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by ChrisMarshallNY 872 days ago
I am "retired." I didn't want to be, but no one in tech wants to work with oldsters, so I had to take my butthurt, and admit that I'm not going to be working for anyone, ever again.

Best damn thing that ever happened to me.

I had enough to retire, when I did, but had no intention of doing so, for another ten years.

That was a bit over six years ago, and I am wondering what all the fuss was about.

The "retired" was in quotes, because I never stopped working. I just stopped writing code on someone else's orders, and started writing the code that I always wanted to write. It's a lot more professional, high-Quality, documented, and bug-free, than anything I ever did, when I was being paid to do it.

And I really enjoy it.

I have no intention of ever stopping. The coroner is gonna have to rub "YTЯƎWϘ" off my cheek.

I know three chaps that retired from my old company. They had worked there for 30+ years, and moved out of state, to relax. They were all in their sixties.

They are all dead, and achieved this transcendental state, before they reached 70.

3 comments

> The "retired" was in quotes

I think that's the point. Actually retiring as in not doing any work is statistically speaking a steep slippery slope to death.

What age were you forced retiring? I'm highly concerned because as a millennial, retiring safely seems to be something that can be achieved at 65
55, but I also live like a pauper, and was maxing out my retirement options for 30 years.
Thanks! I am maxing out my retirement options too, but I have a mortgage and that ends at ~63 roughly. Based on my projections if I retire at 65 I'm good, however if I retire before then, I will definitely need to sell the home for a smaller one (which could be fine, if the body allows it)
I'm 55 and still getting interviews... got my last job at 52.

The whole "omg, I'm 40 - no tech will hire me" is a bit overblown...

I was a manager. That was a big problem, looking for an IC job.

My employees were close to my age, and got jobs, but it took years. These were top-shelf C++ geeks.

I was treated pretty badly, and decided it wasn’t worth it.

Wow man - Sorry you had such bad time :-/ Hopefully you got something fun now :-)

I have noticed over the years that interviewing has gotten more onerous and ghosting has gotten more common. There's never any reason to treat people badly/ghost them. Even a thanks-but-no-thanks is better then radio silence.

I'm glad it is like that, I'm concerned for anything at 60+, in the end 5 years of income is quite a bit, hence why I am trying to plan ahead for retirement
sounds like a good plan :-) Trick is to be on the edges - either leading edge or trailing edge. That's where the competition is lowest and the compensation is highest. I do cloud architecture/infrastructure atm, but I figure I'll fund my retirement by being the last living COBOL programmer :-P
That's way harder to accomplish unfortunately. Unless I study COBOL too
Hehe - yeah.. by the time millennials retire I'm not sure what it would be ... Java maybe ?
I'm happy for you. This kind of "retirement" would be my end game, too.