Ask HN: How to build F-You Skills
However, on talking to a few other engineers at my company, I realized not everyone was as stressed. They are confident in their skills to get a new equivalent job which would easily support their current lifestyle, even in the current market. They have what I would call, "F-You Skills - Enough skills to know that you would never have to worry about money in your life", a spin on the more commonly known term "F-You Money" [1].
I was wondering if HN users ever think of their own skills in this context. If yes, how should one go about building these skills.
To be clear, I am not talking about interviewing skills, which are also equally important. But I am more interested in technical skills that people believe will easily fetch them "decent money" [2] in any scenario in the short term future.
[1] F-You Money means "Enough money to leave one's job, etc. and enjoy the lifestyle of one's choice" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fuck_you_money
[2] not insane money to retire early, but good enough to support their current lifestyle.
92 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadIf that's the case, then mission accomplished. It seems that OP's root goal is to avoid the crippling anxiety and stress. Convincing yourself that it's not a problem -- even if it is -- also accomplishes that. Maybe it's not the best, but you're going to get laid off (or not) regardless of whatever anxiety or stress you feel leading up to that point. Better to just not feel the stress in the first place.
Really, though, is it that hard for you to believe that no one could feel confident in their skills such that they believe that they'd still be able to find a job during an economic downturn? It seems a little nonsensical to take that position.
I’ve kept my skills in sync with the market and kept a strong network. Most of those years from 1996-2020 I was just your run of the mill enterprise CRUD developer.
I take pride in doing what I consider to be generating business value, but I strongly believe that my compensation would be higher if I spent more time self-promoting rather than doing “real work”.
my version is that I tell them naked truth...some people appreciate that
It's possible to play both games.
So my advice, build your skillset on either one of those.
2. Have 6+ months living expenses in cash equivalent.
3. Build retirement / investment savings.
4. Build skills and be able to demonstrate you can ship product.
I've seen many co-workers get laid off in my career, they all landed back on their feet.
Take this seriously. Make sure you invest the surplus cash in an index fund. In time you'll have enough money to not fear a job loss. There's a lot of freedom in that. Keep in mind that most of the stuff you want ends up in the trash or on some shelf collecting dust. So, think twice about what you buy.
That depends on what you eventually want to use the money for. Don't put your 6 month emergency fund in stocks or index funds! If you get laid off along with everyone else, stocks will be down, and that means the money you set aside for an emergency is gone!
"In the last two years, five states — Ohio, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska and Rhode Island — passed legislation requiring that students take a full semester standalone personal finance education course in high school, doubling the total number of states with such a mandate."
To me, this is the hardest to do. In the U.S., this means going against society's narrative that more/better material things will make you happier. Beyond a certain amount of income, material gains lose their material benefit, but it's hard to detach yourself from society's thinking that you'll be happier if you have a $130k car instead of a $30k one.
One thing I like to remember is that billionaires are no happier than people who make a little more than ends meat. Bezos and Gates got divorced in the past few years. Musk is obviously searching for happiness and meaning to little avail. I know lots of people on fairly meager incomes who are much happier than these men.
$37k mortgage $15k bills - electric, water, Internet, car insurance, cell phones, etc. $15k - food, gasoline, clothing, haircuts, other "necessities" (many of which are not)
Then of course there's vacations, Christmas/birthdays, and unexpected large purchases (e.g. the out of warranty laptop broke), so maybe add on another $10k?
But we could also easily tighten the belt a bit and cut those bottom 2 items to $20k with only a little bit of pain.
When you're walking home after taxes with $175k/year you definitely get a little flabby on what should be sensible cost cutting (e.g. I'm sure I'm paying a few hundred dollars a year for streaming/subscription services I don't use enough to justify, but it's not worth the hassle.)
We are of course extremely privileged to not have any major medical issues, a good support system for child care, 2 work from home parents, and to have somehow avoided most of the crazy tuition hikes of the 21st century.
Which is >100k/year before tax which is well above median household earnings.
That’s not even counting the portion that comes out of my check.
I could easily drop 20-25k from that spending if we didn't have kids - in fact, at the time I had my first kid, my mortgage was $24k/year, my bills were nearly 40% lower than they are now, and I didn't track food and clothes budgets back then but even if they were 80% of present day levels (I suspect it was much lower) that'd put us right around $40k/year.
But I also am on the real estate property ladder, so I think it'd be foolish for me to spend any less of our income on our housing than I do, so counting it as pure "expenditure" is a bit misleading.
Also since someone asked this year I paid $2,200 in healthcare distributions on top of $750 annual premiums.
Advice from someone who didn't do this and should now have waaaaaaaay more savings than he does: don't reduce your spending on experiences (dinner, drinks with friends, holidays), but try to reduce your spending on objects.
It is so true that the dopamine hit from buying a thing is short-lived. Now you have that thing, which you probably won't use all that much, and you have to carry it around your life. It wasn't worth it.
Of course this applies more to more expensive objects. Cars boggle my mind. I'm lucky enough to live somewhere that I can walk or cycle everywhere, but still. If I needed a car, people spend what? A hundred k on a fucking Toyota? Are you out of your goddamned mind?
For things, focus on tools that help you do more, save time, etc, not bling, and buy the best quality you can afford. Specifically go for quality, not just the most expensive, which will have often have added bling and exclusive price tags to attract people with more money than care.
Living somewhere nice, that isn't old and moldy, that doesn't leak, that isn't cold in winter and hot in summer, that is close to amenities, is a massive quality of life improvement.
Things might be relatively cheap as single items, but the cost of them all adds up. And I'd still say, question every purchase. I mean don't agonise over it, but if you can get in to the habit of generally not just buying shit all the time, I think you'll be better for it.
that's the best F-You skill you can ever have IMO. You want to be in a position where if you get laid off you make a phone call while walking out and have another job that very day.
You can start this as simply as messaging people you work with or use to work with on linkedin.
So, I started my own web dev company and grew it from myself to 20 full time employees in ~4 years before selling it.
I thought I had FU skills back in 2008 and maybe I did, but it was no match for the macro economic climate.
The fallback might not be another full time job, but instead freelancing or starting your own company.
The thing that helped me the most was building a “FU Network”. Keep in touch with past coworkers and clients and do good work consistently. They were there for me when I needed them most.
Having the skills to do the technical work is only part of the answer. I've met a lot of brilliant programmers in my career who were not good at following through on commitments, delivering work, working with others, or leaving old workplaces without burning bridges.
On the other hand, I've known a lot of good-but-not-great programmers who were great to work with, made sure they got their work done to good standards, worked hard to overcome skill gaps or looming deadlines when necessary, and left a good impression everywhere they went.
The latter group (good reputation, good communication, good networking) will always have a list of people happy to hire them back. That's what you want.
Also, avoid the trap of thinking that social skills are "bullshit" or other cynical dismissals. Business is more than just writing code and avoiding peers. Results are delivered by teams, not individuals. Knowing how to be a good team member is a crucial skill.
If I could sum it up in a sentence it would be "be more helpful than everyone else". Be the person that (generally) says yes, not no. Stretch your boundaries a little, chip in and help even if it's not strictly your job. Share your knowledge. Be friendly and open. Do what you said you'd do when you said you'd do it. That last point is so obvious as to be inane but we all know people who don't do it.
On the flip side, don't be that person who loses their shit when something goes wrong. Don't be the one who is always complaining that "this place is [some negative emotion]". Don't be the one who doesn't do some piece of work on a point of order even though someone else is depending on the result. Everyone hears about those people, and everyone avoids them. Life's too short to work with someone like that, even if they're technically amazing.
I live in a fairly small Australian city and there are circles of people who just seem to follow each other around. Being in one of those circles -- which are informal, to be clear -- is invaluable. You get there by being a) good at what you do and b) really easy to work with.
The last time I got a job by searching a contract jobs website was in 2007. Everything since then has been because of who I know.
Addendum: this takes time, obviously. You're building a reputation. I'm 46. You can't do this overnight but, that said, I took a grad in 2021 and she was everything I've said is good and she's already "in the crew".
At some point I thought this way because I wasn’t good at them and was too anxious to even attempt to work on them.
Then I realized
- ‘programming’ humans is really fun, especially when you can improve them :)
- everything else you and I do in our lives is related (directly or indirectly) to social status, so why not eliminate inefficiencies by using social skills to do the social stuff instead of lossily via technical skills and money
Maybe its better to work on developing empathy? Leadership and Self Deception is a decent book on people skills that really emphasizes this approach.
By Monday you might wish you had been.
It is less frightening if you can go through the motions and see all the other opportunity.
I also agree with all the advice to be kind.
The only thing that actually helps is to not amplify your emotional reactions, and instead encourage them to quiesce. The standard cognitive approaches are to consider yourself lucky (by thinking of those less lucky), or to see the situation as transitory, or just distract yourself. However, cognitive approaches are the cart leading the horse; it's more direct to pay attention to the emotion until it dissolves.
More broadly, there are plenty of less dynamic industries, where loyalty matters most and you get security. But you chose tech typically to make a certain kind of difference, and it's worth the risk and anxiety. You're part of the community only after you've been through the suffering and understand how quickly it can all go up in smoke :)
This was the missing piece for me during the first decade of my career. It's broadly applicable to most human endeavors.
However, getting jobs is more than that. Or, rather, getting and keeping a job is more than that, and that's where I worry I'm lacking sometimes. While I wouldn't flat-out say I don't work well with others, my patience has gradually gotten worse and worse over the years. At my last company, I think I likely developed a reputation as someone who preferred to isolate himself, someone who should be exempt from any established company processes (stuff I always felt hamstrung me), someone who prefers to just be given a thorny problem and then left alone, unaccountable, until it's done.
Certainly what I do (and how I prefer to work) can have value, but it has less and less value as a company grows and relies more on predictability and consistency to get work done.
Over the past year and half or so, a lot of the longer-tenured folks (including me) left the company I was working at. I've kept track of where a lot of my former colleagues have gone, including those who were (and still are) in management positions, and sometimes I question how many of those people would really want to hire me at their new company. While I do good work, I could see them thinking that I can be hard to work with at times, or that I might not mesh well with the rest of their team.
It's possible I'm coming down too hard on myself, and it's not that bad. But it's something to consider: having technical skills is great, but it's not the whole picture when it comes to being easily employable.
As to the root of your issue, the stress and anxiety when things are bad, I think the best thing to do is remove external control over your destiny. Live well within your means, and save as much money as you can. If you have enough savings so that being unemployed for a year or more isn't going to put a strain on your finances or require you to change your lifestyle, then that should reduce your anxiety level quite a bit.
I think “AA” is already taken.
For real though, thanks for mentioning this. It is something I struggle with. I know I’m not “supposed” to be like that. I read the comments in HN. I read the books. I read the blog posts. Hell, my undergrad was at Temple U’s college of education in small group dynamics and conflict resolution. I know how I am “supposed” to act. And yet, I am still “that guy” as if being “that guy” were my job.
This may be, in part, caused by the dynamics of that one particular workplace. It does not have to mean that “you are that guy” from not on. You may want to engage more the next place because the people and the culture is different.
> I question how many of those people would really want to hire me at their new company
Whatever the impression you left is, this is not you. It’s a footprint of you interacting with particular individuals under a particular context. The real you is not constrained to repeat.
> having technical skills is great, but it's not the whole picture when it comes to being easily employable.
This is great advice.
I think its the people who switch jobs every year or two that are most comfortable finding the next one. OTOH people who have been doing this for 10 years have never seen a bad job market so maybe they have confidence when they shouldn't have.
I lost my job during the .com bust, in 2002, I think. There were plenty of software development jobs, even within my city. I was pretty junior, no CS degree (but I did have a science bachelors). I applied to one or two a week, found a job within three or four months. I was also looking for work sometime around 2009. Again, found a job within four to six months, although I was a little choosier then. Ended up with a contract job at BigCo and they hired me W2 six months or so later. During a downturn contract work can be more available, because BigCo doesn't have a budget for new hires (= can't easily downsize), but part of what contractors are selling is that you can end the contract tomorrow and they say "it's been a pleasure, let me know if you have anything I can help with in the future".
All that to say, having lived through the worst downturn, I think a tech downturn where literally nobody is hiring is unlikely. Of course, a financial cushion is always wise.
I think this is unexpected for lots of young developers out there. Lots of devs have experienced nothing other than multiple offers within a few weeks of looking.
everyone hated putting up with the leet coder before, and now they don't really need one. they really just want people to consistently and pleasantly phone it in.
I don’t work for some hip non profitable startup surviving off of VC money either.
These are standard offers - go to levels.fyi and see what the starting wage is for the BigTech companies are in America.
Some of the younger cohort who are just coming out of college getting FAANG jobs (including the one I work for) are talking about FIRE (financially independent retire early). They are saving/investing $50K+ a year.
Are you that unaware of compensation at any of the top tech companies?
How much do you think they are making?
You don’t need “10-20 million” to live a decent middle class lifestyle in the US.
> For a startup it's even less guaranteed, but you will certainly get much more than that ($10s of millions at least), faster (5-10 years) if you have a reasonably successful exit
Yes all you have to do is choose the one startup out of 10 that don’t outright fail and then choose the subset of those that have an outsized exit.
> At big corps you barely do anything for the first two years you get hired, but at startups you are working on something mission critical from the start
Have you ever worked at any large tech company?
I literally just went to a customer’s site with the former intern I spoke about and they are the only hands on keyboard consultant (I work in the cloud consulting department at $BigTech) of a six figure contract. I was there in an advisory role. All of the new grads go through a six month training program and immediately get put on projects.
In my department they get to learn about working with “cloud technologies” from people who are inarguably the best in the business.
I’m sure people at other big tech companies also learn a lot more about working at scale than you can learn at a tiny company.
Besides you are suffering from severe survivorship bias if you think more than an insignificant percentage of people working at a startup ever leave with any significant amount of money let alone “millions”.
On the other hand I am doing boring Java development with microservices. I guess there is too much people with similar skillset, I would probably need to interview for a few months before I land an offer (processes are getting longer and longer even in remote EU areas).
Another market trend that I am seeing is security, sec related positions often pay you 30% more than regular dev ones. But this is totally different track that requires a lot of effort to get into.
Live like the median family is living and save your money
On another note: I am if not by title now for the first time by what I do a hands on keyboard developer.
What I don’t do is coding interviews and definitely not senseless “leetCode”. If an interviewer can’t talk to me like an experienced adult where we can see if my experience can add business value and help you solve your real world issues, we don’t need to be talking.
I’m not about to stand there while you judge whether I can reverse a binary tree on the whiteboard while juggling bowling balls on a tightrope.
Yes that mentality got me into $BigTech.
Having people who trust you and are willing to help you out is a far more potent than having 'X technical skill'. This doesn't necessarily mean going out of your way for 'networking events' or espousing your great and wonderful skills to everyone you meet. It can just mean staying in touch with the people you have enjoyed working with/for.
Keeping your skills is still important, and if you're a curious person you'll probably be doing this anyway. But there are a lot of us curious ppl out there...on the other hand, your network will be unique to you.
The closest thing to a FU skill though is probably COBOL...
Another one is knowing how to “hustle”. If you need money, coming up with plans that might not work is way better than just not doing anything.
When you start at the bottom, always be planning the next move.