It's a lot easier to just quit when you are single. I'm lucky my wife was supportive when I got burned out and took half a year off. I'm sole breadwinner. Ah, youth. I'm more careful now about balance.
But was there anything in particular wrong? Was there anything Dropbox should have done differently to keep her?
I realize that some places are wrong for some people, in ways that can't be fixed. I'm just curious whether it's possible to articulate how Dropbox was wrong for the author.
She mentioned that Dropbox grew 4x. So, while she didn't (and, I think, wisely) say the exact reason she wanted to leave, a lot of people just prefer working at smaller companies.
I imagine she's still trying to sort those things out, and we may hear more about them later on. It sounds like the dust is just starting to settle and she's trying to make sense of the whole experience.
Do you not save any money when you work? If you are not saving 10% - 15% of your paycheck into an account where the money is immediately accessible, you are living above your means.
Only "a renter" is true. I have one kid. We have one family car instead of two. The three of us live in a one bedroom apartment. I carry no credit card debt, but I don't buy any toys. I paid off my college loans in the first two years out of college because I worked like a dog and lived with my parents.
Having children and/or other obligations makes it more likely you're living above your means.
It doesn't change the fact that if you're not putting money aside for emergencies & retirement you are living above your means.
Sometimes it's OK to live above your means. I'd willingly go into major debt for my children. But not acknowledging you're doing so while you're doing it will cause problems.
Whether that is possible depends a lot on where you live - from what I can tell, outside of a few major cities there are plenty of places in the US where you can buy a house for <$200k in the US, good luck with that anywhere in Canada.
Bullshit. Nobody forces you to live in an expensive city. Nobody makes you buy a million dollar house. You chose your own destiny. Stop putting the blame on others.
I lived in Chicago on a $800/mo salary for a year and a half. Yes eight hundred dollars a month, in the city of Chicago. I had no money, but I made it work, then I moved back home to small town Iowa and make a lot more now, and live a better life. Nobody made me do either of those things.
It takes money move, to or from any city. It's nice that you were able to make it work, and yes, it means others could as well but you wold look like a little less of an asshole if you would consider not everyone is in the same situation as you were.
Were you single
Did you have kids
Did you have any medical conditions that needed care
Did you use to have a better job before
That's just a few things that are part of everyday, normal life that can make the cost of moving and living on very little somewhat difficult.
> Did you have any medical conditions that needed care
Not that I know of.
> Did you use to have a better job before
I moved to the city with a $100 loan from my step-father so I could afford gas to do the 4 hour drive taking nothing with me but what I could fit in my car, which took a 3rd of that $800/mo just to pay.
You know how I moved? I asked a friend, he came and helped me and packed his truck with what I couldn't fit in my car.
You know that lack of empathy is a significant personality disorder.
> Did you have any medical conditions that needed care
> Not that I know of.
Others do, it's often sort of important to handle them. It can also limit the cities you can live in.
> Were you single
> No.
Right here I start thinking your now being disingenuous, second income?
> car, which took a 3rd of that $800/mo
So you lived in Chicago on 528 a month and saved enough to move. You are leaving things out. This was either 40 years ago, you were getting significant social assistance or something.
Lets go ahead and throw out another perfectly, though unfortunate, normal situation. You had parents to even move back in with.
Now then, I don't live in a particularly expensive city. The 'million dollar house' you want to keep throwing around as if everyone has is almost 10 times the cost of where I live. Yet I can still see that not every one is in the exact same situation I am in. Moving to another city would not be something I could do on a whim, though I've had to cover medical expenses this year that are more than what your supposed monthly income was.
> The 'million dollar house' you want to keep throwing around
I mentioned it once. You're the one who keeps bringing it back up.
> Right here I start thinking your now being disingenuous, second income?
No second income. My fiance has never, and will never pay anything for me.
> So you lived in Chicago on 528 a month and saved enough to move. You are leaving things out. This was either 40 years ago, you were getting significant social assistance or something.
Oh sorry, I left out the $600/mo the startup I worked for paid the owner of the spare bedroom I lived in. My bad. $1400/mo. And 40 years ago? I'm 30, I moved from Chicago in March of this year.
>Oh sorry, I left out the $600/mo the startup I worked for paid the owner of the spare bedroom I lived in. My bad. $1400/mo. And 40 years ago? I'm 30, I moved from Chicago in March of this year.
Were your SO and kids not living with you? I cant imagine putting 3+ people into a spare bedroom. If you guys did do that, its impressive but its certainly not within the realm of normal in the US. If you didn't have them with you, than saying you had 1400 a month to support yourself, your SO, and your kid/s is not an accurate accounting of your living expenses for Chicago
It's dumb to devolve this argument down to "But what if you have cancer and 7 dogs and 3 kids, how would you move?"
Because the average person reading hacker news with a tech job in the valley does not have 7 dogs and 3 kids and cancer. We can feel sorry for that person, but I am pretty sure we can blame all 200k software developers living in SF as having 7 dogs 3 kids and cancer.
I had a buddy that lived in a coffin apartment in Chinatown (Chicago) for <$200/mo. He was a struggling musician and I was impressed at his ability to make it work
On an affordability (cost vs earning power) basis, houses are extremely expensive everywhere in Canada - we are on the same trajectory the US was with their housing bubble, but about 2 years behind - the difference is, ours never burst, and we have surpassed the peaks attained in the US.
I realize that things have changed, but around 15 years ago, a friend of mine sold her ~$30,000 house in a city in Saskatchewan to move to a ~$20,000 house in the country.
Hard to imagine that housing prices have gone up 10x in that time.
In their index, housing prices were about 100 in 2000 and about 180 in 2013, so houses were about 80% more expensive in 2013 versus 2000. That is in real terms. You'd expect it to be more like 103% more expensive in nominal terms (assuming 2%/year inflation).
Here's a good source for recent housing prices in Canada:
It shows that the average sale price in Canada was $433k in August 2015. But there's tremendous variation within Canada. Vancouver was around $900k; PEI was $158k. It looks like Saskatchewan was around $253k, so a bit over half the national average, with Regina and Saskatoon being more expensive in the $310-320k range.
About 15 years ago you would have expected prices to be about half that in Saskatchewan, or maybe $125k. So no, house prices have not gone up 10x in the last 15 years and $20-30k were not typical house prices in Saskatchewan at the time.
If you're retired or can work remotely, and don't mind missing out on all the culture and activities available in a city, sure you can move to a cheap house in rural Canada. The difference is, in the US you don't have to, you can have both in many places. Low affordability, like in San Fransisco, is an anomaly in the US, in Canada it is the norm.
Not to be a dick but it sounds like you just make a lot of money. I'd consider owning a house and 2 cars to be pretty garish compared to the average middle class family. The luxury of being able to travel is something not many people have. Plus if you have ever had a parent help you with any significant expense you are much luckier than the majority of people. This sounds like one of those /r/personalfinance threads where the op finally paid off debt by cutting expenses, cooking at home, getting $200k windfall from a grandparent dying, etc.
> Not to be a dick but it sounds like you just make a lot of money.
I do not. I make just over $70k a year now (a lot more than a few years ago) and before we had kids, we cut back so that my wife's income at the time went entirely to paying off debts. Our home is worth ~135k (three bedroom in a nice cheaper US city), and our cars are nothing to write home about but they get us where we need to go. My total income now is higher than our combined income was then. Like I said before, planning goes a long way.
Your comment does come off as a bit dickish, by the way. You made a lot of assumptions about me that are not true.
Just for the record when someone says "not to be x" they are almost always about to be X. I was wrong. You are in a situation similar to me though. About the same income/housing price with a wife and first child on the way. There is no way I'm saving 20% in the foreseeable future though. I have two car payments though. One that will be paid off this year and the other I'd like to get rid of but I'm too upside down right now.
> There is no way I'm saving 20% in the foreseeable future though.
Absolutely understandable. We certainly went through a few years where we were just happy that we didn't have debt and could live off my income. Good luck with your own journey!
I have yet to pay off the house, but my wife and I (similar situation to the two of you) managed to pay off $47k in debt (credit cards, student loans, and car loans) in two years. In the months that followed, we saved a six-month emergency fund. We just stuck to a budget, and put every other penny on debt. We followed the Dave Ramsey plan. People poo poo him for not being sophisticated enough, but it's about changing behavior, not doing math.
Anyway, I just noticed that you said "no way," and I wanted to provide a counter example. Good luck!
I'm taking the snowball approach right now too. Maybe I will eventually get to where I can put away 20% but for now that extra money goes to paying down debt. Aside from $100 a month that goes into an emergency savings fund and 4% into my 401k.
When I started the snowball, I stopped contributing to the 401k, in an effort to be as focused as possible. I think that's one of the great strengths of Dave's plan. Being focused solely on one goal at a time gives you a quick feeling of accomplishment as you start racking up wins. If you spread your efforts out across too many goals, you may get discouraged when you don't seem to be making fast progress on anything.
For what it's worth, you're in roughly the top 30% of earners globally. Whether that constitutes "a lot of money" depends on your definition, but we often forget just how little most people on this planet live on so I wanted to throw it out there.
Which is why I have a lot of sympathy for the majority of people on the planet. For the typical HN commenter, though, who is either highly compensated or at least in an industry with a lot of job security, I have to roll my eyes when people act so baffled as to how one can possibly save money.
I am well compensated now, but right after college I was making 15k a year (it was in the arts) and I still managed to save money.
How are you supporting 4 people with roughly 56k a year and own a house and 2 cars at the same time? Its not unbelievable if youve paid off those expenses over a long time and didnt have student loans. But even one bad car repair could be a couple percent of your total budget for the year. My student loans would be 8.5% of your 70k paycheck alone
TIL I live beyond my means. Welcome to America. Having 10-15% cushion to save is a luxury for a lot of people. Probably not most people on HN but still.
It's both. I've worked on fixing the latter. However, living beyond your means isn't always that easy to correct. I can't just stop paying student loans for example. It's not like I'm dropping $300 a month on starbucks. It's student loans, mortgage, utilities, and other debt that takes up my entire paycheck.
Definitely. Some types of living beyond means (buying expensive toys, regularly flying to expensive vacations, eating out a majority of the time) are easy to correct. Loans and depreciating assets will be much more difficult.
More likely you have a lot of optional things that you can trim away. Do you have cable? How often do you eat out? Do you smoke? Do you have a budget that you stick to?
It's all about priorities. If you don't prioritize it, it won't happen. It's not easy and emergencies and unexpected bills come up but the freedom is amazing.
Check out the Ramsey Plan. We wiped out most of our debt in about 2 years while saving for a house. And that's while renting, 3 kids, and living just outside DC.
I appreciate the suggestions and trust me I'm working on it. I wasn't trying to turn this into a thread about my money issues. It's just that HN tends to have a lot of very young and very very well paid people who tend to think everyone else is in that same situation. I'm not sure they realize how fortunate they really are.
If you work in tech you should be able to save at least 30%. I save 60%, and I also live in the highest marginal tax rate country in the world. If you can't it probably means you live beyond your means.
@johnward Well you don't have to do 60% (I'm trying to become financially independent). But stop buying stuff you don't need. Live in a smaller apartment, preferably close to work. Avoid debt and cars like the plague, cook your meals at home. You won't miss all that stuff and it'll make it possible to save a significant portion of your take home pay.
@hoorayimhelping SF also have ridiculous salaries compared to the rest of the world. Everybody seems to be making at least $120k starting out, and many up to $300k. I make way less than that, but also live in a pretty expensive city. I just bypass that by not buying a lot of stuff. It's only possible because I reject the average consumerist middle-class lifestyle. I won't buy a house, I'll never buy a car again, I bike to work, I don't have expensive hobbies. You can't have the cake and eat it too. However most people should be able to save more than they do.
This is bit of a silly blanket statement given America's main tech center (and a significant portion of HN's population) is in San Francisco, where rents are the highest in the country. It's really hard not to live beyond your means just by living there.
Your numbers mean literally nothing to me. What do your expenses cost per month? Children? Food? Housing? Student loans? Car payment? What is your income tax rate? Sales tax rate? Insurance? Phone? Internet?
Umm, I don't mean to sound crass, but if you have 5 kids, 3 who live with you and 2 who do not, and a spouse who isn't currently working, I am not surprised that you find it difficult to save money. At the same time, it's not hard to understand that people who chose to have fewer children would find it easier to save money and get by without needing a trust fund.
It doesn't sound crass at all. One of the children is a foster child who we get no extra money for. She needs a safe place to live and food in her stomach and we're in a position where we can do that. I don't begrudge my situation at all.
What I do have an issue with is "if you can't save x amount per month, you're living beyond your means". It's not that black and white. My trust fund question was legitimate. I also think that if you have a support system behind you (i.e. parents you could ultimately live with if you couldn't find work), it makes taking a year off with very little income, much more likely....as does, having a trust fund backing you up.
@gregd Well of course, that's the entire point! I didn't just happen to have low expenses, I've been actively lowering them as much as I can! And you have to make some sacrifices to reach a 60% savings rate, but you also realize how much of this middle-class lifestyle doesn't actually make you happier. Why do you spend $1500 on food every month for one person for example?! That's insane. My expense is too high for my taste even though I bring lunch to work and rarely eat out, but that's because groceries in this country are more as expensive than in the US. Eating out costs twice as much as the US. Also why is your housing 3 times mine? If you live with an SO for example you should be able to find something cheaper than $3000. Again, in SF that might be a sacrifice but you have to do something to get ahead.
I have a wife who is in college full-time, 3 children that live with me (2 that do not)...that eats up (pun intended) my food budget. My rent on a 3 bedroom apartment is $1400/month and I had to sign a 14 month lease to get that (after already living here for over a year). They wanted to raise our rent $300/month if I didn't sign the 14 month lease.
I pay for health insurance out of my own pocket, which is over 8000/year.
Look, that sounds like a tough situation financially, but this is not the norm among people on this forum (whom I'm addressing). Also, good news! If your wife manages to find a nice job after graduation, and if you keep your lifestyle the same, you can now put an entire salary into your savings account (or pay off loans, which is the same thing) every month. That's basically what me and my wife are doing.
I know people that live in the United Arab Emirates too (the country with the highest marginal tax rate), and besides housing, the rest of the stuff is ridiculously cheap, so it makes sense that if you have a high income you can save a lot.
Wow, 10 to 15 percent is a luxury? I left the bay area because I wasn't happy with a 20% savings rate! I'm currently at a 60% savings rate and I'm 3 hours away from SF. I'm mid 30s with 3 kids.
Should I just blow it all on something ridiculous? Like what? Every single month?!
I really have no idea why you're getting such bad feedback on your comment. It's kind of terrifying to see such negative responses to the idea that people should save money.
It's because of his assumption that if you aren't saving a specific amount (some arbitrary amount that made sense to OP), then you're living beyond your means.
I don't even know where to start with this comment. If you read any "how to plan your life financially" books which are not written for multi-millionaires, but the average "Working Greg", you will see that the agreed upon advice is that you are supposed to save about 25% of your after-tax earnings. I didn't make up 10%-15%, I intentionally lowered the amount from the standard advice because I knew that 25% would elicit responses like yours. Fine, forget the 10% - 15% number.
Let's see if you agree with the following:
If tomorrow you are fired from your job, and you can't afford to live on your state's unemployment aid for six months (that's not an arbitrary number, most states' unemployment period is 6 months) then you are living above your means.
You are still not understanding me. You know nothing about me or my living situation. My state's unemployment maximum amount per week is $538. That barely covers my rent each month.
So, basically: if you got fired tomorrow, four people would be homeless, and 2 people would be foodless because you don't have any savings, and you consider yourself to be a responsible human. Bravo.
What's interesting to me is that you've made an absolute judgement call on me and my worth as a human, based solely on my questioning an income large enough to squirrel away 10-20% of my income, when you know nothing about me or what I do while walking in this world.
So basically, yes, my entire family would be homeless if I were to get fired tomorrow. This has caused unimaginable stress on me, being the sole breadwinner of my current predicament. Do I wish it were different? Sure. But for you to base whether or not I'm a "responsible human" on this, speaks volumes about how you walk around in this world.
For you to assume that someone who can afford to take a few months away from work is a trust fund baby speaks volumes about how you do.
And yea, I stand by my statement, even though it makes me sound like a dick. How well you are prepared for "when the shit hits the fan" (in the order of most probable to least, so don't think I have a basement full of guns and canned food like a Mormon would. As far as eventualities go, getting fired is the most likely one to happen, and the Apocalypse is pretty low on that list), even if it never does, matters just as much, if not more, than what you do day to day, in my evaluation of what a responsible human is.
You keep on and on about how no one here knows anything about you, and that's irrelevant. Whether someone lives beyond their means or not is not dependent on their personal situation, it's a calculation of "money in, money out". It doesn't matter that all of the things you are spending your money on are obligations, rather than toys. It just means you took on obligations in your life above your means. That's irresponsible.
I save a good portion of every paycheck, and I've slowly watched my savings grow. There's no way I would quit a job without some kind of way to pay my day to day expenses or some kind of prospect to be able to do it in the future.
The angles I look at this raise the same question: how can people do this? If people have no savings and no job lined up, how can they put food on the table? If they have savings, and know the value of safety net and how unpredictable financials are, how can they do this? It's not unreasonable to think they might have some kind of outside assistance.
Particularly if you're unhappy working where you are. I think using rainy-day money when it's sunny and you fancy sitting outside is a dangerous habit though.
Particularly if you're unhappy working where you are. I think using rainy-day money when it's sunny and you fancy sitting outside is a dangerous habit though.
Right? You should have at least a 6 month emergency fund, and if you're saving properly then you'll find it's not much of an issue. People love to complain about their money as they spend most of it on dumb things they don't really need.
She's probably not, but she did it anyway. I'm guessing that if you're young and without kids and have some money saved up, its definitely reasonable to go for a few months without an income. Especially in tech, you can save a lot.
Right? I keep reading these stories of people who up and just quit jobs at dream companies, which I can totally understand. But what I'm absolutely gobsmacked about is, "then I took 13 months off and roamed the country". Da fuq?
I've been working since I was in 9th grade and have NEVER had enough money saved up to take 3 weeks off, much less 13 months.
What exactly is it that you are feigning surprise over? That people on high salaries can save a significant sum of money? What's counterintuitive or surprising about this?
Because I'm in tech and have yet to see one of these "high salaries". Nobody seems to acknowledge outside help. Does she have parents that she can always go back to live with if shit falls apart? And then there's a shit ton of "you're living beyond your means, if X isn't true for you.."
> I've been working since I was in 9th grade and have NEVER had enough money saved up to take 3 weeks off, much less 13 months.
If you save 6% of your take-home income for one year, you'll have saved enough to take three weeks off. So if you take home, say, $500/week, put $30 each week into a savings account. You won't even notice that it's gone.
If you want to take 13 months off, the best strategy is to move from high ground to low ground. Eg, take a job in a city like SF, Denver, Seattle, NYC, etc that pays well, get a cheap place, get rid of any vehicles and use public trans, etc. Taking home $75k and socking away 1/3rd each week, you'll end up with $25k in savings - which is more than enough to spend 13 months roaming the country.
(In the past few years I've spent > 13 months roaming the country)
I don't get this mentality at all - if you don't have savings to cover 3 weeks, what are you going to do if you become unemployed? I "only" have about 4 months worth of salary saved and I feel like I need to watch my expenses, cause that is not enough.
Well in my almost 20 year IT career, I've only ever been unemployed for 3 months. For the last 10 years, I've had two jobs.
What does anyone do in the US who finds themselves unemployed? They scramble to find a job..any job to make ends meet and when that doesn't happen, they live out of their car. And when they lose their car, they live in a homeless shelter.
I've never been in this position either but I wasn't going to assume "trust fund". A lot of people in the bay ended up working somewhere that got acquired and maybe have some cash in the bank. Or they are just better than me with money. I would never actually quit a job, even if I hated it, without another job lined up.
Here's the recipe: have no dependents, avoid debt like the plague, be young and lucky so healthcare costs never get you. It helps to live frugally, too - especially avoiding expensive housing.
It's not a long-term plan but it can work for months, even a few years if you really pare down and live somewhere cheap.
I am by no means a trust fund kid, but I do work in technology which usually offers a higher than average salary. While I'm not making a lot of money, I am making a decent amount given where I live. I always try to keep up a liquid emergency fund that I'm capable of living off of for 6-8 months. I built this pretty early on by living below my means, because I feel like an emergency fund is one of the most important things you can do to set up financially (followed by paying off high interest debts, then contributing towards retirement accounts). That way if a situation like this arrives, I don't have to constantly fear what will happen to me.
This kinda stuff just drives me nuts. No, they're not all trust fund kids. The OP quit her job at Dropbox(!), and it looks like her previous jobs were at Squarespace(!) and MailChimp(!). I can only assume that she is highly skilled and productive and has been well compensated for it for years. Perhaps she saved up? Some people have good jobs and save money. Is that hard to understand?
Yes. And I don't mean that in a dismissive sense. I have a well-compensated job in a moderate cost of living area. I have tried hard to live thrifty and to save money, but my obligations always seem to scale with income. From shifts in tax burden after marriage & children (AMT anyone?), unexpected health expenses, to rate increases for daycare that scale with income, I have never received a raise that resulted in a net increase in my income. I have a positive net worth at this point (barely), but I still live paycheck-to-paycheck.
I marvel at and envy the kind of financial independence that would allow someone to quit a job on the spot. For as long as I've been an adult, I've had expenses (student loan payments, bills & utilities, housing, etc.) that far exceed my ability to pay without a regular stream of income. And my obligations have only increased over time as I built a family.
>Some people have good jobs and save money.
In my experience that isn't enough. You also need good luck to have good health - a few trips to the hospital can empty a savings account (at least in the US). You also need to live in an area where your skills are not just valuable, but where there is a competitive market for them. I have a number of fairly unique, highly-technical skills -- but they are only valuable to a few employers, and they are located in distinct, remote locations (so there is a high opportunity cost to move between them, and few openings). It also helps to have the good fortune of manageable expenses. In my experience, student loan debt is an anchor on young folks because it drains the very savings that would grant the financial freedom that would let them shop for the best job opportunities.
I don't begrudge anyone their success, but I often wonder how everyone else manages to get by at all, let alone so spectacularly as this.
Thank you for this well written and thoughtful response. It's how I've been feeling and what I would have said, if I had taken the time to write it out.
I'm not saying that everyone should have the luxury to leave their job if they aren't happy, and if you don't then there is something wrong with you. I'm saying that the implication that if someone does have that luxury it's because they're rich (trust fund) kids is ridiculous.
It's not like she said "I quit my job on a whim and am going to go travel through Europe for a year to find myself". She's clearly a talented person with a sought-after skill and she probably knows she'll be able to find another job, this one just wasn't working out.
"You know the average American..." - She's not an average American. She worked at Dropbox. She is a tech-industry professional that has worked at some highly successful companies for a number of years.
By "Average American" I meant a person with typical (bad) personal finance skills who doesn't save. They simply spend everything they make. And usually then some, getting into CC debt.
I've done it before. I used to just hang onto my bonuses until the clawback period was up before considering them spendable. At the time, I was being paid ~2 months' salary as an annual bonus.
I've done it. Quit a pretty good job at a startup because of burnout and lack of enthusiasm. Spent a lot of time going to bookstores and coffee shops and motorcycling. I don't think I wrote a single line of code.
After about nine months, because I was kind of bored, on a whim I went to a "Brass Ring" job fair in Santa Clara. Found myself interviewing and got a job at another startup (which turned out to be an utter train wreck, ugh).
I've been homeless, frequently broke, and have started companies, quit jobs, and all manner of things with no safety net whatsoever.
It's risky for sure, but meh, avoiding risks appears to equate to living an unhappy life being a slave to wage and not doing something you love.
Life is too short.
Stop doing the things you dislike, go do something you love. If that means quitting when you barely have 1 month of cash left (or less)... then do it. But don't do it and go hide in your bedroom, do it and make noise and tell the world you're free, approach the people doing the things you want to be doing, just go for it.
It's called saving. There are many ways to do that, but I prioritised to have enough _liquid_ capital to be able to get me through many many months without earning anything.
Of course it might still be irrational, stupid and risky to quit before the next job is secured, and I would also avoid it when possible. But being able to afford risk and to allow for ones own stupidity is a great comfort.
No. We have just taken a chance to get off the heroin drip of a constant salary.
Yeah, it's scary to go from guaranteed income to $0. But, here's how I, a non-trust fund immigrant with dependents, did it:
1- line up consulting contracts.
2- leave (at this point I had disposable savings for 4months).
3- Don't worry about saving because it just causes me stress.
What I do now is to work on a project when my savings start to drop below 6months runway.
Of course, it's not all rosy. I have to hustle at times to get that contract. On the other hand, I can just take the time to smell the flowers any given day. I've been on more vacations this past year than the prev 6 years or working.
So. Be your own trust fund.
This is much better than burning myself out getting someone else rich :)
I've done it, twice. (And probably a 3rd time in the next 12 months) And I'm definitely not a trust fund kid.
First time I took a year off to ski bum and travel (late 2008 just as the recession started to get rolling)
In 2012 I took nearly a year off to start my own thing.
I noticed both times that as soon as I didn't have any income, I knew where every dollar I spent went and lived very frugally to stretch my funds.
In general, I live way below my means and save as much as possible. I'm early 30s and have always had shared living situations (either SOs or roommates) and that means right now my living expenses are about ~12% of my take home pay, so basically that means even after I max out my 401k I have a few thousands of dollars per month to do what I want with.
I think you are forgetting how much money someone like this makes at their job. We're talking something like 5 or more times what someone at the bottom of the income ladder makes. So technically just saving for 3 months will give you more than a year of runway in a much less expensive lifestyle.
I'm not a trust fund kid, but I could safely quit my job any minute and be okay for at least a year.
I'm 28. I have a net worth over $130k and a $25k emergency fund. I make over $70k (web dev) in a low cost of living area. I am maxing out my 401k and Roth IRA every year and will be opening a taxable account this year to dump more money into. I'm a renter (2BR for $515/month not including utilities), but I am fully supporting my fiancée who is finishing her masters of accounting degree.
I still spend quite a bit of extra money on video games and board games and a few other luxuries that I could and probably should cut back on. But I don't eat out (we cook in every night) and I live a mile away from my work.
My ultimate goal is financial independence. I want to be able to live off the 4% returns of my investments and not have to work (although I probably would do something, but more for myself than a company).
I'm with you on this. The replies you're getting in this thread are mind-blowingly tone-deaf. People with no expenses, making gobs and gobs of money, feign-surprise-bragging "WTF how are you not financially independent??? Doesn't everyone save 20% of their salaries and take months off to go canoeing??" It's really quite ugly.
I'd be willing to bet the vast, VAST majority of Americans cannot just up and quit their job because they got a hangnail and felt sad about it. Not having a job tomorrow is my biggest nightmare. It's a nightmare that haunts billions of people on the planet. gregd's astonishment at this article is understandable.
If you're socking away tons money into savings each month, you need to take a look at yourself [YES THIS MEANS YOU, person hovering over the "reply" button], stop and look at yourself and realize you are one of a very lucky privileged few who can afford such a luxury. Be thankful for it, and don't pretend to be surprised that everyone here is not equally fortunate.
The responses I got were along the lines of "if you aren't saving %#% of your income per month, you're living beyond your means". I've lived paycheck to paycheck my entire existence and I'm almost 50 years old. I've had every job imaginable; built custom cabinets for private jets, managed a laundromat, managed a liquor store, cleaned houses, firefighter, managed a furniture store (sold a million dollars worth of furniture in 2 years, in a town of 16,000 people) and my IT career has spanned 20 years. I’ve worked all types of IT from state governments to one of the largest tech companies in the world.
As someone who knows they wouldn't want nor enjoy the SV lifestyle, I really feel for the author. Not everyone wants to live in that culture, and we need to remind ourselves that it's OK to want to life live differently from it.
Yep. I lived there for a year and just didn't dig San Francisco (blasphemy, I know!). Reading the author's experience returning home, how she felt awakened again, really resonated with me because I had the same experience.
After one such trip home to North Carolina, my girlfriend and I - sitting in the SFO terminal - started looking at NC houses, just to see. Three weeks later we closed on our home.
There's literally no detail to any of the logic or rationale in this story. People like faffing about these fantasies, but the most important advice I've ever received in my career was from my father - "Don't quit your day job."
I wonder how many shining examples of - successful people who originally quit something with nothing lined up - it will take before people stop making such naive blanket statements such as this. Does her risk of failure increase by just up and quitting? Oh heck yes, but does that mean it's 100% dumb and irresponsible in every context?
You have one life to live and if you don't love what you're doing (she doesn't) and has the skills to do something else (she probably does) and has the guts to change her situation (she does), then in my opinion, she is making the smart and responsible decision.
She did, I can, so can you. Yeah best to have some savings or you may be homeless and hungry for a while but you absolufreakinglutely can, and should, quit your job if it makes you miserable.
Seems like she left a LOT out of the story. She never mentioned what specifically caused her to burn out. Maybe she felt she wasn't good enough as a designer, maybe the work was too demanding, maybe it was too many hours. Maybe this is another cautionary tale about being a woman in tech.
The fact she conveniently leaves out huge parts of the story makes me wonder what the real reason was she left. As such, I can't comment other than to point out people quit jobs all the time these days, and the way her story is written, she hints at something, but never fills in the details - so the only conclusion we can make is:
A lot of the comments are very harsh. I think the underlying message is getting lost: Sometimes when you know something is wrong, it is easy to focus on all of the prerequisites and peripheral problems and never solve the big problem. This type of mistake is even easier with big problems where the difficulty gap between addressing the big problem and the related little problems is widest.
Maybe just abruptly quitting was the only way she could see to resolve a knot of dependencies that seemed impenetrable. If she has the resources to attack the knot from that angle, then there is no shame in it.
Sounds like she has the resources to do so, given all the previous jobs she has had. I would imagine when she is ready to get back into the workforce she won't have trouble landing another job.
This article reminded me in spirit of the jobs quote: "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."
I'm happy the author is not giving up, we in first world societies actually have the luxury to pursue our passions, we have wellfare systems that provide much higher living standards than the majority of the worlds population. Given the relatively low risks of pursuing what you love and the fact that you only get one pass around at life, I feel everyone should live this way
Once you ask yourself about leaving, it is only a question of when, not whether. Sooner, the better. It is not you nor them; it is just time.
Tight-knit groups wrap themselves inside a bubble of conformance. The group's very existence is based on a shared worldview about itself - that it is correct. To leave is to question a choice made by everyone else. To stand out in a crowd is physically painful - it is called the pain of independence (Susan Cain).
For the privileged, jobs are not about the salary; money is aplenty. It is purpose we're after. What shall you do with yourself when, for the first time in your life, you actually get to choose how to spend your time? There was always the parents, the schools, and the workplaces to give a rhythm to our life and purpose to our days. It is scary the first time we confront it - when we quit an institution without knowing where next to anchor.
The biggest regrets I have in life stem from ignoring my "spider sense" about a situation. It's often difficult to articulate what's wrong, but if you have a vague feeling something's wrong, it most likely is.
A good graphic designer will get bored in pretty much any job where they're not being thrown into drastically different creative challenges every so often.
The comfy in-house design job for a single-product company means designing with the same palette and UI standards, using the same brand identity over and over and over. It's boring and creatively frustrating, particularly for anyone who's especially talented.
This is why you often see the best creative minds drift in and out of freelance or boutique agencies at various points in their career, having many different clients means having many different creative challenges.
Living where your family and friends live and being able to meet them in person on daily/weekly basis is of a high value. Unfortunately the most of us recognize this only after moving to a far away city or country. Leaving home and taking a job in the "most expensive city in the country ... 2,500 miles away from your family" is a lot like a job on an oil rig or as a mercenary. You need the right mindset and motivation. Wanting to "not to fuck up" or to "make mommy and daddy proud of you" or just to "work on a great product" might be fine but in a lot of cases it ends up in burn-out. If you are tough enough and want to make a kill (saving up the fuck-you-money within 5 years and doing after that whatever you want) than set your price and go for it. If you are not tough enough but you want to make a kill than find the best people of the industy, learn from them, set your price and go for it. Otherwise staying next to your family and friends might be the best option on the long run.
Reading through this thread makes me a lot happier with my current situation but also makes me want to quit my job. I live in NYC, have enough cash to cover several years of rent, and am debt free. I would love to take a break but current industry strongly frowns upon gaps in employment. Current contract forces me to take two months leave if I quit which I would think should be enough time off. This is also going to be the first time in my life where I've had time off and not be completely broke so I might enjoy it way too much.
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[ 88.3 ms ] story [ 1518 ms ] threadI realize that some places are wrong for some people, in ways that can't be fixed. I'm just curious whether it's possible to articulate how Dropbox was wrong for the author.
Often if you're in an unhappy situation you can speak up and articulate what's wrong and others will adapt.
I suppose if you're young and single you can afford to be impulsive. A pattern of doing that repeatedly can't look too good..
You rarely get massive changes by talking to management (small changes, sure) and if you really hate your job, small changes are rarely enough.
It doesn't change the fact that if you're not putting money aside for emergencies & retirement you are living above your means.
Sometimes it's OK to live above your means. I'd willingly go into major debt for my children. But not acknowledging you're doing so while you're doing it will cause problems.
I'm the sole breadwinner with a wife and two kids, and we pack away 20% out of every paycheck. We own our home and both cars.
Do we live a garish lifestyle? Certainly not, but we travel a lot and adhere to our budget (thank goodness for remote jobs).
Whether that is possible depends a lot on where you live - from what I can tell, outside of a few major cities there are plenty of places in the US where you can buy a house for <$200k in the US, good luck with that anywhere in Canada.
Given that it takes money to move, no, you do not always have a choice in where to live.
I lived in Chicago on a $800/mo salary for a year and a half. Yes eight hundred dollars a month, in the city of Chicago. I had no money, but I made it work, then I moved back home to small town Iowa and make a lot more now, and live a better life. Nobody made me do either of those things.
It takes money move, to or from any city. It's nice that you were able to make it work, and yes, it means others could as well but you wold look like a little less of an asshole if you would consider not everyone is in the same situation as you were.
Were you single
Did you have kids
Did you have any medical conditions that needed care
Did you use to have a better job before
That's just a few things that are part of everyday, normal life that can make the cost of moving and living on very little somewhat difficult.
> Nobody makes you buy a million dollar house
I don't remember saying anything close to that.
No.
> Did you have kids
Yes.
> Did you have any medical conditions that needed care
Not that I know of.
> Did you use to have a better job before
I moved to the city with a $100 loan from my step-father so I could afford gas to do the 4 hour drive taking nothing with me but what I could fit in my car, which took a 3rd of that $800/mo just to pay.
You know how I moved? I asked a friend, he came and helped me and packed his truck with what I couldn't fit in my car.
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
> Did you have any medical conditions that needed care > Not that I know of.
Others do, it's often sort of important to handle them. It can also limit the cities you can live in.
> Were you single > No.
Right here I start thinking your now being disingenuous, second income?
> car, which took a 3rd of that $800/mo
So you lived in Chicago on 528 a month and saved enough to move. You are leaving things out. This was either 40 years ago, you were getting significant social assistance or something.
Lets go ahead and throw out another perfectly, though unfortunate, normal situation. You had parents to even move back in with.
Now then, I don't live in a particularly expensive city. The 'million dollar house' you want to keep throwing around as if everyone has is almost 10 times the cost of where I live. Yet I can still see that not every one is in the exact same situation I am in. Moving to another city would not be something I could do on a whim, though I've had to cover medical expenses this year that are more than what your supposed monthly income was.
I mentioned it once. You're the one who keeps bringing it back up.
> Right here I start thinking your now being disingenuous, second income?
No second income. My fiance has never, and will never pay anything for me.
> So you lived in Chicago on 528 a month and saved enough to move. You are leaving things out. This was either 40 years ago, you were getting significant social assistance or something.
Oh sorry, I left out the $600/mo the startup I worked for paid the owner of the spare bedroom I lived in. My bad. $1400/mo. And 40 years ago? I'm 30, I moved from Chicago in March of this year.
Were your SO and kids not living with you? I cant imagine putting 3+ people into a spare bedroom. If you guys did do that, its impressive but its certainly not within the realm of normal in the US. If you didn't have them with you, than saying you had 1400 a month to support yourself, your SO, and your kid/s is not an accurate accounting of your living expenses for Chicago
It's dumb to devolve this argument down to "But what if you have cancer and 7 dogs and 3 kids, how would you move?"
Because the average person reading hacker news with a tech job in the valley does not have 7 dogs and 3 kids and cancer. We can feel sorry for that person, but I am pretty sure we can blame all 200k software developers living in SF as having 7 dogs 3 kids and cancer.
Hard to imagine that housing prices have gone up 10x in that time.
http://www.macleans.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Rabidoux_h...
In their index, housing prices were about 100 in 2000 and about 180 in 2013, so houses were about 80% more expensive in 2013 versus 2000. That is in real terms. You'd expect it to be more like 103% more expensive in nominal terms (assuming 2%/year inflation).
Here's a good source for recent housing prices in Canada:
http://crea.ca/content/national-average-price-map
It shows that the average sale price in Canada was $433k in August 2015. But there's tremendous variation within Canada. Vancouver was around $900k; PEI was $158k. It looks like Saskatchewan was around $253k, so a bit over half the national average, with Regina and Saskatoon being more expensive in the $310-320k range.
About 15 years ago you would have expected prices to be about half that in Saskatchewan, or maybe $125k. So no, house prices have not gone up 10x in the last 15 years and $20-30k were not typical house prices in Saskatchewan at the time.
Is that including retirement savings or not?
I do not. I make just over $70k a year now (a lot more than a few years ago) and before we had kids, we cut back so that my wife's income at the time went entirely to paying off debts. Our home is worth ~135k (three bedroom in a nice cheaper US city), and our cars are nothing to write home about but they get us where we need to go. My total income now is higher than our combined income was then. Like I said before, planning goes a long way.
Your comment does come off as a bit dickish, by the way. You made a lot of assumptions about me that are not true.
Absolutely understandable. We certainly went through a few years where we were just happy that we didn't have debt and could live off my income. Good luck with your own journey!
Anyway, I just noticed that you said "no way," and I wanted to provide a counter example. Good luck!
I am well compensated now, but right after college I was making 15k a year (it was in the arts) and I still managed to save money.
More likely you have a lot of optional things that you can trim away. Do you have cable? How often do you eat out? Do you smoke? Do you have a budget that you stick to?
It's all about priorities. If you don't prioritize it, it won't happen. It's not easy and emergencies and unexpected bills come up but the freedom is amazing.
Check out the Ramsey Plan. We wiped out most of our debt in about 2 years while saving for a house. And that's while renting, 3 kids, and living just outside DC.
Unrelated: I know a bunch of the Watson team here in Austin. Good group, cool tech. :)
Looks like it's too naïve, but it's good advice for people living in the U.S. and that have mortgages.
The point is that - like with most things - if you don't have a plan and you haven't defined success, you can't get there.
A plan doesn't make it easier but it makes you think about the details, gives you something to work against, and lets you track progress.
@hoorayimhelping SF also have ridiculous salaries compared to the rest of the world. Everybody seems to be making at least $120k starting out, and many up to $300k. I make way less than that, but also live in a pretty expensive city. I just bypass that by not buying a lot of stuff. It's only possible because I reject the average consumerist middle-class lifestyle. I won't buy a house, I'll never buy a car again, I bike to work, I don't have expensive hobbies. You can't have the cake and eat it too. However most people should be able to save more than they do.
Expenses: $1500
Children: none yet, but subsidized child care, paternity leave and other subsidies makes it pretty cheap
Food: $500
Housing: $400 (own apartment with my SO)
Student loans: $150
Car payment: no car, bike most places
Income tax rate: 32%, but employer pays another 30%, so effectively 62%
Sales tax: 25%
Insurace: $15
Phone: $15 (cheapest possible plan)
Internet: included in housing
Note: I also lived in the US before, with simliar savings rate, which was even easier.
My housing is 3 times your housing budget.
My student loans are $200/month.
My car payment is 300/month.
Income tax rate 9%.
Sales tax: 0
Medical insurance: $8000/year
Auto (and other) insurance: 1200/year
What I do have an issue with is "if you can't save x amount per month, you're living beyond your means". It's not that black and white. My trust fund question was legitimate. I also think that if you have a support system behind you (i.e. parents you could ultimately live with if you couldn't find work), it makes taking a year off with very little income, much more likely....as does, having a trust fund backing you up.
I recommend reading this: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-...
I pay for health insurance out of my own pocket, which is over 8000/year.
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
According to Numbeo, even if you live in Dubai you're way ahead of someone living in San Francisco, and even Montevideo, Uruguay (where I'm from)
Should I just blow it all on something ridiculous? Like what? Every single month?!
It's easy to waste money on small things. Some people buy expensive coffee and eat out everyday for example. It adds up really fast.
Let's see if you agree with the following:
If tomorrow you are fired from your job, and you can't afford to live on your state's unemployment aid for six months (that's not an arbitrary number, most states' unemployment period is 6 months) then you are living above your means.
So basically, yes, my entire family would be homeless if I were to get fired tomorrow. This has caused unimaginable stress on me, being the sole breadwinner of my current predicament. Do I wish it were different? Sure. But for you to base whether or not I'm a "responsible human" on this, speaks volumes about how you walk around in this world.
And yea, I stand by my statement, even though it makes me sound like a dick. How well you are prepared for "when the shit hits the fan" (in the order of most probable to least, so don't think I have a basement full of guns and canned food like a Mormon would. As far as eventualities go, getting fired is the most likely one to happen, and the Apocalypse is pretty low on that list), even if it never does, matters just as much, if not more, than what you do day to day, in my evaluation of what a responsible human is.
You keep on and on about how no one here knows anything about you, and that's irrelevant. Whether someone lives beyond their means or not is not dependent on their personal situation, it's a calculation of "money in, money out". It doesn't matter that all of the things you are spending your money on are obligations, rather than toys. It just means you took on obligations in your life above your means. That's irresponsible.
The angles I look at this raise the same question: how can people do this? If people have no savings and no job lined up, how can they put food on the table? If they have savings, and know the value of safety net and how unpredictable financials are, how can they do this? It's not unreasonable to think they might have some kind of outside assistance.
Also - that percentage should be a minimum of 50%. More info on why here - http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-...
I've been working since I was in 9th grade and have NEVER had enough money saved up to take 3 weeks off, much less 13 months.
If you save 6% of your take-home income for one year, you'll have saved enough to take three weeks off. So if you take home, say, $500/week, put $30 each week into a savings account. You won't even notice that it's gone.
If you want to take 13 months off, the best strategy is to move from high ground to low ground. Eg, take a job in a city like SF, Denver, Seattle, NYC, etc that pays well, get a cheap place, get rid of any vehicles and use public trans, etc. Taking home $75k and socking away 1/3rd each week, you'll end up with $25k in savings - which is more than enough to spend 13 months roaming the country.
(In the past few years I've spent > 13 months roaming the country)
What does anyone do in the US who finds themselves unemployed? They scramble to find a job..any job to make ends meet and when that doesn't happen, they live out of their car. And when they lose their car, they live in a homeless shelter.
My very first objective in my very first job was to save enough money to have a buffer so that I could be autonomous for a few months/year.
It's not a long-term plan but it can work for months, even a few years if you really pare down and live somewhere cheap.
> Are you all trust fund kids?
That's pretty condescending.
Yes. And I don't mean that in a dismissive sense. I have a well-compensated job in a moderate cost of living area. I have tried hard to live thrifty and to save money, but my obligations always seem to scale with income. From shifts in tax burden after marriage & children (AMT anyone?), unexpected health expenses, to rate increases for daycare that scale with income, I have never received a raise that resulted in a net increase in my income. I have a positive net worth at this point (barely), but I still live paycheck-to-paycheck.
I marvel at and envy the kind of financial independence that would allow someone to quit a job on the spot. For as long as I've been an adult, I've had expenses (student loan payments, bills & utilities, housing, etc.) that far exceed my ability to pay without a regular stream of income. And my obligations have only increased over time as I built a family.
>Some people have good jobs and save money.
In my experience that isn't enough. You also need good luck to have good health - a few trips to the hospital can empty a savings account (at least in the US). You also need to live in an area where your skills are not just valuable, but where there is a competitive market for them. I have a number of fairly unique, highly-technical skills -- but they are only valuable to a few employers, and they are located in distinct, remote locations (so there is a high opportunity cost to move between them, and few openings). It also helps to have the good fortune of manageable expenses. In my experience, student loan debt is an anchor on young folks because it drains the very savings that would grant the financial freedom that would let them shop for the best job opportunities.
I don't begrudge anyone their success, but I often wonder how everyone else manages to get by at all, let alone so spectacularly as this.
Lets distinguish "incapable of saving" from "unwilling to reduce consumption".
It's not like she said "I quit my job on a whim and am going to go travel through Europe for a year to find myself". She's clearly a talented person with a sought-after skill and she probably knows she'll be able to find another job, this one just wasn't working out.
"You know the average American..." - She's not an average American. She worked at Dropbox. She is a tech-industry professional that has worked at some highly successful companies for a number of years.
After about nine months, because I was kind of bored, on a whim I went to a "Brass Ring" job fair in Santa Clara. Found myself interviewing and got a job at another startup (which turned out to be an utter train wreck, ugh).
I've been homeless, frequently broke, and have started companies, quit jobs, and all manner of things with no safety net whatsoever.
It's risky for sure, but meh, avoiding risks appears to equate to living an unhappy life being a slave to wage and not doing something you love.
Life is too short.
Stop doing the things you dislike, go do something you love. If that means quitting when you barely have 1 month of cash left (or less)... then do it. But don't do it and go hide in your bedroom, do it and make noise and tell the world you're free, approach the people doing the things you want to be doing, just go for it.
Of course it might still be irrational, stupid and risky to quit before the next job is secured, and I would also avoid it when possible. But being able to afford risk and to allow for ones own stupidity is a great comfort.
Yeah, it's scary to go from guaranteed income to $0. But, here's how I, a non-trust fund immigrant with dependents, did it:
1- line up consulting contracts.
2- leave (at this point I had disposable savings for 4months).
3- Don't worry about saving because it just causes me stress.
What I do now is to work on a project when my savings start to drop below 6months runway.
Of course, it's not all rosy. I have to hustle at times to get that contract. On the other hand, I can just take the time to smell the flowers any given day. I've been on more vacations this past year than the prev 6 years or working.
So. Be your own trust fund.
This is much better than burning myself out getting someone else rich :)
First time I took a year off to ski bum and travel (late 2008 just as the recession started to get rolling) In 2012 I took nearly a year off to start my own thing.
I noticed both times that as soon as I didn't have any income, I knew where every dollar I spent went and lived very frugally to stretch my funds.
In general, I live way below my means and save as much as possible. I'm early 30s and have always had shared living situations (either SOs or roommates) and that means right now my living expenses are about ~12% of my take home pay, so basically that means even after I max out my 401k I have a few thousands of dollars per month to do what I want with.
I'm 28. I have a net worth over $130k and a $25k emergency fund. I make over $70k (web dev) in a low cost of living area. I am maxing out my 401k and Roth IRA every year and will be opening a taxable account this year to dump more money into. I'm a renter (2BR for $515/month not including utilities), but I am fully supporting my fiancée who is finishing her masters of accounting degree.
I still spend quite a bit of extra money on video games and board games and a few other luxuries that I could and probably should cut back on. But I don't eat out (we cook in every night) and I live a mile away from my work.
My ultimate goal is financial independence. I want to be able to live off the 4% returns of my investments and not have to work (although I probably would do something, but more for myself than a company).
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence and http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
I'd be willing to bet the vast, VAST majority of Americans cannot just up and quit their job because they got a hangnail and felt sad about it. Not having a job tomorrow is my biggest nightmare. It's a nightmare that haunts billions of people on the planet. gregd's astonishment at this article is understandable.
If you're socking away tons money into savings each month, you need to take a look at yourself [YES THIS MEANS YOU, person hovering over the "reply" button], stop and look at yourself and realize you are one of a very lucky privileged few who can afford such a luxury. Be thankful for it, and don't pretend to be surprised that everyone here is not equally fortunate.
And yet, I still live paycheck to paycheck.
After one such trip home to North Carolina, my girlfriend and I - sitting in the SFO terminal - started looking at NC houses, just to see. Three weeks later we closed on our home.
The valley culture isn't for everyone.
You have one life to live and if you don't love what you're doing (she doesn't) and has the skills to do something else (she probably does) and has the guts to change her situation (she does), then in my opinion, she is making the smart and responsible decision.
She did, I can, so can you. Yeah best to have some savings or you may be homeless and hungry for a while but you absolufreakinglutely can, and should, quit your job if it makes you miserable.
Good for her.
Or maybe I'm just empathetic since I walk away from my full time job tomorrow...
The fact she conveniently leaves out huge parts of the story makes me wonder what the real reason was she left. As such, I can't comment other than to point out people quit jobs all the time these days, and the way her story is written, she hints at something, but never fills in the details - so the only conclusion we can make is:
She quit her job and is looking for a new job.
I'm curious to hear the next post, when she's had a bit of time to digest it.
Maybe just abruptly quitting was the only way she could see to resolve a knot of dependencies that seemed impenetrable. If she has the resources to attack the knot from that angle, then there is no shame in it.
I'm happy the author is not giving up, we in first world societies actually have the luxury to pursue our passions, we have wellfare systems that provide much higher living standards than the majority of the worlds population. Given the relatively low risks of pursuing what you love and the fact that you only get one pass around at life, I feel everyone should live this way
Tight-knit groups wrap themselves inside a bubble of conformance. The group's very existence is based on a shared worldview about itself - that it is correct. To leave is to question a choice made by everyone else. To stand out in a crowd is physically painful - it is called the pain of independence (Susan Cain).
For the privileged, jobs are not about the salary; money is aplenty. It is purpose we're after. What shall you do with yourself when, for the first time in your life, you actually get to choose how to spend your time? There was always the parents, the schools, and the workplaces to give a rhythm to our life and purpose to our days. It is scary the first time we confront it - when we quit an institution without knowing where next to anchor.
Next time it'll get easier.
The comfy in-house design job for a single-product company means designing with the same palette and UI standards, using the same brand identity over and over and over. It's boring and creatively frustrating, particularly for anyone who's especially talented.
This is why you often see the best creative minds drift in and out of freelance or boutique agencies at various points in their career, having many different clients means having many different creative challenges.
If your biggest struggles involve feeling guilty about $5 drinks you need better things to worry about.
So now "I quit my job" is the new learn nothing, "amazing adventure" startup-y blog post. FML.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/09/don...