[scarecrowbob]

Oh no, you mean I might not be able to get another really annoying job so I can, what, have more money than I need to live on?

I used to get paged at 1am to mess with downed webservers, now I hang out in a shack with no running water in rural CO.

I'm 48 and have a chunk of cash that made more last year than I've ever been able to make in a single year doing salaried labor as a programmer.

I quit 3 years ago when my kiddo graduated college and have been just living on that and my small A/V production business.

It's great.

I do a lot of work; I have done first aid at one music festival, paid sound at a bluegrass festival, and sat around doing random volunteer stuff at another. I can give the local music school and the local civic orchestra really good bids on doing sound for them. I am going to get an EMT cert because I have a friend who contracts to do first-aid at festivals.

I'm not at all worried that my (pre-LLM) programming skills and connections are going away- I've replaced them with mandolin skills and much happier.

[josh-sematic]

You are describing where I want to be when my kid graduates (years from now), mandolin and all! Low cost of living, contributing to the community, enough time for passions… Not able to get there yet but it’s what I’m working towards. I just hope LLMs don’t eat my current career path before I can achieve it.