[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How can I continue working as long as possible?
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Ask HN: How can I continue working as long as possible?
I know that a lot of people on HN are focused on retiring as early
as possible. However, for a variety of reasons (some within my
control and some not) it seems unlikely that I will ever be able to
afford a comfortable retirement despite my efforts to save. I've
heard from others in my peer group that they are in the same boat.
Let's say that I am in my 30s now, reasonably healthy both mentally
and physically, and want to take steps that will allow me to
continue working in a technical field for as long as possible (40+
years) so that I can maintain my income well into old age. What
are some things I should start doing now and/or think about doing
in the future that will allow me to stay "on my game" in terms of
being able to work and earn a living?
Author : thatsamonad
Score : 26 points
Date : 2021-11-20 17:19 UTC (5 hours ago)
| aranchelk wrote:
| Beyond the obvious stuff like ongoing learning of new tech, and
| doing your best to stay healthy:
|
| I'd focus on building a diverse age range in your professional
| network. You need younger people in your network to stay aware of
| technical and cultural changes, and you need older people in your
| network to better understand the challenges you'll face later on.
| lost_soul wrote:
| The eye strain is doing me in. I thought I would be working
| longer but that decision is made.
| complexworld wrote:
| On general, figuring out a good ergonomic setup makes a huge
| difference. In particular for eye strain, having "computer
| glasses", and a large monitor, have solved it for me.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Look at the systems that are embedded into big organizations, and
| start learning them. There were stories recently about "bank
| python", so getting a good grasp of say the build process of a
| couple versions of the python build system and learning to make
| your own highly customized versions of python interpreters is
| likely to be a saleable skill for some while yet. The next COBOL
| might be python 2.x
|
| Generally "stay willing to learn new things" seems like decent
| advice no matter what you're doing.
| b20000 wrote:
| I agree with this. Python will be the new java.
| leed25d wrote:
| I'm 75 and I am a software developer. Keep calm and soldier on.
| complexworld wrote:
| I'm 60, and also a software developer. Are you still working
| full time as an employee?
| leed25d wrote:
| Yes I am working full time.
| b20000 wrote:
| is this in the US, europe or somewhere else, and may I ask
| how you found your gigs the past 15 years or so?
| jowdones wrote:
| I'm 115 and still working as a programmer, things haven't
| changed so much since the 30s anyway, we were serverless
| back then as well, primarily coze we had neither servers
| nor computers.
| hermes8329 wrote:
| Keep in mind that you may be healthy today but that literally can
| change in a single day. This brings so many problems when it
| comes to working
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I know these responses might be a bit different than the question
| you are asking, but they lead back to the deeper question about
| lifestyle / finances /longevity.
|
| Marry wisely. One of the biggest financial hits I took was a very
| costly divorce.
|
| Don't be afraid to move to lower cost areas. Maybe not today, but
| realize that you might need to at different points in life in
| order to maximize your savings.
|
| Realize that you might need to find a career niche or even a
| different career that value your age and experience. I did this
| and it's working well.
|
| Take good care of your body and mind so that you can continue to
| work.
|
| Live modestly. This isn't about whether you drink Starbucks every
| morning, but rather whether you use your money overall in the
| smartest way possible. If you live modestly, you can live on
| less, which means if you get to a point where you need to make
| career compromises you are in a position to do that.
|
| If you are in tech, consider going to work at blue chip firm that
| makes its money in tech. You'll have variety in your career and
| it is likely they will still be in business 10, 20, 30 years from
| now, ie: if part of your desire to work a long time also revolves
| around stability and the likelihood you won't lose your job in a
| merger, etc at an age where it would be hard to find a new job.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > it seems unlikely that I will ever be able to afford a
| comfortable retirement despite my efforts to save.
|
| You aren't doing it right then.
|
| Switch to a mostly stock-based compensation. Capital gain is much
| better than employment income.
| cc101 wrote:
| I have been programming for 54 years. My best work was done in my
| forties. Push hard for a senior well paid position now. If you're
| good, you will be worth it.
|
| I have never stopped programming. Even now my work is exceptional
| although I don't think I could get a job.
|
| Keep at it. Develop non-programming deep domain knowledge. That
| can be a asset getting interviews When people think you're too
| old.
| he11ow wrote:
| Building your own business.
|
| Generally, applying for jobs is a young person's game. As one
| gets older, a lot of the opportunities come through the network
| you've built, so investing in building a network is an absolute
| must.
|
| But at some point, even the concept of "having a job" gets
| precarious. So investing early in building the skills to generate
| your income independently of an employer is super worthwhile for
| career longevity. It's harder to master than yet another
| framework, but will do more to guarantee your income.
|
| A big part of building this skill is figuring out a market you
| can serve, and the needs of that market. It's more likely to be
| an existing product or service, but over time one builds their
| own unique take on it, so that over time one becomes the _best_
| at servicing a particular type of client. This, coupled with
| ongoing investments in networking, is the closest thing one can
| get to "job security" in modern labor markets.
| b20000 wrote:
| I have followed this path the past 15 years. I am nowhere close
| to generating enough revenue to really not need contracting.
| The issue I have with my industry is that pushing innovative
| products is very hard, so you end up making me-too style
| products with your own take on it. So basically 90% the same as
| what other people are making. This becomes very boring, because
| as an engineer or designer I want to contribute something new
| and unique, basically an entirely new product different from
| what competitors are selling. So anyway, in the end I am in a
| situation where I need to make me-too products which I have
| zero interest in to be financially succesful, or choose to do
| the groundbreaking interesting stuff and have a really hard
| time making money. To be succesful with innovative products you
| need big marketing budgets.
| [deleted]
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Ergonomics (meaning, learn how to do your work comfortably
| without interruptions).
|
| Management skills (meaning, managing others). It might not be
| your cup of tea, but not having them after a certain point
| devalues you.
|
| Hobbies.
|
| Being proactive in learning new techs you actually like.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I am one of the people who never wants to retire even though I
| could have over a decade ago when I sold my first bigger company.
| At that time I tried retiring and found it terrible; I have tons
| of hobbies, a family and such but there are drivers in work (and
| more so in starting companies and growing them) that I cannot
| replicate. Or at least have not found a way to.
|
| For me the most important is to keep starting new things and
| learning new very hard things (for me) and trying to apply them
| in business(es). The rest, at least to me, is rather obvious;
| stay healthy and don't overwork or work with toxic people. I made
| all those mistakes.
|
| Another one is: learn to manage. If if you are a coder, your
| eyesight will weaken, you might get all kinds of physical issues
| even though fit; as a manager, even on a small scale, you can
| last much longer with those problems.
|
| Build networks; you do not want to do job interviews at 60 if
| needed. Your network has to be solid enough to ask for a job and
| get one without any vetting. That is an advantage of getting
| older: this is very possible if you keep up this network.
|
| But, rolling back to your post: why can you not retire? Thought
| about moving somewhere were this is not a problem? Because if you
| don't enjoy your work, it makes it vastly harder to keep it up.
| thatsamonad wrote:
| > But, rolling back to your post: why can you not retire?
|
| For background: I came from a poor family with a history of
| substance abuse problems. I lifted myself out of my family
| situation by attending and graduating college, but in order to
| do so I had to take on a combination of student loan and credit
| card debt, most of which I am still paying off despite having a
| decent tech industry income. No one ever taught me to save, so
| I had to learn budgeting and finance management on my own while
| I was in college. I didn't start really saving until a couple
| of years ago when things sort of stabilized.
|
| Currently I am able to save about 5% of my income for
| retirement with a match from my employer. However, every
| "retirement calculator" that I use basically says I will fall
| well short of replacing most of my income in retirement, even
| if I assume Social Security will fill in a portion (which is
| uncertain to me). I also don't currently own my own home and
| that also feels like a very far off prospect if not an
| impossibility.
|
| > Thought about moving somewhere were this is not a problem?
|
| I have considered moving to a cheaper area, but unfortunately
| that means no longer being near some family connections so it's
| not a simple decision. My current job also adjusts salaries
| based on regional cost of living, so I'd have to factor that
| into the equation.
|
| > I am one of the people who never wants to retire
|
| Honestly, this is also a factor for me. I am very fortunate
| that I like the work that I do and work is, for better or
| worse, where I get most of my social interactions. I have some
| hobbies but none of them make me feel as engaged as when I am
| solving a technical challenge or working on a high-level
| business problem.
|
| My spouse and I also joke that we might kill each other if
| we're both just puttering around the house without anything
| "productive" to do.
| aynsof wrote:
| Firstly, congratulations for escaping your background,
| getting through college, and making your way into tech.
|
| Secondly, while I admire the drive never to want to retire
| because you'd be bored, I think it's a huge power-up to be
| able to have what Nassim Taleb calls f-you money (enough
| money to be able to tell your boss, "F-you, I'm leaving" if
| they make one too many unreasonable requests. For me, having
| something approximating that (initially just six months'
| worth of expenses in cash) has allowed me to make better
| decisions, take some risks which resulted in good payoffs,
| and just generally have more fun. I'd highly recommend aiming
| for this rather than just accepting that you'll be working
| forever.
|
| So with that said I'm wondering if you can go into more
| detail on your financial situation. If you work in tech in my
| country, I'd suggest it's possible for most people in tech to
| earn 100k+ if they're not utterly incompetent. (I realise I
| might be in a bubble here, but where I am and what I'm seeing
| this is reasonable.) If you're on that salary, a savings rate
| of 50+% is completely achievable. To have a savings rate of
| 5-10% while working in tech suggests to me that something's
| off. Are you able to share a bit more info on that? Is it the
| repayments on your debt?
| throwing_away wrote:
| > No one ever taught me to save, so I had to learn budgeting
| and finance management on my own while I was in college.
|
| Just in case nobody has pointed this out to you yet, if
| you're in the US, how you use the tax system can make an
| enormous difference in your personal wealth and your
| generational wealth. Learning how to invest in tax-advantaged
| ways (backdoor 401k, tax loss harvesting, real estate
| transfers, trusts, donation funds, etc) is extremely
| complicated, but it is possible to deep dive enough to
| understand how it applies to you.
|
| The US incentivizes a lot of risk taking and keeps an elite
| class by requiring obscure knowledge about tax laws. Most of
| it is "buy, borrow, die" with a lot of nuance to do it
| optimally.
|
| US Dollars are losing value faster than ever, so saving in a
| bank is not a valid strategy. Optimally, all dollars should
| be invested in assets immediately, ideally assets you can
| easily borrow against at a low rate as you need dollars.
|
| The whole system is crazy.
|
| For really rich people, "life insurance" is the money they
| borrow against while they're alive, "living trusts" are how
| they pass money along to their heirs when they're dead, and
| "investments" are things they will never sell.
| gravypod wrote:
| > But, rolling back to your post: why can you not retire?
|
| Currently a SWE at $BIG_TECH_COMPANY making very good money.
| 100% of my income goes to paying off debt which, like the OP of
| this post, was acquired by attending school with no support
| from addict parents.
|
| I have ~80k in debt. At 12.5%, 8.5%, and ~6% APR. I think I
| will at some point be able to retire if the next 20 years are
| the same as the past 20 years. Although: the stock market is at
| record high values and property prices are at record highs. I
| don't know how to explain why this is the case though. Nothing
| is preventing our 401ks from buying into stocks at today's
| price and the rug getting pulled and getting completely
| screwed.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Sofi has some really solid educational loan refinancing
| options if you've got good finance fundamentals (income,
| credit), might consider refinancing as much of the high rate
| debt that you can to enable faster payoff (which leads to
| more free cash flow for investment, leading to financial
| independence faster).
| jimhi wrote:
| I don't think this is very complicated.
|
| Drink water, eat healthy, exercise regularly, get enough sleep,
| have an active romantic and social life.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/starterpacks/comments/6wszws/why_do...
|
| It sounds like you have career and budgeting down.
| jimhi wrote:
| I would only add to this that you need to network and grow your
| skills to prevent potential ageism in the industry.
|
| They would involve making lots of friends in the industry and
| continually learning. I would suggest really really deep
| learning. I recently worked with a guy in his 60s who deeply
| understood python and specific open source libraries
| (contributing to them as well) in a specific industry
| (e-commerce).
| b20000 wrote:
| there are only a limited number of hours per day. how can you
| network substantially but at the same time keep up with all
| the new programming language fads and whatever this industry
| throws at you and still have time to cook proper food, go to
| bed early and take care of your health and family?
|
| i have thought about this many times. sometimes i think that
| "networking" needs to be built into the job, and this is not
| the case for engineering roles.
| [deleted]
| jimhi wrote:
| I don't think networking is something that takes tons of
| time. Just be nice and curious. Show yourself to be honest,
| reliable, and hardworking. Maybe go to dinner every couple
| of weeks.
|
| I agree with you that there so is many language fads and
| things you could learn. I spent several hundreds hours on
| different Udemy things over the last few years. That's why
| I think just focus deeply on one or two areas like my
| ecommerce friend. Any new grade can learn the basics of
| whatever fad in a couple months so you don't want to be
| competing for that anyway.
| b20000 wrote:
| What do you think works well then, to network?
| jimhi wrote:
| This is a hard question, like asking how you make
| friends.
|
| I don't go to conferences myself. But if I consider
| people in my network who I would vouch for it's:
|
| - Classmates from schools or various programs who I
| became friends with or joined the same clubs so I find
| them interesting
|
| - Coworkers who got things done and seemed smart. They
| had my back and always made sure the right person got
| credit for things.
|
| - Various meetups and events in my city. My particular
| interest is Biohacking and startups in general but I am
| sure there are crypto, healthcare, self driving, hacking,
| or meetups in whatever topic you might have interest.
|
| - People I only met once or only through LinkedIn
| messages. They went out of there way to recommend for a
| job or help in some way when I asked.
|
| I will say it's far easier to network in person. People
| trust you more. And it's far easier to network when you
| have done something cool to that other person. (self
| projects, sold a company, etc)
| throwing_away wrote:
| > Drink water, eat healthy, exercise regularly, get enough
| sleep, have an active romantic and social life.
|
| oh no
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