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by lotsofpulp 520 days ago
It’s pretty easy to live a simple life if you don’t expect cutting edge healthcare, the best education for one’s kids’, and living in colder/flatter places.

If you expect a better than average quality of life, then you will have to compete for it. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough to be bequeathed a sufficiently large portfolio.

3 comments

If you want an average quality of life you need to compete for it because the average person competes.
Most people, myself included, struggle to understand what actually makes us happy, what our needs truly are, and how to balance the pressures of the world around us (real or perceived, necessary or irrelevant).

We leave a lot on the table in terms of doing less and getting more — meaning, contentment, joy, safety — from our lives.

Or you are born to a developing country and get a remote job as a software engineer. Not much competition (at least until 2022).
Sadly no longer true. :(
Maybe just for now? Imagine if China start hiring all the laid off engineers. The US companies would need to start hiring again, paying even more than the first round.
Cool but who is going to support me while this happens?

I mean I get you but it's not happening any family people in the meantime...

> Cool but who is going to support me while this happens?

I don't know. Is this some arrangement you have had in your life? Being supported by others wasn't never an option for me, I will not expect to be the case now that my chosen career doesn't look as great anymore. I live frugally (after losing everything creating a startup) and saved most of my salary in the past 5 years tho which now gives me some space to breath and plan for the next breakthrough. If things get better again, you should use the current terrible position you are in as a reference to also save most of your salary if you get a good job in tech.

Has not been my experience, everywhere I've been to there's grind going on at all social levels.

The exception being, as you noted, some wealthy people (not all, though).

Mm. If you want to save on expenses, just considering living in squalor or dying. Being homeless costs $0! How's that for a deal?