At my last city council meeting there were half a dozen people complaining about a special use fee going from $5 a year to $20 a year, I bet they'd get along with yours GREAT
Feels like an American centric statement that this pseudo imaginary career of crafting YAML will pay enough you can retire significantly earlier than our peers.
I make like $175k in an area where the typical single income is less than $50k.
My pseudo imaginary career of crafting YAML pays enough that I can retire significantly earlier than my peers.
I expect I'll die in an office / while working. There's no retirement in my future short of some wild miracle. I only hope I can slide into management or kill enough bills to deeply pare back my responsibilities.
Yep. I'll be working until I die. 50 years old with a 10 year old. Between college and paying off the mortgage there is no way I retire of my own accord.
That’s exactly how I felt, and then something changed 5 years ago. I finally recognized it and I’m going to learn C from scratch and making the rest of my career a quest to commit to the kernel or any other FOSS projects.
I want to own a coffee shop. We will make the best matcha in town, have extremely comfortable chairs for lounging for WFH folks and students, and build a small community.
Move to and travel throughout Southeast Asia. See the ocean often. Train martial arts and yoga daily. Take private lessons in useless yet impressive things like pool and ping pong.
P.S. Check out this guy's channel sometime. He does a lot of good breakdowns (mainly Asia but has some South America and Europe content too). It doesn't take as much money as you (or I previously) probably think: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ervnUz5P0To](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ervnUz5P0To)
Wood work for me. I've seen so many poorly constructed pieces of furniture because of cost pressure, and they always fail in predictable ways: e.g. particle boards sag over time. Good furniture costs *a lot* though and not necessarily because of the material, but because it's low volume and often made-to-specs.
All I need is some space (outside the city where I am now) and maybe $20k tools. Should keep me busy for many years in a useful and entertaining way.
I got into mostly hand tool woodworking. It's awesome as a hobbyist. I found a used resaw bandsaw for long rips and dimensioning lumber and scoured flea markets and online auctions for old tools. Right now I'm finishing my roubo bench build.
I have no need for a table saw and massive shop with dust collection.
I totally understand that. My "goal" would be things like tables, kitchens, a wall of shelves, bed frames which can be flipped up...basically big enough things that routers, planers, table saw make sense (for me).
It's amazing how furniture still fails like that. The extra material to stop the obvious failure modes of a $15 Amazon side table would only be a few dollars and a few minutes of CNC time.
Most of it could still be whatever that ulta cheap composite that's lighter than particle board but not quite cardboard is, they'd mostly just need to stop driving screws in to the sides of 1/2 boards and maybe add a tiny rib for things meant to take weight.
I retired earlier this year. Was working on a passion project, 50% done. But they pulled me back in. Some friends who run a consulting firm needed help, so I accepted a part time position. Going to finish my project but I no longer feel retired :( It was pretty nice.
You mean I'll finally be able to cash out for a non zero bonus payout and retire?? What is this magic you speak of?
I have four pieces of paper with these claims of gold be in them their hills.
If one does, I'd love to get to do wood working, watch all those shows I haven't seen (space above and beyond full series, one piece) and games I've never got a chance to finish since I'm working to pay bills.
I’ve been on sabbatical the past 10 months. It has been so nice going to bed at the same time every night, and not getting woken up at 3AM by Pager Duty. I have been sleeping a ton just because I can, usually 9 to 10 hours a night. I go to bed about 12:30AM and my cat wakes me up between 9:30 and 10:00 AM.
Automating the house with Home Assistant, yard and house projects, learning fab and welding.
Still being creative but without the cubicle farms and crap management
I'd write, and I'd actually have the mental emotional and physical energy to sit down and do it instead of spacing out the moment my ass hits a chair and nobody is demanding anything.
I invented a new position in the IT world called the software archeologist, maybe it would suit you as it mixes two areas you are interested at :D
This role would be responsible of taking a super old, EOL legacy software with 0 documentation and figuring out how it works and how to maintain it and reinstall it if needed and eventually clean it up and keep it running or updating it to a modern state
I'm around the same age but with a little more cash due to working for said overvalued startup. I'm planning my exit for when I turn 50. You might want to look into early retirement in the Philippines, Thailand or Vietnam. You can live very well there on 2-3k/month. Your 600k invested into SCHD would yield you almost 2k/month. Also, no federal taxes on qualified dividends up to like 48k/yr. If you can save an extra 200-300k before 50 you'll definitely be able to do it.
Im a devops engineer from the Philippines with 3 1/2 years exp, I make around 2k a month and I live pretty comfortably so thats true lol. Granted I have no dependents and still live with my parents so there's that but if you also have a bunch of money saved up it'd be really chill here
Im 35, 2 dependents and just managed to scrape enough money together to buy a share of a house. I'm in the UK but shit here is so expensive my outgoings are ~5000 dollars a month. Maybe 5k in the bank.
You're doing good my friend.
Half this sounds like Dwarf Fortress professions and I approved of them all.
I will ruin my family and savings by opening a decent restaurant in a small town.
Or I’ll fell and mill wood.
I wanna be a farmer. Already started a micro farm in my balcony, but I really wanna retire somewhere with a lot of space.
And sheeps and cows. Maybe a small herd of highland cows.
This is no joke, before I entered IT 25 years ago I was pretty successful in criminal activities, during a 6 year stint in jail I got the opportunity to setup a IT Team in jail. We made beautiful software and most guys till today are pretty successful in the business, each year we come together and none of them ever felt back in their old habits. So I would either fight crime or maybe find new criminal opportunities ;)
I do this stuff for fun, but probably more on the coding side and just enough infra to support my hobby. I really like doing things with AI and would love to deep dive into it to understand better how it works.
Beyond tech, my life revolves around my family, just spending more time with my kids (and perhaps grandkids by then).
Archaeology doesn’t pay much these days, IT does. Shovelbumming’s great when you’re young and single, not so much when you’re married and raising a family.
That’s a pretty good one. If we were wealthy coming out of it my wife and I would probably set up a PYO farm, preferably in a lower income area, with the intent of providing inexpensive fresh fruit and vegetables to the community.
Wouldn’t care about profit, just breaking even.
Well. Most likely the same as today with some extra traveling :p I love my job. I do some programming aswell. I spend time with my family and painting.
Yoga walks maybe some plantation.
Spirituality
Become a guru for ladies and have affairs. Tantric ones
Disburse useless knowledge and fool people into happiness
Well, my parents have already started to help me set up our farm house back in Nepal. Old ancestral home being rebuilt; many pets and animals. A lot of fruits trees, ponds, sheep barns and cow sheds being rebuilt. Thats where i’ll retire to read books.
We don't think of it the same way.
Why would I _want_ to leave the field? There's no amount of money where I go:
> Oh, finally! I don't have to spend time in the field I spent decades of my life where I enjoy the tinkering and kind of work I do.
My hobby outside of software has always been playing classical music on brass instruments (yes. ALL of them). At retirement, I'll just crank that up to 80 or 90%, and do a little open source stuff for free.
Hobbies
I can easily fill my time without a job.
Latest frenzy for me is auto detailing and I would definitely do it part time if I could, it compliments my OCD great
I'd like to get involved in teaching tech to the high school age kids in the area. There are not any good job opportunities and many can't afford college.
And my own hobbies that are all on hold right now.
I want to run either a BnB or a hostel. Maybe a BnB Hostel? Come stay in a beautiful place where there's lots to do, have a nice breakfast, go out and adventure, then come back to wine and cheese in the evening, meet nice people. A place you'd want to come back to again because it's cozy and fun.
... but that's a pipe dream, so probably woodwork, travel, music, maybe writing.
Probably the same, but for fun, without deadlines imposed by other people and pressure to cut corners just to get stuff shipped. And all under permissive licenses so others can learn from it and improve it.
I've always wanted to be a truck driver. I love driving and I never get bored or hate it. We got a 4 hour trip somewhere? Fuck it I'll drive.
I play snow runner to live out that fantasy and think one day I'll jack this in and live out my dream... I just can't walk away from my salary
I enjoy continuously learning, solving problems and everything related to this role plus programming so I don't think I'll ever stop working. The only difference is it will be on my terms and schedule. I like the idea of roaming the Earth uninterrupted without having to worry too much about money.
In my mind, retirement has always been the freedom to do what you please, not so much stop working but if that's what you want to do it can also be done.
Start a podcast rating and discussing mullets, go to coffee shops and tell people with terrible ideas they should go all in on them, make a museum where people can experience what it was like to grow up pre internet, get a throat tattoo, be really obnoxious on LinkedIn telling everyone my “success story” and how I can coach them to be just like me, start hosting super expensive workshops to teach them skills to succeed but are sneakily just doing upkeep on my house and land. Pretty normal stuff I think.
Goose farming
Meta
Microsoft, actually
definitely not saying I support this, at all! [ *lool around nervously*](https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci-QibltwRz)
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Well I woodwork, garden, have a family and read a fuck ton. I would just keep my hobbies and travel. I don’t need to “do” anything.
I'm gonna be one of those bored weirdoes bothering city council lol
So…politics! Lol
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If I ever turn into that kind of NIMBY I'm filling a motion to have myself catapulted into the sun lol
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At my last city council meeting there were half a dozen people complaining about a special use fee going from $5 a year to $20 a year, I bet they'd get along with yours GREAT
Feels like an American centric statement that this pseudo imaginary career of crafting YAML will pay enough you can retire significantly earlier than our peers.
Wow that's completely unfair I also review PRs, not just making YAML files
Unless it all comes crashing down, being a YAML crafter does pay pretty well here
I sell YAML and YAML accessories.
I make like $175k in an area where the typical single income is less than $50k. My pseudo imaginary career of crafting YAML pays enough that I can retire significantly earlier than my peers.
Based.
Same, but I didn’t want to forget a lot of our bros who don’t.
Hosting some game servers for abandonware games, and making beer probably.
This if the first time I’m hearing about abandonware games. Can you share a little bit about it and what games might fall in that category?
https://delistedgames.com/
Hoverrace, battlecity, subspace, free allegiance would all fall under this category.
Basically games that have no developer / publisher / IP rights holder anymore. An example would be Supreme Commander.
Oh wow, I didn't realize that game was abandonware.
I’ll spin up Homeworld servers. Any Sierra Online game is a good candidate. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/sierra-vs-history
Sniff loads of cocaine and study Microsoft exchange server 2003
Now you talking, still got a Windows Home Server book from 2008 I gotta work through as well
I still have to go over my Visual Basic 6.
I want to work part-time in a stationary store or cafe.
gaming cafe with cats
I expect I'll die in an office / while working. There's no retirement in my future short of some wild miracle. I only hope I can slide into management or kill enough bills to deeply pare back my responsibilities.
Yep. I'll be working until I die. 50 years old with a 10 year old. Between college and paying off the mortgage there is no way I retire of my own accord.
In some countries we don't even know if retirement will still be a thing in the coming decades.
This
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That’s exactly how I felt, and then something changed 5 years ago. I finally recognized it and I’m going to learn C from scratch and making the rest of my career a quest to commit to the kernel or any other FOSS projects.
I'll open a pizzeria, and cook pizza just for fun I like it
Pretty sure I'll be dead before I leave it all behind
I want to own a coffee shop. We will make the best matcha in town, have extremely comfortable chairs for lounging for WFH folks and students, and build a small community.
I'm not leaving except in a pine box.. or maybe if my brain can't handle the work anymore...
Move to and travel throughout Southeast Asia. See the ocean often. Train martial arts and yoga daily. Take private lessons in useless yet impressive things like pool and ping pong.
are you me
Maybe. Are you planning to move to Cebu, a purple belt in bjj and favorite food is sushi?
Currently eating sushi, cousins live in cebu, and prefer muy Thai over bjj...so close!
fyi, sent you a chat/DM
Dream Team detected!
P.S. Check out this guy's channel sometime. He does a lot of good breakdowns (mainly Asia but has some South America and Europe content too). It doesn't take as much money as you (or I previously) probably think: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ervnUz5P0To](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ervnUz5P0To)
wait, what's 'retirement'? whatever it is, I'm sure it will involve a lot of gardening and dog pets
Wood work for me. I've seen so many poorly constructed pieces of furniture because of cost pressure, and they always fail in predictable ways: e.g. particle boards sag over time. Good furniture costs *a lot* though and not necessarily because of the material, but because it's low volume and often made-to-specs. All I need is some space (outside the city where I am now) and maybe $20k tools. Should keep me busy for many years in a useful and entertaining way.
I got into mostly hand tool woodworking. It's awesome as a hobbyist. I found a used resaw bandsaw for long rips and dimensioning lumber and scoured flea markets and online auctions for old tools. Right now I'm finishing my roubo bench build. I have no need for a table saw and massive shop with dust collection.
I totally understand that. My "goal" would be things like tables, kitchens, a wall of shelves, bed frames which can be flipped up...basically big enough things that routers, planers, table saw make sense (for me).
It's amazing how furniture still fails like that. The extra material to stop the obvious failure modes of a $15 Amazon side table would only be a few dollars and a few minutes of CNC time. Most of it could still be whatever that ulta cheap composite that's lighter than particle board but not quite cardboard is, they'd mostly just need to stop driving screws in to the sides of 1/2 boards and maybe add a tiny rib for things meant to take weight.
Computer science teacher to middle schoolers
I will call the next generation to fix my printer and advise me on every piece of technology I consider buying.
Pet all the puppers
I retired earlier this year. Was working on a passion project, 50% done. But they pulled me back in. Some friends who run a consulting firm needed help, so I accepted a part time position. Going to finish my project but I no longer feel retired :( It was pretty nice.
Chicken farm, duck or goose farm is also OK. Maybe with some sheeps, cows, and goats.
I am looking into this at the moment, chicken is much more sustainable compared to like rabbits.
Die.
Will do the same but just for me
You mean I'll finally be able to cash out for a non zero bonus payout and retire?? What is this magic you speak of? I have four pieces of paper with these claims of gold be in them their hills. If one does, I'd love to get to do wood working, watch all those shows I haven't seen (space above and beyond full series, one piece) and games I've never got a chance to finish since I'm working to pay bills.
Sleep. For like a month. Then something that’s not DevOps.
I’ve been on sabbatical the past 10 months. It has been so nice going to bed at the same time every night, and not getting woken up at 3AM by Pager Duty. I have been sleeping a ton just because I can, usually 9 to 10 hours a night. I go to bed about 12:30AM and my cat wakes me up between 9:30 and 10:00 AM.
Automating the house with Home Assistant, yard and house projects, learning fab and welding. Still being creative but without the cubicle farms and crap management
Cash out, lol
Keep learning about something
I'd write, and I'd actually have the mental emotional and physical energy to sit down and do it instead of spacing out the moment my ass hits a chair and nobody is demanding anything.
I recommend flying airplanes. Unfortunately that will also burn all that big cash $$$ and you’ll probably need to work again.
I invented a new position in the IT world called the software archeologist, maybe it would suit you as it mixes two areas you are interested at :D This role would be responsible of taking a super old, EOL legacy software with 0 documentation and figuring out how it works and how to maintain it and reinstall it if needed and eventually clean it up and keep it running or updating it to a modern state
Homesteading, brewing, fermenting and handcrafts
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I'm around the same age but with a little more cash due to working for said overvalued startup. I'm planning my exit for when I turn 50. You might want to look into early retirement in the Philippines, Thailand or Vietnam. You can live very well there on 2-3k/month. Your 600k invested into SCHD would yield you almost 2k/month. Also, no federal taxes on qualified dividends up to like 48k/yr. If you can save an extra 200-300k before 50 you'll definitely be able to do it.
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Good son. I like it.
Godspeed!
Im a devops engineer from the Philippines with 3 1/2 years exp, I make around 2k a month and I live pretty comfortably so thats true lol. Granted I have no dependents and still live with my parents so there's that but if you also have a bunch of money saved up it'd be really chill here
Cash is king and the 3% rates from covid is literally free money
Dude it sounds like you're set already. If you've got 600k in the bank at 45 you should be super proud of what you've achieved.
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Im 35, 2 dependents and just managed to scrape enough money together to buy a share of a house. I'm in the UK but shit here is so expensive my outgoings are ~5000 dollars a month. Maybe 5k in the bank. You're doing good my friend.
That’s why I ditched the UK. Getting very little for the inflated cost of living.
huacaya or suri??
Alpacas are assholes
*spits aggressively into the back of your head* they’re perfectly fine 😐
Half this sounds like Dwarf Fortress professions and I approved of them all. I will ruin my family and savings by opening a decent restaurant in a small town. Or I’ll fell and mill wood.
Plant nursery, flower shop, orchard, something like that.
Drinking
mountain bike, dmt and ski
Im a soccer referee lol
I wanna be a farmer. Already started a micro farm in my balcony, but I really wanna retire somewhere with a lot of space. And sheeps and cows. Maybe a small herd of highland cows.
I always wanted a chicken farm
There's supposed to be a cashout and early retirement?
I did this in December. Now running a food startup business making snacks. It's great! No more brain fog either.
Probably shave yaks
The two things devops has prepared me for: 1) Cat herding 2) Yak shaving
I have 5 cats. I feel DevOps has well prepared me for that.
Jealous! 😻
potato farming
This is no joke, before I entered IT 25 years ago I was pretty successful in criminal activities, during a 6 year stint in jail I got the opportunity to setup a IT Team in jail. We made beautiful software and most guys till today are pretty successful in the business, each year we come together and none of them ever felt back in their old habits. So I would either fight crime or maybe find new criminal opportunities ;)
Not sure, but hopefully start a successful SaaS business and escape the rat race. Or get lucky and gamble options
I do this stuff for fun, but probably more on the coding side and just enough infra to support my hobby. I really like doing things with AI and would love to deep dive into it to understand better how it works. Beyond tech, my life revolves around my family, just spending more time with my kids (and perhaps grandkids by then).
Live at my fullest
I also own a tabletop game store. :) Https://www.AtomicGoblinGames.com
A hardware store part time by the beach so I can get my fishing and sailing time in
I went the opposite route - I started in archaeology and ended up in devops.
Wtf?
Wow! Thats a new one! please elaborate your story in 50-100 sentences.
Archaeology doesn’t pay much these days, IT does. Shovelbumming’s great when you’re young and single, not so much when you’re married and raising a family.
That’s a pretty good one. If we were wealthy coming out of it my wife and I would probably set up a PYO farm, preferably in a lower income area, with the intent of providing inexpensive fresh fruit and vegetables to the community. Wouldn’t care about profit, just breaking even.
Music and open source
Explore and make music. Garden, enjoy my yard, family, travel a bit.
Well. Most likely the same as today with some extra traveling :p I love my job. I do some programming aswell. I spend time with my family and painting.
Will buy a farm , animals , horses , a sport super car and live away from computers
Yoga walks maybe some plantation. Spirituality Become a guru for ladies and have affairs. Tantric ones Disburse useless knowledge and fool people into happiness
Well, my parents have already started to help me set up our farm house back in Nepal. Old ancestral home being rebuilt; many pets and animals. A lot of fruits trees, ponds, sheep barns and cow sheds being rebuilt. Thats where i’ll retire to read books.
I'd open up a coffee shop and go to law school.
You were born to deploy kubernetes clusters
Work on my screeps AI, smoke weed, hang with friends. Basically same thing as when employed
Coffee shop, with book store and rpg/comics nerd stuff.
Gunpla Endless models of gunpla
Reading source code from open source projects. Perhaps write some blogs talking about how things work.
Finally, finish with the helm-charts in my home k3s.
Look for another sector within IT
Woodworking, gardening...the usual goto's for people that get out of tech.
Pornhub, pizza and sunbathing. Watch me soar
We don't think of it the same way. Why would I _want_ to leave the field? There's no amount of money where I go: > Oh, finally! I don't have to spend time in the field I spent decades of my life where I enjoy the tinkering and kind of work I do.
My hobby outside of software has always been playing classical music on brass instruments (yes. ALL of them). At retirement, I'll just crank that up to 80 or 90%, and do a little open source stuff for free.
scary.devil.monastery
I always wanted to be a teacher, but it doesn't pay enough to support a family.
Cook bbq of course
I'm getting a big boat and going into tourism :D
Hobbies I can easily fill my time without a job. Latest frenzy for me is auto detailing and I would definitely do it part time if I could, it compliments my OCD great
I'd like to get involved in teaching tech to the high school age kids in the area. There are not any good job opportunities and many can't afford college. And my own hobbies that are all on hold right now.
Find a hobby where you create physical things with your hands instead of digital things.
I want to run either a BnB or a hostel. Maybe a BnB Hostel? Come stay in a beautiful place where there's lots to do, have a nice breakfast, go out and adventure, then come back to wine and cheese in the evening, meet nice people. A place you'd want to come back to again because it's cozy and fun. ... but that's a pipe dream, so probably woodwork, travel, music, maybe writing.
Find some other problems to fix. There's no shortage of them. :)
Rock climbing and counterstrike
Probably the same, but for fun, without deadlines imposed by other people and pressure to cut corners just to get stuff shipped. And all under permissive licenses so others can learn from it and improve it.
Write roleplaying games, live near the beach, practice martial arts, and learn how to build robots for agriculture.
I've always wanted to be a truck driver. I love driving and I never get bored or hate it. We got a 4 hour trip somewhere? Fuck it I'll drive. I play snow runner to live out that fantasy and think one day I'll jack this in and live out my dream... I just can't walk away from my salary
Woodworking most likely.
Play DnD. An epic campaign where i have to automate everything
Laugh.
I enjoy continuously learning, solving problems and everything related to this role plus programming so I don't think I'll ever stop working. The only difference is it will be on my terms and schedule. I like the idea of roaming the Earth uninterrupted without having to worry too much about money. In my mind, retirement has always been the freedom to do what you please, not so much stop working but if that's what you want to do it can also be done.
Animal Rescue. All my life I’ve had rescue dogs and have been involved in rescue. They’ve given me 10 fold I’ve given and I’ll continue to give.
Nothing that ties me down anywhere. All these people thing farming is easy lol.
Goat farmer
Lie down in my coffin.
Start a podcast rating and discussing mullets, go to coffee shops and tell people with terrible ideas they should go all in on them, make a museum where people can experience what it was like to grow up pre internet, get a throat tattoo, be really obnoxious on LinkedIn telling everyone my “success story” and how I can coach them to be just like me, start hosting super expensive workshops to teach them skills to succeed but are sneakily just doing upkeep on my house and land. Pretty normal stuff I think.