Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier
I'm on the cusp of going back to a job I really enjoyed that paid pretty well, but I was lured away by my current, high-paying job (for the money, prestige, etc.).
I'm getting cold feet because of the money, but I'm fairly sure I'd like the day-to-day much better than my current job.
So tell me -- what are your stories?
110 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] thread8 years later, just last month, I closed on buying that second company from the founder.
Obviously, no one knows the future or could plan this stuff out, but in my experience, prioritizing your overall life over purely your financial life is worth it. We have a weird obsession with "more money, more good", and I haven't found that to be inherently true. It's true to a point, but like a bell-curve, there's a downturn and diminishing returns at some point. And that point is different for everyone.
The security requirements were also anxiety inducing to me.
I've missed some me things, but mostly it's been nothing but up since then.
It's felt like I don't have a job for the past decade. In those ten years I've barely felt any stress, have read hundreds of books, mastered several hobbies, and started a family. Would I trade that for more money? I'll let you guess.
(There is always another point of view.)
That is the voice of the current somnambulism.
Suppose we were to say, "Apple pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value." Or, "The smallpox virus is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value." Again, "Firearms are in themselves neither good nor bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value." That is, if the slugs reach the right people firearms are good. If the TV tube fires the right ammunition at the right people it is good.
I am not being perverse. There is simply nothing in the Sarnoff statement that will bear scrutiny, for it ignores the nature of the medium.'
For the record, I disagree with McLuhan, but perhaps I don't fully understand his argument.
You can use a hammer to screw and a screw to hammer, but the biases for their respective uses are embedded in their affordances. McLuhan argues that the same can be said for any tool, whether it's a binky or a bomb.
I left for a manager role that saw me with a lower title, but never having to worry about fundraising ever again. I have less responsibility, a lower title, and more red tape, but my stress level and work/life balance made the move 100% worth it.
Only problem was I made only barely enough to cover my expenses so wasn't getting ahead in life but it was still worth it.
Economically, my space is not in a good space right now. I have been considering going back to a "normal" job for a bit more income security.
I can't take the hype cycle anymore. First it was big data this and big data that, now it's all AI. It's always about something other than crafting sensible solutions to real problems.
A breaking point for me was getting scolded to figure out how to apply LLM technology for a sewage utility contractor. Like, WTF.
I'm not too moral to take money for stuff people want but don't actually need. But it gets old. I'm tired. Now I can do little projects that I enjoy after work.
Maybe they'll go somewhere. Maybe they won't. They're not my real job anymore so it doesn't matter.
This contract working as an linux engineer bank only allows me to work 24 months without having to take three months off.
Working 15 years none stop since the age of 17, time to rest for a bit.
I hope to work in a old persons retirement home next year. So much wisdom and knowledge that year by year goes and is forgotten, I would love to hear past time stories.
Majority of people choose to maximise money/prestige. I'm pretty sure you end up happier than them.
At one point I was doing my job and vividly hallucinating what I was going to do in dwarf fortress later that evening.
Honestly one of the trippiest experiences I’ve had and a sign that I should probably be applying my mental abilities to something else, which I did eventually.
I wonder if this is what writing code for the feds feels like
Was a front-end developer, then tried to go full-stack and it was just too much to deal with. I worked at a huge corporation and the team I was on was full of the "rock star" types - like you said, always chasing the latest thing. I finally had to get out when someone said, "Bruh, you still use Angular? Pfffft, SVELTE is where its now, you're practically a dinosaur!" Same thing, it became so consuming trying to know the coolest thing instead of just being able to build something robust, accessible and easy to use. I look back now and just think how bizarre that mindset is.
I moved into accessibility and love it. I'm further up the chain and work closely with business owners and designers which is really fun to work with and I get to indulge the UI/UX side of my brain now.
I'm doing the same thing. I do some fun dev stuff on the side and have a few freelance clients I work with to keep a nice side income coming in. I have a lot less gray hair now and actually enjoy having free time to decide what I want to work on and when I want to work on it. My wife says I hardly ever complain about my job now so I got that going for me, which is nice.
If you don't mind sharing I'd love to know more.
It was from networking and timing. I was on a team that was being dissolved because of some internal politics and at the time I had been talking with some people in the UI/UX department about some openings they had for designers or UX researchers. By chance a director heard I was poking around and wanting to move over and reached out and said they were going to need to fill some backfill roles and asked if I ever considered accessibility.
After meeting several people on the team, I thought it would be a good fit and a role I could use a lot of my development background as well, so the learning curve wouldn't be so steep. The final weeks of my team being dissolved was basically spent being onboarded onto the accessibility team so when I moved over, it was a really smooth transition.
>> What's the job title?
I'm an accessibility engineer. We do mainly two things - consulting and assessments. Its a great place for me as a developer because I get to work with designers and developers so I'm in the middle of all the action and interface with everybody on the team. Its been a great move and its an area that is becoming super important so demand is only going to increase in the future.
I've thought the same thing. So many people in software just pretend to chase after some meme and being around them makes me really cynical
It's just buzzword this buzzword that to some people. Who gives a shit about solving problems when you can just shuffle a couple buzzwords around and pretend to do shit?
After 2020, it feels like more and more people are full of shit and only care about money
Something had definitely changed. But I am not sure how much of that is me.
When I think of what would bring me back to dev, I always think of jobs supporting some kind of science work, like weather or GIS.
would be pretty cool if i didn't have kids
Interesting story.
I worked in a bike shop a number of years ago. Guy came in and I helped him find some stuff for a long distance ride he was going to do. I noticed he had a black baseball hat with the initials "NJTTTF" sewn into the front of it and I had no idea wtf it meant so as he was checking out I asked him. He said, "You don't want to know." and I said, "I really do." and he said, "Its boring, seriously." and after some more bantering he said, "It stands for National Joint Terrorist Tracking Task Force." I just stood there confused, then asked him, "So you're CIA or NSA and track terrorists? That's pretty cool." He then said, "Not exactly NSA or CIA, but I do work for the government and yes, we do track terrorists. You ever hear about Weather Mountain? I was stationed there. Conspiracy nuts love it, but its not as cool as they say. I was in a windowless room with a sealed door listening to radio chatter and analyzing radar signals. Since the room was sealed, we had to open the door every 30 mins because we would run out of oxygen otherwise. It was hot, it was miserable, and the work was pretty boring when you get right down to it."
I asked him if he was still working for the gov and he said he was, in a different capacity. I asked him what he was working on and he said a few different things, but his favorite was cryptography. I told him I was fascinated with cryptography so he gave me a few books to read and then we parted ways.
Of course after he left, I went right to google and couldn't find a single thing on the task force but did find a bunch of conspiracy stuff on Weather Mountain, just like he said. Very interesting meeting and a very interesting guy for sure.
I did this just a few months ago. Worked in the Blockchain industry, earned around 240k in my local currency, which is a lot for what I did. The company got bought, would have gotten an additional 300k (more or less) after 2 years in bonus.
Instead, I joined a company more aligned with what I want to do and become, and the people I want to surround myself with. I now get paid just 140k in my local currency, so I take around 100k a year pay cut.
My wife will start working soon, so we will top up our household income again.
But, I realized, I don't have money problems. My needs are met, and what makes a difference now is my emotional and physical health, and my friends and people I see every day. Filling up my account doesn't help anymore, and the opposite, it made me more stressed every day.
Now I work part time for a small local Eastern European company started by my high school friends. We're around ten, I learn a lot, and I have potential for a lot of impact.
My real hourly take-home pay is 20% of what I used to make and I work less than half the hours, so I make less than 10% of what I used to make. And I'm happy with this trade-off! I get to work with very smart people on things that matter in a relaxed environment. Couldn't be happier!
Now I work for my county government as a computer programmer. I make 20% of what I would've been making at Facebook if I hadn't left (60k vs 300k) but I don't regret it at all. My work helps real people in my community instead of siphoning off bits of attention here and there from strangers all over the world.
The final straw for me was in October of 2019 when Zuck had a closed door meeting with Trump and then "randomly" the next week announced that politicians are now allowed to lie in ads on facebook. Hmmm, I wonder who would disproportionately benefit from that policy change??
1. I left Microsoft to join a startup and took a >100k pay cut.
2. The startup was acquired, and I quit the parent company to go teach. Again, taking a sizable pay cut.
I’m happy with all the decisions (to join and to leave). After having a high salary for a few years, the happiness piece becomes far more important.
Then I spent 6 months doing nothing and decided to learn to code. It currently pays nothing because after a year, I'm only just on the cusp of starting to apply. I enjoy coding a lot more than recruiting, but my educated guess is that I'd enjoy entrepreneurship more than working at a company. Either way, it's exciting and challenging in a way that recruiting never was.
While I'm annoyed about the money, I have an improved quality of life in Toronto. My wife and I were raising kids alone in Seattle whereas we have a village here to co-parent with. I also found much more cultural identity and roots here in Toronto compared to Seattle. I also prefer the climate and politics of Toronto more than PNW. I certainly miss the hikes, but we make that up with non-stop beach trips.
If I can achieve the same financial security here in Toronto that I had in Seattle, I would never move. Unfortunately, this has been difficult to achieve, but I'm confident I can get there.
As a parent with small kids, this really piques my interest. Could you share more details about this? Are you referring to a tighter community; neighbors that you actually know and interact with?
We're moving to the Midwest soon and hope to experience more of that compared to the where we are now.
I could live even on basic income, my family not.
My best to all those out there pursuing peace of mind and happiness.
However, I hired into my current job for stability and learned there is no stability despite repeatedly being assured that it was. The startup will yield about five-plus years of work until we sell (options). The pay bump will be nice.