Retiring in the US as a member of Gen X in the tech industry is quite achievable, if you can move out of high cost of living areas. Large parts of the South and Midwest are quite affordable, and there are still many manufacturing organizations with needs for in-house software and IT support (though often this is contracted out, you will usually move along with each contract though). In software/IT you can make 2-4x the median household income in areas of NC, GA, OH, IN, and others, if not more. Areas where buying a 1 acre or larger property with a 2000 sq foot or larger home was doable in the $150k-250k range throughout the 2010s. Harder now with pandemic price increases, but we'll see how the next 2-3 years play out on home prices.
I've already got a house on .33 acres in PA. Not sure I'd want to move to the South or Midwest. I might be a bit right-wing compared to neighbors who are either part of the professional-managerial class or wish they were, but I suspect I'd be pretty far-left compared to people in the areas you recommend and might find the local culture unwelcoming as a result.
I spent about a decade as a PM in early-stage enterprise software companies (Box and Talkdesk, among others) and left in 2019 to open a dog boarding business!
I found real estate, had plans drawn up, got permits, found a contractor and ways a few days away from closing my SBA loan. Then the bank called and said they were putting a hold on new underwriting because of this COVID thing... this was March of 2020.
Had to shut that down before I ever opened my doors, but then I started a dog treat business, and that's going well!
The industry is still relatively young. Plenty of tech workers have retired but they weren’t web devs because the web wasn’t as prevalent yet. My dad was one! He was a project manager for giant mainframe stuff that doesn’t really exist these days.
Startups can easily lead to burnout. Tech itself doesn’t necessarily. I think I’d be quite happy spending my twilight working years at some kind of bigcorp saving up for retirement.
That last sentence sums up why the home server is still a hobby, even though I pay the bills administering systems. People ask me how I do both without going nuts.
It's simple. At home, the things that annoy me about the job don't exist.
If it's broken and I don't feel like fixing it, it stays broken. No due dates, no planned outages, no SLAs. If I like an app it stays, if not it disappears. No processes or approvals. No people problems. No BS.
They're really not the same thing at all, and I'd imagine many careers that are also hobbies work the same way for many. Playing with cars on the weekend isn't the same as being a full time mechanic.
There's a lot of things I'd like to do after tech: learn to draw or paint, play games with friends, learn to cook, read, maybe learn to write, work on my garden, play video games, strength training, learn chess, study history, travel ... anything that I would have time and energy to do, both of which I am running out of as I pass through middle age.
I am retired from tech but I might want to build a family of happy chickens and freeze dry their eggs. No idea if I would do it as a business or just stockpile freeze dried eggs and share with the neighbors.
This idea was prompted by the recent supply chain issues, egg shortages, panic buying, weird world issues and finding that freeze dried foods are expensive. I can see why. Freeze dryers are expensive, time consuming and a little noisy. Either way I will be building a quonset style barn with as much solar as I can put on and next to it. I carved away a little bit of land from the horses so that I have more room for solar and chickens.
I saw a couple of people retire from big old blue chip tech companies (think Intel and IBM). I saw a lot more people burn out, die before retirement or change careers. I burnt out a few times and now make VR games for a fun semi-retirement.
I'm curious why you think tech would be any different from any other industry? People definitely retire from tech.
Yes, there is lots of burn out as well. I suspect much of the burn out is due to lack of having a reason to do what they do.
For the last 40 years, tech has been a tool of creation. It's becoming a utility. Part of the fabric of everything we do.
Almost every company has tech, just like every company has accounting.
I believe burn out is often a result of a lack of purpose. If you are on a mission, you are less likely to burn out. This also assumes you are taking good care of yourself, taking breaks, being well rounded, etc.
I was considering "retiring" from tech after leaving my last job. I had a plan to hack on fun side projects and (hopefully) eventually transform one of them into a lifestyle business -- something I've done before and previously enjoyed.
When I took a few months off, however, my perspective changed. After the 2nd month of doing nothing, I started to really miss the intellectual stimulation of hanging out with other engineers, working on shared goals, etc., so I decided to go back to work at a new company.
I'm now happily employed full-time, working with a larger team, and still building things in my free time. Life is busy, but I enjoy it.
I still think this may be my eventual destiny, but for now I'm happily working with other people and just trying to enjoy life as much as possible.
I thought so too around your age but I’m 39, still working in tech and am feeling better than ever about my career! For me starting my own startup was the best thing I ever did (so far…)
Oh I'm a bit older than you. I have no doubt that if I put in enough time I could find a job that is perfect for me, but it can take months to find a job and months to decide if a job is right for you.
And TBH I'm kind of tired of tech. There's a lot of busy work and "automation" that requires more upfront time than you save in a year or maybe even years. It's exhausting keeping up with the young'uns and their new-fangled software that they don't fully understand. (It's incredibly uncommon for them to consider failure modes).
I've considered my own startup. I have ideas. I'm not a salesperson though. Raising funds would be a challenge, as would hiring.
Sorry for the brain dump here. I've got a lot built up. And unfortunately I have a lot of "but"s and excuses. It would have been better if I intervened in my life a decade ago.
Raising could be challenging now due to current circumstances. Hiring I’ve never found that hard, and you can hire people for sales (and learn the basics yourself).
I plan on reading non-technical stuff more often, gardening/yard work, and woodworking. I've found that while IT pays the bills, doing things with my hands provides more enjoyment, creating tangible things. I love the mental challenges of solving IT puzzles, but that's faded over the years.
Oh, and I'm going to travel much more than I've done for the last 30 years.
Right now, I'm just a cog in the machine, iterating on the same boring products for consoomers and to maximise shareholder value and increase executive salaries and bonuses whilst earning just enough money to keep me motivated for another day.
When I think about my work and life it's incredibly depressing, but I have no idea how to create monetary value doing something meaningful and productive.
I don't expect to have any other career between tech and retirement. My hope is simply to be able to retire eventually so I can sit around and do the stuff I really enjoy, on my own schedule. What will I do after retirement? Hard to say, as there's a lot of "it depends" in there. But riding bicycles, tinkering with old cars, reading, and traveling will hopefully be major parts of that portion of my life.
TLDR; I've got some Windmills to tilt at as I go off into the sunset.
I am now, apparently, a retired person. It came as a surprise, and relief. (The fine line between retired and homeless cuts through every human heart)
I intend to write a lot of code, make a lot of 3d printed stuff, and enjoy my time with my friends and family.
For the next month or two, I can't do much due to eye surgery.
I've picked up (with a lot of help from HN) a Forth variant from the 1970s previously known as STOIC, to work on. It's written in C, which I've avoided since the 1980s. (I hate case sensitivity, and the shenanigans that happen with Macros, and the insanity that is \x00 terminated strings)
If possible, I intend to write a C library that does Reference Counted, Count Prefixed Strings, to route around the standard *char grief.
I'm also working on a set of tools to deconstruct HTML and recast it as an Actual Markup language that you can apply to HyperText, in a sane manner. (Throwing all the layers together with a blender in "HTML" was a tragedy)
Oh... and I forgot earlier... I want to at some point use an OS as a daily driver that implements the principle of least privilege. WASM might be a work around for this.
51 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 99.9 ms ] threadI suspect you'd be pretty wrong. I'm quite left-leaning and no one in those areas ever gave a crap about it.
Presented in order of honesty
I spent about a decade as a PM in early-stage enterprise software companies (Box and Talkdesk, among others) and left in 2019 to open a dog boarding business!
I found real estate, had plans drawn up, got permits, found a contractor and ways a few days away from closing my SBA loan. Then the bank called and said they were putting a hold on new underwriting because of this COVID thing... this was March of 2020.
Had to shut that down before I ever opened my doors, but then I started a dog treat business, and that's going well!
Here's an AP article that covers it... that's me at the top with my dogs: https://apnews.com/article/business-coronavirus-pandemic-8ea...
Startups can easily lead to burnout. Tech itself doesn’t necessarily. I think I’d be quite happy spending my twilight working years at some kind of bigcorp saving up for retirement.
Retirement merely means I tell me what to do.
It's simple. At home, the things that annoy me about the job don't exist.
If it's broken and I don't feel like fixing it, it stays broken. No due dates, no planned outages, no SLAs. If I like an app it stays, if not it disappears. No processes or approvals. No people problems. No BS.
They're really not the same thing at all, and I'd imagine many careers that are also hobbies work the same way for many. Playing with cars on the weekend isn't the same as being a full time mechanic.
The cheese_goddess has spoken, there are no longer any alternatives. We know what to do ~
I am retired from tech but I might want to build a family of happy chickens and freeze dry their eggs. No idea if I would do it as a business or just stockpile freeze dried eggs and share with the neighbors.
This idea was prompted by the recent supply chain issues, egg shortages, panic buying, weird world issues and finding that freeze dried foods are expensive. I can see why. Freeze dryers are expensive, time consuming and a little noisy. Either way I will be building a quonset style barn with as much solar as I can put on and next to it. I carved away a little bit of land from the horses so that I have more room for solar and chickens.
Yes, there is lots of burn out as well. I suspect much of the burn out is due to lack of having a reason to do what they do.
For the last 40 years, tech has been a tool of creation. It's becoming a utility. Part of the fabric of everything we do.
Almost every company has tech, just like every company has accounting.
I believe burn out is often a result of a lack of purpose. If you are on a mission, you are less likely to burn out. This also assumes you are taking good care of yourself, taking breaks, being well rounded, etc.
When I took a few months off, however, my perspective changed. After the 2nd month of doing nothing, I started to really miss the intellectual stimulation of hanging out with other engineers, working on shared goals, etc., so I decided to go back to work at a new company.
I'm now happily employed full-time, working with a larger team, and still building things in my free time. Life is busy, but I enjoy it.
I still think this may be my eventual destiny, but for now I'm happily working with other people and just trying to enjoy life as much as possible.
And TBH I'm kind of tired of tech. There's a lot of busy work and "automation" that requires more upfront time than you save in a year or maybe even years. It's exhausting keeping up with the young'uns and their new-fangled software that they don't fully understand. (It's incredibly uncommon for them to consider failure modes).
I've considered my own startup. I have ideas. I'm not a salesperson though. Raising funds would be a challenge, as would hiring.
Sorry for the brain dump here. I've got a lot built up. And unfortunately I have a lot of "but"s and excuses. It would have been better if I intervened in my life a decade ago.
Oh, and I'm going to travel much more than I've done for the last 30 years.
Right now, I'm just a cog in the machine, iterating on the same boring products for consoomers and to maximise shareholder value and increase executive salaries and bonuses whilst earning just enough money to keep me motivated for another day.
When I think about my work and life it's incredibly depressing, but I have no idea how to create monetary value doing something meaningful and productive.
Don't the consumers enjoy the products? You're giving them that enjoyment.
These two sentences seem contradictory.
I am now, apparently, a retired person. It came as a surprise, and relief. (The fine line between retired and homeless cuts through every human heart)
I intend to write a lot of code, make a lot of 3d printed stuff, and enjoy my time with my friends and family.
For the next month or two, I can't do much due to eye surgery.
I've picked up (with a lot of help from HN) a Forth variant from the 1970s previously known as STOIC, to work on. It's written in C, which I've avoided since the 1980s. (I hate case sensitivity, and the shenanigans that happen with Macros, and the insanity that is \x00 terminated strings)
If possible, I intend to write a C library that does Reference Counted, Count Prefixed Strings, to route around the standard *char grief.
I'm also working on a set of tools to deconstruct HTML and recast it as an Actual Markup language that you can apply to HyperText, in a sane manner. (Throwing all the layers together with a blender in "HTML" was a tragedy)
Oh... and I forgot earlier... I want to at some point use an OS as a daily driver that implements the principle of least privilege. WASM might be a work around for this.