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Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

It could be "pay cut for different domain" or "pay cut for better location but lower CoL". In a more extreme case you can re-spec to another industry altogether. You may not make anywhere close to what you made in tech, but you have 7 figures in stocks and 6 figures in savings anyway. Money is no longer a worry, why not follow a passion?

In addition, it can be non-job motivations. e.g. you take a year off to travel for a bit, or engage in some hobby that you know won't make any income. I wouldn't mind doing some art classes if I ever got to that kind of money to live off of for years.

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> you have 7 figures in stocks and 6 figures in savings anyway

I honestly can’t tell if you’re serious here. I’ve been in tech for almost twenty years and the only way I could have 7 figures in stocks is if I still lived at home and didn’t contribute anything to the budget. There is a whole world of people working in tech outside of Silicon Valley’s ridiculous compensation. Money is still a concern for the vast majority of us.

No one in my company has equity except the founder. On the off chance we actually get far enough for me to get equity I’ll be lucky to get $100k out of it.

I'm a game dev so no worries, I'm about as far from the minmax total comp bubble as you can get.

But yes, it was a purposeful use of extremes. Unless you rush to young retirement or are in that SV scene and move out, most people won't have the means to metaphorically move out to the pastures and become a farm hand.

But that is in fact an option for a few in tech. I recall some 20+ year googling choosing to leave and pick up comedy as a career.

> better location but lower CoL

How does that work?

"better" is very subjective and doing a lot of heavy lifting, my apologies. The easy snarky response is "move from US to EU". But it can be a personal choice to simply get out of the metropolitan areas in favor of a quieter area, or one with better transportation or less crime or friendlier communities.

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