They inevitably move, only to find the new place they're in sucks, just in different ways.

Or they find another job, but just discover more things they hate there.

Or they find a new partner, only to discover a new set of annoyances.

The same psychology leads people to think they'll be happy if they finally get that new car, or that new house, or that new TV.

All of it comes from the same place: assuming that happiness is something you can find by simply changing your circumstances.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are absolutely good reasons to want to change those circumstances! But it's critical to understand that oftentimes there is no one change of circumstances, one decision, one thing that will result in happiness.

I know it's a cliche, but I think I'm old enough now to confidently say that, yes: Happiness really does start from within.

After the 3rd such place, and a complete inability to effect change - I threw in the towel and started my own agency 2 years ago. From the outset I made the purpose of the company to be quality of life, not profit. Fewer clients/hours per team member, more time to execute and put out work you are proud to hang your hat on. No assholes (teammates OR clients).

For the entirety of the past 2 years, including the hard bits of actually getting it off the ground and getting those first few customers, the difference has been night and day. My stress levels are the lowest they've been in years. My relationship with my wife is better. I never dread Monday, and rarely pine for Friday. Sometimes it really is the environment, and sometimes that environment is pervasive in a particular industry.

But how do you get started? I have tried a few times and every time I got discouraged and it didn’t pan out. It’s just overwhelming, and I don’t know where to start. Then I’m doubting my abilities and thinking whether I really want to work like a dog for very little pay for months/years to start the business? Or maybe I’m just better off doing another 18 months stint followed by 6 months off to recover.

I know I’m not alone in this, but haven’t figured out how to get out of it.

Any insights on the above, or a blog if you’ve written about it already?

- I've been working in my industry for over 12 years and have amassed a decent sized network and twitter following along the way

- I don't have kids, so my costs are lower, and my time is my own.

- My wife makes good money and was supportive of me taking a hit to pay while I got things going (I didn't draw any money from the biz for the first 6 months, enabled by the next thing on the list)

- I had a close friend be willing to give me an essentially risk free, low interest loan of $30K to get things going. Enough to cover me for those 6 months. Loan was structured to be forgivable if business failed in the first 2 years, 5 year terms @ 5%, with no payments or interest accrual in the first year. Obviously a loan like this is a rarity, but if you are sitting on some savings that could be a good stand-in.

- I ran a business once before many years ago and learned a lot of the hard lessons that time (taxes/accounting/entity structure/hiring)

- I do digital marketing & WordPress dev - which means the service I sell is also a skillset most founders need (ability to market their service, set up a website). I'm also pretty comfortable selling to both a technical and non-technical audience, and I'm comfortable pitching directly to and managing the expectations of C-suite folks.

All of that combined is a pretty great place to "start from zero". Success wasn't guaranteed but I certainly wasn't going about things the hard way.

Anyway to get first few customers I started being pretty active in places where people who might need my services gathered - Slack communities, subreddits, et cetera. I tried to give insightful advice where good answers could be given in a few paragraphs. I offered to look at peoples issues directly or to solve really small problems for free + an ask to consider me for larger projects or retainer work, or to just say nice things if someone was asking for the types of services I offered.

I also pitched 2 customers who normally would have been below my going rate/retainer size as basically a "I need some case studies, someone has to go first, you'll get a bit of a deal if it's you". Once I had those first 2 customers as a base and a nice referral pipeline as a result of them and the presence in those communities I was able to grow from there.

When I had around 4-5 steady retainer clients and a bit of padding in the business account (about 4ish months in?) I started hiring help. I had a lot of previous experience hiring and working with international teams so I leveraged that to save some cash early on by hiring in the Philippines, Romania & South Africa. By the end of year 1 we were a team of 4 (myself included). Total revenue was around $200K, of which I managed to pay myself around $60K before taxes.

At the end of year 2 there is about 8 of us now including our first full time US hire. Year two was just shy of $600K in revenue and I was able to get myself back into 6-figure territory compensation wise, give everyone raises + Christmas bonuses, and still keep several months of runway in the business account. I don't expect the biz to make me a multi-millionaire any time soon (and that's not the point anyway), but things feel pretty stable at this point and growth remains strong. Results probably not typical.

I see zero chance of being able to pull it off myself though.

The parent comment glossed over "the hard bits of actually getting it off the ground and getting those first few customers" -- it's really hard. Five years in now things are going okay, but it took a while to get back to the came total comp I had pre-starting-my-own-biz, and even now the level of work is much higher (but so is the comp...).

If I had to do it again I'm not sure I would, and would definitely do a lot of things different. The big one would be going hard on biz dev from day 1 (or even day 0; start prospecting before incorporation), with #2 and #3 being talking to an accountant and lawyer ASAP once I could afford them.

Agreed on accounting & legal - though this is easier now than ever with services like Bench.co - which I set up on day 1 right after spinning up the business entity & bank account.

What does age have to do with it? You're one person. It's anecdotal data.

I'm old enough now (5 years later) to confidently say that, yes: Quitting my last job really did make me happier.

I have less money now, but I don’t care. I’m much happier being where I am now.

People underestimate just how much work life affects your entire life.

Typically when I play a game I like to explore every nook and cranny, trying to find secrets and glitches and stuff. Lately it just gives me anxiety to start a new game when I know it will be on deck for years. I've been playing through Tomb Raider since 2019 and I'm not finished yet... I think I need to consciously change my play style and expectations, and just barrel through main story lines.

I went over to a younger coworker's apartment last night to play video games, which is a very rare activity for me. Left 4 Dead was a lot of fun a decade ago. He loaded up whatever the latest call of duty zombie horde shooting game is, and it was more stressful than fun. I have an interesting anecdote about stress and Tomb Raider. In 2020 my heart AV nerves all stopped working. My effective heart rate got down to 20-30bpm, and wouldn't increase with demand. A few days before I ended up in the hospital, I tried playing Tomb Raider just to see what would happen. After about 5 minutes my peripheral vision started to black out and I felt like I was having a panic attack!

LA Noire and other games like it (e.g. Red Dead Redemption, Destroy All Humans!) seem to have the opposite problem, where I seem to remember the game being more engaging and challenging (in a fun way) than it is now. I guess that's a result of growing up and getting "smarter".

We haven't even touched on the micro-transactions/pay-to-win stuff...

As for the panic attack- I read an interesting book recently called The Body Keeps the Score. It's about PTSD and how, even today under the DSM V, it and similar conditions aren't getting the attention they deserve. While reading this book, I realized that my "fascination" with Dead By Daylight (similar to Left 4 Dead) might be rooted in adrenaline/stress hormones rather than pleasure hormones. Indeed, I had (have) several "hobbies" that my brain seems to be interested in for the stress they cause (like stock trading, holy fuck). The book poses that my subconscious thirst for stressful activity is actually a coping mechanism that is derived from my dysfunctional attachment style to my parents and my subsequent childhood experiences. In other words, stress and worry are all I've ever known. I'm in therapy and taking an SSRI for this now, and I'm significantly better than I was, mentally.

Speaking of Red Dead Redemption, I am working toward being able to robustly stream games from my desktop computer to the living room TV. I'm hoping to try playing through Red Dead Redemption 2 once it's all set up and working. It's non-trivial, as I will soon be relocating my desktop to a detached guest house. I think the reason I am drawn to Rockstar Games is because of their level of immersion despite the relative lack of gameplay complexity. I like that the only customization in L.A. Noire is picking an outfit, and if you want a bigger gun you have to open a car trunk in the middle of a shoot-out.

I am certainly nostalgic for the games I played in my youth. StarCraft, EverQuest, Starsiege Tribes, Medal of Honor and Battlefield 2, Freelancer, the list goes on. My old friend came into town a couple years ago, and we had a small LAN party for old time sake. We spent an hour just getting StarCraft to run reliably on everyone's computers. It was just as fun as ever.

That does sound interesting, I'll have to check out that book. My wife copes with a vaguely similar sounding past. I think her "Left 4 Dead" is watching shows like Criminal Minds. Glad to hear the therapy and SSRI are helping you. It's tough.

I recently started trading individual stocks for fun, but with a relatively small principal that won't stress me out. I see so many "news" articles telling me which stocks to buy, and I've always assumed they're manipulating me into being a sucker. So, I've been blindly taking the free advice to see what happens. I'm only down about 10% right now. Also, my investment in SHIB coin is due to take off like a rocket at any moment!

The Body Keeps the Score mentioned some alarming statistics... I don't recall the exact figure, but MANY Americans are dealing with some amount of PTSD whether they recognize it or not, as a result of having a non-secure attachment style as an infant. It sounds kind of strange that a lifetime of strife could come from how your parents were with you as an infant, but the science seems clear-cut.

With stocks, generally speaking if you are reading about a stock in the news, it's too late to hop on the roller-coaster and you will get left holding the bag. Most of my money is in index funds, but it still stressed me out trading a small portion with individual stocks.

Avoid ARKK/Cathie Wood. I have no idea what she's doing. She just loaded up on TSLA, as she does when one of her picks tanks, but automakers typically trade around a 4 P/E and TSLA is still well-above that at ~$120/share. TSLA will almost-certainly fall below $100 this year and perhaps even below $50 in the longer-term.

That also made me notice that, even though I played quite a few single-player games when I was younger, most of my fun with games was on multiplayer/competitive games, it could be a grind to get better but there was a practice and I could feel myself leveling up my skills and playing them better, some up to competitive levels. That's always been more satisfying to me.

Newer high budget single-player games (feels like in the past 10-15 years) also feel much more like an interactive movie than a proper game, I don't want to be clicking to interact with a movie, I like mechanics and figuring out the metagame, I realised that watching something unfold with some interactive action in-between is not really my kind of gaming.

For the last 10 years I've basically stopped playing videogames, my gaming nowadays is mostly getting together with some friends and playing tabletop, it's social, it's fun and you always get to see a different persona of the people you know.

Then adulthood came and I just don't have time to enjoy games. I do watch a ton of TV shows and movies because they're easy to start up, put down, or even watch while doing something else that doesn't require full attention.

I do occasionally do a Let's Play of a game that looks promising, ideally one with little commentary, where the player focuses on the story elements rather than completion (prioritizes talking to characters over a speed run, or 100% quests completed, all collectables collected, etc).

Those are unfortunately hard to find (though I'd highly recommend the Cinematic Playthrough of Last of Us for anyone interested in experiencing the medium at its absolute best).

The nice thing about a Let's Play is that you get the story elements of the game, and can 2X speed through slow dialogue, skip action sequences as soon as they become monotonous, etc. You don't get to explore at your own whim unfortunately, but I've found it a good middle ground for being able to experience (and talk about) excellent games, while investing 10-20% the time actually playing it would take (not to mention it's free). It does tend to be more enjoyable with games that are fairly linear, rather than something like Fallout where there are thousands of ways to explore the game and align your character.

Other than that, I enjoy playing board games with friends.

Where else in the world people dont spens most of their lives at work?

I've worked in some manufacturing domains where unions negotiated the ability to essentially opt-out of large amounts of the work year. There were people who would take off Nov-Feb to essentially focus on families during the holidays, hunting, etc.

I think, to a certain extent, the fact that we're highly productive yet have an expectation to work constantly is a measure of our value systems. (Obviously, highly context and culturally dependent.)

I work for a large swedish company in USA. None of my coworkers in sweden work less than 40 hrs, like not even one.

So is having that choice really relevant and does it really make it different than USA.

If Swedish residents can work fewer than 40 hours at their discretion, why is it you think most in your circle do not take advantage of this?

Qualtrics released the results of a survey recently stating that 92% of Americans are in favor of a 4-day workweek (that's not necessarily 32-hours)[1]

[1]https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/four-day-work-week/

Maybe because they want the money and working 40hrs isn't so bad? But i really have no idea.

That survey isn't directly related to your original point about working less than 40hrs.

If you are claming that its much different in other countries mere existence of some law isn't enough, it would be a stronger point if you had quoted how many people are actually taking a paycut in those countries in exchange for a day off.

Also sounds like you haven't really looked into laws of MOST first world countries ( whatever that means) yet you made that claim without any proof.

We need a four-day (32-hour) workweek. Give me a 20% pay cut, I don't care. Most of us here make well over $100k/year. What we need is TIME.

It would be interesting to see how cultural aspects affect this. In the West, it seems like so much of our life/identity is focused on our job. "What do you do for a living?" is one of the most common opening questions upon meeting someone. I wonder if the impact of work life on one's happiness more muted elsewhere.

I quit and then asked: “what if I stayed and do I regret leaving” on my last 4 companies.

Universally the answer is no I don’t regret it. One imploded and laid off like 60% of people after turning into a nasty political hell hole. Another laid off massively and is now world renowned as a failed story. Another gave me zero opportunities and everyone was yelling at each other all the time.

Believe me, I tried to enter my internal universe and be happy not learning and not growing.

Being bored to death and underutilized if you feel highly talented and creative is a form of death.

Op needs to answer: What has he done in his life? Built a unicorn and IPOd it? Jet skiing with super models? Inventing cures for diseases? Or did he sort of sit in a cubicle typing and reading Reddit for the last five years.

A lot of those on here, I don’t listen to their input on what successs is.

I will never be happy until I am climbing to the highest potential I can get to. No one is going to talk me into being otherwise.

From a more scientific perspective, there have been plenty of studies done on happiness, and it's virtually undeniable that our external environment has at least /some/ effect on our happiness.[1] I'd argue that one has to ignore or dismiss a massive wealth of studies in psychology to insist that happiness only comes from within.

[1] Since I'm talking broadly, this might act as a good summary - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

By all means, people can say what makes them happy!

My point is that we have no grounds for criticizing another person's subjective experience or personal life choices, nor is that desirable as a goal for this website.

How would you say the OP adds to the discussion if what they say, almost by definition, is meant to shut down discussion? Or is your issue with pointing out HN guidelines? It feels like you're reading way more into my point than was actually there if you think I was criticizing anything related to their life decisions.

It's fine with me if someone has that point of view. But I don't think a forum like HN, which is supposed to be about fostering dialogue, is the best place to share it, or at least share it in that manner.

I've already explained this: "It's supposed to be about intellectual curiosity. Not questioning other people's life choices and giving unsolicited advice."

You've actually warped the direct quote "No one is going to talk me into BEING [emphasis mine] otherwise" into "Nothing you say can CHANGE MY MIND". The OP is talking about how they feel, what kind of person they are, what kind of life they intend to life. Not talking about some kind of belief about a subject X.

This conversation with you is becoming very tedious, and I'm repeating myself, so I doubt that I'll be continuing.

I didn't misquote; I said "amounts to" in order to indicate I was paraphrasing because it seemed like it would benefit from rephrasing since it appeared we were talking past each other. Although what you've pointed out comes across as a difference without a distinction to me. Saying "No one is going to talk to me into BEING..." is just as apt to shut down healthy conversation.

Fair enough when it's just a vague, general sentiment like "making the most of your life." What is probably worth being open minded about is how you define the objective function that maximizes that potential. It might be a little odd if I defined "making the most out of my life" in the same way I did when I was six (or even 16) years old.

I'm happy for your success. I assume it was earned with hard work. I hope it works out. A lot of startups with high valuations are feeling the crunch right now. Many of those will peter out and the founders will join the rest of those depressed by their life choices and/or feeling like victims of circumstance. There's far more to success than forgoing comfort and there's far more to happiness than success.

For my part, I co-founded and built two companies for ~4.5 years each: one in hardware and one in SaaS. The SaaS one was in the second batch of TechStars Boston. I had some success and I'm happy I did it. I learned a lot and it was generally fun. But, I trashed my health and wouldn't recommend others do it under the guise of happiness.

Nowadays I do industrial research on language VMs. I get paid very well. The work is gratifying. I have time for my kids, I'm learning things on the job. And I work with great people. I'll probably start another company some day because I like the variety of work and the thrill of the chase. My startup experience gave me a broad network and introduced new opportunities, but I'm only marginally better off compensation-wise than peers that worked a more conventional career. I'm almost certainly behind in terms of lifetime earnings. Many of them are impressed that I struck out and built multiple companies, but that has no real bearing on my happiness.

I'm not sure what being in the top 0.5% means without knowing the metric. If you love starting companies, have at it, but I can think of more challenging paths if you're looking to reach your full potential. Some of the smartest people I've ever met built the foundational technologies that allow SaaS to even exist while working for decades at the same company. I don't know how happy they are, but I know how impactful they've been.

Is your point that in order to take risks to be happy you need to be so cock-sure as to be closed minded? I tend to disagree and would probably characterize that as reckless as opposed to taking informed risks.

(Jet skiing with super models BTW is one of the most ephemeral ways of gratification one can seek, probably induced into you by media -have a look at Girard's theory of mimetics to understand why you even want this- and as such something that will only impress the most superficial of people, if you tell them "I super-model jet skiing" when asked what you did with your life - all of which make me believe this must be a young person writing.)

it might sound embarrassing to admit, but it was actually watching Fight Club and the scene animating the Ikea catalog and the accompanying monologue (and overall theme of the movie/book) really got me thinking about it. i was mid-20s when that came out, and it definitely planted a seed. people do remind me of that when i mention making soap!

A virgin will have serious FOMO over sex. But the more experiences you have with different partners, the less special it is ie. the less FOMO you get since you've "been there done that."

also, if you have moderate ambitions and desires, with time you may reach a point where you've met them. Then you are less focused on those for happiness.

so I do think age has something to do with it

The adage is generally that wisdom comes with age, and there are some things in life that are difficult to internalize until you’ve gone though the experience.

To me, it’s just another way of saying “the more life experience I gain…”.

I believe that if you never were in a position where your job was a soul-crushig source of misery and despair, you've been lucky to live a sheltered life.

Most people don't have the privilege of picking and choosing outstanding jobs with decent work/life balance, nice colleagues, reasonable deadlines and considerate stakeholders. Most people have rent/mortgage to pay, kids to feed, and unfavourable odds of improving their life with low risk and impact on your life. I'm sure they gained a lot of life experience too.

Personally, I’ve been on both sides of this conversation. Grew up dirt poor, started working as a teen to help my family make ends meet, and dreamed of a “better” life where the work I did mattered to me and the money I made would be sufficient to not constantly wonder where the next meal comes from. A constant source of that soul crushing misery and despair.

Later in life, I was fortunate enough to experience the lifestyle afforded by a Silicon Valley salary after working my ass off to get there, an “arrival” of sorts.

Younger me had no ability to comprehend how/why this high paying job would make me more deeply unhappy than I’d ever been in my life.

Life experience is contextual and relative, but important nonetheless.

I would go further - majority of people on this planet live painful and miserable life.

I don’t want to speak for the OP, but I think they’re using age as a proxy for “I’ve seen this same pattern enough times to…”

Also, there's no evidence that the OP is older than, say, me, which is why citing age is largely irrelevant.

I'm not. In fact my previous comment would still be valid if the line "What does age have to do with it?" were omitted. The important point is that the anecdotal observations do not apply universally.

We are probably reading their comment somewhat differently. Because of the way they couched their statement as rooted in their personal experience, I assumed their were implying it was anecdotal and obviously not a generalizable, objective truth.

"I think I'm old enough now to confidently say that, yes: Happiness really does start from within."

As I already stated, I read the OP as if the latter. Despite the often pedantic nature of HN, there's a lot of room for nuance and interpretation human communication.

"Bluntly, every person I know who's expressed these kinds of sentiments is guilty of the same mistake: [living outside southern California]."

Actually an entire field of psychology is based on the idea: cognitive behavioral therapy.

But you seem like you need to pick a fight, and I'm honestly not in the mood, so carry on.

"Bluntly, every person I know who's expressed these kinds of sentiments is guilty of the same mistake"

That was my life for years. Then I changed _everything_. Quit job, broke up with my girlfriend, sold my flat and most of my possessions, different job, became a "digital nomad".

Now I'm "happy". I found a job that doesn't have all the things I hate about working. I can do sports I enjoy much more frequently, I'm not stuck in a loop where everyday is the same.

I guess I agree that _one_ thing most likely won't be the key to happiness. I think the key is figuring out what makes you happy(I think a lot of people don't know) and what makes you unhappy(this is usually easier to identify). Then doing more of the things that make you happy and less of the things that make you unhappy.

I'm not sure if that's what "happiness starts from within" means, but that's what worked for me.

Edit: I guess being happy also depends on the definition of the word. Depending on the definition, maybe I'm not happy.

I don't believe this take is fair or correct. FANG-like jobs are designed to depersonalize workers, compell them to work extremely long hours, force them to be constantly on and available, and basically live for the company, only to be pushed out of the company by design and get fired as disposable canon fodder at the slightest bump on the calendar.

The pay might be good, but it resembles a deal with the devil.

Have you ever wondered why the average tenure at some top tech companies is measured in months, and reaching a milestone like 4 or 5 years is lauded as a major achievement? I seriously doubt that so many people is just "externalizing their happiness". Sometimes it's really the job that kills you inside and does so by design, don't you think?

That mostly doesn't match my experience in two ~5y stints at a FANG:

* Depersonalize: maybe; not sure what you mean by it here.

* Extremely long hours: not at all. Most people worked ~45hr/wk counting ~1hr/d of lunch. I averaged a bit less than that.

* Force them to be constantly on and available: no. One of my roles had an explicit oncall rotation where you were primary for about one week a quarter and secondary for another week. The other role had no oncall. When you were off no one expected you to be in contact, and several team members had configured their phones so that their work profile was completely deactivated outside of work hours. At times when I was excited enough about what I was doing that I wanted to work extra my manager pushed back hard, getting me to think about the impact on team culture. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34329670

* Be pushed out of the company by design and get fired as disposable canon fodder at the slightest bump on the calendar: I worked closely with ~50 people and didn't see anyone fired. The people who got somewhat close to getting fired were ones who were having trouble getting things done, but in a sustained low output sort of way that was clear to everyone they worked with and not a "slight calendar bump" sort of way.

And honestly, I was averaging maybe 5 hours of real work a week in some stretches. Ofcourse crunch time happens, and it is team dependent, but one has to take control of their experiences in any company or situation instead of relying on others to make their expectations happen.

It was dehumanizing in its own way because you are such a small cog in a large machine, but nobody worked long hours, nobody was forced to be available all the time, nobody really needed to sacrifice for the company (because everybody was such a small cog) and even the lowest performers I worked with could basically not do anything to get fired. Many people there were also "lifers" because the job was so easy.

Most people left due to having ambitions for more impact, not due to being burnt out.

For two reasons: 1) it contradicts my lived experience and 2) it contradicts research.

Let's start with money. I used to be poor and now I'm not anymore. I used to have all kinds of anxieties about money, surprise surprise, once I put my nose to the grind, earned more of it, and developed a healthy financial cushion, those anxieties disappeared and I became happier.

My anecdote isn't the only data point, there's research out there which indicates that more money correlates with more happiness (though the effect has diminishing returns once you hit the upper middle class).

There are at least three really big external factors I'm aware of which are correlated to happiness in a big way.

1. Money

2. A supportive network of family and peers

3. Health and fitness

Every time we look we find that as people improve their circumstances in these areas, they report greater happiness and fulfillment in their lives.

I'm not saying that striving for inner peace and all that is necessarily a waste of time. It has its benefits. But frankly I think if you want to be happy you can do a lot worse than busting your hump to sort out the three things I just mentioned. If you're broke, sick and alone, inner peace isn't really a priority. Working on those problems is.

After all, we're discussing a blog post of a young bored top-earner from one of the most impressive cities in the world.

The circumstances of my work make a large difference to my happiness. I know because I've been in a number of different circumstances and my happiness has varied greatly.

So maybe what some people think are the sources of their unhappiness is actually just making their unhappiness more obvious.

Yeah in the limit you can't achieve capital-H Happiness with a change in physical circumstance but I don't think that's what's at stake here.

Thankfully I learned years ago this doesn’t work and got past this mindset. Changing circumstances has never significantly improved things for any length of time.

> Happiness really does start from within.

I’ve also never had any luck with this and am increasingly convinced some people aren’t destined to be happy.

Roughly everyone. Happiness is an unattainable construct designed to sell you more stuff and experiences. It isn’t real.

Contentment, though, now that’s achievable. But it doesn’t get talked about because it doesn’t monetize well.

The Oatmeal has my favorite explanation/take on this: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy

A recovering alcoholic friend of mine once told me this syndrome is well known in 12 step programs. They call it "doing a geographical."

There are irredeemable places, and places that just don’t work for an individual. They key is knowing when it’s a problem instead of just running somewhere random and hoping it’ll fix all your issues.

Personally? I feel way better in sunny, dry climates. My mood improves a ton and I legitimately feel healthier. Right now I live in the exact opposite and I don’t like it.

i’ve had jobs that didn’t feel like work.

not sure if you intended by you come off defeatist.

if i was again at a job that was making me sad or angry i’d:

1. list things i hate

2. list things i don’t mind

3. work to do more of 2 and less of 1

if after a year it’s still unbearable look for a different job. talented people have more options than they realize.

If anything, getting older is strongly moving me away from your mindset. To the extent that well-being is intrinsic it seems to be more about the causal relationship to environmental factors. Some people are better at managing workload, setting boundaries, avoiding stressful situations and finding a "scene" that fits their values and abilities. I've seen these people do very well.

There are plenty of people out there ready to tell you that happiness and well-being are all about attitude. But when I look at the people in my own life who have said this none of them have been particularly happy or seem to have figured things out for themselves. And it's no coincidence that some of the strongest advocates for "individual responsibility for happiness" are bad bosses and abusive spouses who have a vested interest in keeping people in bad environments.

To me, stories like this one read more true to life: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34406760#34409368.

You can change your circumstances in another way. Reduce your expenses despite all the money that's coming in. Then find something important to you. It feels like it should be something altruistic. Funnel money to it. But also funnel your time and energy.

Buy some property in Detroit and build a safe house there. Fly in once a month to be involved, actually forming concrete, or roofing, or whatever. Then be involved in forming the management team, and be the board chair or something.

Or found an IT version of a farmer's market. Whatever that means.

Design and build a cylindrical windmill that stinks, but can be installed on balconies to harvest $5 of energy per month. Then invite people who know what they're doing to teach you how to get that up to $20/month and cost only $50 to build. Refine it until you can distribute kits.

Launch a wheelchair repair service. Coach a 4H club.

I know recent events have made altruism look bad, but I'm not advocating... well, I guess maybe I am. I never really looked into it, so I don't know. But I know it feels kinda good to shovel a neighbor's driveway every so often.

100% - and for some people to excel in connecting with themselves, they need a calmer environment - or just more simplicity.

But his sentiment reminded me right away of the book "The Quest of the Simple Life" by William James Dawson.

Now let's go full-circle for a moment: sometimes the job, or circumstances, stand in the way of this ability to find inner peace, or sometimes just think. Even standing apart in a vacation for a few weeks gives you the ability to snap out of it. It's true in my experience that sometimes, the job needs to change.

The attitude expressed in one of the top comments above around happiness being within and not connected to changed circumstances is narrow, I've had this debate with friends who are high-achieving types. They argue that one should adapt and make the best of it, and often it's you and not the job. They also drink a lot.

Doubling my salary and being paid what I am worth by doing what I wanted to do brought me a peace of mind I never had in the last five years (since I immigrated to a new country). I do not have to worry about so many things anymore, it's truly amazing and liberating. I can focus on what truly matters. I can take risks. I can plan for the future without having to go to the depression realm of looking for a better paying job.

Did I hate the jobs I did before? Some of them, but the money aspect stressed me a thousand times more than the work itself. When you don't like your job and do not have the money, you have to worry about both. When it's only your job, you know what to focus on and if you have enough savings, you can be bold and take risks.

A few years ago, I read this NYT article titled "Your Job Will Never Love You Back" [1] and that tagline is stuck in my head since then. Your work doesn't define you and even your dream work will have boring parts.

I'd suggest to go to therapy to focus and work on yourself. Better days are yet to come!

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/business/your-job-will-ne...

jack of many master of few

And for many, it's one small slip-up, poor choices, medical problems, etc. and they may have to look forward to these sorts of jobs ... potentially until they drop.

I have no back-up plan, and ageism is a thing. I have to play this software engineering game for as long as I can to avoid the service sector when I'm older. And I have to play it very carefully.

Right now I'm sitting pretty, good income, unlimited vacation, work from anywhere. A "dream" job. But for how much longer?

Fingers crossed. I am not sure about turning to drugs, that would likely amplify the hell and make suicide even more of a viable option.

It's a grim outlook, I try not to think about it.

Definitely though it will become an issue later in life, though I have to wonder if agism really will be a problem for us, or if it will be that we simply quit the rat race of keeping up with the industry. I'm thinking about all the older developers/engineers I have worked with over the years, and they all had one thing in common- they did not or would not keep up with the industry. Some were working with System Z mainframe stuff, some were working with VB.NET, and most moved into management.

Management is certainly one way you could save yourself from aging out (whether through agism or not keeping up).

It’s all relative, and you are viewing their jobs through the lens of an engineer making 6 figures.

Someone wouldn't spend 30 years working retail in utter misery the entire time, these are intelligent people who have agency. I spent ten years working these jobs and the people who were there for life were relatively content.

On the flip side, it has never been easier for parents to ensure prosperity to their children. For some people, if your parents [and or spouse's parents when applicable] have saved enough to de-risk your [and your siblings'] financial situation; are there anecdotes of how to leverage that to exit the rat race [or probably not enter at all]?

On the second point, you could obviously time inheriting assets to retire early, but I think there's risk in how it was done so that you didn't jeopardise future generations or lose purpose. There are typically existential risks for family businesses, as an example. It's easy to lose motivation/purpose if you have it easy and get things on a platter. There's exiting the rat race to retire or exiting to be self-employed in some fashion, as one consideration.

There is clearly not enough incentive to bring a bigger portion of a population towards a [somewhat subjective] better quality of life. This might be the polarization inherent to human nature.

So far we have done well to curb and mitigate crime, risky events, etc. Maybe the next phase will be more long-term focused including sustainability, responsible waste management, sensible regulations on fast-food and healthcare, etc.

Let owning property while the market rises benefit the few, we cultivate human capital more broadly. We have to be cautious of bloat, red-tape, short-term-thinking spreading to more systems and processes. We have to do something about education systems that seem to face too much inertia and vested interests among other reasons to not witness significant-enough innovation.

^ a few random thoughts in response to your first point

Land and home ownership has become harder, financially and psychologically, even for middle class and above.

However the negative behaviors you mention is mostly younger people and they will not usually be owning homes by themselves. So your home ownership hunch might apply to the family of such actors; extrapolating, the general social fabric around potential negative actors is the realistic indicator. Which is a much more complex problem.

One way or another I will leave, it remains to be seen what that will actually mean. For now all I can do is keep putting money away and praying I get lucky.

I still make less than most HNers, but it’s decent for where I am.

I don’t know what the exit plan is. It never seems like you have enough. I’ve even looked at minimum retirement savings needed and I should be good for my current lifestyle, but I don’t feel like the numbers are right or I keep coming up with excuses. There is a lot of anxiety around this.

I know it first hand. I got completely burnt out, ended up drinking too much, and lost everything.

At least with this career there is a chance to start over, depending on age and compensation.

But one small slip-up, whether it be a serious medical problem (especially in the US) or otherwise, and the "numbers" can be thrown out the window.

Fingers crossed.

I think there’s a huge difference in the value we feel ourselves contributing based on our own interests and what our company does.

I am working in the world of peer reviewed research now, and I think that’s one of the best places I can contribute to. I’m proud every day to start working because I know I’m helping, even in a small way, the many researchers around the world moving human knowledge forward.

I used to work in avionics development, mostly for defense purposes. Some people would hate it. I liked it for awhile, and then I reached the end of learning new things there. I left shortly after that to start my own company, the peer review research-focused one.

I never want to work for ad tech. That’s not the right answer for everyone, but I’d I was working in ad tech, I’d probably feel similar to you.

What do you work on, and how does that sync with your world view?

What happens if you take a 90 minute bike ride each day without changing your hours at all? Would anyone notice? Would they care?

Work is about dollars per hour. Salary is a trick.

So if you can get in daily rides and still meet the expectations of your employer, awesome, you're doing it right.

You're likely also doing right by your employer, since the daily exercise is giving you lots of health benefits and keeping you performing at a high level mentally.

If it doesn’t, then you are just working for assholes

How does one frame the other way. Ie I don't care if only a 1000 users experience it, but I'd rather be part of a 10 person team pushing out while features used by 1000 users for hours each day.

I dunno if such roles exist and pay reasonably enough and are sustainable? And how does one politely disregard other kinds of impact in favor of this?

Their response left me flabbergasted: They thanked me! Personally, by email. They actually took out time of their own busy life to write a simple thank you note.

Never in my professional life have I experienced a response anything like this. Not as a researcher, being harassed and scolded by reviewers. Not as an embedded dev, by users or contractors being blissfully unaware of my existence. Not as an open source dev, hidden behind a pseudonym and fake "professionalism" in Github bug reports. The closest thing was perhaps professional recognition amongst colleagues.

I'd rather make a big personal impact on a small number of people than a small incremental impact on a large number of people. It's way more satisfying. Come to think of it, teaching and mentoring work similarly.

I work 40-ish hours a week, have ample vacation, and am paid enough to own a fairly basic condo in Boston, all by my late 20s. It’s not glamorous, I don’t earn $300k+ a year, and it’s certainly not a prestigious resume entry, but hey, I like my life so far. It’s definitely sustainable. Enough so that my wife and I will probably start a family soon.

For software to be sustainable with only 1000 users, it's got to be something that a small number of people use to do their jobs. Look for B2B software targeting a small niche.

The other route is software that is trying to get to a billion users, and just isn't there yet. If you get into a startup scene, you can definitely make a career of it.

Maybe this is something related to older generations, but I for one have never been happier. Of course my life isn't perfect, but I would never in a million years go back to my childhood/teens/yearly 20s. I have so much more freedom to express my self, to move in the world, to see and experience things and just in general do whatever I want. I never had the capital necessary or capability to do any of these things when I was a kid.

>I despise being a cog in a huge corporate machine, it’s like the job was designed to be as unappealing as possible.

Of course I can't speak for anyone else, but I think this is part of the "dream job" myth i.e. "if you work a job you love you don't need to work a day in your lift". This is pretty much garbage advice and only works for few rare people. I accidentally fell into my niche. I don't think I would have ever applied for position such as mine, but as new graduate I got an offer that was too good to pass by (however I expected to work here for couple years, gain some money, and then move to a bigger city and find job in my actual field), but when I started I just decided that I was going to be the best in my team/department. I took couple hours every day from work time to study and I became a professional. I wouldn't say I love my job, but I'm good at it and that makes my proud which in turn gives me joy. I've been doing pretty much same thing for almost a decade now and I've never been happier.

How much of your unhappiness is your job, or more so a function of having a continually growing list of responsibilities that can become to feel suffocating (e.g., marriage, kids, managing people at work, etc).

Because it can be a taboo subject, I’ve seen people misattribute their unhappiness to a single thing when it’s really a culmination of many things … and their isn’t a way to “fix” the unhappiness (you can’t “un-have” a kid)

The idea of fathering a child is legitimate nightmare fuel for me. I already feel trapped as it is, though thankfully there’s no risk of it happening.

I have none of the other, suggested, confounding factors. Quitting my last job was fantastic and 100% the best thing I could have conceived of to improve my life.

I also had a very similar sentiment re: cog+machine, although found it more of a combination of amusing and tragic (rather than unappealing).

The ONLY thing that is real is how YOU feel.