, headphones, keyboards, etc. Today, I need only laptop. I was considering getting one monitor, but can’t seem to justify the need.

It really teaches you how little material crap you need.

deadbabe2• 2 years ago

You listed a bunch of crap most people wouldn’t buy anyways.

The bulk of what people own are things like furniture, artworks, plants, appliances, cookware… etc. Not particularly sexy, but essential for making a cozy place to live in the world.

grogenaut2• 2 years ago

I wouldn't call dual monitors sick, barely entry level, but... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08NSW5F8V they make good cheap external portable monitors that are laptop thin or thinner.

Aeolun9• 2 years ago

I always think laptop only is fine, and then I suddenly have a screen and realize how much happier my neck is every day.

imbusy111• 2 years ago

Would not recommend, if being alone is a risk factor to mental health.

insane_dreamer9• 2 years ago

My brother and his wife did this; quit their jobs and spent a year in Europe "slow living" (still did a bit of consulting work, maybe 10 hours/week), but with careful planning were able to keep their expenses waaay down (not sure of exact figure but much less than if living in the US). Month-long AirBNBs in non-tourist areas are inexpensive, so they'd spend 1 month in each place. A lot of walking, hiking, trains, just living. Not Paris, London or Zurich of course, but places like Albania, Montenegro, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, France of course. (Part of the reason for going to those countries is you can only spend so long in the Schengen Zone.) So you don't have to go as far as Vietnam or Ecuador to do this.

Obviously the OP has no children (and my brothers' kids are grown up) - if you have kids this changes the equation completely (though if they're very young then it can still work).

Loughla• 2 years ago

I have a cousin and his wife who did this with kids. They sold everything, bought an RV, and traveled north and Central America. They were homeschooling during that time. Their kids were 5 and 7.

It was not good.

I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea this is unless your children are under 3. Children need structure and permanency. They need friends, not just acquaintances. My cousin did everything else right, but his kids still have issues with relationships because 5 of their very formative years were spent without actual friends. It's really sad to think about.

For him, it was a wildly selfish move that negatively impacted his children. Don't be that guy.

unsupp0rted2• 2 years ago

Whereas in late-2024, go to Turkey if you’d like to blow through your savings faster than in Western Europe.

szundi2• 2 years ago

Also some eastern countries have deadly diseases even these days, malaria, etc.

chgs3• 2 years ago

What visa did they use?

whtsthmttrmn• 2 years ago

As someone that hasn't been able to travel, this sounds wonderful

postepowanieadm4• 2 years ago

$80k will give you one year of very comfortable life in Central Europe. If you want to live in an international city in a decent flat 4 years is not realistic, more like 2.

declan_roberts3• 2 years ago

The world is a big place, and central Europe is a small part of it.

Aditya_Garg• 2 years ago

In Thailand, you can live very very comfortably for 25k.

csomar• 2 years ago

If you are willing to forgo a car, expensive food and be fine with a small studio, you can easily do 4 years on $80k in central Europe. You can do 10 years in many parts of the worlds and it'll require some adjustments but some places (ie: Vietnam) can be really okay and offer a night life unmatched by the US.

badpun• 2 years ago

I live in Poland in a city center in a metro area of 2 million people on $9k per year. That's rent free, because I own the place, adding rent would push the total cost to $13k per year. That's six years of living on $80k.

Also, I'm 42 and retired :) It's really easy to retire here when making software money.

pj_mukh• 2 years ago

Stories like this make me the most mad at the Landlords/NIMBY's (sometimes the same people). An $80,000 "investment" into a one person startup should take you much much much farther than this, but it is completely gobbled up by literal rent-seekers.

BAcK iN mY dAy a room in a house would cost $400-$500/mo in most places in the Montreal-Waterloo corridor. Now runways have basically been halved (0.3x'd?) as an extra allowance to the landed gentry.

FactKnower69• 2 years ago

Impossible to estimate the amount of damage the runaway real estate market has done to competitiveness, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the interest of funnelling more free money to entitled landlords sitting on their asses cashing rent checks

virtualwhys• 2 years ago

I used to rent a studio on Parc Lafontaine in Montreal for around $400 USD/month.

Beautiful space, clear view of Mont Royal, right off the park, ideal location (IMO) in the plateau.

Granted, this was around 15 years ago -- I shudder to think what the now-likely Airbnb units in that building go for these days, probably $400/night.

rendang2• 2 years ago

If you're spreading blame around, save some for the politicians who let in millions of immigrants despite the housing shortage

game_the0ry• 2 years ago

Totally agree with this.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the recent tech boom happen to be the owners of land and buildings in and around the cities that tech companies prefer to be around.

Also a strong argument for remote-first companies.

Terr_• 2 years ago

into a storage unit

I've heard some terrible things about how vulnerable those are to theft / squatters.

bane5• 2 years ago

My wife and I always say that the most dangerous show on television is "House Hunters International".

"I need a 3 bedroom apartment with a full kitchen in the village center, with at least parking for one car, I have a budget of $300/mo".

"Here's at least three options"

It also bring up a kind of discomfort between us, as tech workers, and regular people. The quantity of money we can earn, even at the lower end in the U.S., is unfathomable. It makes us want to go places and spend somewhat frivolously to support local businesses.

We were recently in Portugal. There's a ton of trendy food spots with prices near what we'd pay in HCOL U.S., but there's a ton of really local, mom 'n pop places, with absolutely incredibly prices, and they're incredibly appreciative of your business.

One place we frequented was maybe a 30 second walk from a very trendy tourist district, but served local food at very local prices. Ubers were lined up to drop people to go overpay for mediocre food in the district, literally on the street next to where we were eating. If they would have just taken a moment, they could have come and had a great relaxed meal and support some locals for almost next to nothing.

szundi2• 2 years ago

I second this, I had a seabass with potatoes for 5.5 eurs some years ago... not the nicest environment but it was clean and the food was delicious.

Simon_ORourke• 2 years ago

We were recently in Portugal. There's a ton of trendy food spots with prices near what we'd pay in HCOL U.S., but there's a ton of really local, mom 'n pop places, with absolutely incredibly prices, and they're incredibly appreciative of your business.

I hear that - last time I was in Lisbon I got breakfast in one of those kind of places and had to ask the cashier if they made a mistake with the change and had given me back too much. Like literally, they could have charged double I would have accepted it as a fair price for a nice meal.

eps2• 2 years ago

One place we frequented

Got a name?

cactusplant7374• 2 years ago

I have only met poor retirees when living abroad. The sort of people that have never been abroad before but love the low prices (and spend most of their time talking about it). I don’t think the House Hunters demographic has much money.

secondcoming2• 2 years ago

That's great, unless you're a young person in Portugal being priced out of accomodation due to wealthy foreigners.

Der_Einzige• 2 years ago

The trivial ability to use even a small fraction of this wealth to improve a huge amount of lives is exactly what the “effective altruist” crowd should be creaming themselves over.

The fact that I can buy a house in Thailand for something insanely cheap also means that I can make sure that the local school has whatever they need, for basically just a haircut.

You can take the local orphanage and make sure hundreds of kids are comfortable for hundreds of USD a month.

nickjj2• 2 years ago

but there's a ton of really local, mom 'n pop places, with absolutely incredibly prices, and they're incredibly appreciative of your business

Yep, I was in Portugal back in June and was blown away by how nice it was. City life, the beach towns and overall prices of things. That was my first time going to the EU from the US.

I was on vacation so I ate out every day for all meals but I don't think I paid more than $5 for breakfasts and most sit down dinners were $12-15 all-in. I splurged one night in Lisbon and had the craziest plate of sushi I've ever seen and it was $18. That was from a 4.9 rated sushi bar with ~800 reviews.

My total food bill for 14 days of solo traveling was ~$475 and I wasn't purposely trying to budget. That includes randomly trying a lot of things that I normally wouldn't do like getting a fresh smoothie while walking around because why not. That food bill also includes 3 days in south western Spain because I moved around to a few cities (Seville, Spain -> Lagos, Portugal -> Lisbon, Portugal was the loop I took with day trips to a couple of places).

lobsterthief3• 2 years ago

If it makes you feel any better, most of that show is faked. My friend was on it; she had already moved to another country and into her new apartment before applying to the show. Her apartment is where she “ended up”.

They flew her back to the US, where she’s from, to do filming there and have us friends come by to throw frisbees and talk about how much they’ll miss her. It was weird.

mock-possum• 2 years ago

Sorry, but then what - money will just be magically waiting for you when you’re ready to come home? Having spent every penny to your name?

God it must be nice to be in a position where you can afford to just be like “ok my partner and I are just going to travel for four years, and after that, idk, things will work out somehow.”

StressedDev5• 2 years ago

Some people don't mind living paycheck to paycheck. It has a downside but if it works for someone, I don't think judging it really helps.

ornornor7• 2 years ago

Same as it would be nice to win the lottery. Not everyone is so lucky and others will be jealous they can’t do it too.

wingworks2• 2 years ago

I did this. Was in a dead end job, left the job, traveled for a year, rented somewhere for 6 months, then out of money, moved in with parents... still here. Job opportunities where my parents live aren't great.

At the time the job was so boring, going nowhere, pretty easy.. I would do anything to go back in time to that role tbh..

I loved every second of traveling, and met some cool people, but none of that helps me find work now.

If you're a shy introvert, and struggle with social situations.. and you currently have a job, I'd advise to keep the job, even if it's not great, and try get something else lined up before leaving.

I have so many mental issues now (low self esteem etc)... therapy would probably help, but now I have no money sooo... I'm stuck in a loop of unemployable, no help due to no money, no money due to no work etc.

.. don't be me

vunderba3• 2 years ago

Think long and hard before cramming your crap into a storage unit. Outside of possessions with some sentimental value, it's likely the money spent on a year or two of paying for a storage unit (particularly one that is climate controlled) exceeds the value of the things you're storing there.

aprilthird20213• 2 years ago

But almost everyone has some possessions with sentimental value. Where should those be kept?

ornornor7• 2 years ago

It’s not only about current value. As anyone who has had their house wiped out and an insurance payout, acquiring everything again when you settle back is a massive time sink (let alone cost, if you were insured at fair market value rather than replacement value)

So yeah, the rent on the unit might be more than your crap is worth, but having it all back in a blink (essentially) when moving back someplace has some intangible value too.

xenospn2• 2 years ago

They also tend to increase prices on a regular basis, and that more or less doubles your cost very quickly

nox1012• 2 years ago

Agree with this. I put all my stuff in storage several times. One time I put it all in a smaller rural town because a because cost was 1/5th of what it was in a big city ($70 a month vs $350 a month). But even then, the stuff was in there for 4 years so ($3360) + the van to move it and most of it could have been replaced for far less.

I eventually emptied it but I made the mistake is discarding books and trinkets that were actually memorabilia. I didn't interact with the trinkets or pull the books off the shelves. I didn't realize that just seeing them would trigger memories of where I bought them, who I was with, what I was into then, what songs were popular then, etc... so I regret getting rid of that stuff. But that was probably no more than 10 "book boxes" of stuff

hilux8• 2 years ago

I'm sure if he had known he was not going to get a job, he would have taken your excellent advice.

lazyasciiart3• 2 years ago

It doesn’t sound like he was looking for a job. He was trying to start a business of some kind.

pluc• 2 years ago

I am currently doing this, AMA!

em-bee10• 2 years ago

i did this more than 20 years ago. i was between jobs. my choice was to go back home or go travel. so i sent my stuff home to my grandparents and went to travel...

jasonkester2• 2 years ago

I’ll second this advice, counterintuitive though it may seem.

Back in the day, I had saved enough to take a nice 3 month leave of absence from work to do some travelling. Nudging my spreadsheet around, I tried replacing my rent, utilities etc. with the cost of a storage locker, and suddenly my “how long can I go for “ number shot up to over a year.

It changed my whole approach to life in my 30s, and it was a good 15 years before I committed to living in a single place long term again.

lylejantzi3rd• 2 years ago

How did you go about finding cheap short term rentals?

purplethinking4• 2 years ago

At first I thought you meant you were living out of a storage locker

keraf• 2 years ago

After a last horrible work experience, I decided to quit working for a while and travel. Haven't sold a lot of things, some are still stored at my parent's place but I managed to live off my saving for almost two years. I could have gone a lot longer but unfortunately some bad investment decisions and a long dream of obtaining a pilot license shortened my runway by a lot.

In the past months, my situation has gotten worse as I needed to tighten my belt due to my saving having almost completely melted. Hard but enriching times, I have now found a job after months of searching. The market in Europe isn't great these days. Back to hustling but without any regrets.

100% agree with OP, it was the experience of a lifetime for me. If I can give some additional advice, plan your finances. Even if you think a large sum will last you years and you're a bit lazy to plan it (as I was), don't be conservative with your forecast, plan large. Personally if I had to do it again, I'd try to keep half or one third aside for unexpected cases.

nox1012• 2 years ago

Which parts of the world? What kind of lifestyle? What kind of living situation? What kind of opportunities?

alfiedotwtf2• 2 years ago

and travel, 4 or 6 months in each location.

At least have a plan first and make sure you understand visas. I have fiends who sold up everything and moved to Switzerland only to be turned back at the airport because they didn’t know they couldn’t just move their life there unemployed

insane_dreamer9• 2 years ago

I recommend this to anyone who has not yet had kids (unless you don't plan to). It's the only opportunity you'll get (well until your kids are finished college)

zb3• 2 years ago

Amateur... It's the 7th year of NEET for me :)

system24• 2 years ago

Is it better to be unemployed rather than to find a crappy job that pays the bills? (AKA sucking it up while paying bills and looking for a real career job.)

I was in a similar situation and I worked at a warehouse as a loader, then at a kiosk to sell toys, and then sold necklaces at a mall (none of them were my businesses, just worked.) And I worked as a mover. Many odd jobs but I never accepted being unemployed for 2 years while depleting my savings.

Whether it is a matter of being homeless or not, I can find 1000+ odd jobs that pay for something + food from Craigslist right now. This is the reason why you will rarely see an immigrant being homeless or being picky about the jobs they find. Staying unemployed for years until finding the "best job" is a very privileged mindset. 3 months in no job? Find something to float, don't wait until your dream job appears out of nowhere.

I survived with $1000 a month for a very long time (in America, the money I earned from my jobs) while paying for a room, eating + transportation. If I had 80k, I'd buy a cheap van, live in it for free, and eat the bare minimum nutrition I need ($150 a month). I can survive with 80 for over a decade easily. God knows what this person is doing with his money. I am certain he has parents that he can count on.

These posts are extremely bizarre.

Now, downvote me to hell.

em-bee10• 2 years ago

it depends, you still need time and energy to apply for jobs, keep your skills sharp, etc. not every job allows you to do that. and in some countries doing jobs like that looks worse on your resume than a gap.

system24• 2 years ago

None of the resumes are real anyway. You can type garbage online projects to close the gaps. After work, you can still go home and study for 3-5 hours per day. That's what I did and I know it is possible. Whatever you do though, it is better than wasting time with friends and going out for adventures for 2 years while wasting your money and time.

justinrubek3• 2 years ago

I don't think this is a universal solution. I was unemployed for around 6 months, and my parents thought it was laziness that I didn't try to get a job at a gas station or something. I used the time to develop skills that helped me later. I got a job after that which didn't pay the best for being a software position, but the skills I fostered in that time were directly helpful in landing the next one that had a 60%+ pay bump with better benefits and learning opportunities. I absolutely would not have gotten this position without that time devoted to sharpening a specific skill set.

system24• 2 years ago

You were a young boy living with your parents under their protection. Likely they didn't care if you find a job within 6 months while they were helping you since you are their precious child (most parents do the same). That is not the same as blowing 80k while having fun acting like you couldn't find any survivable job for 2 years.

UncleOxidant3• 2 years ago

December 2022 was not a great time to quit a tech job. I too have been unemployed during the same period (except for a 3 month part-time gig last summer) after the startup I was working for lost it's funding in December '22. Fortunately, I've got a paid-off house and a good amount of savings (plus I'm old enough to start withdrawing from my retirement accounts and since our income is pretty low the ACA subsidies are working out great for being able to afford health insurance. At this point I consider myself semi-retired as I'm not interested in playing the tech interviewing game anymore, but if someone comes to me and wants me to work on an interesting project then I'll give it serious consideration (as was the case last summer).

ryandrake4• 2 years ago

Whenever I read articles like this and the ensuing "just relax and go have fun/travel" comment chains, I think to myself I'm living in an alien universe. Not having a job is a pants-on-fire emergency, and I would be interviewing 24/7 until I corrected it, even if the hiring market meant that was hopeless. I'd be a nervous wreck until I found a job, any job.

It's absolutely wild to see people 1. with the privilege of having $80K in liquid savings to just... chill while unemployed, and 2. with the willingness and mindset that allows them to do that chilling without freaking out. Total Zen Masters you all are. I couldn't do it.

Every $10K I blew through while unemployed, I'd be thinking to myself: Accounting for time value of money, that's just pushed out my retirement date by 3 more months.

EDIT: I guess I should add that I'm married with a kid, since that obviously does affect the math on this one. Still, I don't think I'd change my opinion if I was single.

cryptozeus3• 2 years ago

100% agree with this. Whoever said take a break and go traveling either have money saved up or have no idea what they are doing. Take a break from what ? Most of these people have not even worked for 5 years.

grepfru_it2• 2 years ago

Burnout happens before you even realize it. By prioritizing regular breaks, you can avoid burnout altogether

nicbou3• 2 years ago

To enjoy some of your prime years?

totallywrong2• 2 years ago

Wow aren't you projecting big time here? People have different goals and priorities, such as enjoying life while young.

samvher2• 2 years ago

The first few years out of university I consistently had < $10k on my bank account and was traveling as much as I could, with just occasional part time work to "fill up" a few k$. I loved it and couldn't imagine living any other way, neither retirement nor risks were just really on my mind at all (it wasn't really a zen thing).

Now I have a child and feel completely different. The moment she arrived I immediately felt way behind on retirement savings and stability and since then my #1 priority has been to catch up. I'm hoping that not long from now I'll be able to translate being more secure on paper to also mentally getting back the care free feeling I had before.

justinrubek3• 2 years ago

It is incredible how long these feelings can stick with us. My first few years out of university, I didn't even make $10k total combined. It is taking a long time to come to terms with the fact that I'm doing better now. Behind in life and goals, but doing a bit better.

ar_lan• 2 years ago

I completely agree with you. I actually have this privilege and I still would be absolutely grinding until I got any job.

I also think in terms of retirement - it's not just savings being depleted, but it's active months I'm not adding to my savings. And I'm certainly not living off of 50% of what I make post-tax, so the burn rate becomes exceptionally high.

ProfessorLayton• 2 years ago

Not having a job is a pants-on-fire emergency, and I would be interviewing 24/7 until I corrected it, even if the hiring market meant that was hopeless. I'd be a nervous wreck until I found a job, any job.

Same, although I'm not sure it's always a privilege thing, but also one's background. I've done pretty well for myself these last few years, and financially speaking it would not be the end of the world if I lost my job tomorrow. But I come from a working class family, and grew up with nothing.

I was raised and surrounded by family members who work a lot harder than I do for a lot less pay. They sacrificed a lot for me to go to school and get a good job, so if I were to lose it, the last thing I'd want to do is just chill for 2yrs even if I could afford to.

pesus• 2 years ago

I think this might be the single biggest factor, and it seems hard, if not impossible, for most people who grew up in financially comfortable situations to truly understand how much it affects every aspect of your life.

I was fortunate to grow up relatively (lower?) middle-class, but even then, we weren't exactly financially secure, and I still remember how bad things were during the Great Recession, even though I wasn't working at the time. My wife grew up in poverty, and even though we're both doing decently in our careers, I don't know if she'd ever truly be able to get rid of the worry and anxiety that something might happen and we'd end up homeless. Even if we suddenly won the lottery and ended up with $500 million, that fear would probably still be there at least a little bit. And like you said, that fear makes enjoying/being comfortable with unemployment impossible.

lukan2• 2 years ago

"Accounting for time value of money, that's just pushed out my retirement date by 3 more months."

It sounds a bit, like retirement is your only goal in life.

Personally I am not sure, if I make it to retirement (WW3 or whatever), so I try to enjoy the ride a bit more.

Also yes, I do pratice Zen meditation. But I doubt I am a master ..

bagels2• 2 years ago

The odds are extremely high that you live to be at least 80 years old. If you plan on not having any money beyond when you're capable of doing what you're doing now, you're going to have a bad time.

grepfru_it2• 2 years ago

How old are you?

I used to be in the same boat. Somewhere in my 30s I realized I could fall back on my skills if it ever warranted. Now I am between jobs and considering not going back to work.

What I’m saying is that your life outlook shifts as you age and experience common life events

pdimitar2• 2 years ago

And you will live off... what exactly? Fall back on what skills? What does that even mean?

Your reply is cryptic and leaves crucially important details out.

OK, I figure I don't want to work anymore. Who pays my rent / mortgage? Who pays food, bills?

paulddraper• 2 years ago

Rampant singleness I guess.

IDK I have the same thought.

bagels2• 2 years ago

There are a lot of people on hacker news that have significant savings from working in bay area tech.

coolThingsFirst• 2 years ago

Not having a job is a pants-on-fire emergency, and I would be interviewing 24/7 until I corrected it,

This would have the absolutely opposite effect of that, I was in this mood and it made getting a job impossible because I'd appear too stressed and too depressed on every single interview. Sometimes relaxing and letting it be is just better and a lot more productive.

creer• 2 years ago

There's a difference between panicking and making it your job to find your next job. We often hear the two extremes, "stressed and depressed" and "relaxed and on vacation".

"Delaying retirement" is absolutely an option - and not a bad one while with extremely flexible financial needs - but it's one to take eyes open.

sbrother2• 2 years ago

It mostly just comes down to having kids, right? I am certain that if I were single and happy staying that way, I would be living in a van in Moab and doing the bare minimum amount of freelancing to keep myself fed.

coldpie2• 2 years ago

I don't think so. I have a wife, but we have no kids and will not have any, and a lot of savings, but I could not do something like this. If my income was less than my spending, I would feel incredible stress knowing there's this Time Limit To Doom hanging over my head. I'd also worry what a gap like that would do to my future job prospects. (I'm not saying I'm correct to feel that way, but that I would feel that way, and it would ruin things for me.) I also don't particularly enjoy traveling or lounging about, so those kinds of stories never appeal to me. I enjoy working. It is what it is, /shrug :)

tenpies• 2 years ago

I think it also comes down to relationships.

I would personally be extremely content living a very spartan life. If there were a barracks type arrangement where I just get a small room with desk and bathroom, and all food preparation were handled for me for a reasonable fee, access to a gym, and solid internet I'd be all over it.

But the minute you enter a romantic relationship, that generally stops being an acceptable living situation.

askafriend2• 2 years ago

The people I know who do this are either exceptionally talented that employment will never be an issue for them in their lifetime and/or (it's usually and), they can burn through $100k no problem, any day of the week.

Nobody I know is leaving a $70k a year job to take a sabbatical. They're usually leaving a $400k+ per year job and there'll be another similar job waiting for them when they're ready to jump back in.

Kids are another huge factor that changes this. I don't think I've known anyone who's done something like this with kids in the picture.

8n4vidtmkvmk• 2 years ago

They're usually leaving a $400k+ per year job and there'll be another similar job waiting for them when they're ready to jump back

Will there be though? I honestly don't know. I'm closer to that boat, I get (good) job offers every 3-6 months, but nonetheless, if I was laid off... I think that'll leave a pretty nasty mark on my resume, no matter the reason. I don't think I'd wait a year to start looking for jobs again. A big gap won't help either.

* Recruitment emails from top competitors I should say.

ttt3ts• 2 years ago

Kids are another huge factor that changes this.

Yep, I have have quit a perfectly good job to bum around Southeast Asia. Now that kids are in the picture being unemployed would be very stressful.

adamtaylor_13• 2 years ago

You hit a big nail square on the head.

Kids + spouse changes everything.

My condolences to the writer because it sounds like he had a divorce, which changed one part of that equation.

seanmcdirmid3• 2 years ago

I took a break after getting laid off from YCR (2017) and joining Google (2020). My wife just had our baby and she was a bit stir crazy, so I thought it better to focus on getting her a job first (so I would take care of the kid instead). We have a bit of redundancy now, which is useful at least (we are ok if either us loses their job, but we would definitely try to both stay working).

What they don't tell you is that employers are suspicious if you are out of the job market for more than a year. And anyways, no, it doesn't make sense to stay at home and raise your kid, just pay for the childcare and get back to work as soon as possible. And they wonder why birthrate is tanking...

nicbou3• 2 years ago

3 months now might be more valuable than 3 months when you’re old.

adastra225• 2 years ago

Nobody I know is leaving a $70k a year job to take a sabbatical

I did. Best decision of my career.

totallywrong2• 2 years ago

Nobody I know is leaving a $70k a year job to take a sabbatical.

I took my first sabbatical at 25, with only a few years in the industry, making a lot less and I think $35k in the bank. Everyone told me I was crazy putting a gap in my CV, spending savings, etc. but I did anyway.

It was easily the best two years of my life, I travelled South America and Asia without a care in the world until the money was gone. Then I went back to work without an issue and have continued taking long periods off throughout my career. These days I'm a remote contractor, and even though I can and do work from anywhere I regularly still take months off at a time. I have a lot of savings too and a fully paid house in a country I love.

My point is that we create the anxiety for ourselves. A different lifestyle is possible if you make certain choices.

ipsento606• 2 years ago

Accounting for time value of money, that's just pushed out my retirement date by 3 more months

You account for the time value of money, but not for the time value of time.

A week right now is worth more than a week 30 years from now. 30 years from now, your life might have changed beyond all recognition, or you might be dead.

Reasonable people can disagree over how to discount future freedom-from-work vs present freedom-from-work.

atmavatar• 2 years ago

Playing devil's advocate: a dollar right now is also worth more than a dollar 30 years from now, both from an inflationary and from an investment perspective.

That said, I'm still largely in agreement with you. While there are a myriad ways to make more money, there's no way to make more time.

ForHackernews2• 2 years ago

Are you young, or living outside the United States?

American developers are staggeringly well compensated.

adastra225• 2 years ago

Most are not.

lumost2• 2 years ago

In my experience, the relax and travel crowd has much more than 80k liquid - or the ability to acquire much more than 80k via relatives etc.

Alternately, they have very cheap tastes. It's entirely possible to live off of 15k per year while hiking the AT, there are at least 5 equivalent trails to hike globally.

insane_dreamer9• 2 years ago

I should add that I'm married with a kid, since that obviously does affect the math on this one.

That changes the equation altogether.

handwarmers• 2 years ago

I am not sure if you are really young, but you definitely sound like either nothing quite earth-shattering has happened in your life, or maybe some stuff has happened, but you have chosen to be very selective about how you digest it.

Sometimes life hits you like a truck, and you get trapped under that truck for a really long time. Then, once you get flung in the ditch and think you just had the most horrible N months/years of your life, a whole colony of fire ants starts crawling on you and pulling you apart.

So, yeah, sometimes certain actions could be a sign of privilege, sometimes, they could be the tiny thread giving a person a lifeline.

Being able to only optimize for proximity to retirement could be a more "privileged" state to be in, than having 80k in Canada in certain contexts.

hoherd2• 2 years ago

I moved to Silicon Valley in the fallout of the dot com bust, and I had this amazing HR director named Rex who gave me a fantastic intro to tech career life. One thing he told me that has stuck with me is "You need to live your life like you may not have a job tomorrow." The full weight of this didn't register for probably a decade or more, but I take it now to be this:

1. You may have zero income tomorrow. Plan for that, especially if you have a family. Tech companies pay good money, and you need to stash that money away while you have an income because there are pretty good chances that some day you'll wake up and not have a job.

2. You need to foster the professional relationships you make while doing your day job, because almost nobody is going to be working at that company until they die or retire, which means everybody is going to be looking for work. When it comes time to look for work, you will want a network to reach out to. When you find yourself in a position where you have something great and you need to hire great people to help you achieve your vision, you will want a great network to reach out to. Take time to look after the folks you care about. Pay special attention to the humans you have done great work with. Those people are probably going to be more valuable to you personally and professionally than the company you are working for, and the same goes the other way for them looking out for you.

This wisdom was later supplemented by a contractor we had hired at a different company, who came back to meet with us after we hadn't used all our paid hours and said "Look, I know you're upset that (some guy you loved working with) is no longer with us. We're also bummed about that. But we have done great work together as a combined team. Not as companies, but your engineering team and our engineering team. We hope that you will think about that when you need help with anything, at this company or in the future, just like we will think about you individuals when it comes time for us to solve problems that you would be good at solving."

Every time there is a layoff, I think about this nugget that Rex told me, and that supplemental anecdote, and every time they are just as relevant. This wisdom has saved me so much stress, and opened so many doors for me. I admit that it hasn't always let me take my unemployment completely worry free, and that I have made some desperate decisions while unemployed which I later regretted. That being said, I still think this is solid advice, not just for the tech industry, but for everybody everywhere. This is especially so if you are a humanist or are anti-bigcorp. It has helped me find peace with having to walk away from jobs when I needed time for me or my family, or when things just weren't working out. After the blood bath of 2023, I am living this advice more than ever, and the last few times I have wondered if I was on the chopping block, aside from the emotional response of visceral existential fears that come up in such cases, I've found peace in the rational knowledge that having planned for not having a job tomorrow, I can set those fears aside and look for the opportunity in my new circumstance.

XorNot• 2 years ago

My problem is that the main thing I want to do when I have free time is work on DIY'ing around my home, and however much money you save in labor, materials and tool costs are still pretty significant.

bdangubic7• 2 years ago

the first thing I am going to tell my kid when she enters the "workforce" is that her #1 PRIORITY (she won't have any student loan debt) is to save F YOU money. 6 months at least, 12 preferably. Life without it is terrible. Not just for the fear of losing your job and not knowing what tomorrow brings but (in my opinion) even worse - staying on a job that makes you miserable because you need that paycheck coming regularly to survive...

scorpioxy5• 2 years ago

Does that amount qualify as "F YOU" money? I always thought it was if you have multiple years worth of savings.

But I agree. Some funds to fall back on is critical. The amount is highly dependent on your situation and risk comfort level and can be argued back and forth but not having any puts you at the mercy of whatever your employer/manager decides. Or even you getting sick and unable to work for a while. And even if the former doesn't happen, the latter definitely will at some point.

Though I am reading some of these comments and wondering why they'd call losing a job an end-of-the-world scenario. I've always thought people on this forum are the type of working professionals that could afford to put away a few hundred dollars a month even if they're not on SV wages. Mind you, I am not talking about an amount of money to allow you to retire but just enough to get you going for a few months until you can figure something out. Even if married and with children. That just changes the math a little bit but not the approach. Is there something I am missing?

nunez2• 2 years ago

Hard HARD agree

I have that fund now and it completely changes how you approach work.

It's going to go away once we buy a house, but my top priority will be to restore it after the deal's done.

Good on you for paying their way through college; that will help a ton.

nunez2• 2 years ago

My first thought is "which rich family member can they coast off of when shit gets really bad" or "where's the rest of the money you haven't touched yet?"

So many of these "I've been funemployed for 5 years" articles NEVER talk about the hidden asterisk that, well, actually, they have plenty of money and are just fine; they're just conventionally broke.

ryandrake4• 2 years ago

Yea, I think a lot of it is this. In a lot of these discussions, nobody wants to admit that their family is loaded. Although they might have to swallow their pride a little, if things get bad they could just move back in with lawyer dad or doctor mom, and they'd be fine indefinitely. I think that's very different, stress-wise, than "I have $100K of savings and am willing to sacrifice years of future retirement to blow through it."

jcarrano• 2 years ago

I get your point because I'm also quite like that, but the reality is that I've spent all of 2024 in dead-end interviews and got no results other than wasting time. In hindsight, "had I had the crystal ball", it would have been more rewarding to relax good and proper. I still don't have a crystal ball, though.

Kirby64• 2 years ago

Any basic financial advice would tell you to have 3-12 months worth of emergency fund ready for unexpected events. Losing your job is just another unexpected event. If you’ve got a 6-12 month runway of money, why wouldn’t you take a little bit to destress? And if you’re laid off in most tech roles, getting some (often substantial) severance is pretty common. You may not even need to tap into an emergency fund.

Even with a wife and kids, all that means is that you have more household expenses. Just means you’d need more money in said emergency fund.

deprecative• 2 years ago

I've been out for about two years. My retirement is a bullet or poison. It's just that simple. I will never earn FAANG money such that I can make up for the lost time.

jckahn• 2 years ago

I’m exactly the same. I have excellent savings. But even still, unemployment is a must-fix critical emergency for me.

If nothing else, pulling money out of investments to fund expenses due to lack of income feels like robbing myself of future gains.

adastra225• 2 years ago

Whenever I read articles like this and the ensuing "just relax and go have fun/travel" comment chains, I think to myself I'm living in an alien universe. Not having a job is a pants-on-fire emergency, and I would be interviewing 24/7 until I corrected it, even if the hiring market meant that was hopeless. I'd be a nervous wreck until I found a job, any job.

That's on you. Stress is something you generated, not something that exists in the world.

em-bee10• 2 years ago

stress comes from being backed into a corner. this may be from bad decisions or from unforseen circumstances. in countries where healthcare mostly depends on having a job and support is not guaranteed or not easy to come by this can happen much faster than you expect, and it's not always possible to prepare for that.

stress is also created by other people who insist that i am doing something wrong, and don't respect that i have a different opinion on that matter. people who have expectations that i can't or don't want to meet.

i did learn to avoid stress, even as i live in countries where there is no safety net. i am out of work now, and while putting in applications day after day is tiring, i am not stressed. but i come from a country that has a strong safety net, and i know that if i have to i can always go back there. i grew up with that safety net, and i know that i'll never be homeless unless it's by choice. that alone removes a major stress factor. i don't know how i would feel without that safety net.

vunderba3• 2 years ago

I would read the story posted with a bit of skepticism. They obviously have more of a safety net then they're letting on - because there's simply ZERO way that they wouldn't be stressing if all they genuinely had in savings was ~60 CAD and the stated rent is 1200.

I also travelled the world, but I did it as an ESL teacher. Nothing encourages you to integrate faster into a country's culture and learn the native language than actually working there, and you feel like less of a tourist.

javman• 2 years ago

I quit my job two years and four months ago. I'd worked non-stop for twenty years (10+ at the last company) and was getting three weeks of vacation time per year. I'm in my 40's and finally decided that I wanted to enjoy some of life while my body was still in shape. Watching the savings drain out is hard, but what's harder is thinking about going back to the grind and never having any time for myself again.

physicles• 2 years ago

Also just turned 40 this year, coding straight since I graduated college. If you do need to go back to work, there are ways of making it feel more sustainable and not life-draining.

I was feeling close to burnout a couple years ago in my current job, but was lucky enough that they let me drop back to four days a week. And the company is fully remote, so I end up traveling about three months out of the year. I have a hobby that helps me meet people when I travel.

Maybe living overseas also helps life feel less like it’s passing me by.

Ideally I’d be able to take a few month sabbatical, now that I’ve been in my current role for 8+ years. Still working on that…

aprilthird20213• 2 years ago

Yep. I was laid off a bit over a year ago, and I literally did nothing but try to get my next job, and fortunately got one in 2 months before my severance ran out.

I have easily enough to live a whole year or more without needing to work, but I would never consider that for even 1 second, tbh. Never even thought hard about why, it's just not an option to me.

famahar2• 2 years ago

Maybe it's the wrong way of looking at things but I have such minimal plans for retirement and that choice has led me to being extremely happy now rather than waiting for it later. The memories and adventures I've had by spending my money on experiences have led to moments and connections I don't think I can see myself having in retirement. It's a gamble but I'd rather live now and hope that when I retire, I 'Ll be happy to live an extremely frugal modest life.

not_a_bot_4sho• 2 years ago

Reading this article and its comments (except this one), the casual attitudes towards unemployment were striking. I realized just how few people here have children

kirso2• 2 years ago

I used to be like that.

First of all your situation and context is unique. Everyone has their own circumstances (including aging parents).

For many, even perhaps for you this is a reality. However for others its a fear of worst case scenario as a protection mechanism that served you when you were at a certain stage of life and many just kept it as a habit.

For a single grad without responsibilities after 3 years of working at a FAANG this fear of the future shackles them to explore and take calculated risks.

I've seen people with $20k in their savings account going for 1 year sabbatical describing it as transformational.

Its all priorities I guess and sometimes we can't say for every case that its actually the lack of agency that is holding you back.

Only you know for sure internally when reading this, if its making you uncomfortable and uneasy and if you have an emotional reaction.

For some, as mentioned its a reality and they are fully content with the limitations that they have and choices that they made in life that are now irreversible.

Up to everyone individually to evaluate their situation, however what is important to understand is that whether its really your context that is holding you hostage or just your fear.

cryptozeus3• 2 years ago

Wow 80k in 2 years is not that much. I am in my 3rd year in bay area. Luckily I had invested and have zero debt so able to survive. Honestly op may not want to hear this but “music, sports” and this line “Once a week, we play board games, cook food, or do coworking sessions. Living with others is not always easy, but it is fun.“ does not tell me you have any focus on getting job. You need to be too busy to even worry about food. What is all this ? You joined a climbing club ? How do you have time ?

huqedato• 2 years ago

A very valuable lesson for me. So, I'll venture into entrepreneurship once I’ve saved a million dollars in cash—though, realistically, that might never happen.

cahoot_bird• 2 years ago

Problem is lack of money catches up eventually. If you can't figure out some way to get it, and the longer without a job, the harder it is to get one. I think a lot of people struggled because the economy and job numbers. Supply and demand..

I had contract work, then couldn't get a tech job a couple years ago after a lot of applications. Completely broke. Drove down the road and felt kinda foolish seeing people paying less but decent money for non-tech. got fast food / hospitality worker. Low stress, physical work. Can't imagine where I'd be if I didn't.

I kind of get it though, you start doing something else then you don't have much time and energy to improve on what you want to do (such as tech) for a while, a recipe for people to get trapped, unless you can save money and reclaim time somehow to improve, or the supply/demand shifts..

anyone could fail at anything, all I know for certain is the worst thing a person can do is nothing.

insane_dreamer9• 2 years ago

One solution, if you can, is to take part-time work. Then you can reduce your expenses to that level, take time off for living, without having to spend down your savings (or only very very slowly). Then it's sustainable.

kelvinjps10• 2 years ago

I wonder how much it would last in a 3rd word country, I live in Colombia with 800$ quite comfortably.

spondylosaurus3• 2 years ago

OP, idk if you'll see this, but the part about GI issues after being on Accutane concerned me a bit. There's some evidence that Accutane can cause short-term symptoms that mimic autoimmune disorders and long-term symptoms that are bona fide autoimmune disorders. If you only feel "normal" while sticking to a restrictive diet, especially in the absence of confirmed celiac disease (which would otherwise explain issues with gluten), you might be suffering from a more serious problem without realizing it.

Signed, someone who only feels "normal" while sticking to a restrictive diet... and therefore is seeing their gastro next week to discuss switching to a different Crohn's treatment :P

svnt4• 2 years ago

A similar but underreported possibility here is gastric ulcers which correlate extremely well with cortisol/stress.

You can attempt to fix it by taking NAC which is an amino acid with no side effects for $20 a month or so. Usually you don’t need to take it continuously, just in regressions.

It is frequently misdiagnosed as the other more serious/intractable things you’ve mentioned.

spondylosaurus3• 2 years ago

Oh yeah, I forgot about ulcers. Non-ulcerative gastritis is on the table too, which can mimic some of the same symptoms and is absolutely triggered by stress. And both ulcers and gastritis can be a smaller part of a bigger serious issue!

Which is all to say... there are so many ways your gut can make you miserable, and they rarely get better on their own. Absolutely worth checking out if you can.

kaiwenwang• 2 years ago

Isotretinoin is poison, here's my article about it: https://www.kaiwenwang.me/writing/effects-and-detoxification...

In some parts of the internet, Vitamin A is theorized to not be a vitamin but a poison.

Auto-immunity is likely related to biofilms in the intestines and plant defense chemicals such as lectins in combination with leaky gut.

Try looking @ cabbage juice for your Crohn's. There are YT videos about it.

cko• 2 years ago

In some parts of the internet leaky gut

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_gut_syndrome

mancerayder5• 2 years ago

The problem in the US is healthcare.

In my state the health insurance marketplace only has 'bronze' plans that are in-network only (with mediocre options) and high deductibles, it costs 6-800 for individual and close to 1500-2k for a family.

The United States has rigged the employment market to forever keep you dependent on a corporate employer until retirement. Now these same companies are taking away remote work, forcing people close to expensive and increasingly annoying cities like New York City, where the median one bedroom is one million to buy.

So, for giving your time to a company, your reward is never being able to be fully independent without huge risk. Healthcare is the Company Store Voucher of the modern era.

Has anyone else considered leaving the United States long before retirement age?

adastra225• 2 years ago

ACA plans would be free / fully subsidized in that circumstance.

maximinus_thrax• 2 years ago

Has anyone else considered leaving the United States long before retirement age?

Yes. I'm American but was born in a small country in Eastern Europe. I was planning on moving back during the pandemic, however I was presented with some job prospects I couldn't reject and my move was delayed. But I do plan on retiring in my hometown within two years. There is universal healthcare which sucks for the most part, but private insurance is extremely cheap (compared to the US) and I could retire more than comfortably with my current nw. And by 'retire' I don't mean stop working, I mean I'm going to work on whatever I want.

And to your original point about healthcare, it is the absolute single reason for why I did not take any sabbaticals or long term leave even while burned out, for my insomnia during layoff seasons and generally for my job related stress.

keyserj• 2 years ago

I'm in Illinois, my bronze marketplace plan was $247/mo this year, and the coverage was good (for what I used at least). 2025 plans look to be going up $50/mo or so which is annoying. Still a good chunk to have to pay, but nowhere near as bad as your situation.

Makes me curious how much marketplace costs vary per state?

In any case, as another person pointed out, the ACA plans also provide very high premium credits for low income households, covering up to ~80% of the costs (from what I've seen). But this also varies by state, I think.

iancmceachern10• 2 years ago

Being your own employer is the only way to take charge of this.

Platforms like Gusto, etc. make it so even small businesses can offer benefits and insurance like bigger companies do.

I went though various big and small employers plans, several states' exchanges, and none were nearly as good as doing the legwork to get benefits setup for my own company. Now I choose.

pcl• 2 years ago

How do the costs pencil out on that, if you are signing up with Gusto etc. only for access to the health care plans? Presumably you need some minimum payroll or something?

mancerayder5• 2 years ago

In some states the insurance group policy won't be available for a one person LLC, and there's no option direct from the health insurance companies, so all that remains is the state marketplace. I tried. I ended up signing up with an agency that basically put me as a W2 employee and took a fee, so I could use their so-so but better networked group insurance.

Is Gusto for stuff like that? Single member LLCs?

dennis_jeeves25• 2 years ago

Being your own employer is the only way to take charge of this.

One step further, being your own doctor when ever possible is even better. Bring out the rusty knife for surgery, a club for anesthesia etc. most surgeries are not rocket science.

m00x4• 2 years ago

In Canada you just die before you get a family doctor :)

Last time I went to the ER, the wait was 10h for kidney stones. Thankfully I passed out for 4h in the waiting room from the pain and the stones passed by the time I saw a doctor, so all they did was send me home.

My family doctor died 10 years ago and I'm still on a list.

nubinetwork• 2 years ago

If you're from Ontario, you might want to call the health care connect people... I was on a list for roughly a year and a half, then out of the blue I got 2 referrals in 2 months (the first one never called me)... while the one I got isn't a typical family doctor, just having someone to help me with my needs is a start...

HWR_143• 2 years ago

In the US, 70-80% of the time they just send people with unpassed kidney stones home from the ER. With painkillers and a giant bill.

jrochkind1• 2 years ago

Can't find a primary care doctor in the US either, so we're even.

FredPret5• 2 years ago

Have you tried calling doctors directly?

Sometimes there are information gaps between their capacity and the provincial bureaucracy.

gadders• 2 years ago

Surprised you weren't offered MAID.

fantod2• 2 years ago

Do you really need a family doctor? I've never had one. Whenever I've had a non-emergency issue (in BC), I've just gone to a walk-in clinic where they've either helped me on the spot or referred me to a specialist. I can definitely see why having a family doctor might be a more pleasant overall experience, but as far as I understand in Canada it's practically a pipe dream.

EarthMephit• 2 years ago

My brother (Australian) spent some time in Canada and was able to see a doctor straight away and really cheaply a bunch of times, and visited the hospital once with a nasty foot injury with no dramas. It seemed like a pretty good system.

I remember contrasting that with my US experience at the same time, where a 10 minute consult with a doctor cost 600USD. I had a really obvious ear infection, just needed some antibiotics, but he must have seen me as a cash-cow and ordered a ton of unrelated blood tests that were pointless since I was flying out the next day. I walked away feeling like I'd been scammed.

(In Australia a doctor's visit is under 30USD, blood tests don't cost much either)

zo1• 2 years ago

This entire thread makes me think you guys over there in the north-American continent are living in literal hell. And I'm not even saying this from a "first world" European country. I'm saying this from a so-called "shithole" country at the bottom of Africa, South Africa to be precise. The last thing I had to worry about wrt my medical was whether or not I was using all my "benefits". The deductible (or excess) is basically peanuts (or zero) for most things, and I have so far in my entire adult life never had to pay a deductible. I get a doctor's appointment at a moments notice, ER rooms are practically empty and really just 24-hour doctor's rooms with access to hospital equipment, pay for nothing out of my pocket, they cover all my meds, they cover my entire hospital stay, I wait for at-most weeks for certain specialists (that are all leaving the country btw, due to government), and never worry that medical bills will bankrupt me.

Of course, as with most things, government in South Africa is basically jealous of private medical insurance here and is trying to destroy it because public healthcare is a failure here. We really need to add a third item to this list: Nothing in life is certain, except for death, taxes and the government fucking up everything it touches.

chamomeal• 2 years ago

Does Canada just have a lack of doctors? What’s up with that?

gorfian_robot2• 2 years ago

in CA if you make less income than the minimum (like $18.5k as a single person) you are put onto the free Medi-Cal plan. so thats nice. :)

remyp3• 2 years ago

I did. Healthcare was a big part of that decision. My older siblings have been through hell both medically and financially because of the US healthcare system.

I decided to learn from their experiences and GTFO while I could. I miss my family and friends dearly, but it’s a massive relief (and privilege) to be able to get the care I need and not worry about whether the cost is going to bankrupt me.

qwerpy• 2 years ago

Where did you end up going? I have some savings and would like to retire early, and getting health insurance is an impediment to that. Need somewhere that doesn’t require a work visa and is a good place to raise a family. I have enough to do it in the US but would be happy to consider alternatives.

EasyMark2• 2 years ago

The bronze plans are basically catastrophic insurance, not preventative care. If you want that you have to take it into your own hands in the USA; eat right, exercise, do the annual checkup Mine paid out when I had an appendix close to exploding and several days in the hospital. Of course I paid the deductible which was $6500, however the remaining portion would have put a large dent in my retirement fund, but thanks to the “bronze” plan, I was fine. So what is the risk for me?

winwang• 2 years ago

My friends have successfully relied on Medicaid during financial hardships + unemployment. At least in NYC, the Medicaid plans are quite decent.

Also, for those who require plans similar to the one previously provided, COBRA (18 months) is decent -- expensive but presumably less expensive than "equivalent" in the marketplace if we're talking about a good corporate plan.

mancerayder5• 2 years ago

18 months + 18 months in NY State for a total of 36

Just that COBRA costs quite a lot.

CharlieDigital9• 2 years ago

Over the last 4 years, I've gone through a similar "speed run" of startups after quitting my job of 10 years during COVID.

First startup went nowhere and took on a contract role after 9 months. Then tried another startup with a co-founder I met at one of the startups where I worked in the interim. About 6 months building something awesome, but no commercial path. Spent 1 month with him and another co-founder on a fintech product but realized much faster that once again that there was no viable go-to-market strategy. Started another company and built a product that seemed like it had legs. We had one early user that absolutely loved the product and we thought all we needed was to find more users like her. Turns out that she was a false signal because we never found another user like her and I'm about to shut that one down after almost a year to avoid DE franchise fee next year.

If anyone is in a situation like this/thinking about doing something like this, I've gathered some of my lessons learned: https://chrlschn.dev/blog/2024/12/lessons-learned-from-worki...

If I had to sum it up: always build the minimal thing that can be "sold". Use AI to build the dirtiest MVP as fast as possible. Even better if your "MVP" is a deck and you can get people to put money down to wait. Figure out your GTM and messaging with that deck. If you are an engineer, you must resist that urge to build until you're sure you can find enough people that have this problem and want to pay you to solve it. Don't work with a non-technical co-founder if they claim if you build it, customers will come. Don't work with a non-technical co-founder that can't demonstrate an ability to sell. If the vibes feel off, get out fast. Don't form a company with a co-founder until you absolutely have to (like your personal life, don't get married until you're absolutely sure).

Lots of mistakes and lessons learned during that time having founded startups that went nowhere, been an employee in startups that went nowhere, and left startups that are actually crushing it. I have seen a big swath of the gamut at this point with some regrets in retrospect.

garrickvanburen3• 2 years ago

This.

Build only after customers have thrown money at you.

As it’s at that point you have enough clarity and specificity to build.

MarcelOlsz23• 2 years ago

Build only after customers have thrown money at you.

This advice is better if you have 10k twitter followers. For example I'm building something cool, a no-code visual regression tool. I don't have any real network. Besides cold outreach (and hn, ph), what else is there? Would love to know what you recommend.

StressedDev5• 2 years ago

Thank you for sharing this.

CharlieDigital9• 2 years ago

Good luck if you're thinking about going for it! Learn from my mistakes.

tailspin2019• 2 years ago

Given the dense amount of wisdom packed into this comment I checked out your profile. Both your current projects look extremely impressive and polished. And viable! Keep up the good work! It’s inspiring to see that in light of the obvious difficult lessons you’ve had to learn along the way.

Having learned many of the same lessons as you I can 100% backup everything you said in your “sum it up” paragraph!

The only caveat I would add is to the “make an MVP with AI”. I think MVPs generated directly out of ChatGPT/Claude are so easy now (or at least it can appear so on the face of it) that many people are just barely going beyond that - but to any experienced eye, that approach is quite transparent and can look very low-value (even if the idea is actually a good one).

Now if that person is a skilled salesperson then that might work.

But, for most people, I think it’s still very important to demonstrate good instincts, taste and strategic/commercial understanding when building such an MVP. And that means editing and shaping the output just enough to meet your vision for the product. So to agree with you - definitely, 100%, use AI as much as possible - but don’t assume that you can put zero work in on top and have that MVP be effective. Because the 10 year old down the street has the exact same tool as you - so if you are just relying verbatim on that tool’s output- it’s going to be hard to stand out.

I’d still definitely agree to spend as little time as physically possible on the MVP - with the above caveat.

Having said all that… a lot of historical wisdom on the topic of MVPs has been turned upside down since gen AI became mainstream, so on the flip side you could argue: create 1000 MVPs in an hour, publish them all, see what generates interest…*

Hmm.. I think I just argued against my own point.

* (I’m not really seriously suggesting anyone do this, but I’m also not entirely discounting this as an approach either…)

CharlieDigital9• 2 years ago

    > Both your current projects look extremely impressive and polished. And viable!

Appreciate it and thanks for the positive feedback! But those are two of the multitudes of side projects I have collected that I haven't figured out how to monetize. My "day job" is at a VC-backed startup that is going through a protracted wind-down because it also failed to find a viable GTM. So yeah, I've learned some hard lessons in multiple facets of my career!

    > Now if that person is a skilled salesperson then that might work

My rule now is that if I'm building something for fun, I just open source it. If I want to make money, I'm going to first figure out who's paying and how do I get them to pay. AI MVPs are easy now to let you flesh out an idea one level up from a slide deck (in fact, maybe this is its own startup idea? Use AI to build an MVP from a deck??).

I had a non-technical friend recently spin up a full blown startup with customers using nothing but Claude + Replit (not plugging, but just sharing to show that it's real: https://bullship.co). He came up with the idea after talking to a friend and finding that indeed, the market had only two major competitors who both charged too much for many smaller customers.

The code is throwaway in my book, but it's enough to validate the idea by actually getting people to pay for something they can use. It won't scale, but that's fine; by the point that he needs it to scale, he'll be able to hire people with more skill to fix or rebuild it.

ornornor7• 2 years ago

like your personal life, don't get married until you're absolutely sure

I misread “personal wife” (in Kripky’s voice from big bang theory) and after I was done chuckling, I started thinking of something funny to comment about the other types of wives there are… then reread your comment and… yeah.

CharlieDigital9• 2 years ago

Haha, well, I'm going through a "divorce" now with a co-founder and unfortunately, it costs money, time, and effort to try to get my assets (code) back. He was never able to generate a dime of revenue after I brought the code, but now he wants the code (which I want to open source).

So yeah, in many ways, it is just like a marriage when you formally create a company with a co-founder. Don't do it unless you need to and if you do, make sure that you can get your assets back if you are bringing existing assets to the table.

danielparsons• 2 years ago

Good lessons!

ipnon• 2 years ago

The stark transition from employment to unemployment can be very painful in our industry, because it is a boom-bust industry, and it's not uncommon to go from making half a million dollars a year to having the most expensive cities in the world vacuuming money out of your bank account as fast as economically possible. When the money is coming in you feel like a rockstar-ninja-hacker genius. When the money dries up you start to wonder why you didn't just go into accounting.

anotheracc883• 2 years ago

I have not been out of work since 2002 but same time... I earned nothing close to 500k or even 250k.

tasuki2• 2 years ago

If you make half a million dollars a year, it's really easy to save lots of it.

I didn't make that much (but also don't live in the US). For some time I was living on about 5% of my income and saving the remaining 95%.

liontwist4• 2 years ago

but also don't live in the US

There is your answer. The cities where you can make 400-500k are at least 2x the cost of other US cities.

liontwist4• 2 years ago

it is a boom-bust industry,

It's surprising this is not more widely recognized. The majority of corporations need help configuring existing software, not developing and marketing novel software. Those new opportunities come and go. If you want stability, get a job in IT.

marcus0x62• 2 years ago

Recency bias, amplified by the age bias in tech. There are a whole bunch of people in this industry who just weren't around before the post-2008-great-financial-crisis-zero-interest-rate-money-firehouse financed an unusually long bull market and sent pay packages through the stratosphere.

mirsadm• 2 years ago

I think this is very much US centric. The upside is much higher salaries. Clearly people need to plan for when it ends though. The industry is more stable in Europe and Australia. You don't get paid as much though.

hn_throwaway_997• 2 years ago

Am I missing something about where this guy is getting money? He posted his bank account, which is essentially empty, and it seems his only current income is $600/mo, which is less than half of his rent. So how is this guy surviving currently?

I don't mean to be one of those people that shout "privilege" at every turn on the Internet, but most people with no savings and barely any income would be freaking out unless they had some family or support network to lean on, which I noticed any discussion of is suspiciously absent.

MarcelOlsz23• 2 years ago

I'm in a similar boat. -$800 in my checking and about ~$1000 left on my CC. Also from Canada. Morgage payment coming up in 5 days will put me in the negative, and another one in January as well. Should not have bought a house. I'm basically screwed, but I figure the wheels of the system or whatever will move slower than me finding work.

stocknoob• 2 years ago

Rent out/airbnb a room in your house?

Zambyte• 2 years ago

What do you mean by "~$1000 left on my CC"? Do you mean like $1k until you max out your CC? $1k left to pay off?

SvenL• 2 years ago

Would it be possible to sell the house? Kind of get rid of the mortgage?

tomcam• 2 years ago

Damn, brother. But if anyone can pull a rabbit out this hat, it’s you. Your main problem will be getting your giant brain through the door for a job interview.

m00x4• 2 years ago

Overspent on the house? Not uncommon in Canada tbh. The country is in a really bad state real-estate wise.

rendang2• 2 years ago

Why did you buy a house while having such small savings?

venk12• 2 years ago

similar boat 7 years ago. Luckily, I found a data science job that barely covered by rent and family expenses for 12hrs a day. In addition I had to freelance for a 2 to 3 hours everyday to make ends meet - basically sleep, work, repeat - rough patch - you will get through it. Hold tight, wishing you good luck!

Tade03• 2 years ago

What is going on with the IT sector in Canada?

I'm a contractor and last year my agency said there would be layoffs, which caused quite a scare, but in the end only contractors residing in Canada were affected.

carlosjobim4• 2 years ago

Should not have bought a house. I'm basically screwed

Sell your house. You can't afford it.

YZF• 2 years ago

What experience do you have and what job are you looking for?

You might want to reach out to your mortgage provider and see if they can help. Often they will.

Where in Canada are you?

throwup2382• 2 years ago

It’s the privilege of renter’s protections. Even with nonpayment the landlord has to go through a Tribunal administratif du logement hearing to evict them and that usually takes at least a few months unless the tenant is trashing the property on their way out. The process can get extended every time the tenant pays rent so if someone is genuinely trying to pay as soon as they can, eviction takes a while.

Ferret74462• 2 years ago

Renter's protections is one of those ideas that sound good on paper. Having to keep a non-paying rentee is disastrous for a landlord who is also trying to pay their mortgage.

Sure, some landlords are large real estate companies, but all you're doing is forcing out small landlords and ensuring that large companies own all of the rental properties.

(Like all regulation, it is at a fundamental level pro-monopolistic, favoring large companies that can handle the overhead of complying with the regulation and punishing small players who cannot.)

btbuildem• 2 years ago

Sounds like he rents a room in a house/apartment, so it's probably one of his roomies that has the lease, not him. If that's the case, protections wont apply here.

vunderba3• 2 years ago

I called it out in an different thread. There's a safety net here that's simply not being mentioned. Nothing wrong with that of course, but let's not pretend that somebody with a monthly rent of ~1200 and a whopping ~60 CAD in savings would somehow magically be stress free. You'd be homeless inside a few months in the US.

ornornor7• 2 years ago

stress free

But he’s not. He’s specifically spelling it out by saying his gut and stomach issues are very likely tied to the stress of his no stable income.

bawolff4• 2 years ago

Didn't he say he started with $80,000, spent it, and is now out of money?

Presumably he now needs to either get a job asap or make some hard choices. But it sounds like the post is supposed to be a retrospective so its not surprising he isn't really talking about the future.

I don't mean to be one of those people that shout "privilege

He literally had enough money to blow $80,000 on 2 years of unemployment. Of course he is privleged. Most people in the computer industry are. Most posters to hn are. The average person lives paycheque to paycheque and certainly doesn't have 80k just lying around in their bank account.

osrec• 2 years ago

I read somewhere that most people in the US are definitely not paycheck to paycheck. The article I read claimed it's around 15-20% of the working population.

turnsout6• 2 years ago

To me, $80k sounds like a very small amount of "F-You" money. I'm not criticizing the OP at all, but if I quit my job with 80k in the bank, I would immediately start researching the most painful B2B problem I could solve quickly using AI. Not to generate an income stream, but to build an asset (the business) to sell.

That's the quickest path to $1M. Software developers are too caught up on salary (or 73 different "income streams" that all make $0), and rarely think about building a valuable business.

gdilla• 2 years ago

He's privileged sure, not because he had 80K in the bank to burn through, but because he knows it's not the end of him when it's burnt through. He COULD get a job and steady income if he wanted, in at least that 80K range (probably double really). So meh. Good for him though for scratching his itches though. Any dude who can code can be a wage slave if they really want to.

OtomotO• 2 years ago

The average person in the US maybe.

And the third world.

In Western Europe? Not so much. I mean, yes, there are poor people, but the middle class mostly doesn't live paycheck to paycheck.

hn_throwaway_997• 2 years ago

But it sounds like the post is supposed to be a retrospective so its not surprising he isn't really talking about the future.

No, my specific point is that he does not sound like he needs to make hard choices, and he is alluding to continuing working on his own projects in the future. He writes:

I made resolutions: to make $1M in revenue in 2025. Well, that's not really happening… But rest assured, I do everything possible to reach that goal rather sooner than later.

and

blymp is the only one generating money — about $600/month — and the one I plan to continue next year. Yay!

and finishes with

Here's to a promising year 2025. My third year without a job. A year when I give more than I receive. A year of patience. And a year of an even deeper connection with myself. Cheers!

And sure, people that make a high income job are privileged, but I was using it in the sense that you frequently see it used online, specifically that he has a backup pool of money/support somewhere, most likely family, that he conspicuously leaves out of his post.

maronato• 2 years ago

Here's to a promising year 2025. My third year without a job. A year when I give more than I receive. A year of patience. And a year of an even deeper connection with myself.

He does talk about the future and seems to imply he’ll continue to not have a job.

If that’s the case, I’m with GP in wondering how he’s going to make it past January.

sheepscreek• 2 years ago

$80k is by no means “privilege”. Bear in mind, we’re talking about the Canadian dollar that doesn’t stretch nearly as much as USD.

Also with the cost of living shooting up so much - C$80k of today is probably as much as $50-60k of 2019.

nickpsecurity• 2 years ago

That’s a good point. The article reads like an extended vacation, often spent trying to start businesses, that didn’t work out.

I was recently working six days a week with a nearly-empty fridge. My coworkers were scraping by. I have two jobs now. Due to a car repair, money is tight through December but we have food (and the car). Working 12 hours a day does cut into time I might build skills for a better job. Still progressing, though.

My coworkers and I at each job can’t usually take even a week off unless it was a paid vacation. A year or two? That’s like a dream goal for us.

Whereas, it’s terrible he had a divorce and lost everything. I’ve prayed that Jesus Christ bless he and his former partner with mutual forgiveness and new lives with peace. I thank Christ that He gave much joy in financial or other circumstances that would cause depression in most people. He is our Rock.

ornornor7• 2 years ago

I don't mean to be one of those people that shout "privilege" at every turn on the Internet, but most people with no savings and barely any income would be freaking out unless they had some family or support network to lean on, which I noticed any discussion of is suspiciously absent.

I understand the sentiment but I don’t understand why point it out. It’s not like the blog post in question is putting anyone down, complaining about anything, or being obnoxious.

There will always be someone more privileged than you are. Why constantly remind yourself (and others) about it if the more privileged person isn’t harming anyone?

vasco2• 2 years ago

Yeah this just sounds like my mom saying "finish your food because there's starving kids in africa".

hn_throwaway_997• 2 years ago

I point it out because he's leaving out a very important part of his story. He's come to the end of 2024 with no money left and no stable income, yet he talks about continuing on more of the same in 2025, so he's got to have some other significant support from somewhere, and that's critical to his story. In my mind the better analogy is fitness influencers that go into detail about their diet and exercise regimen, and then conveniently leave out their weekly testosterone shots.

I don't judge him at all for being privileged or what he's done. I judge him for leaving out what I think is the most important part of the story: how he could go on this journey and come to a point where he's got no money left but he isn't freaking out about being homeless or getting food.

Havoc• 2 years ago

Definitely feels like there is some sort of unmentioned safety net at play. Or guy is just fearless.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK2• 2 years ago

There is no problem surviving for a young healthy man in Montreal. One can always uber, deliveroo, tend bars etc, and it pays pretty well. Nothing to freak out about.

hn_throwaway_997• 2 years ago

Fair enough, but then talking about this going forward would be a critical part of his story, because he talks about continuing on in 2025 developing his projects and essentially more of the same, which becomes considerably more difficult if he's going to spend 30-40 hours a week driving for Uber.

hbosch• 2 years ago

You can easily find the guy's LinkedIn. It appears that he is fully devoted to "entrepreneurship" rather than finding a traditional job, and currently lists himself as the founder of 2 current start-ups. So the unemployed part is basically by choice... and you'll notice, in the article, nothing stated about applying for jobs and not getting them.

I believe what this guy is referring to is that his startups currently aren't making money. And, to that end, this blog post is a marketing piece.

mangolychee• 2 years ago

He didn’t link to his only revenue-generating project anywhere, so it doesn’t feel like much of a marketing piece to me. It’s just a blog post about what he worked on in 2024 (including hobbies)

StressedDev5• 2 years ago

This is a good example of why entrepreneurs, founders, and investors should make a lot of money. Frequently, they fail, or go for years making very little. Starting a successful business is incredibly hard and I wish shilin (the person who wrote the article) the best.

blharr• 2 years ago

I mean, or it heavily restricts the pool of founders to mostly those who already have enough wealth such that they won't be homeless.

I don't see why a safety net wouldn't mitigate this risk in the first place, which would then allow for more people to take these risks and come up with great ideas as well

robofanatic• 2 years ago

How can someone with $68 in bank so articulate.

selimthegrim4• 2 years ago

You must be fun at parties.

motohagiography2• 2 years ago

Similar story for me in 2017-19 era. Ran out of money never thought I would work again, picked up a consulting contract, parlayed it into more, have since succeeded to the point of being discreet about it. I've come to believe opportunity finds us.

If you can be fit and pursue arts or hobbies, you're already doing what people think they need to be wealthy to do, and most wealthy people are boring anyway.

Run a CRM pipeline to get a job and you will have one in a couple of months, then use the stability as a way to find customers for your next thing. If you can't run a pipeline for yourself, you won't be able to do it for a startup anyway. You're fine. Good luck.

jumparoundwords3• 2 years ago

Highly agree with your comment, just wondering what you mean with "CRM pipeline to get a job"?

motohagiography2• 2 years ago

it's the way to get a job, i didn't think there was another way. the way a sales funnel works is you start with a pile of company names as "leads" you have or want to work for. they are in a spreadsheet that has the columns "company"," applied", "contacted", "responded" "interview1" "interviewN" "offer" "closed" "declined" sort the companies in order of preference and approach them in that order giving the ones you really want to work for a small head start over the others.

you figure out how to contact each one of them and spend your days moving each one through the stages in the spreadsheet and adding to the companies column until your situation changes. that's how people who get multiple offers get them. they use this to make them happen. if you have 10-20+ companies, there's always something you can be doing to get one of them over the line. I used the streak crm as a gmail plugin, but you can just use a spreadsheet.

anotheracc883• 2 years ago

Ooh. Lesson: if you are out of work go bare bones. You don't need a entrepenerial flat in the city. You need a shitty room in the suburbs where you can commute to the city by train or bus ideally (dont have a car). Call it runway and it sounds better. If you spent 20k/y then the 60k becones 75k in the market and you are doing better.

sahmeepee2• 2 years ago

Yes, I'm not sure how helpful it is in TFA to compare living costs against average living costs in the area and then call it a win if you're anywhere below.

If I was unemployed my living costs would be far, far below average, even allowing for the "it's expensive being poor" factors. Even when I've been in low pay jobs I've lived on very little and definitely didn't feel like I had budget for "travel" or other non-essentials.

As an employable person without work, before I reached negative bank balance I'm pretty certain I would have found a crappy job to at least slow the decline and buy more time. I can't see from this story why that hasn't been deemed necessary here.

jlarocco• 2 years ago

I was thinking the same thing.

The average person has a job and income. What's the average for a person taking extended time off?

gexla• 2 years ago

Nobody is jobless. You either have a job or you don't need a job. If you need a job, then finding a job is your full time job. Do your marketing. Build your offerings (skills.) Slam your offerings against the market as much as possible to get feedback.

I couldn't imagine anyone wanting a job not finding one. At least in the US, there's industries hurting for skills shortages. We're also on the edge of a cliff of baby boomers retiring.

denysvitali• 2 years ago

Getting a good job is hard - especially today.

Getting a low-salary one, unrelated to your skills, is fairly easy (e.g: waiter).

selimthegrim4• 2 years ago

May I introduce you to the New Orleans metropolitan area.

paxys• 2 years ago

2 years living in a big city enjoying entrepreneurship, hacking, socializing, music, sports, climbing, triathlons – all without the shackles of a 9-5 office job – sounds like a dream. Resourceful people find ways to pay their bills, and I'm sure you will as well. Best of luck!

Topgamer7• 2 years ago

For the author, you probably have IBS.

I have similar symptoms, and basically I can't eat anything with Peppers or Chilies. The whole fruiting family. So no paprika. You would be absolutely floored to find out how many things paprika is in. Basically every flavour of chip you like. Curries often have them too.

cowsandmilk• 2 years ago

Expanding on this, OP, please see a GI doctor. These could also be signs of much worse things you want to catch early.

graycat• 2 years ago

Check it out, but ~2020 saw where in the US could BUY a nice manufactured house, with a mortgage, for ~$300/month. Land? Some small rural communities have been falling in population and are eager for new people -- sooooo, land for the house might not be too much.

Be sure to have cell phone and Internet access and be not too far from a Walmart, a hospital, and, maybe, auto repair. In the US can get nice weather, usually not too hot or cold or too wet or dry, in the East at the latitude of, say, Kentucky.

In Maryland, Virginia, and DC, there is lots of Federal Civil Service employment, and the hiring is not based much on "who you know" but what you can do, education, experience.

selimthegrim4• 2 years ago

Let’s see if that last bit lasts after Jan 20

nikolay• 2 years ago

The new generation thinks your job should be fun and interesting, but that's rare and a luxury. I see young coworkers leave an excellent job after months, often less than 6 months even. It used to be that I would not even interview candidates who had less than 2 years in any job on their resume - it was the industry's standard. Now it's rare to find somebody who has had 2 years in any job - this is beyond pathetic! Entrepreneurship is different than self-experimentation. If you have a killer idea, if you've done the market analysis, and the business plan - ok, great - quit your job! But to leave a decent job to play entrepreneur - that's pretty irresponsible! Stoicism is extinct!

unethical_ban• 2 years ago

I'm in network security and I want to quit so badly. I feel trapped in a job and team dynamic I don't like. I own my truck and have $275k in liquid assets.

I've been thinking of quitting with the assumption that my job skills will still be relevant in two or three years and that I have strong social skills that help stand out and a crowded worker field.

I just want to take care of some long-standing tasks, clean out my house, and enjoy waking up each day.

Schiendelman4• 2 years ago

I would recommend going and interviewing and changing companies. Get anyone else to hire you, it's better than zero income, and then you can figure out if it's the culture of your company bothering you.

fafhnir• 2 years ago

Here is a good example of someone who shies away from responsibility for himself and others.

2 years time for what? To build something with other people? A partner, family, children?

Nope, just doing what brings him fun or fulfillment or whatnot...

I'm not saying it's bad to take care of yourself from time to time. But as a father of 5, I can definitely say that the best and most instructive moments in my life were definitely the ones where it wasn't about me but about people who were important to me.

And the money issue that most people seem to be talking about here: Go to work and earn money. That's life. It always has been. If people would only do what fulfills them, there would be no sewer workers or garbage collectors. Whenever you take advantage of a developed society, you always have a duty to give something back to it.

If there is not Time enough after a 8 hour shift to to what you want, you have a serious Problem.

justmedep• 2 years ago

I totally disagree and don’t even know where to begin…

People are different. Some are just not “as resilient” as others. Some have mental issues. Some have other priorities in life. Some people are just overwhelmed when they have to focus on more than one thing (their own wellbeing) - which should and cannot be confused with selflessness.

Not everyone wants to accept the common conceptions of life. And that’s ok.

spacecadet• 2 years ago

Some people might consider a family of 5 in the current climate to be a gross level of over consumption... Do you take responsibly for your actions here?

delitrem• 2 years ago

I'm a kind of political fugitive (probably will go into the prison for the beliefs if return to the country of origin), living in one of EU countries, married, having a little child and two dogs, owning apartament, have no significant health issues, also having second year without income at all, having some money on banking account, full-time working for the own startup on open source project. And I do not feel very disappointed.

jstanley• 2 years ago

I used to think that I overspent. That my groceries could have been cheaper. That I could have eaten out or traveled less. Then a few months ago, I went on NomadList and found out that the average living cost in Montreal is $3,750/mo. Considering that I spent the first year in Ottawa/Toronto, where the cost of living is even higher, my spending habits turned out not that bad after all. I’m not just average — I’m slightly better!

This philosophy may not be ideal for your circumstances. You already knew you had limited funds and no income. "Slightly better than average" is overspending.

_rrnv3• 2 years ago

There’s a moral in this story but the HN crowd ain’t gonna like it: money is capital. Two years ago the author had no job and 80k in the bank. At least half was disposable. Had he invested that 40k or more in a risk-averse fashion (20% s&p/btc; 80% t-bills) his position today would be much better. Instead he ate through his capital. Always invest your disposable savings or income. Hate me now. Thank me later.

Vinnl• 2 years ago

Depends on when that money is going to result in the most valuable experiences, of course.

nitwit005• 2 years ago

He was investing it, in starting new businesses. He has revenue from one. The return just wasn't what he wanted.

Invictus05• 2 years ago

I’ll sell you a $600/mo revenue stream for $80k any day of the week. Bro should have just bought a business.

Existenceblinks2• 2 years ago

Yep, 2024 market is considerably too good though. When he about to quit, I'd expect 8% yield (pessimistic) per year, so $6.4k/yr or $533/mo, that's "good" living quality in non major cities in Thailand. But to be fair, it's only good for locals, not for foreigners. And that $80k also needs to be invested 1 year before quitting.

It's doable for extending up to 3x of his runway.

lottin2• 2 years ago

If you get 8% returns per year on average, the expected annualized return over a multi-year period is going to be LESS than 8%.

This is because you won't get exactly 8% each year. For example, suppose the returns over a 3-year period are: 20%, -10%, 14%. In this case, the return over the whole period is 23.21% (= (1 + 0.20) * (1 - 0.10) * (1 + 0.14) - 1). On the other hand, a 8% return each year would have resulted in a 25.97% return over the whole period (= (1 + 0.08)^3 - 1).

jarsin• 2 years ago

The type of people that want to start companies rarely invest. Once you adopt an investor mindset you start to see startups as one of the riskiest investments you could ever make.

I've seen quite a few one hit entrepreneurs lose it all chasing the next idea and never investing anything.

Existenceblinks2• 2 years ago

Indie startup (or just simply call it "selling app online") is not bad if your "capital is lower than $1M" AND "desirable MRR at $10k". You can beat $1M capital, 10% return .. by making $10k MRR SaaS instead.

greenie_beans7• 2 years ago

you can always earn more money after you spend it

BugsBunny1991• 2 years ago

What's the difference in risk between the S&P and BTC? I'm all in on S&P and it feels as if BTC is an even bigger gamble.

greenie_beans7• 2 years ago

oh that's funny, somebody saying they should buy bitcoin with part of their money rather than blow it in 2 years trying to pursue their entrepreneur dreams.

_rrnv3• 2 years ago

The difference is volatility. S&P and BTC hit their bottoms around Nov 2022. Since then the former is almost 2x up, the latter almost 7x. Similarly once they hit their tops, S&P will go down 15-20% but BTC more like 50-70% down.

byyoung3• 2 years ago

Try carnivore bro. Read the mind body prescription by John Sarno. Meditate 20 mins per day

acd10j• 2 years ago

Not sure, If he has option OP can ask his parents to help or live with them. Having zero balance in account is not a very good situation to be in.

p00dles• 2 years ago

Well I’ll be damned if it didn’t make my day to read somebody talking so honestly about their life. Thanks for the being relatable, and for putting yourself out there.

ChiMan2• 2 years ago

The moral of the story: Don’t quit your job unless you have an employment contract for another one or if you have a reliable, growing side hustle that generates enough income to live on. Real life bites hard, and $80k is peanuts.

titanomachy6• 2 years ago

Did we read the same article? This guy is spending his time learning music, mastering a sport, spending time with close friends, and your takeaway is “he should be grinding away at a corporate like everyone else”?

There’s a lot of different ways to live. Personally I like taking periods of voluntary unemployment to explore other interests. Finding a job after has never been a problem.

A large percentage of the population has at least some safety net. Probably the average 25 year old could move back in with their parents for a year if things got really bad.

ChiMan2• 2 years ago

In other words, the parents protect the kid from real life. No thanks.

mplewis2• 2 years ago

This guy is spending more than he makes. Who is bankrolling him?

kirso2• 2 years ago

This. I took breaks of 3-6 months in-between jobs to explore, learn and grow and it always led me to better opportunities, skill acquisition and moving to a better more stable life.

This essay is kind of radical but outlines a few amazing points of unstructured work time: https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/01/06/quit-your-job/

javiramos• 2 years ago

Accutane killed my stomach for a good while

Jabbs2• 2 years ago

Are you looking for a job now? It seems the market is even tougher than it was a few years ago. I have built an app to scrape job listings directly from company websites if you're interested

jjordan• 2 years ago

I'm interested, how can I check it out?

Jabbs2• 2 years ago

https://www.unlistedjobs.com/

If you signup and want it free please just email me (listed on my profile). Currently asking $15/mo for the app

the__alchemist2• 2 years ago

I wonder how the dating world would go, given he's divorced, even before running out of money. I.e.: I think most women would immediately reject someone unemployed. (Even if he had money) Taking a risk like this while in a relationship is probably fine, but trying to start one with a stranger is likely to be significantly more difficult than while employed.

Aeolun9• 2 years ago

Just have to find someone else that’s unemployed? Or someone that doesn’t care? If there’s men that don’t care a woman is unemployed the reverse must be true too.

mettamage3• 2 years ago

The way I see it, the more disadvantages you have the more you need to make up for it with charisma. That's how I do it anyway. Charisma is trainable. It's not easy to train, but it ultimately is trainable.

titanomachy6• 2 years ago

Being single for a couple years isn’t the end of the world. Besides, he’s in the climbing community, which (at least from the outside) appears to be chock full of barely-employed attractive men and women who all sleep with each other.

bradlys3• 2 years ago

I have more experience with this than most of the HN crowd. I've not been working for 2.5 years. Being unemployed is considered unattractive but if you spin it - it's not too bad. I spin it as, "I did startups in SV, one of them went public. I have plenty of money." Most everyone gets it but some women are put off by it. I'm literally taking time away from SV because I'm on the hunt for a wife. I couldn't find one after being in SV for 8 years and so now I'm in NYC where at least I can actually meet women. I've traveled a lot as well but I don't recommend that as a way to meet your future wife. Dating culture outside of the US is very different and very few women will be interested in dating someone who is traveling around. There are also other issues like being used for a green card and so on. Sleeping/dating around casually isn't as much of a thing in other countries and it's a necessity if you're going to try to form an intense bond with someone.

Overall, I think for a tech worker, the real issue is that so many women will not date a tech worker to begin with because of the low social status associated with dating a tech worker. I've met thousands at this point and it's honestly made me regret joining this industry. I do not advocate for it at all.

I think the bigger hurdle with dating beyond that anyway is physical attraction. The bar for that is really high now. Being a rock climber only attracts certain types because rock climbing tends to have more lanky builds. You better hope you're attracted to women who only want to date slim built men. That is a niche woman. As well, you can't escape your baseline genetics like height, facial attractiveness, etc. People talk about rock climbers sleeping with each other all the time but it's mostly men who are rock climbing. There are some women but the ratio is 3:1 - which means you're 2/3 chance of not getting anywhere.

louwrentius2• 2 years ago

The amount of sexism and stereotypes about women is astounding. I don’t feel you even see women as actual human beings, damn.

htrp2• 2 years ago

I mean you're not unemployed, you're retired.

blamazon• 2 years ago

I didn't notice a difference personally during a long unemployment stint. Not being employed lends a lot of free time to focus on self development and to be an interesting person which is beneficial to dating. Also, an unemployed partner can do a lot of cooking and cleaning. I used large chunks of my time to plan and create elaborate meals for working partners and keep co-living spaces spotless and organized. This is substantially more challenging for me personally to do with full time employment.

cynicalpeace4• 2 years ago

Don't quit your job to start something. Start something on the side. Spending down $80,000 in savings is a massive L.

Alifatisk• 2 years ago

Yeah, I don't get why people are praising this idea, it's a huge risk to take. If you don't have a safety net to catch yourself, don't do this!

kbr-• 2 years ago

What if your job sucks so much energy out of you, it's even hard to imagine to do something on the side?

cynicalpeace4• 2 years ago

I mean, he did have a safety net and he squandered it.

$80,000 is a great down payment in most places of the USA. You could buy a large country home with a pool and a view in most places of the world with that money.

I like risk takers, but quitting your job and spending all that money isn't actually a risk, it's just kinda lazy.

I'm not trying to be mean. This guy's obviously doing a lot right. He has friends, he's physically active, he has hobbies. But none of these things requires spending down $80k with effectively $0 in income.

Maybe he reads this comment and it lights a fire under his ass. 2 years is too long to get going, bro. You gotta dial in, move faster, and make money in a few weeks tops, or just get a job and slow burn on the side.

greenie_beans7• 2 years ago

a massive L to me is living your life by not taking risks because you are more comfortable counting your money beans and watching the compounding interest

cynicalpeace4• 2 years ago

You can take risks and also not spend $80k.

There are endless ways to do it. A way I did it was I moved to a cheaper country, started a business, learned a new language, met new friends, and eventually started a family.

Spending $80k in Montreal is the opposite of risk taking.

Perhaps if there was much to show for it, you would have a point. This guy did a lot right, has friends, is physically active, but none of that required spending down $80k.

gorfian_robot2• 2 years ago

Eric Bachman, this is your mom, and you, you are not my baby.

nell• 2 years ago

Did he try to get a job at all? Being from Canada and technical, I will say OP isn't trying enough.

https://digitalcareers.infosys.com/infosys/global-careers?lo...

https://ibegin.tcs.com/iBegin/jobs/search

https://www.epam.com/careers/job-listings?recruitingUrl=%2Fc...

mekoka• 2 years ago

I've been there. Some advice.

So you found yourself with some safety net and are contemplating reinventing yourself in some way. Maybe working on a side project, or supplementing your skillset by learning something new.

My first and top advice is to move to a place where just breathing and thinking is cheap. Travel if you can (i.e. you're young, have no kids, no relationships, no obligations). The slow burn will alleviate the stress and the need to precipitate a decision. Nomadlist, Numbeo, and the numerous nomad blogs are your friends. Start working on your projects from there. Come back home when you have some feelers moving.

Second. If your runway is only a year or two, prioritize acquiring a skill that'll make it easy to find work by the end of the run. Take a course on something trendy or valuable. If you choose to work on a project, also consider it the demo you'll eventually present to companies you'll interview at if things don't pan out. If you have 3 or 4 years, consider that you actually only have 1 to get something up and running.

Third. Don't be too ambitious with your first project. Aim to build something that can sustain living in a place where it's cheap to just breathe and think.

Good luck.

cwalv• 2 years ago

Also, carefully consider the costs. It's usually pretty hard to get the first 80-100k; burning your principal to 0 probably doesn't make sense. If it wasn't hard for you, that income stream is worth a lot, so you should carefully consider whether you're burning any bridges. If you're not burning bridges or burning principal to 0, that's a complete reframing of the situation.

ezekiel68• 2 years ago

Other considerations aside -- Given the difficulties in the tech job market over the past couple of years, I highly doubt most people who click through this headline will relate to the story of a guy who _decided_ to quit with 2+ years of living expenses saved up.

d_burfoot• 2 years ago

The problem with the "try a lot of projects, see what works" is that you lose out on exponential growth every time a project fails.

A lot of people would be better off doing "intra-preneurship", meaning trying to innovate and strategize within their current company to make the job more fun, gain more autonomy, and advance their career prospects.

ghaff21• 2 years ago

At the end of the day, it's a bet. You'll probably make zero (or negative after expenses). You may make some passable income. You might make a lot.

Whereas working for a big company, you have a fairly reliable shot at bringing in a decent income with some stability.

Nothing is guaranteed of course.

fellowmartian4• 2 years ago

I’m sorry, but what exponential growth are you talking about? No company will ever pay you that much as a regular salaried employee.

itake10• 2 years ago

Career growth. This includes job title, responsibilities, and compensation.

Companies can promote you every 1-2 years, but you need to start that clock.

itake10• 2 years ago

Fair, but the exponential growth function can be much more aggressive for a side project than your career. In a career, you max raises at 20% per year over a 5 year period? But side projects can have revenue increase 20% MRR.

Also, within companies, you need everyone’s unanimous permission to do anything.. if a problem is big enough, the team would do it themselves. If the problem is too small, the team won’t integrate.

moooo99• 2 years ago

But side projects can have revenue increase 20% MRR. Also, within companies, you

Or, more likely, 0%

coldtea3• 2 years ago

meaning trying to innovate and strategize within their current company to make the job more fun, gain more autonomy, and advance their career prospects

Assuming that's in an environment where it's possible (no shitty office politics, etc), the monetary returns from that ain't gonna be competing to a succesful project. Nor is the freedom and satisfaction ever going to be the same. And of course all progress in that front, is a round of layoffs or a change in management away from being nulled.

So, it's a safer path (as much as being an employee is safe these days), but not achieving the same thing.

asdev• 2 years ago

this is literally impossible at most companies due to politics, incentive alignments, OKRs etc

EasyMark2• 2 years ago

Right, most companies just want you cranking out the code their marketing department has determined as necessary, they don’t care if you grow, prosper, are happy, or any of those things.

vineyardmike2• 2 years ago

You probably won’t launch an entire product line out of your own sheer will, but you can totally push for smaller scale work. Push for creating a tool to improve your team’s processes, or push for a few feature within an existing product. Focus less on the “entrepreneur” aspect and more on the “build fun and autonomy into your work” aspect. If you’re trusted and respected within your organization, you’ll probably be able to push through ever-larger projects (assuming they’re not net-negative). This probably isn’t a working strategy if you’re within your first year, but if you’re a respected senior engineer who wants to scratch an itch, you’ll probably have much more success.

Or, if you work at Google, push for a new chat app. It’ll probably be approved.

jnwatson• 2 years ago

I've started something new at every company I've worked for, except the startup, which was already a new thing.

My current employer, Google, seems particularly amenable to internal entrepreneurship. After all, they're essentially paying you not to create new external businesses.

agumonkey• 2 years ago

That's how it goes at mine. I regularly whine about the amount of waste in there.. insane. I was more productive, creative and happier when jobless. In group you have to navigate all the hurdles, egos, fears around .. Makes me wonder how Xerox PARC managed to exist all (beyond the fact that they had a lot of money of course)

SkyPuncher2• 2 years ago

I’ve had extreme control over my role over the past decade (leadership in startups) and I couldn’t even do what you suggest. I’m not sure how you think the average person could

FredPret5• 2 years ago

You only need exponential growth to work once

aorloff• 2 years ago

But you have to be able to execute when it arrives

j45• 2 years ago

Exponential growth means getting the timing, positioning and right amount of execution just right.

Also feels like chasing a lottery win. Some folks might be chasing a financial safety net first that is smaller, because the variables and formula of everyone's life in what they have to take care of is valid.

I'm very happy for people who are able to swing for the fences, and also happy for the people working on getting more hits to bigger hits to swing for the fench. I know the latter is a much more sure way to get an outcome to have time freedom to really swing fences.

Everyone does what they best can do, if there's not an option in front of them at work, some people have to try to create the option themselves if it's not geographically accessible.

boiler_up800• 2 years ago

This is the tech equivalent of ‘my year of rest and relaxation’, enjoyable to read with talk of sports and projects. I think I will try this after my current job runs its course.

jumparoundwords3• 2 years ago

Crazy to me that some people in the comments believe that 80k$ dollar is peanuts. Even in Germany I could easily live with that for more than 5 years.

If I had that kind of money lying around I would move to another country, pay for my whole education, learn a new language and still have enough money for multiple full-time start-up attempts.

bradlys3• 2 years ago

Cost of living in the US is very high. HN skews towards the SV crowd. $80k isn't even a year of rent for many here. If you instead bought a home recently in SV, $80k wouldn't even get you halfway through the year.

There's a reason people get paid $400k+/yr in SV. The place is expensive and you need to keep people there somehow.

dragonwriter• 2 years ago

$80k isn’t even a year of rent for many here.

$80k is more than the median annual rent on a three-bedroom house in San Francisco; if its "not even a year of rent", even in the "SV crowd", that's because of lavish personal choices, not location-based necessity.

There’s a reason people get paid $400k+/yr in SV.

Yes, because the jobs paying that are highly selective and there is lots of competition for talent. The cost of living in SV is a consequence of the concentration of high-paying jobs, not its cause.

jumparoundwords3• 2 years ago

I do wonder what's keeping people there long term.

With that amount of money you can have an amazing life in so many places on this earth, and these people definitely have the resources to do that. Have these people never experienced life abroad? Quality of life is much higher elsewhere.

khushy• 2 years ago

How about that guy who wrote graphing calculator? Or the guy who put zip in windows explorer?

zynlo• 2 years ago

To the author: Thank you for this blogpost. I'm in a difficult situation myself and your writeup helped me reflect. I wish you all the best.

hoherd2• 2 years ago

Shout out to the low-FODMAP diet. I did that last year after having several months of abdominal pain and discomfort, and was stunned at how quickly a change in diet could solve these seemingly chronic symptoms. At the end of the second day I told my wife I couldn't remember the last time I felt so good. I'd recommend trying it for a few days to pretty much anybody, because doing it can't hurt, and who knows? It might make you feel better. It's not intended to be a long-term thing anyway, more of a diagnostic tool to help you learn about your body.

aaronblohowiak• 2 years ago

I was low-fodmap for YEARS (a little onion on something would trigger an emergency bathroom situation for me...) . but now FODZYME means I even make onion jelly for my burgers with zero discomfort. it costs about a dollar per serving and you have to put it on after cooking (heat denatures it or something) but it is truly a game-changer. im not affiliated in any way except I just ordered another bottle.

Nimishg14• 2 years ago

Thanks for the honesty dude. I got fired earlier this year.

I have been working on personal projects since.

I have personal savings to last for around 3-4 years.

Lately I have been stressing a lot, thinking about what would happen if I fail to make a single penny in upcoming years.

Reading your post was a breath of fresh air.

purplethinking4• 2 years ago

I took over a year off working on a project before I joined another company. Never made any money, but in retrospect I see that I could have made it work in 2-3 years, but the stress would have interfered. Wish I could be more chill, but money stresses me out. Getting close to do it again, but this time I'm fairly close to being financially independent at a barebones lifestyle. I mean, with 22 years of living expenses saved I should be fine right? Right? I should be able to make some money at SOME point. But the reason I have 22 years of expenses is because I'm neurotic about money...

crtified• 2 years ago

(I'll nest my thought here, as there's some relevance to your position)

I'm looking a long way back to when I was in your position : I got fired about 10 years ago, after unrealistic expectations and mental health burnout led to me making regrettable statements to executives.

The entire experience and time since is far too large to encompass in a post. But perhaps my biggest takeaway after all this time is that most people waste a great, great deal of money frivolously. Having even an average income, more often than not, leads to a lifestyle where it's standard to buy a $50 version of an everyday item because it has a certain stamp and shiny packaging, instead of the $10 one that frugal people use. Going to the food markets with a comfortable income is a thoughtless experience of filling bags with items you like the look of, regardless of price or purpose. Tens of thousands are dropped on a whim for a change of travel-box (car). An executive spends more on daily coffee than I do on my total coffee+breakfast+lunch. The income finds a way to be spent, but the experience isn't necessarily that different.

I'll indulge in another edit-in point. Home economics. It used to be a school subject. People thought it was about cooking, and sewing. Millions of mothers and grandmothers from past generations know that basic cooking skills actually = a lot of money in the bank. The best food you ever ate, at half the cost, in perpetuity. Concepts like these, where you trade a % of your time for directly applicable, $-winning skills (as opposed to using salary to pay others) is a key necessity of living sustainably outside the traditional 40-hour-week employment system.

The best part is when you realise it's all the same. You'll job Here, or you'll job There. Everybody does 24hrs of something per day, and if you're smart, you WILL find your way to comfort. Perhaps on surprisingly less money than you thought. It will just take time and persistence.

And if not, well, the traditional job market always wants smart people too, sooner or later.

mlboss• 2 years ago

Everybody's life is different but if I have to do something similar this will be my strategy:

- Move to a low cost place where other indiehackers go: thailand, bali. - Start living in a cheap hostel with other indiehackers - Copy an existing app with lot of users and something that interest me - Start with the lowest price possible. Keep on adding features and introducing expensive plans - Non stop marketing on X, FB, Insta, reddit etc

As soon as you leave your job it is a ticking clock. Every minute is important. I know mental sanity is important but life of entrepreneur is not best one if you want one. It is risky. It is a grind.

theteapot• 2 years ago

Is Bali still cheap? I heard is was a mess now.

kachurovskiy• 2 years ago

I wonder if a part-time remote job coupled with full time traveling on a budget would have been a more sustainable, enjoyable and productive approach. Hanging with pals in Montreal is cool but it's expensive and not very productive.

em-bee10• 2 years ago

the challenge is finding such a job.

senko• 2 years ago

a part-time remote job coupled with full time traveling on a budget

a.k.a. Digital Nomad

theLegionWithin• 2 years ago

I did that, sort of, pre-pandemic.

IBM did a restructuring of my division in mid-2018 and I got RIFed. I pulled UI for 6 months and then lived off of my savings for a while - I looked at it as a mini-retirement. it was really nice, and made me appreciate work more (I'd been getting burnout from the IBM job).

when it was time to look for work again, the pandemic hit and I had a few tough months. I onboarded at a place mid-2020 and am still employed at the same place to this day. cant say I feel valued by the employer but I enjoy my job, it's a bit less stressful than my previous job.

djeastm• 2 years ago

Folks, just live your life how it fits you. We're all born into a different set of circumstances that dictate many of the choices we make. We all have different ideas about what life means to us and what levels of risk we're comfortable taking. Listen to your gut and focus on what you'll be smiling about as you lie on your deathbed.

Apofis• 2 years ago

These past three year's markets have been super tough. It's the hardest I've worked in my life to be employed in the field I was interested in actually working in, which is building software. I've had to get two new roles in that time due to layoffs. 1000's of applications, and all that entails. I was ready to be a farmhand this summer before things actually worked out, figured I would get to work a farm on a lake, and fish on my time off, it's pretty much what I want to do when I retire, shouldn't be so bad. Just be flexible. Work as hard as you can to get what you want, but remember McDonalds pays nearly $20 an hour these days, if it keeps the lights on, don't be above it. Better than being homeless.

oblio10• 2 years ago

I fear that we might be in the twilight of the software development job market:

https://www.hnhiringtrends.com/

Everybody got used to continuous growth, but I fear that for most people the music has stopped.

blakblakarak2• 2 years ago

McDonalds pays nearly $20 an hour these days, if it keeps the lights on, don't be above it.

I was between jobs several years ago and my startup failed - I ended up washing up at a restaurant to be able to continue feeding my family. At the time it was humiliating to be in my late 30s scrubbing pots and pans for the minimum wage but looking back it’s probably one of the periods of my life I’m most proud of: Putting pride aside to do what’s required to be a father and a provider.

Nemo_bis• 2 years ago

Speaking of different circumstances, here's a helpful income comparator based on actual numbers: https://wid.world/income-comparator/ . Figure out how common your situation is where you are.

la_fayette• 2 years ago

Unfortunately, I only get this from the website:

{ "statusCode": "TypeError", "message": "Cannot read properties of undefined (reading '0')" } An error occurred

01HNNWZ0MV43FF• 2 years ago

My gut is telling me to sleep around. I don't always listen to it

XCSme• 2 years ago

Completely agree. What is a "stable life" for some is complete chaos for others. What is "taking risks" for some is too safe and boring for others...

ge96• 2 years ago

I was/am paycheck to paycheck, if I didn't have so much debt I could get by. I was working at AmazonFC, then driving uber eats (Uber makes more) and donating plasma. I was able to make $5-6K/mo granted I was working a lot eg. up to 80 hrs, at least 1 job everyday and I was not paying taxes yet on the side income. I do pay taxes by year.

Edit: thankfully after a year I got a new job, contract role. I have experience but no degree so harder for me.

Fokamul2• 2 years ago

OP, imagine you live in EU. You could get unemployment support payments + rent payment from social security, for a year at minimum. I thought you have somewhat similar social security in Canada, no?

ThrowawayTestr• 2 years ago

There's unemployment insurance but only if you're laid off.

blobbers• 2 years ago

What's your plan to make food/rent money for the next year? Sounds like you currently have $68 and need to pay rent/eat?

Fr0styMatt88• 2 years ago

A few years back I got a nice severance and took some time off, but looking back on it now I do regret not trying to get a job sooner. It would have been so nice just to have that money behind me in the bank while still bringing more in.

uhtred• 2 years ago

Product launch when will you launch demo startup VC! VC! Demo product launch eat sleep code repeat cringe what's your stack hacker congrats on the launch website just a website not working at NASA just crud crud crud standup grooming review retro LinkedIn engineering@fuckly so excited to share! Occam's razor

_giorgio_3• 2 years ago

This post makes no sense.

You're making fun of your readers.

Somewhere you have hidden money or people that will help you.

The end.

betimsl• 2 years ago

I'm going through a very similar thing for 2 years now. All I can say is that I don't wanna work for a company anymore, specially a FANG like setup.

I have some friends who work, sometimes they work remotely from my studio and when they do zoom meetings, oh man, ugh...

xkbarkar• 2 years ago

Some clarification on the comments on unemployment in the Nordics .

The nordics arent really as inviting, socialist and helpful as many US interweebs might think.

Sweden and Denmark will only pay unemployment if you have unemployment insurance. Called A-kassa. It is very expensive and you have to have paid it for a year to be able to claim benefits. If you don´t pay A-kassa you will have the pleasure of having them spam you to reel you on 3-4 times a week.

The Swedes and Danes have the highest taxes in the world but are using the US medical insurace as a model for unemployment.

Really not the welfare system these two countries claim they have.

The benefits you get from the A-kassa are extremly low. Less than average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment. You can buy another really expensive insurance to get a little higher amount.

And even if it's an insurance you have paid for you will get hounded to get any job, the Danish authorities may send you to do pretty much menial job they demand to get you off the benefits. The Swedish are not as bad as the Danish in that regard.

The way to live unemployed in Denmark and Sweden is to get into the medical system. Get a doctor to sign you have some illness. Stress is probably 90% of the cases in Denmark.

Then you get a small amount montly, it has been pre covered by your tax money so you dont need to pay the extortionate A-kassa (unemployment insurance) and no one will hound you to take some excruciating job no one wants to do.

This setup btw benefits the ruling parties in Sweden and Denmark as they can claim unenployment is at an historic low. No one counts the people on, I suppose it could be called, disability.

Iceland is a little different. Unemployment is covered in your tax payments, it's not a private (it's not supposed to be profitable, but trust me, for the A-kassa it truly is ) insurance like Denmark and Sweden.

In Iceland you have to show proof that you are actively looking for work and you will be cut off from benefits for an x number of months after an x amount of time. Do not remember the exact setup.

Bizarrely the Icelandic system is a lot more fair and less cruel than the Swedish and Danish. All three pay out a very very very low amount of money though.

Now, coming from a point of bitterness. This medical loop is exploited as you wouldnt beleive in Sweden and Denmark. I have people in my vicinty proudly admitting they are on "stress" leave because some employer said something mean to them they didnt want to hear.

So the working dane and swede has to pay minimum 44% taxes of their salary to keep this sham going.

I pay an exruciating amount of taxes in the Nordic countries. Sweden and Denmark are the highest. Iceland a little less.

It pisses me off royally to see the tax money gamed in this way and this has turned me to voting for parties I never thought I would.

Social democrats are a poision, maybe they were useful 50 years ago but today they do enourmous damage to countries that offer tax payed welfare.

tldr;

You need savings in the Nordics too if you are going to quit your job. If you can get a doctor to sign a medical paper that claims you had to leave work because of stress, you can game the system and let the taxpayers pay for your hobbies for a few years.

octopusRex3• 2 years ago

Reading through comments on living paycheck to paycheck was brutal as it sounds like many people here have no clue what really living paycheck to paycheck is like.

No, it doesn't mean you can still go out to eat and have a club membership. If you save nothing after you use up your entire paycheck going out to eat and paying for a gym membership , that means you aren't handling money well.

Sorry folks, but many of us here sound entitled. Having been poor and scrambled my way up, it was depressing reading.

strzibny• 2 years ago

Nice write up. Don't listen to folks at jobs that will never "get it". I wish you good luck, left my last full-time job mid last year.

anonymous344• 2 years ago

why isnt the WonderBook - Stories for Kids avaible for my device in google play?

mv4• 2 years ago

Anxiety hits different when you have responsibilities (family, kids, dependents).

Unbeliever69• 2 years ago

I voluntarily left the workforce a few years ago, and I'm fortunate that my wife, a teacher, has a solid job earning over $100k a year. While that’s not a huge amount, it’s enough for us to live comfortably. What we discovered during this transition was eye-opening: most of my income had been going toward discretionary spending, much of it wasteful. Now, even though I only generate $200–$500 a month in passive income from a few books I sell on Amazon (gotta love passive income), we’re actually living better than before. This is thanks to paying off debt, living more within our means, and both of us feeling more personally fulfilled.

So, what do I do now? * Household management: I handle cooking (about half), cleaning, shopping, finances, repairs—basically all the day-to-day stuff. * Supporting my wife: I act as her personal assistant. I write emails, grants, and curriculum; create her presentations and visuals; and handle whatever else she needs so she can focus on teaching. With my help, she’s raised over $100k in two years to support her program—not too shabby! * Pet parent: I’m a proud cat and dog dad. Side projects: I’m working on a web app that I hope will generate income someday. * Writing a novel: For the first time, I’ve moved past the endless planning stage and am actually writing! I’ve also got more ideas in the works. * Tabletop game design: I have about ten tabletop games in various stages of development, and a few are done. I’d love to get at least one published. A friend and I even created a tabletop game that teaches condensed matter physics (CMP 101 level) with funding from an NSF grant. It’s more of a euro-game than an edu-game, and we’re looking to publish it and maybe turn it into an app. * Self-care: Decades of work, especially in startups, took a toll on me emotionally and physically. Today, I'm more organized, more productive, more focused, and more motivated than ever. I have a lot of work to do to repair my health, but I'm working on it.

What I’m finally able to do: * Engage in emotionally rewarding activities instead of draining ones. * Pursue personal goals and dreams I’ve always put on hold. * Channel my energy into supporting my wife, which has made her happier and more fulfilled in her career—a first for her. * Be the master of my own destiny rather than living on someone else’s terms.

I do feel some anxiety about putting the financial burden on my wife. She understands and values the contributions I make to our household and her career, so there’s no resentment on her part. Still, I worry about what would happen if she lost her job or couldn’t work. I cope by focusing on the fact that the things I’m pursuing can generate income. If I channel my energy positively and healthily into these pursuits, I believe they eventually will.

yapyap• 2 years ago

cool

yibbix• 2 years ago

It’s been almost two years since I was layed off. Unlike him though, I have not been working on side projects. This time has actually made me realize that I do not enjoy software, even working on projects for myself and as a hobby.

I’ve slowly spent all my savings, moved back in with my folks, and still don’t have a job. It’s rough. I have no idea what I wanna do in life. So I decided to join the navy recently, to give me the next 4 years to figure it out.

Muskyinhere• 2 years ago

You are on hn so let me ask you this: Are/were you a nerd? Did you play around with systems, use linux for fun etc.?

If yes, you just might be depressed or haven't realized that a job might be shit anyway.

If no, interesting though that you are aware of hn (i have to assume a certain interest because i know plenty of software people avg ones, not being aware of hn at all).

But hf at the navy.

oooyay• 2 years ago

That's not really the qualifier you think it is. I've been coding and hacking stuff up since I was nine. Corporate programming is a great perversion of the kind of stuff I find fun to do in my spare time. In order to be successful you not only need to be a good programmer and curious person but you also need to know how to navigate corporate power structures (explicit and implicit), you need to be somewhat of a therapist helping people tap into their true problems, and above all else you need to be excellent at compartmentalization.

hudon• 2 years ago

similar boat. Been doing software for 15 years and I used to love it. Learning new languages, side projects, contributing to open source, you name it. At every job I became less enthusiastic, like the technical problems all became the same. The actual problems became ones of people, management, customer, product, etc., and I had no interest in solving those. So this year I decided to not code... and I don't miss it at all. However I have no idea what I will work on next.

I was in the army before uni - it was grueling but awesome. You'll find your way fren

meonkeys• 2 years ago

Good read, thank you Sergei. Refreshingly honest and surprisingly inspiring. Good luck!

enjoyitasus• 2 years ago

keep it up

zer8k• 2 years ago

I'd love to do this - I have had so many ideas and just wanted to take a sabbatical to refocus after the corporate grind.

Unfortunately I need healthcare. An ACA plan cost me $1200/mo. over COVID when I was out of work for two months. It was a complete panic. Just mortgage, utilities, food, and healthcare was almost $3,500 a month. Throw in car insurance (because I'm American) and it was unsustainable. If there's one thing the ACA is - it's not affordable. A complete garbage program that has enabled health insurance companies to take our money by force.

I've realized there's no way I can do this. I missed my window when I was in college (because I was working - for healthcare). Now I'm condemned to suffer until I retire or die. A consummate worker drone shackled by literal bureaucratic bullshit.

My second year without a job

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