Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

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I'm also 58 and still mostly active in software development. I say "mostly" because I did give early retirement a try - it lasted about 2 years and then my current job came along, looked really interesting and here I am.

It's not just my brain that's not as elastic - my body isn't so elastic anymore either. I can't sit for more than an hour or so before I've gotta get up and take a foam-roller break. Lots of aches and pains that I'm finding are causing me to lose focus.

After ~2 years of not working I found that I didn't much care for it - I needed more purpose or something. Just felt like I was floating along not going anywhere. I think the happy medium would be to work 3 days/week. I could do that indefinitely. Not really be retired and not really be working full time. It would work monetarily as well since the house is nearly paid off and we have no other debt. But software development gigs where you only work 24hrs/week seem to be quite rare.

I left Facebook shortly after they abandoned their own plans for a 3-day-week pilot scheme which I'd been very eager to join. Someone I'd worked with before was now head of engineering at a reasonable-sized tech company, and was willing to give the 3-day week plan a try for me.

This was right at the start of 2020, and only working 3 days a week definitely helped me avoid pandemic burnout. But unfortunately I ended up working the 3 days that had the most meetings (this was a double-sided effect - it made sense to work those days else I'd miss important meetings, and then important meetings that included me gravitated to those days). So I ended up with 3 days that were stuffed full of meetings.

This was unpleasant enough that when the division was sold to another company, I opted not to take the transfer (and staying with the old company wasn't an option, as part of the terms of the acquisition deal). I'm now doing some flexi-time consulting that, while not as lucrative, gives a lot more latitude for scheduling my time.

I guess I should clarify that this wasn't the only reason I didn't take the acquisition transfer - it really wasn't clear that the acquirers knew what to do with the large number of smart people that they were basically acqui-hiring. But the heavy concentration of meetings caused by the 3-day week did influence my decision.

I have a close friend who had a win from a startup acquisition at 38 paired with just saving his money. He had a similar experience to you with retiring.

He said it took him 6 months to realize that he didn't have to work anymore. After about two years he ended up getting married and starting a family and can't see himself ever going back to working.

My dad on the other hand worked a normal job and retired at 60, told me it took him about 6 months to accept that he didn't have to work anymore either. As funny as it sounds, I think it just takes time to get used to not working.

Your comments are treating work as some sort of dichotomy. It doesn't exist. There are several reasons to want full-time employment:

- Purpose (do something good in the world)

- Mental challenge

- Physical challenge

- Meet people

- Earn money

- Daily routine

- etc.

Full-time employment is a popular way to get these desires satisfied, but it's far from the only way.

For example, if I would take a sabbatical right now, earning money or meeting people would not be an immediate problem. However, I would miss the mental challenge and doing something good for the world. So I'd likely take up open source contribution. I'd probably do quite a lot of it -- several hours per day. Is it work? No, I don't think people would call it that. Does it do for me many of the things work does for me? Yeah.

Sorry you're right, by "working" I meant "working for The Man" :-). I just spent my Sunday afternoon working on writing jokes for my standup comedy routine, The Man wasn't involved in that work at all. Pay's a lot less than fixing broken websites though ;-)

I think the same could be said for wanting part-time employment.

3 days a week is definitely doable, at least as a contractor (source: that is what I am doing right now, and I even have the luck of being able to choose between two companies for my next engagement)

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