Ask HN: Career advice for backend engineer/SRE

Hi HN

I recently changed job due to boredom (stayed at my previous company for 5 years, so it was about time), and entered a miserable situation: very good pay, but the environment is awful, my tech lead is the quintessential brilliant jerk who is quite literally emotionally abusive (and people have left because of him, but he’s so smart and productive that management is accepting that cost), and my manager is the worst I’ve ever seen (and my skip manager is even worse, from what I’ve heard).

My boss is an incredible micro manager, purposely sends out tons of emails and Slack on weekends (I am even worried to step outside for grocery shopping on Saturdays because he will inevitably reach out with something urgent), and changes his mind many many times, to the point where I became incredibly diligent at taking notes to at least have a written trail of what he decided, to make sure a week later it’s not just his word against mine. Seriously, I am miserable to the point where I cried at night a couple times. I don’t think this is a life worth living, we are just on this planet for a few more years...

This experience is making me reflect that I would like to be my own boss and insulate myself from people who have the power to make me miserable. However, I am not good at entrepreneurship, I don’t easily get ideas and the thought of starting a SaaS seems incredibly daunting (I also lack UI skills). So I am asking for recommendations from the wise HN crowd: how would you approach the problem? I am a backend engineer heavy on SRE skills, and outside my domain my main interest is personal finance and investing.

I have been pretty frugal in life and blessed with Silicon Valley income, so I amassed a portfolio of about $2M that I keep invested in index funds. My expenses are low for Bay Area, in the $40k a year (minus taxes and subsidized healthcare). I don’t want to retire because I don’t know what else I would be doing with my time and I would want a higher buffer anyway (yeah, I know about the 4% rule, I’m just more pessimistic than average and would like to first reach 100x my living expenses), and I am still relatively young at 33. No wife, no kids, no mortgage (and will not have kids, I even got a vasectomy to be sure of that).