Thoughts on quitting high-paying tech job

[damyst]

The knuckleheads are either let go or they tend to move up the food chain to other positions in the organization where being a knucklehead is either an asset or has no bearing on their work.

Have you read The Dilbert Principle? Because you just stated the Dilbert Principle almost verbatim.

Being in roughly the same boat as most commenters here, I'm genuinely confused by the fact that the free market deems it necessary to pay us so much for what is, on the face of it, utterly pointless work. We spend our days trying to claw back precious fragments of our time so that we can accomplish something productive. Why??

We must be missing something important here. I'd expect any company that operates this way to be eaten alive by more sensible competitors. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening.

[gerardc]

The knuckleheads are either let go or they tend to move up the food chain to other positions in the organization where being a knucklehead is either an asset or has no bearing on their work.

Have you read The Dilbert Principle? Because you just stated the Dilbert Principle almost verbatim.

Being in roughly the same boat as most commenters here, I'm genuinely confused by the fact that the free market deems it necessary to pay us so much for what is, on the face of it, utterly pointless work. We spend our days trying to claw back precious fragments of our time so that we can accomplish something productive. Why??

We must be missing something important here. I'd expect any company that operates this way to be eaten alive by more sensible competitors. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening.

Big companies keep being successful mostly because of their position (reputation, connections, quasi-monopolies, etc.) so their competence/productivity isn't that important. The most important thing by far is preserving their position and advancing safely with flawless execution. The more sensible competitors won't have an edge if they're not in the same initial position as the big company, unless they're REALLY good and become a successful start-up.

[damyst]

Your definition of "flawless execution" must be very different than mine :-)

[Dicey]

Thanks for the uodate, @GardenerB! I love it when a plan comes together. Welcome to the rest of your life!

[gerardc]

Your definition of "flawless execution" must be very different than mine :-)

Haha, you know what I meant... flawless as in perfectly safe, not getting into trouble, no lawsuits, etc. No big mistakes basically, but they can still be inefficient.

[effigy98]

Only 4... more... years. I can see why people have mid life crises and buy corvetts to make themselves feel better. I DREAD going to work everyday to give status on some project that I do not care about and be present at my desk to manage perception leaving late to avoid an hour long commute...

[big_slacker]

Awesome to hear people's opinions on this. I work for one of the 'big 5' and am of two minds on it. The pay is OUTSTANDING, we've gone over this in other threads but individual contributors (aka nerds, not managers) can pull $250k-$500k. In the right position you get to work on big impactful projects sometimes implemented by small teams. My team is under 10 and me and one other guy designed and built a worldwide service being used by close to 200k people in the company, that's f'in cool. There is often lots of room to work remote and work whatever schedule you want.

OTOH OMG can the pace be slow and EVERYONE wants a say in what you do. The meetings make you want to jump off a bridge. Most of them I just dial in on mute and continue working because it's just people who have no business even making comments flapping their gums.

For me the people are mostly nice, the work isn't very stressful and I have a family to support. Pile up cash, let my house appreciate to ridiculousness and once the nest is empty I'm out and moving back to a little town in the mountains. Wife can keep doing her job, I can do consulting. House/condo should be paid and we'll work enough to not touch the stache until full retirement. Rest of the time I'm on the beach or riding bikes, livin the dream.

That's the plan, we'll see how reality works out.

[gerardc]

Awesome to hear people's opinions on this. I work for one of the 'big 5' and am of two minds on it. The pay is OUTSTANDING, we've gone over this in other threads but individual contributors (aka nerds, not managers) can pull $250k-$500k. In the right position you get to work on big impactful projects sometimes implemented by small teams. My team is under 10 and me and one other guy designed and built a worldwide service being used by close to 200k people in the company, that's f'in cool. There is often lots of room to work remote and work whatever schedule you want.

Meh... maybe I'm spoiled but working from home 1 day a week or setting a 11-7 schedule instead of 9-5 is nice and all but not life changing IMO.

This lifestyle is great if you have kids though.

[albireo13]

Your definition of "flawless execution" must be very different than mine :-)

Haha, you know what I meant... flawless as in perfectly safe, not getting into trouble, no lawsuits, etc. No big mistakes basically, but they can still be inefficient.

Flawless execution??    LOL
It's flawless if CYA is your priority within the organization.

[big_slacker]

Awesome to hear people's opinions on this. I work for one of the 'big 5' and am of two minds on it. The pay is OUTSTANDING, we've gone over this in other threads but individual contributors (aka nerds, not managers) can pull $250k-$500k. In the right position you get to work on big impactful projects sometimes implemented by small teams. My team is under 10 and me and one other guy designed and built a worldwide service being used by close to 200k people in the company, that's f'in cool. There is often lots of room to work remote and work whatever schedule you want.

Meh... maybe I'm spoiled but working from home 1 day a week or setting a 11-7 schedule instead of 9-5 is nice and all but not life changing IMO.

This lifestyle is great if you have kids though.

I was in the office one day last week, haha! My co-worker is 100% remote. Also that 8 hour workday isn't my reality. I do most of my work in the early AM, then meetings a little later during normal people hours. I often go ride midday. I'm talking real work/life balance, not a tiny bit of unchaining from the desk.

A co-worker and I always used to make fun of each other for bitching about the gilded life we were leading. We were both previously traveling consultants and had started working there to provide more stability for our families.

[gerardc]

I was in the office one day last week, haha! My co-worker is 100% remote. Also that 8 hour workday isn't my reality. I do most of my work in the early AM, then meetings a little later during normal people hours. I often go ride midday. I'm talking real work/life balance, not a tiny bit of unchaining from the desk.

And you're at a big 5? Show me your ways! Where I'm at 95% of engineers are in the office 5 days a week, sometimes 4 for WFH. Remote is tolerated but not embraced. You need to work remote to pull that work/life balance, so they don't know the actual hours you're doing and you can go faster and finish earlier.

[big_slacker]

I was in the office one day last week, haha! My co-worker is 100% remote. Also that 8 hour workday isn't my reality. I do most of my work in the early AM, then meetings a little later during normal people hours. I often go ride midday. I'm talking real work/life balance, not a tiny bit of unchaining from the desk.

And you're at a big 5? Show me your ways! Where I'm at 95% of engineers are in the office 5 days a week, sometimes 4 for WFH. Remote is tolerated but not embraced. You need to work remote to pull that work/life balance, so they don't know the actual hours you're doing and you can go faster and finish earlier.

Tolerated but not embraced is a good description. I'm a big WFH evangelist, I've been involved with the tech side of enabling it since the 90 when you had to get an ISDN line plumbed to your home office. I'm just vocal about the increased productivity, how it's a key reason why I stay with the company/org (talent retention is a big issue these days), and I play the family card quite a bit. When I'm in the office I meet in person with my manager and director, go to lunch with team members, etc. Any time anyone makes a comment about WFH like it means you're slacking off I fire back with a friendly joke about getting more done before lunch than all the meeting lovers and so on.

It's a game, I push to get what I want. I've got enough job capital from pulling off good work for it to work out for me.

[gerardc]

I was in the office one day last week, haha! My co-worker is 100% remote. Also that 8 hour workday isn't my reality. I do most of my work in the early AM, then meetings a little later during normal people hours. I often go ride midday. I'm talking real work/life balance, not a tiny bit of unchaining from the desk.

And you're at a big 5? Show me your ways! Where I'm at 95% of engineers are in the office 5 days a week, sometimes 4 for WFH. Remote is tolerated but not embraced. You need to work remote to pull that work/life balance, so they don't know the actual hours you're doing and you can go faster and finish earlier.

Tolerated but not embraced is a good description. I'm a big WFH evangelist, I've been involved with the tech side of enabling it since the 90 when you had to get an ISDN line plumbed to your home office. I'm just vocal about the increased productivity, how it's a key reason why I stay with the company/org (talent retention is a big issue these days), and I play the family card quite a bit. When I'm in the office I meet in person with my manager and director, go to lunch with team members, etc. Any time anyone makes a comment about WFH like it means you're slacking off I fire back with a friendly joke about getting more done before lunch than all the meeting lovers and so on.

It's a game, I push to get what I want. I've got enough job capital from pulling off good work for it to work out for me.

What's your seniority? I do see the occasional SWE pulling this off, most of the time blaming family reasons ("I can't because of wife/kids") but I suspect the real reason is a sweeter arrangement. It's harder with no wife or kids because then I would sound selfish or not serious. I'm thinking of making up something about my GF moving to a city where there's no office and WF there... I'm at a FU money level real soon, so I'll figure out something for sure.

[big_slacker]

I was in the office one day last week, haha! My co-worker is 100% remote. Also that 8 hour workday isn't my reality. I do most of my work in the early AM, then meetings a little later during normal people hours. I often go ride midday. I'm talking real work/life balance, not a tiny bit of unchaining from the desk.

And you're at a big 5? Show me your ways! Where I'm at 95% of engineers are in the office 5 days a week, sometimes 4 for WFH. Remote is tolerated but not embraced. You need to work remote to pull that work/life balance, so they don't know the actual hours you're doing and you can go faster and finish earlier.

Tolerated but not embraced is a good description. I'm a big WFH evangelist, I've been involved with the tech side of enabling it since the 90 when you had to get an ISDN line plumbed to your home office. I'm just vocal about the increased productivity, how it's a key reason why I stay with the company/org (talent retention is a big issue these days), and I play the family card quite a bit. When I'm in the office I meet in person with my manager and director, go to lunch with team members, etc. Any time anyone makes a comment about WFH like it means you're slacking off I fire back with a friendly joke about getting more done before lunch than all the meeting lovers and so on.

It's a game, I push to get what I want. I've got enough job capital from pulling off good work for it to work out for me.

What's your seniority? I do see the occasional SWE pulling this off, most of the time blaming family reasons ("I can't because of wife/kids") but I suspect the real reason is a sweeter arrangement. It's harder with no wife or kids because then I would sound selfish or not serious. I'm thinking of making up something about my GF moving to a city where there's no office and WF there... I'm at a FU money level real soon, so I'll figure out something for sure.

Sr engineer, with management pushing me towards principal. I'm in a somewhat specialized field and it's hard to get skilled folks so I've got some leverage. That aside I'm not unique even on my team. We've got low and mid level folks who do 2-3 days a week WFH. Though I think some of that was due to my trailblazing. ;)

[gerardc]

I was in the office one day last week, haha! My co-worker is 100% remote. Also that 8 hour workday isn't my reality. I do most of my work in the early AM, then meetings a little later during normal people hours. I often go ride midday. I'm talking real work/life balance, not a tiny bit of unchaining from the desk.

And you're at a big 5? Show me your ways! Where I'm at 95% of engineers are in the office 5 days a week, sometimes 4 for WFH. Remote is tolerated but not embraced. You need to work remote to pull that work/life balance, so they don't know the actual hours you're doing and you can go faster and finish earlier.

Tolerated but not embraced is a good description. I'm a big WFH evangelist, I've been involved with the tech side of enabling it since the 90 when you had to get an ISDN line plumbed to your home office. I'm just vocal about the increased productivity, how it's a key reason why I stay with the company/org (talent retention is a big issue these days), and I play the family card quite a bit. When I'm in the office I meet in person with my manager and director, go to lunch with team members, etc. Any time anyone makes a comment about WFH like it means you're slacking off I fire back with a friendly joke about getting more done before lunch than all the meeting lovers and so on.

It's a game, I push to get what I want. I've got enough job capital from pulling off good work for it to work out for me.

What's your seniority? I do see the occasional SWE pulling this off, most of the time blaming family reasons ("I can't because of wife/kids") but I suspect the real reason is a sweeter arrangement. It's harder with no wife or kids because then I would sound selfish or not serious. I'm thinking of making up something about my GF moving to a city where there's no office and WF there... I'm at a FU money level real soon, so I'll figure out something for sure.

Sr engineer, with management pushing me towards principal. I'm in a somewhat specialized field and it's hard to get skilled folks so I've got some leverage. That aside I'm not unique even on my team. We've got low and mid level folks who do 2-3 days a week WFH. Though I think some of that was due to my trailblazing. ;)

I really hate feeling like I should be in the office (even if officially the only thing that matters is getting things done and core hours from 11am to 3pm, there is unspoken pressure by peers for physical presence). I hate the "open space" offices and sitting there all day is unhealthy. I could do the same work in 3-4h average at home, and I would make it fit in my schedule, e.g. start compilation in the morning, have breakfast, launch an experiment, go workout, go on with my day, code at night during down time, etc. We're "thought workers" anyway, we can literally work during a walk. Instead I'm fucking around at the office, waiting for some task to complete, going in the kitchen for some chocolate, feeling self-conscious about surfing the web for non-work-related stuff or setting up appointments, then after 6-8h of this drag, get home tired, and need to rush to do the other things I wasn't able to fit in my day.

Once I have FU money after my next bonus, I'm debating whether I should negotiate (as in, ultimatum) for a one-time 6-month leave, a fully remote arrangement, or 3-4 blocks of 1-month time-off per year (I'm not interested in weekly PT as in 3-4 days a week). I think I might try first asking for an arrangement where I participate in all scheduled meetings in person (probably 1 hour/day on average) and work remote the rest of the time. I live close to work so I don't mind going anytime, I just don't want to spend time there :'D. I don't have reports so just sitting there for the off chance that some random will have a question for me that can't be answered by chat or email or waiting to catch me the next day is too slim. The main issue I envision is how to communicate that to the team, jealousy, etc. Need to think of a better strategy.

[AliInKY]

I completed my final programming contract in March of this year.  I am now FIRE.  I can relate to this thread.  We should start a support group.  FIRE-IT.  I don't think it is any accident that that many here are from IT.  I still enjoy programming, just not all the BS that goes with it.

Yep, FIRE-IT.  I'm in!  I'm going on 48.  Been in tech for 25+ years.  Really enjoy my colleagues but I'm burnt the bleep out on the work.  In the big scheme it's completely meaningless, and that's what I keep getting hung up on.  That's what makes it hard to get up every day and take it seriously now that I am financially set for life.

I've started a non-tech side business that I expect to build up over the next 2 years.  Although I could safely do so now, 2020 is my FIRE year.  Mortgage free, debt free, great medical benefits from husband's job (he's not ready to retire).  The side business will allow me all the flexibility I desire but keep my mind active and mitigate risk of natural hermit tendencies taking over.   And...I can see my aging parents more frequently (that's all they want is time with their family).  Meaningful work and volunteer activities, too.   

Trying to remember now why I have decided to wait until 2020... :-/

[DreamFIRE]

I hate the "open space" offices and sitting there all day is unhealthy.

Another senior IT worker here.  Yeah, I hate those open office spaces, shared offices, and cubicles.  Fortunately, I've had my own office for a while now - one with actual walls and a door that I can close, so it's a much less distracting work environment and gets me some space from co-workers, who tend to annoy me.  I still get up for breaks and stop by to talk to other employees anytime I feel like it.  That makes these final couple years pre-FIRE much more tolerable.  I've also been FI for a while, but that hasn't really changed anything for me.

[Clamdigger]

There seems to be multiple things going on in the tech industry.  First, half the people in tech  should not be in the industry.  They either don’t like technology or don’t understand technology or both.  They end up being managers.  Second, they don’t understand what it takes to build anything.  They can estimate at a high level but they never collect actual numbers so that future estimates are more accurate.  Even in the Agile world, story card points are never rolled up to determine the actual cost to build a widget.  Now, there are places that do have real and accurate numbers but it is because the penalty for being wrong is severe.  Third, we fail to recognize that we need at least four hours of uninterrupted time to produce useful work.  There is a Ted Talk on this topic.  So meetings and slide decks are killers of productivity.  Finally, mega corps manage up.  Keep your bosses happy but don’t talk to your workers.

All of this wears on people, and many people just want to go back to writing code with no interruptions.  But even that is difficult due to offshore development, so you are forced into observing and monitoring development, while the technical knowledge and experience slowly evaporates.  So you sit there at work, counting down to retirement.  I have a retirement countdown clock at work.  That was a piece of code I was able to write.

[GardenerB]

It's been 3 months now since the big change so I thought I would post another update.  I don't have much more than just these random points I have noticed so far:

- Moved from a HCOL to mid-COL - not too far but enough to be in a much more quiet place.  House cost 2/3rds of HCOL house, with more land area (same size house) and better views/settings - plus mortgage gone and house is almost new.  Gas much cheaper, and, car insurance dropped from $1900 to $1200 for the car.

- Initially missed the bigger-city perks like good coffee shops, restaurants and pubs all close by.  But the trade off is more space, more quiet setting (relaxing)

- First month and a half off work was kept busy with the move, getting a dog, setting up in the new house.  Felt the typical busy-ness that kept me from reflecting on what's next (LIVINGAFI 'TFB' syndrome).  In down-time took advantage of being free from work- exercising/walking any time of day/week I want, etc.  Also have been able to visit relatives at any time that suits them to catch up.  Even helped FIL clean and fillet 40 salmon they caught in August - got enough to last the year now.

- Second month and currently I find the gaps in time are causing me to question what I am going to do, and what should I be doing to be 'productive'.  Helping out with wife's home business 4 hours per day keeps the technical/computer side covered, house stuff and dealing with kids/dog a few hours per day, and in the time gaps still wonder what I should do to have some 'purpose'.

My last point there is covered in many threads (see LIVINGAFI again for the preparation of FIRE).  With the previous job at 11-12hours per day, there was no time to plan for this phase.  But it highlights that we forget about what we would/will do after our work is gone since we are too busy.  We feel productive at work and so that continues when the fulltime work ends.  I find I don't 'deserve' any free time unless I do something productive first.  But then almost nothing I 'produced' at my previous companies fulfilled any purpose either - it just keeps you occupied.  It is easier to stay busy (doing anything) than to analyze/reflect on what you would do if you didn't need to earn money doing it.

So I figure it's better to plan what's next now (at 45) versus at 65 when it may be more difficult.  Kids will be gone in 10 years, and you will be back in the mode of 'what should I do?' only now without the need to earn so much money (or none) doing it.  I look to both sets of parents and none of them have prepared.  Still clinging to work to fill the days.  I realize I have the 'second adulthood' phase just waiting for something to do (Gail Sheehy I believe?), so I had better not waste it.

GB

[TempusFugit]

Good to see an update GardenerB.  It sounds like you have a good situation for easing into FIRE with the work you are still doing with your wife's business.  I think 4 hours a day is still too much work, but to each his own : )

Ive been maintaining business relationships that i hope will lead to some small engineering side projects after i leave MegaCorp in a few years.  I think something that only requires about 10 hours a week sounds like the sweet spot between having something "productive" to do but still having the vast majority of my time for anything else i want to do. 

Hows the new dog working out?  I love dogs but since my last dog passed away many years ago ive not felt right about getting another one because i always felt guilty about not spending enough time with my dog.  I think that after I retire, i'll probably get another one. 

Since you undertook not one but two major life changes at the same time (leaving full time work and moving) its only to be expected that it will be a bit disorienting.  Give it time and dont pressure yourself to find all the solutions right away.  Youve got lots f time to figure things out and experiment.

[PDXTabs]

I don't really have a great answer for the OP. I am not FI so I have never quit without another job lined up. With that said, I have quit multiple jobs because I wasn't happy. If you are nearing FIRE, willing to take a pay cut, and are good at writing code I would imagine that there are a dozen amazing jobs that you could have in short order. The trick is to find them and to separate the wheat from the chaff, because every hiring manager and HR department will tell you that they shit gold that shits rainbows that shit unicorns.

EDITed to add - and the last time someone hired me to be a lead engineer and turned me into an email jockey they got two weeks of notice on my way out the door, and no one complained. They knew they made my job suck, no one was surprised.

And even though we use the "SCRUM, but..." method where a scrum master is supposed to shield the workers from distractions, this does of course not work in practice.

Yea, I very much view SCRUM as a tool. It can certainly be misused, just like other tools. It is hard to get a good SCRUM master into the organization with the political capital and will to stare down managers and tell them to leave the developers alone. It is also true that your best engineers will get distracted unblocking less experienced engineers. But that's a feature, and every time it happened to me (which was often a daily occurrence) I got to remind myself that I got paid substantially more than the engineers I was unblocking.

[pecunia]

Wow - Many years ago when I took Fortran with punch cards on an IBM 370, I wondered if I should pursue this programming thing as a career.

After reading these posts, I guess I'm fortunate that I didn't.  I spent enough time in little office cubicles to know it is not nourishing for your soul.  So then I looked up this Agile thing.  The long description follows:

Agile software development refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. Agile methods or Agile processes generally promote a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability, a set of engineering best practices intended to allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, and a business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals. Agile development refers to any development process that is aligned with the concepts of the Agile Manifesto. The Manifesto was developed by a group fourteen leading figures in the software industry, and reflects their experience of what approaches do and do not work for software development. Read more about the Agile Manifesto. Did you know thatAgile can also be applied to hardware projects? Learn about cPrime’s revolutionary Agile for Hardware framework.

I know I wouldn't like it.  It has cost, schedule, quality, pert charts, deadlines, overtime, stress and inherent BS written between the lines.   It sounds like they break the jobs into little pieces that you perform that give you little or no job satisfaction and sell you on the story that you are part of a greater team.  The iterative thing is the best.  It's cut and try.  Keep hacking at it until it works.

Per your entries, you guys all sound so happy when you get away from that software assembly line environment.  I'm glad I left the punch cards years ago. 

[PDXTabs]

I know I wouldn't like it.  It has cost, schedule, quality, pert charts, deadlines, overtime, stress and inherent BS written between the lines.   It sounds like they break the jobs into little pieces that you perform that give you little or no job satisfaction and sell you on the story that you are part of a greater team.  The iterative thing is the best.  It's cut and try.  Keep hacking at it until it works.

Absolutely not, agile done right has is none of those things. Specifically:

• You never run your team faster than is sustainable indefinitely. You never have OT, unless for some reason everyone agrees that that amount of OT would be sustainable indefinitely.
• The engineers are equal partners in scheduling, and it is the engineers that decide how long task will take. When done correctly, literally by voting on it. That is, task complexity is determined by the democratic process among your engineers.
• There are no deadlines, only sprints/iterations, and it not everything gets done in your sprint you just push it to the next iteration. You accept that everyone put too much stuff in the iteration or the complexity was not understood.
• You do not interrupt the developers in the middle of an iteration, and if you do you accept that nothing is going to get done. That is, you can "blow up" an iteration,
   if there is an emergency, but you accept that you are slipping your schedule by one sprint iteration (usually two weeks).
• There are no Pert charts, because all you care about is the current iteration, and towards the end of the current iteration the next iteration.

EDITed to add - and if you do it this way every iteration, you get very good at estimating your velocity. That is, the business gets very good at knowing how much work it can get done in a given period of time - at the expense of not overworking the engineers or telling them to work OT for one or two iterations.

But the OP can certainly work wherever they want, or not work at all?

[Matz_70]

On my way to FIRE at 50 in 2021 with no hurry.

I have been working in IT since 20 years now, but I have changed jobs (and continents) and had 3 years off work traveling at various stages.

I am happy and content in my current job and if you are not, maybe taking a year off and traveling could help? Just my 2ct.

[Reader]

    A few years ago I looked into changing to a smaller high-tech company.   Now, I think I'm "cooked" and all done with high tech and the corporate world in general.
Too many knuckleheads, mostly in management and at the high level.   It's funny ....  MegaCorp cannot tolerate knuckleheads at the worker-bee level.  You have to be productive and accountable to too many people.  Bad decision making is not tolerated.
The knuckleheads are either let go or they tend to move up the food chain to other positions in the organization where being a knucklehead is either an asset or has no bearing on their work.

you may be interested in this : https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
it is pretty much as you described :)

[Money Badger]

Another late 40's Tech worker who is working to FI soon (yes, it's really a syndrome across Hi-Tech and reason for shortage of American workers in tech... after all, who else would put up with this $hit?)    And the them on this thread highlights one of the "not so nice" reasons S/W Development is always near top of the charts for "In Demand" skills...   There are so many companies who "F" it up!   Outsourcing always reminds me of the old parable "If you put enough monkeys in a room for 100 years, one of them will write a Shakespeare play."   It's really just a syndrome when a non-technical leadership level and bean counters decide it's more "efficient and effective" to buy labor at a fourth to a third of US labor rates to build a piece of their product line that they don't like having to rely on engineers who know better and will stand up to their incompetence.   They say "Well, I'm smarter than that techie... I'll just outsource it".   Then they wonder why costs eventually go up due to quality issues, delays, high turnover.    Of course, there are some wonderful engineers in some of the other countries (we outsource and insource engineering work in India and Mexico).  But the 24 hour lifestyle and systems of control it takes are awful.   But there are a few companies who let people focus, have ownership and allow good minds to innovate.   But they are a precious few... and you have to have a really compelling skill or network of relationships to get into one of them.   If you're there, you're happy.  If you're not, it's FIRE away baby!   

[PDXTabs]

It's really just a syndrome when a non-technical leadership level and bean counters decide it's more "efficient and effective" to buy labor at a fourth to a third of US labor rates to build a piece of their product line that they don't like having to rely on engineers who know better and will stand up to their incompetence.   They say "Well, I'm smarter than that techie... I'll just outsource it".   Then they wonder why costs eventually go up due to quality issues, delays, high turnover.    Of course, there are some wonderful engineers in some of the other countries (we outsource and insource engineering work in India and Mexico).  But the 24 hour lifestyle and systems of control it takes are awful.   But there are a few companies who let people focus, have ownership and allow good minds to innovate.   But they are a precious few... and you have to have a really compelling skill or network of relationships to get into one of them.   If you're there, you're happy.  If you're not, it's FIRE away baby!

I would add that the really good engineers in India are making 85% of what their US comrades are, and those brain dead execs didn't offshore the project to pay 85 cents on the dollar!

[GardenerB]

Thanks for the replies.

My main goal/concern is to at some point fulfill point #3 in the most recent MMM article regarding mainstream getting FIRE wrong.  That is, I have the physical and mental (points 1 and 2) well covered.  The third daily hardship and learning part is going to take time.  I probably don't want anything tech to provide this aspect of life (and I was/am in hardware so harder to do remotely) Much more interested in concrete things  - carpentry, landscaping, something you build and use.

"Daily hardship and Learning: if you are not sweating and learning and doing something difficult and solving problems, you are not living fully. Find a way to scale back the pampering and achieve more with your own body and mind."

Oh and about the dog.  Going better now.  He was 8 weeks old when we got him, and so lots of work.  Almost 6 months now and calming down a bit.  No way we could have had him in the old lifestyle.  But he fits in now - out for walks many times per day, and constantly happy to see the family like most dogs are.

[bacchi]

Hi from 2019 :)
I would like to ask you, friend. How much was you paid? Simply, I decided to build my own outsourcing software development team and I don't know what's the best pricing model for this business... Could you advise anything, if you're still here?

Wow, that's great, but don't forget that there are lazy people who don't want to work...

You rang?

But this exchange doesn't pass the smell test. 2/3 of SharpMind's initial posts are spam. The responder is a first time poster. Link to a site in 3..2..1...

[Dicey]

The quoted post is gone. Looks like your vigilance paid off. Thanks, @bacchi!