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Comment by throwaway8941 | Hacker News Reader

This is a privileged position to take. IT is one of the very few ways to have a relatively decent life in my third world (well, technically second world) country, especially for those of us who can't rely on nepotism to put them in a comfortable place.

Sure, I can go make furniture out of wood for $150 a month (and I did at some point in my life), but I'd rather keep my cushy lifestyle and stare at a screen for 16 hours a day, thank you very much.

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Good for you. No, really. I wish you nothing but the best. But that's now. After some years, when you have already secured a relatively decent life, your perspective on the value of continuing to do it might change. In fact, it would be rather amazing if it didn't. Yes, it's absolutely a privileged position, but it's still how I feel and how I suspect a lot of programmers my age feel. You can't dismiss our reality any more than we can dismiss yours.

I don't think you can secure a decent life by programming outside of US - if this is understood as position of comfortable financial independence.

I'm a programmer, my income is in the top 10th percentile, but that just means I'm in the upper middle class with the privilege to pay more taxes. I need to work until I get to retirement to secure myself financially.

> I need to work until I get to retirement

That is true by definition. No matter how much or how little you make, it remains true. The question is: when do you get to retirement? Making a lot of money makes it a lot sooner.

In my country I get to retirement when the government says I can go - more or less. Otherwise the pension is really small.

To explain: a large chunk of our salary goes to the state's pension fund - not my fund. When I reach the official retirement age the government will allow me a pension that is scaled based on my payments while employed.

At this time I'm looking at 3 decades on front of keyboard (am 40 and the official pension age for me will be around 70).

For now the "trick of the privileged" (like myself, I guess) is to work remotely for an US-based company and get half of US salary, while living in a country where that salary is still 2x what you'd get on your home market. It probably will stop working at some point (as salaries for remote workers reach equilibrium), but for now, it's a good way to live.

Ok, I suppose in that case where you can get as remote a salary far exceeding local market rate the situation is also conducive to an early retirement :)

FWIW I think that's the same in the US as well, unless you strike it lucky with stock options. As obscene as Silicon Valley salaries are, it would take remarkable financial discipline to get to the point where an early retirement could be had.

I believe that due to market forces, engineering salaries are set as high as they can be without producing "escape velocity" for said engineers.

That said, I'm not in the US proper but in Canada, but I'm in the same position as you: highest tax band, make very good money, but unless I were to dump everything and move to an area with a much lower cost of living I will be in no position to retire before 65. Doing that (major cost of living reduction) becomes difficult once you have children.

Id agree but can we stop using "obscene" in this way and TBH a average SV salary is nothing much to write home about compared to some other professions.

It's very doable in Poland - see my comment above somewhere. At least for now, the taxes for contract work (even long-term one) are low and the pay puts you probably in 98-99th percentile in the country. Retiring in 10-20 years is real (of course, it requires full-blown careerism: job hopping, going after the hottest fields/fads etc.).

Everything's a privileged position to take, as you can always find shittier jobs or people that have it (much) worse in life.

Doesn't mean it's not true or not relevant.

I wonder if those making furniture are just doing it to stave off boredom after cashing in millions of tech stock profits. I've already seen exactly this sort of pattern in a few people I know.

When I was a manager for a few years I started wood working as a hobby. If you have the builder/creator itch then when you stop building software then you will need an outlet for your itch. When I went back into software development, I have not touched the wood working.

Wood working, classic automotive restoration and several other hobbies tend to scratch a similar creative itch that software does. They each have a element of perfection above perfection, unlike software success in a project is easy, but similar to software mastery is difficult.

There's definitely some truth to that. I've grown to hate technology over the past decade or so, largely because I'm a technologist who believes that technology should exist to make our lives better and the entire modern industry seems hell bent on doing the opposite. Consequently, I'm considering radical lifestyle changes that I am forced to admit would probably not be possible if I had not saved a good amount of money that I earned working in technology. And I don't even make that much because money was never a big motivator for me.

I'm neither rich, nor do I work as a programmer or software engineer, but I have found woodworking to be extremely rewarding. Wood is an amazing material, and there's thousands of years of woodworking experience available in books, online instruction videos and DYI guides so it's relatively easy to get into. It's nice to use one's hands for other things than a mouse/keyboard.

There is a middle ground.

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