My second year without a job (opens in new tab)

Didn't he say he started with $80,000, spent it, and is now out of money?

Presumably he now needs to either get a job asap or make some hard choices. But it sounds like the post is supposed to be a retrospective so its not surprising he isn't really talking about the future.

> I don't mean to be one of those people that shout "privilege

He literally had enough money to blow $80,000 on 2 years of unemployment. Of course he is privleged. Most people in the computer industry are. Most posters to hn are. The average person lives paycheque to paycheque and certainly doesn't have 80k just lying around in their bank account.

I called it out in an different thread. There's a safety net here that's simply not being mentioned. Nothing wrong with that of course, but let's not pretend that somebody with a monthly rent of ~1200 and a whopping ~60 CAD in savings would somehow magically be stress free. You'd be homeless inside a few months in the US.

I'm in a similar boat. -$800 in my checking and about ~$1000 left on my CC. Also from Canada. Morgage payment coming up in 5 days will put me in the negative, and another one in January as well. Should not have bought a house. I'm basically screwed, but I figure the wheels of the system or whatever will move slower than me finding work.

You can easily find the guy's LinkedIn. It appears that he is fully devoted to "entrepreneurship" rather than finding a traditional job, and currently lists himself as the founder of 2 current start-ups. So the unemployed part is basically by choice... and you'll notice, in the article, nothing stated about applying for jobs and not getting them.

I believe what this guy is referring to is that his startups currently aren't making money. And, to that end, this blog post is a marketing piece.

It’s the privilege of renter’s protections. Even with nonpayment the landlord has to go through a Tribunal administratif du logement hearing to evict them and that usually takes at least a few months unless the tenant is trashing the property on their way out. The process can get extended every time the tenant pays rent so if someone is genuinely trying to pay as soon as they can, eviction takes a while.

> I don't mean to be one of those people that shout "privilege" at every turn on the Internet, but most people with no savings and barely any income would be freaking out unless they had some family or support network to lean on, which I noticed any discussion of is suspiciously absent.

I understand the sentiment but I don’t understand why point it out. It’s not like the blog post in question is putting anyone down, complaining about anything, or being obnoxious.

There will always be someone more privileged than you are. Why constantly remind yourself (and others) about it if the more privileged person isn’t harming anyone?

Definitely feels like there is some sort of unmentioned safety net at play. Or guy is just fearless.

There is no problem surviving for a young healthy man in Montreal. One can always uber, deliveroo, tend bars etc, and it pays pretty well. Nothing to freak out about.

These past three year's markets have been super tough. It's the hardest I've worked in my life to be employed in the field I was interested in actually working in, which is building software. I've had to get two new roles in that time due to layoffs. 1000's of applications, and all that entails. I was ready to be a farmhand this summer before things actually worked out, figured I would get to work a farm on a lake, and fish on my time off, it's pretty much what I want to do when I retire, shouldn't be so bad. Just be flexible. Work as hard as you can to get what you want, but remember McDonalds pays nearly $20 an hour these days, if it keeps the lights on, don't be above it. Better than being homeless.

Completely agree. What is a "stable life" for some is complete chaos for others. What is "taking risks" for some is too safe and boring for others...

Speaking of different circumstances, here's a helpful income comparator based on actual numbers: https://wid.world/income-comparator/ . Figure out how common your situation is where you are.

My gut is telling me to sleep around. I don't always listen to it

My wife and I always say that the most dangerous show on television is "House Hunters International".

"I need a 3 bedroom apartment with a full kitchen in the village center, with at least parking for one car, I have a budget of $300/mo".

"Here's at least three options"

It also bring up a kind of discomfort between us, as tech workers, and regular people. The quantity of money we can earn, even at the lower end in the U.S., is unfathomable. It makes us want to go places and spend somewhat frivolously to support local businesses.

We were recently in Portugal. There's a ton of trendy food spots with prices near what we'd pay in HCOL U.S., but there's a ton of really local, mom 'n pop places, with absolutely incredibly prices, and they're incredibly appreciative of your business.

One place we frequented was maybe a 30 second walk from a very trendy tourist district, but served local food at very local prices. Ubers were lined up to drop people to go overpay for mediocre food in the district, literally on the street next to where we were eating. If they would have just taken a moment, they could have come and had a great relaxed meal and support some locals for almost next to nothing.

My brother and his wife did this; quit their jobs and spent a year in Europe "slow living" (still did a bit of consulting work, maybe 10 hours/week), but with careful planning were able to keep their expenses waaay down (not sure of exact figure but much less than if living in the US). Month-long AirBNBs in non-tourist areas are inexpensive, so they'd spend 1 month in each place. A lot of walking, hiking, trains, just living. Not Paris, London or Zurich of course, but places like Albania, Montenegro, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, France of course. (Part of the reason for going to those countries is you can only spend so long in the Schengen Zone.) So you don't have to go as far as Vietnam or Ecuador to do this.

Obviously the OP has no children (and my brothers' kids are grown up) - if you have kids this changes the equation completely (though if they're very young then it can still work).

Stories like this make me the most mad at the Landlords/NIMBY's (sometimes the same people). An $80,000 "investment" into a one person startup should take you much much much farther than this, but it is completely gobbled up by literal rent-seekers.

BAcK iN mY dAy a room in a house would cost $400-$500/mo in most places in the Montreal-Waterloo corridor. Now runways have basically been halved (0.3x'd?) as an extra allowance to the landed gentry.

Not only you suddenly will get the entire week for yourself, to do whatever you want, and you will be able to travel, but the other benefit is reviewing your relationship with material possessions.

I did that (sold everything, and went traveling), and now I own very little stuff. Apart from the mandatory laptop I need for work, and clothes, I couldn’t care less about everything else.

Before selling everything, I had a sick setup of dual monitors, and external DAC, speakers, headphones, keyboards, etc. Today, I need only laptop. I was considering getting one monitor, but can’t seem to justify the need.

It really teaches you how little material crap you need.

Think long and hard before cramming your crap into a storage unit. Outside of possessions with some sentimental value, it's likely the money spent on a year or two of paying for a storage unit (particularly one that is climate controlled) exceeds the value of the things you're storing there.

After a last horrible work experience, I decided to quit working for a while and travel. Haven't sold a lot of things, some are still stored at my parent's place but I managed to live off my saving for almost two years. I could have gone a lot longer but unfortunately some bad investment decisions and a long dream of obtaining a pilot license shortened my runway by a lot.

In the past months, my situation has gotten worse as I needed to tighten my belt due to my saving having almost completely melted. Hard but enriching times, I have now found a job after months of searching. The market in Europe isn't great these days. Back to hustling but without any regrets.

100% agree with OP, it was the experience of a lifetime for me. If I can give some additional advice, plan your finances. Even if you think a large sum will last you years and you're a bit lazy to plan it (as I was), don't be conservative with your forecast, plan large. Personally if I had to do it again, I'd try to keep half or one third aside for unexpected cases.

$80k will give you one year of very comfortable life in Central Europe. If you want to live in an international city in a decent flat 4 years is not realistic, more like 2.

Would not recommend, if being alone is a risk factor to mental health.

I’ll second this advice, counterintuitive though it may seem.

Back in the day, I had saved enough to take a nice 3 month leave of absence from work to do some travelling. Nudging my spreadsheet around, I tried replacing my rent, utilities etc. with the cost of a storage locker, and suddenly my “how long can I go for “ number shot up to over a year.

It changed my whole approach to life in my 30s, and it was a good 15 years before I committed to living in a single place long term again.

Sorry, but then what - money will just be magically waiting for you when you’re ready to come home? Having spent every penny to your name?

God it must be nice to be in a position where you can afford to just be like “ok my partner and I are just going to travel for four years, and after that, idk, things will work out somehow.”

> and travel, 4 or 6 months in each location.

At least have a plan first and make sure you understand visas. I have fiends who sold up everything and moved to Switzerland only to be turned back at the airport because they didn’t know they couldn’t just move their life there unemployed

I'm sure if he had known he was not going to get a job, he would have taken your excellent advice.

As someone that hasn't been able to travel, this sounds wonderful

Which parts of the world? What kind of lifestyle? What kind of living situation? What kind of opportunities?

> into a storage unit

I've heard some terrible things about how vulnerable those are to theft / squatters.

I am currently doing this, AMA!

In Canada you just die before you get a family doctor :)

Last time I went to the ER, the wait was 10h for kidney stones. Thankfully I passed out for 4h in the waiting room from the pain and the stones passed by the time I saw a doctor, so all they did was send me home.

My family doctor died 10 years ago and I'm still on a list.

Being your own employer is the only way to take charge of this.

Platforms like Gusto, etc. make it so even small businesses can offer benefits and insurance like bigger companies do.

I went though various big and small employers plans, several states' exchanges, and none were nearly as good as doing the legwork to get benefits setup for my own company. Now I choose.

I'm in Illinois, my bronze marketplace plan was $247/mo this year, and the coverage was good (for what I used at least). 2025 plans look to be going up $50/mo or so which is annoying. Still a good chunk to have to pay, but nowhere near as bad as your situation.

Makes me curious how much marketplace costs vary per state?

In any case, as another person pointed out, the ACA plans also provide very high premium credits for low income households, covering up to ~80% of the costs (from what I've seen). But this also varies by state, I think.

> Has anyone else considered leaving the United States long before retirement age?

Yes. I'm American but was born in a small country in Eastern Europe. I was planning on moving back during the pandemic, however I was presented with some job prospects I couldn't reject and my move was delayed. But I do plan on retiring in my hometown within two years. There is universal healthcare which sucks for the most part, but private insurance is extremely cheap (compared to the US) and I could retire more than comfortably with my current nw. And by 'retire' I don't mean stop working, I mean I'm going to work on whatever I want.

And to your original point about healthcare, it is the absolute single reason for why I did not take any sabbaticals or long term leave even while burned out, for my insomnia during layoff seasons and generally for my job related stress.

The bronze plans are basically catastrophic insurance, not preventative care. If you want that you have to take it into your own hands in the USA; eat right, exercise, do the annual checkup Mine paid out when I had an appendix close to exploding and several days in the hospital. Of course I paid the deductible which was $6500, however the remaining portion would have put a large dent in my retirement fund, but thanks to the “bronze” plan, I was fine. So what is the risk for me?

ACA plans would be free / fully subsidized in that circumstance.

I did. Healthcare was a big part of that decision. My older siblings have been through hell both medically and financially because of the US healthcare system.

I decided to learn from their experiences and GTFO while I could. I miss my family and friends dearly, but it’s a massive relief (and privilege) to be able to get the care I need and not worry about whether the cost is going to bankrupt me.

My friends have successfully relied on Medicaid during financial hardships + unemployment. At least in NYC, the Medicaid plans are quite decent.

Also, for those who require plans similar to the one previously provided, COBRA (18 months) is decent -- expensive but presumably less expensive than "equivalent" in the marketplace if we're talking about a good corporate plan.

in CA if you make less income than the minimum (like $18.5k as a single person) you are put onto the free Medi-Cal plan. so thats nice. :)

this is literally impossible at most companies due to politics, incentive alignments, OKRs etc

At the end of the day, it's a bet. You'll probably make zero (or negative after expenses). You may make some passable income. You might make a lot.

Whereas working for a big company, you have a fairly reliable shot at bringing in a decent income with some stability.

Nothing is guaranteed of course.

I’ve had extreme control over my role over the past decade (leadership in startups) and I couldn’t even do what you suggest. I’m not sure how you think the average person could

Exponential growth means getting the timing, positioning and right amount of execution just right.

Also feels like chasing a lottery win. Some folks might be chasing a financial safety net first that is smaller, because the variables and formula of everyone's life in what they have to take care of is valid.

I'm very happy for people who are able to swing for the fences, and also happy for the people working on getting more hits to bigger hits to swing for the fench. I know the latter is a much more sure way to get an outcome to have time freedom to really swing fences.

Everyone does what they best can do, if there's not an option in front of them at work, some people have to try to create the option themselves if it's not geographically accessible.

>meaning trying to innovate and strategize within their current company to make the job more fun, gain more autonomy, and advance their career prospects

Assuming that's in an environment where it's possible (no shitty office politics, etc), the monetary returns from that ain't gonna be competing to a succesful project. Nor is the freedom and satisfaction ever going to be the same. And of course all progress in that front, is a round of layoffs or a change in management away from being nulled.

So, it's a safer path (as much as being an employee is safe these days), but not achieving the same thing.

You only need exponential growth to work once

I’m sorry, but what exponential growth are you talking about? No company will ever pay you that much as a regular salaried employee.

Fair, but the exponential growth function can be much more aggressive for a side project than your career. In a career, you max raises at 20% per year over a 5 year period? But side projects can have revenue increase 20% MRR.

Also, within companies, you need everyone’s unanimous permission to do anything.. if a problem is big enough, the team would do it themselves. If the problem is too small, the team won’t integrate.

Given the dense amount of wisdom packed into this comment I checked out your profile. Both your current projects look extremely impressive and polished. And viable! Keep up the good work! It’s inspiring to see that in light of the obvious difficult lessons you’ve had to learn along the way.

Having learned many of the same lessons as you I can 100% backup everything you said in your “sum it up” paragraph!

The only caveat I would add is to the “make an MVP with AI”. I think MVPs generated directly out of ChatGPT/Claude are so easy now (or at least it can appear so on the face of it) that many people are just barely going beyond that - but to any experienced eye, that approach is quite transparent and can look very low-value (even if the idea is actually a good one).

Now if that person is a skilled salesperson then that might work.

But, for most people, I think it’s still very important to demonstrate good instincts, taste and strategic/commercial understanding when building such an MVP. And that means editing and shaping the output just enough to meet your vision for the product. So to agree with you - definitely, 100%, use AI as much as possible - but don’t assume that you can put zero work in on top and have that MVP be effective. Because the 10 year old down the street has the exact same tool as you - so if you are just relying verbatim on that tool’s output- it’s going to be hard to stand out.

I’d still definitely agree to spend as little time as physically possible on the MVP - with the above caveat.

Having said all that… a lot of historical wisdom on the topic of MVPs has been turned upside down since gen AI became mainstream, so on the flip side you could argue: create 1000 MVPs in an hour, publish them all, see what generates interest…*

Hmm.. I think I just argued against my own point.

* (I’m not really seriously suggesting anyone do this, but I’m also not entirely discounting this as an approach either…)

This.

Build only after customers have thrown money at you.

As it’s at that point you have enough clarity and specificity to build.

> like your personal life, don't get married until you're absolutely sure

I misread “personal wife” (in Kripky’s voice from big bang theory) and after I was done chuckling, I started thinking of something funny to comment about the other types of wives there are… then reread your comment and… yeah.

Thank you for sharing this.

Good lessons!

You are on hn so let me ask you this: Are/were you a nerd? Did you play around with systems, use linux for fun etc.?

If yes, you just might be depressed or haven't realized that a job might be shit anyway.

If no, interesting though that you are aware of hn (i have to assume a certain interest because i know plenty of software people avg ones, not being aware of hn at all).

But hf at the navy.

similar boat. Been doing software for 15 years and I used to love it. Learning new languages, side projects, contributing to open source, you name it. At every job I became less enthusiastic, like the technical problems all became the same. The actual problems became ones of people, management, customer, product, etc., and I had no interest in solving those. So this year I decided to not code... and I don't miss it at all. However I have no idea what I will work on next.

I was in the army before uni - it was grueling but awesome. You'll find your way fren

One solution, if you can, is to take part-time work. Then you can reduce your expenses to that level, take time off for living, without having to spend down your savings (or only very very slowly). Then it's sustainable.

Yes, I'm not sure how helpful it is in TFA to compare living costs against average living costs in the area and then call it a win if you're anywhere below.

If I was unemployed my living costs would be far, far below average, even allowing for the "it's expensive being poor" factors. Even when I've been in low pay jobs I've lived on very little and definitely didn't feel like I had budget for "travel" or other non-essentials.

As an employable person without work, before I reached negative bank balance I'm pretty certain I would have found a crappy job to at least slow the decline and buy more time. I can't see from this story why that hasn't been deemed necessary here.

A similar but underreported possibility here is gastric ulcers which correlate extremely well with cortisol/stress.

You can attempt to fix it by taking NAC which is an amino acid with no side effects for $20 a month or so. Usually you don’t need to take it continuously, just in regressions.

It is frequently misdiagnosed as the other more serious/intractable things you’ve mentioned.

Isotretinoin is poison, here's my article about it: https://www.kaiwenwang.me/writing/effects-and-detoxification...

In some parts of the internet, Vitamin A is theorized to not be a vitamin but a poison.

Auto-immunity is likely related to biofilms in the intestines and plant defense chemicals such as lectins in combination with leaky gut.

Try looking @ cabbage juice for your Crohn's. There are YT videos about it.

> it is a boom-bust industry,

It's surprising this is not more widely recognized. The majority of corporations need help configuring existing software, not developing and marketing novel software. Those new opportunities come and go. If you want stability, get a job in IT.

If you make half a million dollars a year, it's really easy to save lots of it.

I didn't make that much (but also don't live in the US). For some time I was living on about 5% of my income and saving the remaining 95%.

I have not been out of work since 2002 but same time... I earned nothing close to 500k or even 250k.

I think this is very much US centric. The upside is much higher salaries. Clearly people need to plan for when it ends though. The industry is more stable in Europe and Australia. You don't get paid as much though.

I appreciate that you used that time to build that second home.

Any estimate on the value creation from building that home vs the $50k consumed?

"That’s honestly how life is meant to be lived but it’s too bad we’re not at UBI levels in society yet"

This sounds great. My question is why should I have to work and pay for you to do what you want all day?

Yes, that sounds very nice and you are very privileged and lucky. Leisure is definitely a lot nicer than work, but there's a lot of work someone has to do. You can choose to pay people to work, or not, but if you pay people to not work you have to figure out some other incentive for workers or the necessary work won't get done at all.

I do prefer living in industrialized society to subsistence farming and slavery, personally, so maybe let's try to keep the incentives in place and NOT copy the Soviets, yeah?

And implying that there's a way we're "meant" to live implies we were created by a conscious being with intent, and I think you'll find that's a controversial view

Did we read the same article? This guy is spending his time learning music, mastering a sport, spending time with close friends, and your takeaway is “he should be grinding away at a corporate like everyone else”?

There’s a lot of different ways to live. Personally I like taking periods of voluntary unemployment to explore other interests. Finding a job after has never been a problem.

A large percentage of the population has at least some safety net. Probably the average 25 year old could move back in with their parents for a year if things got really bad.

I'm depressed studying computer science. Been thinking about quitting seeing how people with years of experience can't even find work.

try 10 years because i havent made a dime since 2016

The people I know who do this are either exceptionally talented that employment will never be an issue for them in their lifetime and/or (it's usually and), they can burn through $100k no problem, any day of the week.

Nobody I know is leaving a $70k a year job to take a sabbatical. They're usually leaving a $400k+ per year job and there'll be another similar job waiting for them when they're ready to jump back in.

Kids are another huge factor that changes this. I don't think I've known anyone who's done something like this with kids in the picture.

>Not having a job is a pants-on-fire emergency, and I would be interviewing 24/7 until I corrected it, even if the hiring market meant that was hopeless. I'd be a nervous wreck until I found a job, any job.

Same, although I'm not sure it's always a privilege thing, but also one's background. I've done pretty well for myself these last few years, and financially speaking it would not be the end of the world if I lost my job tomorrow. But I come from a working class family, and grew up with nothing.

I was raised and surrounded by family members who work a lot harder than I do for a lot less pay. They sacrificed a lot for me to go to school and get a good job, so if I were to lose it, the last thing I'd want to do is just chill for 2yrs even if I could afford to.

The first few years out of university I consistently had < $10k on my bank account and was traveling as much as I could, with just occasional part time work to "fill up" a few k$. I loved it and couldn't imagine living any other way, neither retirement nor risks were just really on my mind at all (it wasn't really a zen thing).

Now I have a child and feel completely different. The moment she arrived I immediately felt way behind on retirement savings and stability and since then my #1 priority has been to catch up. I'm hoping that not long from now I'll be able to translate being more secure on paper to also mentally getting back the care free feeling I had before.

I completely agree with you. I actually have this privilege and I still would be absolutely grinding until I got any job.

I also think in terms of retirement - it's not just savings being depleted, but it's active months I'm not adding to my savings. And I'm certainly not living off of 50% of what I make post-tax, so the burn rate becomes exceptionally high.

I quit my job two years and four months ago. I'd worked non-stop for twenty years (10+ at the last company) and was getting three weeks of vacation time per year. I'm in my 40's and finally decided that I wanted to enjoy some of life while my body was still in shape. Watching the savings drain out is hard, but what's harder is thinking about going back to the grind and never having any time for myself again.

100% agree with this. Whoever said take a break and go traveling either have money saved up or have no idea what they are doing. Take a break from what ? Most of these people have not even worked for 5 years.

My first thought is "which rich family member can they coast off of when shit gets really bad" or "where's the rest of the money you haven't touched yet?"

So many of these "I've been funemployed for 5 years" articles NEVER talk about the hidden asterisk that, well, actually, they have plenty of money and are just fine; they're just conventionally broke.

In my experience, the relax and travel crowd has much more than 80k liquid - or the ability to acquire much more than 80k via relatives etc.

Alternately, they have very cheap tastes. It's entirely possible to live off of 15k per year while hiking the AT, there are at least 5 equivalent trails to hike globally.

I would read the story posted with a bit of skepticism. They obviously have more of a safety net then they're letting on - because there's simply ZERO way that they wouldn't be stressing if all they genuinely had in savings was ~60 CAD and the stated rent is 1200.

I also travelled the world, but I did it as an ESL teacher. Nothing encourages you to integrate faster into a country's culture and learn the native language than actually working there, and you feel like less of a tourist.

I get your point because I'm also quite like that, but the reality is that I've spent all of 2024 in dead-end interviews and got no results other than wasting time. In hindsight, "had I had the crystal ball", it would have been more rewarding to relax good and proper. I still don't have a crystal ball, though.

> Accounting for time value of money, that's just pushed out my retirement date by 3 more months

You account for the time value of money, but not for the time value of time.

A week right now is worth more than a week 30 years from now. 30 years from now, your life might have changed beyond all recognition, or you might be dead.

Reasonable people can disagree over how to discount future freedom-from-work vs present freedom-from-work.

How old are you?

I used to be in the same boat. Somewhere in my 30s I realized I could fall back on my skills if it ever warranted. Now I am between jobs and considering not going back to work.

What I’m saying is that your life outlook shifts as you age and experience common life events

the first thing I am going to tell my kid when she enters the "workforce" is that her #1 PRIORITY (she won't have any student loan debt) is to save F YOU money. 6 months at least, 12 preferably. Life without it is terrible. Not just for the fear of losing your job and not knowing what tomorrow brings but (in my opinion) even worse - staying on a job that makes you miserable because you need that paycheck coming regularly to survive...

It mostly just comes down to having kids, right? I am certain that if I were single and happy staying that way, I would be living in a van in Moab and doing the bare minimum amount of freelancing to keep myself fed.

Yep. I was laid off a bit over a year ago, and I literally did nothing but try to get my next job, and fortunately got one in 2 months before my severance ran out.

I have easily enough to live a whole year or more without needing to work, but I would never consider that for even 1 second, tbh. Never even thought hard about why, it's just not an option to me.

Reading this article and its comments (except this one), the casual attitudes towards unemployment were striking. I realized just how few people here have children

I used to be like that.

First of all your situation and context is unique. Everyone has their own circumstances (including aging parents).

For many, even perhaps for you this is a reality. However for others its a fear of worst case scenario as a protection mechanism that served you when you were at a certain stage of life and many just kept it as a habit.

For a single grad without responsibilities after 3 years of working at a FAANG this fear of the future shackles them to explore and take calculated risks.

I've seen people with $20k in their savings account going for 1 year sabbatical describing it as transformational.

Its all priorities I guess and sometimes we can't say for every case that its actually the lack of agency that is holding you back.

Only you know for sure internally when reading this, if its making you uncomfortable and uneasy and if you have an emotional reaction.

For some, as mentioned its a reality and they are fully content with the limitations that they have and choices that they made in life that are now irreversible.

Up to everyone individually to evaluate their situation, however what is important to understand is that whether its really your context that is holding you hostage or just your fear.

Maybe it's the wrong way of looking at things but I have such minimal plans for retirement and that choice has led me to being extremely happy now rather than waiting for it later. The memories and adventures I've had by spending my money on experiences have led to moments and connections I don't think I can see myself having in retirement. It's a gamble but I'd rather live now and hope that when I retire, I 'Ll be happy to live an extremely frugal modest life.

There are a lot of people on hacker news that have significant savings from working in bay area tech.

I've been out for about two years. My retirement is a bullet or poison. It's just that simple. I will never earn FAANG money such that I can make up for the lost time.

>Not having a job is a pants-on-fire emergency, and I would be interviewing 24/7 until I corrected it,

This would have the absolutely opposite effect of that, I was in this mood and it made getting a job impossible because I'd appear too stressed and too depressed on every single interview. Sometimes relaxing and letting it be is just better and a lot more productive.

"Accounting for time value of money, that's just pushed out my retirement date by 3 more months."

It sounds a bit, like retirement is your only goal in life.

Personally I am not sure, if I make it to retirement (WW3 or whatever), so I try to enjoy the ride a bit more.

Also yes, I do pratice Zen meditation. But I doubt I am a master ..

I’m exactly the same. I have excellent savings. But even still, unemployment is a must-fix critical emergency for me.

If nothing else, pulling money out of investments to fund expenses due to lack of income feels like robbing myself of future gains.

My problem is that the main thing I want to do when I have free time is work on DIY'ing around my home, and however much money you save in labor, materials and tool costs are still pretty significant.

> Whenever I read articles like this and the ensuing "just relax and go have fun/travel" comment chains, I think to myself I'm living in an alien universe. Not having a job is a pants-on-fire emergency, and I would be interviewing 24/7 until I corrected it, even if the hiring market meant that was hopeless. I'd be a nervous wreck until I found a job, any job.

That's on you. Stress is something you generated, not something that exists in the world.

I am not sure if you are really young, but you definitely sound like either nothing quite earth-shattering has happened in your life, or maybe some stuff has happened, but you have chosen to be very selective about how you digest it.

Sometimes life hits you like a truck, and you get trapped under that truck for a really long time. Then, once you get flung in the ditch and think you just had the most horrible N months/years of your life, a whole colony of fire ants starts crawling on you and pulling you apart.

So, yeah, sometimes certain actions could be a sign of privilege, sometimes, they could be the tiny thread giving a person a lifeline.

Being able to only optimize for proximity to retirement could be a more "privileged" state to be in, than having 80k in Canada in certain contexts.

> I should add that I'm married with a kid, since that obviously does affect the math on this one.

That changes the equation altogether.

Rampant singleness I guess.

IDK I have the same thought.

Any basic financial advice would tell you to have 3-12 months worth of emergency fund ready for unexpected events. Losing your job is just another unexpected event. If you’ve got a 6-12 month runway of money, why wouldn’t you take a little bit to destress? And if you’re laid off in most tech roles, getting some (often substantial) severance is pretty common. You may not even need to tap into an emergency fund.

Even with a wife and kids, all that means is that you have more household expenses. Just means you’d need more money in said emergency fund.

I moved to Silicon Valley in the fallout of the dot com bust, and I had this amazing HR director named Rex who gave me a fantastic intro to tech career life. One thing he told me that has stuck with me is "You need to live your life like you may not have a job tomorrow." The full weight of this didn't register for probably a decade or more, but I take it now to be this:

1. You may have zero income tomorrow. Plan for that, especially if you have a family. Tech companies pay good money, and you need to stash that money away while you have an income because there are pretty good chances that some day you'll wake up and not have a job.

2. You need to foster the professional relationships you make while doing your day job, because almost nobody is going to be working at that company until they die or retire, which means everybody is going to be looking for work. When it comes time to look for work, you will want a network to reach out to. When you find yourself in a position where you have something great and you need to hire great people to help you achieve your vision, you will want a great network to reach out to. Take time to look after the folks you care about. Pay special attention to the humans you have done great work with. Those people are probably going to be more valuable to you personally and professionally than the company you are working for, and the same goes the other way for them looking out for you.

This wisdom was later supplemented by a contractor we had hired at a different company, who came back to meet with us after we hadn't used all our paid hours and said "Look, I know you're upset that (some guy you loved working with) is no longer with us. We're also bummed about that. But we have done great work together as a combined team. Not as companies, but your engineering team and our engineering team. We hope that you will think about that when you need help with anything, at this company or in the future, just like we will think about you individuals when it comes time for us to solve problems that you would be good at solving."

Every time there is a layoff, I think about this nugget that Rex told me, and that supplemental anecdote, and every time they are just as relevant. This wisdom has saved me so much stress, and opened so many doors for me. I admit that it hasn't always let me take my unemployment completely worry free, and that I have made some desperate decisions while unemployed which I later regretted. That being said, I still think this is solid advice, not just for the tech industry, but for everybody everywhere. This is especially so if you are a humanist or are anti-bigcorp. It has helped me find peace with having to walk away from jobs when I needed time for me or my family, or when things just weren't working out. After the blood bath of 2023, I am living this advice more than ever, and the last few times I have wondered if I was on the chopping block, aside from the emotional response of visceral existential fears that come up in such cases, I've found peace in the rational knowledge that having planned for not having a job tomorrow, I can set those fears aside and look for the opportunity in my new circumstance.

Are you young, or living outside the United States?

American developers are staggeringly well compensated.

I don't think this is a universal solution. I was unemployed for around 6 months, and my parents thought it was laziness that I didn't try to get a job at a gas station or something. I used the time to develop skills that helped me later. I got a job after that which didn't pay the best for being a software position, but the skills I fostered in that time were directly helpful in landing the next one that had a 60%+ pay bump with better benefits and learning opportunities. I absolutely would not have gotten this position without that time devoted to sharpening a specific skill set.

it depends, you still need time and energy to apply for jobs, keep your skills sharp, etc. not every job allows you to do that. and in some countries doing jobs like that looks worse on your resume than a gap.

He was investing it, in starting new businesses. He has revenue from one. The return just wasn't what he wanted.

Yep, 2024 market is considerably too good though. When he about to quit, I'd expect 8% yield (pessimistic) per year, so $6.4k/yr or $533/mo, that's "good" living quality in non major cities in Thailand. But to be fair, it's only good for locals, not for foreigners. And that $80k also needs to be invested 1 year before quitting.

It's doable for extending up to 3x of his runway.

The type of people that want to start companies rarely invest. Once you adopt an investor mindset you start to see startups as one of the riskiest investments you could ever make.

I've seen quite a few one hit entrepreneurs lose it all chasing the next idea and never investing anything.

What's the difference in risk between the S&P and BTC? I'm all in on S&P and it feels as if BTC is an even bigger gamble.

Depends on when that money is going to result in the most valuable experiences, of course.

you can always earn more money after you spend it

Hi! Author here. You are very much on point. I only recently started looking for part-time jobs, and perhaps I should have mentioned it in the post. It's precisely what you said -- financial stress started impacting my hobbies and sports, and that's where I don't feel as comfortable anymore.

> But unlike the author, I came back to the workforce. I don’t know what’s the end game for the author, but I kind of feel torn here.

His timing wasn't great. The tech job market is pretty dismal right now and will likely be dismal for a while. Unless we get back to a hot tech job market like circa 2020-2022 it's not going to be easy to find a gig after being out for 2 years.

> unemployed burning through my savings.

did that include retirement savings? Are you behind or on track for when you're inevitably too old to work?

a massive L to me is living your life by not taking risks because you are more comfortable counting your money beans and watching the compounding interest

Yeah, I don't get why people are praising this idea, it's a huge risk to take. If you don't have a safety net to catch yourself, don't do this!

I was low-fodmap for YEARS (a little onion on something would trigger an emergency bathroom situation for me...) . but now FODZYME means I even make onion jelly for my burgers with zero discomfort. it costs about a dollar per serving and you have to put it on after cooking (heat denatures it or something) but it is truly a game-changer. im not affiliated in any way except I just ordered another bottle.

I would recommend going and interviewing and changing companies. Get anyone else to hire you, it's better than zero income, and then you can figure out if it's the culture of your company bothering you.

Cost of living in the US is very high. HN skews towards the SV crowd. $80k isn't even a year of rent for many here. If you instead bought a home recently in SV, $80k wouldn't even get you halfway through the year.

There's a reason people get paid $400k+/yr in SV. The place is expensive and you need to keep people there somehow.

I mean, or it heavily restricts the pool of founders to mostly those who already have enough wealth such that they won't be homeless.

I don't see why a safety net wouldn't mitigate this risk in the first place, which would then allow for more people to take these risks and come up with great ideas as well

(I'll nest my thought here, as there's some relevance to your position)

I'm looking a long way back to when I was in your position : I got fired about 10 years ago, after unrealistic expectations and mental health burnout led to me making regrettable statements to executives.

The entire experience and time since is far too large to encompass in a post. But perhaps my biggest takeaway after all this time is that most people waste a great, great deal of money frivolously. Having even an average income, more often than not, leads to a lifestyle where it's standard to buy a $50 version of an everyday item because it has a certain stamp and shiny packaging, instead of the $10 one that frugal people use. Going to the food markets with a comfortable income is a thoughtless experience of filling bags with items you like the look of, regardless of price or purpose. Tens of thousands are dropped on a whim for a change of travel-box (car). An executive spends more on daily coffee than I do on my total coffee+breakfast+lunch. The income finds a way to be spent, but the experience isn't necessarily that different.

I'll indulge in another edit-in point. Home economics. It used to be a school subject. People thought it was about cooking, and sewing. Millions of mothers and grandmothers from past generations know that basic cooking skills actually = a lot of money in the bank. The best food you ever ate, at half the cost, in perpetuity. Concepts like these, where you trade a % of your time for directly applicable, $-winning skills (as opposed to using salary to pay others) is a key necessity of living sustainably outside the traditional 40-hour-week employment system.

The best part is when you realise it's all the same. You'll job Here, or you'll job There. Everybody does 24hrs of something per day, and if you're smart, you WILL find your way to comfort. Perhaps on surprisingly less money than you thought. It will just take time and persistence.

And if not, well, the traditional job market always wants smart people too, sooner or later.

I took over a year off working on a project before I joined another company. Never made any money, but in retrospect I see that I could have made it work in 2-3 years, but the stress would have interfered. Wish I could be more chill, but money stresses me out. Getting close to do it again, but this time I'm fairly close to being financially independent at a barebones lifestyle. I mean, with 22 years of living expenses saved I should be fine right? Right? I should be able to make some money at SOME point. But the reason I have 22 years of expenses is because I'm neurotic about money...

> a part-time remote job coupled with full time traveling on a budget

a.k.a. Digital Nomad

the challenge is finding such a job.

Is Bali still cheap? I heard is was a mess now.

There's unemployment insurance but only if you're laid off.

Expanding on this, OP, please see a GI doctor. These could also be signs of much worse things you want to catch early.

Also, carefully consider the costs. It's usually pretty hard to get the first 80-100k; burning your principal to 0 probably doesn't make sense. If it wasn't hard for you, that income stream is worth a lot, so you should carefully consider whether you're burning any bridges. If you're not burning bridges or burning principal to 0, that's a complete reframing of the situation.

Being single for a couple years isn’t the end of the world. Besides, he’s in the climbing community, which (at least from the outside) appears to be chock full of barely-employed attractive men and women who all sleep with each other.

I have more experience with this than most of the HN crowd. I've not been working for 2.5 years. Being unemployed is considered unattractive but if you spin it - it's not too bad. I spin it as, "I did startups in SV, one of them went public. I have plenty of money." Most everyone gets it but some women are put off by it. I'm literally taking time away from SV because I'm on the hunt for a wife. I couldn't find one after being in SV for 8 years and so now I'm in NYC where at least I can actually meet women. I've traveled a lot as well but I don't recommend that as a way to meet your future wife. Dating culture outside of the US is very different and very few women will be interested in dating someone who is traveling around. There are also other issues like being used for a green card and so on. Sleeping/dating around casually isn't as much of a thing in other countries and it's a necessity if you're going to try to form an intense bond with someone.

Overall, I think for a tech worker, the real issue is that so many women will not date a tech worker to begin with because of the low social status associated with dating a tech worker. I've met thousands at this point and it's honestly made me regret joining this industry. I do not advocate for it at all.

I think the bigger hurdle with dating beyond that anyway is physical attraction. The bar for that is really high now. Being a rock climber only attracts certain types because rock climbing tends to have more lanky builds. You better hope you're attracted to women who only want to date slim built men. That is a niche woman. As well, you can't escape your baseline genetics like height, facial attractiveness, etc. People talk about rock climbers sleeping with each other all the time but it's mostly men who are rock climbing. There are some women but the ratio is 3:1 - which means you're 2/3 chance of not getting anywhere.

I didn't notice a difference personally during a long unemployment stint. Not being employed lends a lot of free time to focus on self development and to be an interesting person which is beneficial to dating. Also, an unemployed partner can do a lot of cooking and cleaning. I used large chunks of my time to plan and create elaborate meals for working partners and keep co-living spaces spotless and organized. This is substantially more challenging for me personally to do with full time employment.

Just have to find someone else that’s unemployed? Or someone that doesn’t care? If there’s men that don’t care a woman is unemployed the reverse must be true too.

Highly agree with your comment, just wondering what you mean with "CRM pipeline to get a job"?

I'm interested, how can I check it out?

Let’s see if that last bit lasts after Jan 20