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Haha I have the same feeling and goal, my friend. 20 years in this field, I’ve done a lot, I’ve learned a lot, but I haven’t given a real shit about the career part in half a decade now. Since early 2025 I have gone all in downsizing my life so I do not have to put up with this nonsense to have a roof over my head. I don’t care about AI, about cloud, about navigating the job market which has been utterly broken the past 5 years, React, Kubernetes. Right now I am being paid a lot to write software for a megacorp, that gets scrapped 6 months later without ever seeing production, without anyone appreciating the effort that went into it. Endless meeting, ever-changing specs that I somehow deliver on time because I am decent at this career, yet it’s all for naught. It’s so fucking soul crushing I want out. I have gone from needing 4 grand/month to survive in London, to savings all I can so I can buy the cheapest house in a cheap country in mainland Europe, and live with 1/10th the cost. Then I can dedicate my time doing what I truly love (research into OS dev and language design), dedicating 3 months a year to prostit^Wselling myself cheaply as a consultant to fill the coffers again. Maybe my cost of living will be so small I can survive doing open source. I can’t remember being this excited about not having to have a real job any more, especially not in software engineering. Here is the advice for you, so obvious in hindsight, no one really pays attention to it: the difference between poverty and wealth is spending less than you earn. That’s literally all there is to it. Want to work less? Spend less. Move to a lower cost of living part of the world. |