[hopeful_coder]

Your comment is like un-comprehensible to me, I am 25 and I quit my last tech job 5 months ago thinking I would find the meaning of life only by having some time of thinking on my own and I also wanted to try out building things on my own since I don't find doing a job to be a good money making strategy for life, this is true for most people, not talking about folks with huge equity stake in companies.

It didn't work out like I planned and I am still as clueless as possible and loosing money everyday, getting to be retired before 30 sounds both incredibly boring and heavenly at the same time.

I want to know what do you think about life in general and how do you spend your young retirement days, does it ever feel like you have too much time but no reason to work towards anything since you have the money or are you still in the fight working towards some purpose ?

[Nextgrid]

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply retiring (in the normal sense of the word) at 30 is normal or expected.

However I am close to 30 and I am considering “retiring” from a tech career and moving onto something else. That’s why I put “retired” in quotes. I will still work, just not in this increasingly-bullshit industry, and I’ve already reduced my usage/reliance on technology as much as possible in my personal life (I’m still rocking an iPhone SE3 on an outdated iOS version for example, as nothing since then fits my requirements. Similarly my Mac OS is also outdated).

I assumed people can decide to “retire” from a job regardless of age (and move onto something else if their finances demand to).

> how do you spend your young retirement days, does it ever feel like you have too much time but no reason to work towards anything since you have the money or are you still in the fight working towards some purpose

I’m nowhere near retirement in the common meaning of the word but I have some money saved up which allows me to spend a year or so away from the increasingly-bullshit technology industry in which I started my career. Besides the day-to-day necessities and entertainment the only way I’ve found to “fight towards some purpose” at the moment is to argue with techbros on HN because I see nothing on the tech market that would allow me to put my skills to good use, and unfortunately short selling is unavailable to me since I’m not in the US and can’t trivially “just buy puts on the companies you believe will fail”, so yelling at the cloud and hoping something will change is the best bet I have right now tech-wise.

I don’t even see open-source/altruism as a way to achieve what I want; the blocker preventing what I want in tech isn’t code, it’s monopolies that have the law (or at least the lawyers) on their side. No amount of code is going to change that, and I don’t have the resources to set a legal precedent confirming adversarial interoperability as legal and take on the worldwide tech industry who will no doubt put their entire war chests towards litigating against such a precedent.

[fragmede]

Plenty of people go on to have second or third careers. One programmer I know was a music teacher for decades. He's really good with the interns. That winning the startup lottery means you have more money and thus freedom than most, means you're also less constrained in what you choose. Which may be a good or a bad thing. Constraints are useful, and absolutely freedom is like staring at a blank page not knowing what to write. You really have to push yourself, make yourself uncomfortable in order to find yourself. You can waste the rest of your life sitting at home posting on HN, or whatever forum comes next.

There's a whole big world out there that hasn't heard of Nvidia. Go find them, volunteer at a local non profit, help people you think need your help (Alan Watts has a bit on who not to help though). A human has to have a purpose, even if that purpose is planning the next cruise destination. That sounds boring as hell to me, personally, but that's at least got my friend doing things and leaving the house. Learn new skills. Travel. Make friends in strange new places. For the love of Dang, don't just sit at home on HN.

Or do. I'm just some rando on the Internet. (This message brought to you by someone who spent a year retired, posting on HN, and is now, back, gainful employed, trading hours for dollars. Email in profile if you wanna connect.)