I would work, not for my current employer (or any employer) but for myself. I would setup a one-man LLC or similar and build products I'm proud of. If some of them work out and bring money, good! If not, also good.

Also, I wouldn't work 40h/week on it. More like ~10h/week. I would take it very slow, focusing on the parts that I enjoy the most (like deciding the font of the website for my product, or deciding the dir. structure of my backend, or thinking about that algorithm for days or weeks until I got it right).

I don't like tech companies. I work for one because they pay good. I love my career nevertheless and I become better at it in my free time (that's another reason tech companies pay me good money, because I'm good at it... but I couldn't care less about their products; I pass their interviews with a fake facade)

That’s the most refreshing take I have read on a public forum. I am really glad there are people like that. I have met a few people like that over my professional career and either coincidentally or not, they have been among the most competent and most pleasant to work with engineers. This is opposite view of the lunacy that LinkedIn is right now.

This comment feels almost as if I had written it myself.

No. Gonna dive 100% into my hobby xv6 OS project which I'm already working on.

I don't need $10M, 1 or 2 is good enough. I'm going to pay back all debts, rent a cabin (last checked about 127 CAD per night) for a few weeks and bring my son with me for a few nights. I'm also going to buy a telescope. 4-6 hours of kernel hacking at day, and 2-3 hours of stargazing during the night. Heaven!

Nope, I would probably even quit at 250K of savings. Take some time off, then maybe learn pixel art / design , and spend 2 years to make a game or SaaS to get around 2k income per month for 2 years and then repeat the cycle. The initial money secures basic housing and bills, and the small monthly income is good enough for me.

Unfortunately my wife has a terminal illness, and while $10m would be quite a lot, when facing the bills of ALS without proper health insurance, that could run out very quickly. With $10m, I'd work, but do all of the things that I don't have the guts to ask for now: Go fully remote all the time (something that I'll likely have to do within the next few years to be a partial caretaker). When the bad times come, which they will, if I had $10m in the bank I'd walk away from the job and focus entirely on being the most present father that I can be.

Over the last couple years of her illness, I've become the sole caretaker of our young kids, and it's changed me dramatically. Being a parent can be exhausting, and I've always loved it, but I also loved logging into work and doing productive things, contributing to (what I thought were) important software projects, and working with my colleagues. I always loved the camaraderie of the work place and my colleagues. That's shifted entirely in the last 2 years. Other than the paycheck to maintain my kids' quality of life, other than the health insurance that we're now inextricably tethered to (something that I never had an appreciation for as a young, relatively healthy single or married-but-no-kids person), I just don't care about anything at work other than doing what I have to do to maintain those things.

Sorry to read about your wife's illness. It's such a pity that "having to work to maintain quality of life" has taken away the joy of work, even when your colleagues are comrades.

As for me, the principal reason for working is that camaraderie. I find 'establishing things together' more valuable and rewarding than the progress or productivity on itself. The for knowledge workers above-average paycheck feels like a luxury.

It took me awhile, but I arrived at "no".

What I enjoy: the programming, the messing with large systems and solving challenging problems.

What I don't enjoy: the politics, the meetings, the ineptitude of colleagues (nobody hired in the last 10 years seems qualified to do their job), the infrastructure rot and misconfigurations.

I arrived at yes, for the same reason. There are plenty of open source and community projects you could through your time at, but with none of the obligations.

Would I keep showing up to the job I had in 2015? Yes, not forever, but at least for a time. It was enjoyable socially and practicing the craft is enjoyable. At jobs like that, the ability to enjoy the craft outweighed the downsides of having to manage a job/career.

Would I keep showing up to the most recent job I had? Or seek out a job in what the market has become, or take a job in what the field has become? And what has become of the craft? Absolutely not. I retired with much less money than $10m, my living expenses are low.

If I had $1M in the bank I would leave (probably to start my own thing, but maybe to volunteer or even just take a risk on a new job).

No. My labor is transactional. The rest of my time is leisure.

Same reason why I have no interest in working weekends. Is the CEO going to come by my house on Saturday and mow my lawn? Wait, HR said we were family...

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the legendary Office Space scene yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu2HhlTEHMc

$10M in the bank is very different for a family of 4 staying in VHCOL (Bay Area/ Manhattan) vs single person staying in Bangkok. The answer to this question depends on a lot on that versus job satisfaction etc.

Not sure why people like the bay area so much. Move someplace else and retire. Most anywhere in the US is going to be dramatically cheaper.

Buy a summer place on a lake in the Midwest for under 200k. Get a winter place somewhere warmer, since the weather must be what people like about CA. We have tons of retirees doing this with well under $10M.

The weather here is flawless, the culture is adequate (it's not top-tier, but it beats most low cost of living areas), the food is fantastic thanks to immediate access to most of the country's fresh produce. There's deserts, mountains, and the ocean all immediately available for day trips, and most of all, jobs here pay twice as much as they do anywhere else. Sure, the CoL is twice as high, but unless you're living paycheck to paycheck and spend 100% of your income locally, that means more money in our pockets.

Yep. It also depends on types of goals you have and stage of life.

I can safely say as someone who FIRE’d in his early 30’s that it doesn’t matter how much money you have because women are very adverse to a man who isn’t working. Mind you, I am quite physically ugly and so my experience is not that of everyone’s. It might be that for men who are of average and above looks that it doesn’t matter as much but for the women I encountered it mattered a lot that I wasn’t working. It didn’t matter how much money I had made. I was spending on a lavish lifestyle in manhattan as well. I gave up on pursuing a family life due to poor genetic basis, chose to be single back in the Bay Area, and go back to work since there’s nothing else to do. All my goals were revolved around family and building a life for a family. No point in those goals if you’re alone.

Then don’t stay in Manhattan or SF Bay? SF is always a dreary place and NYC is a bit much in the winter

But even so, just going by the 4% rule, that’s still $400K a year. The median household income in SF Bay is $130J

Probably so. I'm in academia as a teacher and as a researcher. I like teaching and I like research. If I were "rich" I'd probably do both things with a much clearer state of mind.

Not filling grant proposal would be amazing.

Yup. In may case, if I'm lucky enough I may get a permanent position relatively soon. That would surely improve my productivity a lot. Finger crossed.

Without a shadow of a doubt. 10 mil is more than a 100 years at my current salary rate, and I live quite comfortably.

10 mil means I can take care of my family, and significantly upgrade our standard of living, and sustain this for the remainder of our lives. We can spend our time doing things we actually enjoy doing.

I love my job. Don't get me wrong. But the fact that my job means I can eat plays a very significant part in me loving it in the first place. When the need to survive is removed, I think that love will evaporate.

No. For me, work pays my bills and funds my (modest) lifestyle. With $10 million in the bank (or invested wisely), I won't need to work. I could continue to live my life the way I do and not have to worry about the ridiculousness of the corporate world.

How is that dissonance? The best you can hope for, in order, are: 1) not having to work, for whatever reason, and having personally meaningful interests with which to fill your time; (two-way-tie) 2a) not having to work, 2b) having to work and having a job you love that means something to you; 3) everything else.

We require sustenance and shelter and sanitation and a few other things. Those require resources, one way or another. If one has to perform some activity in order to acquire the resources necessary to those needs, then one might as well do something one enjoys, if one can.

I absolutely LOVE my job (WFH systems programming in a challenging space (cross domain)), have the best team (my boss, the owner, is a friend from way back in another cyber co; my closest colleague is a great friend from off-roading; my other colleagues are all great people, with fantastic younger team members who break every cliché and trope about their generations; etc., etc.).

And if $10,000,000 showed up in my bank account tomorrow, I would wind down my work as smoothly and quickly as possible, to not leave them hanging, carry on consulting occasionally for them, when needed, and spend a year working on my house and Jeep and learning category theory and walking the dogs and watching as many football matches as I could (heck, with that money, maybe I even would spend the $50/month to get FA Cup games on top of what I already have).

Once the house was to my - and my GF's liking - and once the Jeep was again the beast it once was, and a bit more (portals!!!), well, there would be still be football to watch and math to learn and dogs to walk. Maybe we'd move somewhere we could foster many, many dogs? Ah, the mind reels.

I might even upgrade my phone or monitors.... (I'm a cheap bastard. The dead pixels on the phone screen are a PITA, but they only really impact Quordle.)

I might keep working doing what I do now.

I have the job I want. I work remotely. I “retired my wife” when she was 44 8 years into our marriage in 2020 (I was 45) so we could travel and she could pursue her passions. There is really nothing I want to do that work stops me from doing. We travel, we have done the year long “digital nomad” thing, I can go home and spend time with my aging parents and our adult kids (my stepsons) for an extended time.

My other hobbies is I’m a gym rat and just hang out with friends and my wife.

I work in consulting so I never get bored working on the same problem. I’m a staff consultant so the company I work for really gives me almost complete autonomy. I get assigned a project and for the most part I get to lead the projects the way I want.

I work independently as consultor/solo dev (https://www.elmalabarista.com) for years now, so with that much money (even 1 million) I just be set for life!.

But I actually love my job (programming) and do it in my spare time (after program for work!) and like to join others to learn (as I have done for https://spacetimedb.com/).

Will probably dedicate the time for my dream of build a FoxPro-alternative, and pretty certain will love it for more than a decade, so if anyone wanna help get funds I all hears!

Yes. That said, I work for myself at home in a job that takes only a few hours a day.

The money would affect that in the sense that the additional assets and guaranteed income would allow more investing in my business.

Investors are not investing in small startups much, perhaps due to high interest rates.

Now is a great time to invest in small startups applying ML to realworld problems, and will result in a lot of useful new tech being built.

Id make a lot of small bets on early stage startups of this kind - and perhaps top up when they get a POC and at MVP / early traction stage.

It would almost be worth buying a building in Danang Vietnam, and hosting small teams for 3m at a time to get more bang for your buck - ie. rent arbitrage / quadruple the effective runway due to low cost of living.

Absolutely not show up. With the current level of expense I would live off of it for about 10 generations. But now I think I would push them up a little bit, so more like five.

Absolutely not. I'd be doing more enjoyable and meaningful projects instead.

I would still do a job, but it would be something that is important to me.

And $10M would require some up-front management and ongoing maintenance to develop an index-tracked revenue stream from it. I mean, aside from an initial disbursement meant to wipe out harmful debts and get a few small toys, the vast majority of that $10M would go towards being productive revenue-generating assets. No, not from the backs of other members of the working class like rental homes, but via stocks that generate dividends.

For one, I would likely adopt one or more open-source projects that have people struggling to be maintainers, and to fund them in some manner via the dividend income. Kind of like a “you no longer have to worry about food and shelter needs anymore” type of support.

It’s not like I would be able to support oodles of projects like this, but a choice project or three that is vital to the entire tech ecosystem and which desperately needs to remain independent of corporate influence… yeah. I already know of a few.

> And $10M would require some up-front management and ongoing maintenance to develop an index-tracked revenue stream from it.

Buy $5M of VOO and $5M of VTEB or BND. Send dividends to your bank account. When your bank account is over the FDIC limit, buy more of whichever fund has less $. Dividend yield on VOO is about 1%, bond fund is about 3%, approximately $200k/year from dividends, but if that's not enough, sell from the fund with more $ as needed. If you go with VTEB (tax exempt bonds), you'll have a very low federal tax with $50k of mostly qualified dividends and $150k of mostly tax exempt interest; if you go with BND, you're still only looking at about 20% effective tax rate Single, or 15% married filing joint.

Probably check with your insurer and get an umbrella policy for $5M+ cause they're cheap and you don't want to get a judgement and lose out on the easy life.

Send me a check for about $10k a year as a reminder of how much work I did for you right here in the open :P (j/k, I'm not a financial advisor, I can't take compensation for this). You could do something fancier like optimizing the tax-exempt vs regular bonds or think about your preferred stock/bond ratio or exotic investment options to enrich the advisors, but $10M is enough that anything safe (80:20 to 20:80) will work unless you overspend, and it's not enough that getting a little more return is going to let you keep a private jet (better to charter anyway).

On the OP's question. I kept working while I was having fun and then worked on cleanly transitioning things out so I could feel good about leaving without loose ends. I went back to work part time in order to insure domestic tranquility. :P You can do a lot with computers without a job/company/product, but IMHO, optimizing things is more fun when you have a lot of users and you can see the results, so that kind of leads towards working at least a bit, even if you don't have to.

I always find it hilarious that people on HN think that there is something morally wrong with being a landlord like everyone should be a homeowner no matter what the circumstances are. Should college students buy homes? Someone who may not want to live some place for a long time?

> there is something morally wrong with being a landlord

In the traditional manner, by upgrading through houses over a lifetime and holding onto the prior homes as “mortgage helpers”? No, not in the least.

In the modern context, by buying up 5, 10, 15, or even more homes in a neighbourhood just to rent them back out for their labour-free “investment income”? Oh YES, VERY MUCH SO.

In the modern context - which is practically every rental these days - landlords do not provide housing. They HOARD it and ransom it back to the community for more than it’s worth.

Landlords and other “investors” are why North America as a whole has a housing crisis, and by direct-causation proxy, a homeless crisis. When an individual or company can sweep into a neighbourhood and buy up most to all of the houses and then jack up rents to the maximum that the market will bear _just because,_ even when a third or more stand empty, that’s economic parasitism of the working class, plain and simple.

So where I stand, if anyone is renting out any sort of a habitable structure that they themselves didn’t live in for the better part of a decade before they turned it into a rental, THEY ARE THE PARASITE.

As a former landlord - who would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than ever do it again - there is nothing “passive” about being a landlord.

A quick Google search shows that only 1-3% of homes are owned by institutional investors and has almost nothing to do with the homes not being affordable. It’s a talking point that even the briefest Google search will contradict.

Are you also against apartments?

IMO anyone holding more than 5 rentals is doing so for the purpose of investing; of having a revenue stream well above what is needed for mortgage purposes.

Why? Because if you take the traditional route of living in a place, and do so for the average of 8 years that most jurisdictions see people doing before upgrading, and turning that prior home into a rental, it would take you into your 70s or 80s until you have 5 rental places.

And having 5 or more rental units accounts for almost ⅓ of all landlords. This means that ⅓ of all landlords are economic parasites, being landlords purely for the income stream.

I am not talking about “institutional investors” that hold 100+ homes by themselves (100+ being the industry definition of an institutional investor), they are just included in my concept of a parasitical population of housing “investors”.

> there is nothing “passive” about being a landlord.

You clearly are an old-school landlord.

These days there are “property management” companies that - for a small fee - do all the work for you, and the only effort left to you is to cash the cheque. And many people with multiple properties leverage this system.

Every business is about buying something or producing something and selling it for a cost higher than it costs you. Why is rental property evil? Do you think building and running an apartment complex is wrong?

Every business is about producing an income stream. My 23 year old son and his fiancé rent a house. They don’t want to buy a home and don’t even know whether they are going to stay in the city they are living in

There is nothing “small” about the fee that property management companies charge. It’s 50% of the first month’s rent for a new tenant and 10% of rent each month. Standard underwriting for rental income is assume 75% - 80% occupancy and you have to account for slow payments and long eviction processes. Even in a red state like GA it can take around 3 months to evict someone for none payment.

And again bringing the 2-3% of homes that are owned by institutional investors won’t make a dent in housing affordability.

>Why is rental property evil?

Profit margins on all inelastic essential goods are fundamentally evil.

A mansion for a single person isn’t an essential inelastic good. A Bachelor suite or basement suite for a single person _is._

Water in general isn’t an essential inelastic good. Sufficient water to keep a single person hydrated, clean, and in good health _is._

Junk food and premium-grade food isn’t an essential inelastic good. Sufficient raw foods to keep a person fed _is._

When you forcibly extract more from a person than providing the product costs you, purely because they have no other choice, you are an evil parasite, full stop.

And no, going homeless is not “a choice”. Neither is dying from exposure. And there are plenty of people who work full-time jobs yet don’t earn enough to put a roof over their heads.

> bringing the 2-3% of homes that are owned by institutional investors won’t make a dent in housing affordability.

But dealing with the ⅓ of all rentals who are owned by parasites _will._

You refuse to answer the question - do you think that everyone should own a home and their should be no rental market or do you think that landlords should rent at cost?

Housing is very much elastic. There is plenty of undeveloped land in the country and there is even more air - meaning building up and not out. Personally, my wife and I sold our big 5 bedroom 3200 square foot house in the burbs that we had built in 2016 for $335K in the burbs of Atlanta in the good school system to move into a 1250 square foot condo in Florida and we couldn’t be happier. Blame the lack of supply on NIMBYism that opposes multi unit housing and zoning laws.

As far as raw food, do you also think that people in the supply chain like farmers, packagers, food delivery drivers etc shouldn’t make a profit?

You never did answer the question - are you also opposed to apartment complexes owned by investors?

The second point you didn’t address is should my 23 year old son and his fiancé be forced to buy home or should his landlord have spent money on a property and rented to him at cost?

Me personally, if I were renting a house, I would rather deal with a corporation who did it professionally than deal with an individual landlord. The management companies both times I rented an apartment in Atlanta were excellent.

And it’s nonsensical that if you got rid of all of the investors who only own 2-3% of the supply, it would make a dent in housing prices. Do you think everyone who rents wants to buy no matter what their life circumstances? I definitely didn’t want to buy a home when I was single, I wanted the option of moving quickly

> And it’s nonsensical that if you got rid of all of the investors who only own 2-3% of the supply,

Either you are sealioning, or you genuinely can’t comprehend the written word.

Time and time again you keep hammering on this point, which is only a tiny fraction of mine. You keep hammering on the window dressing, while I am addressing the real elephant in the room, THE OTHER ⅓ OF LANDLORDS, WHO ARE THE MAJORITY OF THE PROBLEM.

I am talking about the other ≈30% of landlords

≈30%. Not 2-3%. ≈30%. That is the size of the problem.

> Housing is very much elastic.

For buyers and sellers, perhaps. For renters, NO.

If rent was elastic, we wouldn’t have a “working poor” homeless problem. If rent was elastic, we wouldn’t have 23 empty homes for every homeless person.

> are you also opposed to apartment complexes owned by investors?

A single, separate, unrelated owner per apartment/unit? No. That generates genuine competition for renters.

A single owner per complex? F*ck, yes. It’s an obscene concentration of economic power away from the renter and into the landlord’s hands.

> As far as raw food, do you also think that people in the supply chain like farmers, packagers, food delivery drivers etc shouldn’t make a profit?

My family have been orchardists for almost a half century. We know plenty of other farmers and orchardists. Most would rather let their food go to the hungry rather than let it rot on the tree or in the field.

And yet, it takes capitalism and the Parasite Class to drench food in kerosine and light it aflame in order to generate artificial scarcity and keep profits high.

And if you know anything about economic trends, you would know that food prices keep skyrocketing, yet the share that farmers get keeps shrinking.

Where does it all go? To the middlemen, increasingly concentrated in a handful of suppliers that keep buying up all the competition, thereby concentrating profits in the hands of the ultra-wealthy Parasite Class.

Even up here in Canada, it’s even getting such that the lines between middleman and retailer is blurring, with mega-corps such as Loblaws - which makes up a large majority of supermarkets - buying up distributors and processors in order to capture that middleman profit margin for themselves, denying the farmers higher returns and the consumer lower prices.

Yay, capitalism?

Because it’s neither the consumer nor the farmer who’s benefitting from capitalism. It’s the parasites at the top.

> Either you are sealioning, or you genuinely can’t comprehend the written word. Time and time again you keep hammering on this point, which is only a tiny fraction of mine. You keep hammering on the window dressing, while I am addressing the real elephant in the room, THE OTHER ⅓ OF LANDLORDS, WHO ARE THE MAJORITY OF THE PROBLEM.

What exactly is your point? For single homes, if only 2% of all homes being sold are owned by investors, releasing those would at most increase the supply by 2%.

But it’s even crazier that you think apartment buildings shouldn’t be owned by corporations and centrally managed.

Do you think individual owners will take care of maintenance, property taxes, collecting rent, a centrally managed tenant office erc?

Funny enough, I have an idea of exactly how that would conceivably work. I mentioned before that my wife and I moved into a condo. I didn’t mention that it was a unit we own in a condotel (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/condotel.asp). Each unit is individually owned. But the complex itself is run like a hotel (not a timeshare). All of the owners but us use there unit as some combination of a second home and an investment property. When someone stays in a unit the owner gets half the income and the property manager gets the other half.

To be clear, this is in central Florida close to Disney and it is zoned and was built as a hotel. Unless you are also opposed to corporations owning hotels

You have to have central management for a large apartment complex just like for the condotel we live in.

As far as farmers what do you suggest? Either every farmer distributes the food themselves across the country or everyone in the distribution chain does the work for free? BTW, my grandfather raised and sold pigs and cows most of his life and my uncle (his son) still takes care of the cattle. I don’t think he’s going to be killing and processing the meat himself. Should everyone between him selling the cows and it getting to shelves do it for free?

> For single homes, if only 2% of all homes being sold are owned by investors, releasing those would at most increase the supply by 2%.

For the last time, I AM NOT ONLY TALKING ABOUT CORPORATIONS. I am INCLUDING those INDEPENDENT INDIVIDUALS who are landlording AS A CAREER.

Like, anyone who has bought any residence purely to rent out, and who has never lived in that residence. Who treat housing as an investment without actually being a corporation.

THAT is what covers 30+% of the market.

Release 30+% of that housing onto the market, and supply increases DRAMATICALLY.

QUIT BEING A F*KING TROLL.

> But it’s even crazier that you think apartment buildings shouldn’t be owned by corporations and centrally managed.

>Do you think individual owners will take care of maintenance, property taxes, collecting rent, a centrally managed tenant office erc?

Let me update you on this lovely little administrative structure called a STRATA COUNCIL. This covers a lot of what you just talked about. It’s a council of individual owners that make decisions about maintenance and changes to the common areas and overall physical building.

The property taxes and rent are handled by the landlords, which is what the vast majority of landlords already do.

> As far as farmers what do you suggest?

Punitive taxation of corporate profit margins. This forces the middlemen to do one or more of three things: invest in the company (such as increased wages of workers, or better tooling, etc.), pay more for inputs, or charge less for outputs.

Okay, again, are you saying that no one should rent a home under any circumstances or that people who own homes should tie up their money and do it at cost?

And again you are wrong. It’s not 30% of the market - it’s 3%.

> Let me update you on this lovely little administrative structure called a STRATA COUNCIL…

Guess what a group of owners who collective own and run something is called - a business

On the other hand, there is an existence proof of what happens when a group of individuals run a group of units - look at the mess that is most condo associations in Florida where they don’t do upkeep and condo buildings are literally falling down.

By the way, since most people don’t know how to run a business like an apartment complex or even a condo association where the units are individually owned, they still end up outsourcing the management to a property management organization as do most HOAs

It’s clear that only one of us in this conversation knows about the real estate business….

Why would anyone invest their money in a company if not for profit?

I might not stay in my current job, but I'd certainly want at least a part time job. Something external to impose schedule, where my capabilities are needed (or at least useful to others) is important to my mental health.

No.

I have a cushy job, especially when I compare it to how many other people earn money, but it's still a job rather than a passion. The social aspect is all well and good, but much (but not all) of it in a company is actually quite fake.

Not an easy question to answer.

On one hand I really like my job and get treated well and like being part of something bigger than myself. On the other hand it would be attractive to spend more time working on some ideas I have.

Stub

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broodfonds

Note that they go a bit above the "middle" Dunbar number..

(Has to be revamped^W tweaked for various contexts obv (mortgage, inflation, kids, etc))

In your case tho it's bit of a "regret insurance", or "cache insurance" (using your terminology perhaps)

Tho as PG would discover, the premium isn't denoted in (the usual sorts of enviable) wealth..

I would quit my job and start my own freelance consulting business. No doubt my employer would hire me and I could escape the internal bureaucracy I have to deal with. Probably do part time as well.

You need $10M in bank to do that? Sounds like you should just do this. What's holding you back?

I would, but for a different job just for sustenance. I don’t love my job, but it isn’t a total grind either. I’m working because it pays. I live in a developing country and would use a good chunk of the $10 million (if I had it) to get out to, preferably, an English speaking developed country (it’s not as easy even then). Nevertheless, I think this could be a life changing amount (positive or negative) for most people around the world.

I would not show up, I'd sell the business, and work on more fun projects.

I have written code for 40years, self-taught from 6502 to C++ and now Node.js, and I have always loved it.

Not to the current job. I'd still want to use same skills, but I'd probably find some PhDs to assist for free.

No, I wouldn’t show up to work. I could invest it conservatively and live off of that forever.

However… I don’t know what I’d do in the time that I would normally work. I’m working on retiring early so I need to figure that out.

Probably as an Eng manager because I remember Eng managers did jack shit. I’d just flex on the rest by showing up in my Ferrari. What are they gonna do? Fire me?

I’d rather have an engineering manager who does nothing rather than one who wastes everyone’s time and runs around trying to get credit for everything under the sun while throwing people under the bus if anything goes sideways.

Once you move beyond a mid level developer [1], line level managers are more or less useless in my experience. They don’t control raises, promotions, budgets or strategies.

I worked at two companies before I got into consulting where I was recruited to lead major hairy initiatives, the conditions of employment for both was that I wanted to report to the director/cto - someone who controlled budgets.

[1] no matter what your title is, if you are just pulling well defined tasks off the board, you’re a mid level developer.

The answer is simple. Id quit tech and become a yoga instructor.

Id hike and travel in-between gigs.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: maybe I would wrap up a few outstanding projects and then retire?

This is a good question. Many of us work out of blind habit or to support a lifestyle we didn't consciously choose. Asking this question can lead to freedom, no matter how much money you have and no matter whether you work or not, because its a question that leads to living deliberately. Which I am all for. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

hell no. i quit tech with a lot less because life is too short.

I do, and I don’t. Not for lack of trying, but a (non-exec) job is usually full of people who are not in that situation and it creates all sorts of awkwardness I’d rather not deal with. For example, I was out at a team dinner one time and someone asked me where I lived and when I’d bought my place, and they replied with “so you’re rich then,” and I had nothing to say to that except feel awkward.

Also when shit hits the fan layoff-wise management tries to use fear as leverage, which just causes me to quit, leaving my teammates in the lurch. (I’m reminded that Warren Buffett said they don’t try to manage most of the business mangers under them, because many of them are independently wealthy and that would take away their desire to keep showing up. That’s probably why execs are insulated from these dramas too.)

Lastly, if you work with vapid people as I did, they will low-key judge you by your possessions while flaunting theirs, and that’s just nonsense I don’t need in my life.

That being said, I don’t mind working, just not “for money alone,” if that makes sense.

Funny cause I'm pondering this question right now. While I don't have $10M, I have around a quarter of that and by my calculations it should cover my expenses indefinitely, but who knows in this strange climate.

For me, fulfillment comes from two things: seeing people finding use in the things I build and the craft itself. A job can help with the former, but it definitely doesn't help with the latter.

At my current job politics and "process" often take priority over the software engineering part. The advent of AI isn't making things better, some people are cranking out buggy slop at speed and there's no room for pushback with ever more ambitious deadlines.

I'd rather just work on my own passion projects, maybe contribute back open source that have brought me a lot of utility over the years.

No fuckin way, i don't like my job, and in fact i rather dislike the entire programming career.

I'm about an inch away from quitting my job today with no backup. The impossibility of finding a new way to pay rent is the only thing stopping me.

If i knew any way on earth for me to make as much as i do programming doing something else, i would.

Probably not. I love what I do, I get to work in games and it's so much fun. But at the end of the day I still have a issue, in trading my time for money, and there's a lot of stuff I'd rather be doing. Spending more time outside, exercising, reading, cooking, being with my family. Work is... Just work.

"Nobody wants to work anymore"[0] is a trope as old as industrialization itself.

0: https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/w3si8l/nobody_wan...

A trope is a trope because it is commonly true for long periods of time. This proves nothing.

Cycles exist, and there can be periods of time where there is true passion in an industry followed by lack thereof.

A boom and bust economic system guarantees that there will always be times where a ton of "normies" enter tech who just want a paycheck during booms.

Is it really that surprising that a vast majority of people don't work a job that is not better than doing whatever they want whenever they want?

What do you mean? The layoffs have nothing to do with people loving their jobs or being loyal to their employers.

I just mean people are just not excited about tech as they used to be.

I would expect, out of all the sites on the Internet, that people would say something like trying to lead some initiative that they never had the courage to do so before leaving the company if given no opportunity for the love of the industry.

Most of my neighbors who have well more than $10M in the bank (Tesla stock, houses, cash, etc.) and they all work because they enjoy it. The younger neighbors quit and just sit around doing nothing but collecting rent money from houses.

But of course, the only constant in life is that things will change. It isn't that surprising I suppose.

This thread is about jobs. If I had $10M in the bank I would be developing something I had equity in instead of enriching others.

If you ever hang out in the nonprofit sector you will notice that a lot of these underpaid workers are independently wealthy as well.

I program for fun on my own time, I'm absolutely passionate about technology. What I'm not passionate about is spending 40 hours a week increasing shareholder value or making some capitalist asshole more rich and powerful than they already are.

I get to solve interesting problems at a large scale with minimal politics or BS with legitimate unlimited PTO so I'd probably stick around. Eventually I might do my own startup or consulting business or some such. I find joy in solving interesting problems with real impact which is difficult outside some type of job. Thats due to my personality more than anything but it is what it is. The job is not the passion but the problems are.

Nah I've been fucking around on fretboards for 20 years and it's still fun. And at no point did i have some moron manager making me fill out progress reports about it.

Doing things you find fulfilling is nothing remotely like working for a profit driven enterprise, unless you choose to make it that way.

There are two kinds of work being conflated here.

In The Prophet (1923), Kahlil Gibran writes On Work: "Work is love made visible." This is the kind of work you're talking about.

However, the OP question is "would you still show up to work?" This kind of work is usually for a for-profit company owned by capitalists, with their time controlled by their employer, and their effort disconnected from its impact (the alienation of the worker, per Marx).

It makes total sense that someone would stop "showing up to [someone else's] work" and start developing their own independent work ethic towards their own goals. These two types of "work" are not the same, even if we generally use the same word to describe them.

> > It makes total sense that someone would stop "showing up to [someone else's] work" and start developing their own independent work ethic towards their own goals. These two types of "work" are not the same, even if we generally use the same word to describe them.

I'd say that as far as the extraction of brain juices they become exactly the same after a while and maybe the only difference is a smirk when asked about and replying "it beats working" or "it's a tough job but someone has to do it"

send me $10m and then i'll let you know

I mean duh? At the very least wouldnt one just show upt to their job for the "non work related" activities? Or work becomes your "passive income"?

Hell no. I would mess with my stuff, no AI, no bullshit, just fun programming. But I would also do things for myself: better health, better food, better socialization.

no

To my current job? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Working on passion-projects? Until the day I die.

No, capital NO.

And I think people who do continue, are engaging in a sociopathic mental illness, that is the primary cause of income inequality, and authoritarian hierarchies in general.

Some people just feel driven to dominate others...

Working as a programmer is dominating others?

How do you know people wouldn't quit their jobs and then take that $10M to start a sweatshop?

I'm way more concerned about the latter than the former. Work is just work; leveraging capital to exploit people is the sociopathy you're talking about.

So, you know a lot of "programmers" with $10M in the bank?

None. Why would you think i do?

If you live in a modern 1st world country and have a family, at least 1 child or some old relatives and at least minimal ambition to eat good food and have okay level of life - 10M is not much at all.

It’ll get you okayish to allright property (depending on the region), will cover all basic expenses and (if you don’t have anyone with serious illness or financial problems) some non basic ones. For up to 10 years max.

Then what?

If you want to hear people’s passions I suggest using vague “F U money” term instead of a pretty small specific number.

This makes no sense. By this logic, anyone spending less than 1M per year only has an "okayish" lifestyle.

Absolutely ridiculous. $1M/year is TEN TIMES what i spend for a gorgeous apartment and all the entertainment and food i can manage in Chicago. I could last 100 years on $10M. Well, maybe 80 when you factor healthcare :)

Do you have a family? How many people do you support?

Just me. But my 4% APY savings account would net me 400,000/yr on $10M, so 4x what i make now; my hypothetical family would also be fine for 100 years

If you carefully read my message and all the conditions you’ll see that 400 will melt faster than you think. Also it will be closer to 200-300 because you spent part of the sum to buy a house.

I could raise a kid in my apartment, plenty of room. My parents raised 4 kids on less than i make, even adjusted for inflation. My friends with kids are not making 400k/yr and doing just fine.

I mean, $10m comes out to $400k in year at the 4% rule which is top 2-3% income in the US. And top 1% in Europe. I guess being in the top 1% is barely scraping by nowadays.

10 million earning 4% is 400k per year. That's a good bay area salary.

Read my whole message carefully. 1 bay area salary is nothing special if you live in bay area and support _family_