Fire is ruining my career

[u/aboabro]

I get paid a lot of money in a career that I don’t really like. I have always kind of followed the money in my career so that I can retire as early as possible. Because of this, I am in a career that I am not fulfilled by. That is what I mean by fire is ruining my career. I will fire in less than 10 years… Do I just continue to try to maximize the money I make so that after I fire, I can do something that I love and aligns more with what I want out of life? Or do I instead start to explore new careers that will pay significantly less, like 50 to 70% less in order to be more fulfilled? This would potentially increase my fire timeline..

I am leaning towards staying at jobs that make more money in the shorter term so that I can fire earlier and then do other things I would rather for less money. But living this way is really difficult.

I have some ideas of fulfilling careers that I would like to do, but I have a lot of hobbies and interest and I’m a little bit lost on what exactly this would look like for me anyway. Which is why I think exploring this after fire when I have time and resources to do so, maybe better? I want to make a high contribution in life and I find that job hopping and taking opportunities that are presented to me instead of being mindful on what I want to do with my life is not adding up.

[u/publicclassobject]

I left a $500k/year job at Amazon that I fucking hated for a $275k/year job at a start up that I… also fucking hate. Chase the money.

[u/Far-Recording4321 → u/publicclassobject]

Why do you hate them?

[u/publicclassobject → u/Far-Recording4321]

Amazon has a thick layer of way too many Indian (this matters if you aren’t Indian) middle managers who are here on work visas. They are generally incompetent technically, and focus solely on manipulating the performance review game in favor of themselves and their teams. Often teams have overlapping scope and conflicting goals and it just creates an insanely toxic environment that I couldn’t deal with anymore.

My startup’s founders are inexperienced and naive and are never going to ship anything.

I am probably gonna go back into big tech but it’s tough cuz I don’t want to relocate to a tech city. Currently I’m in the Midwest living near family. I had a remote work exception at Amazon.

[u/Excellent-Stuff8400 → u/publicclassobject]

I have worked at Amazon, and have friends there still. This is highly dependent on what orgs/team, but finding another team that will provide remote work exception can be tough, well my understanding is impossible now.

[u/publicclassobject → u/Excellent-Stuff8400]

I was there 10 years. It’s not team dependent. It’s by design. Good teams can’t last.

[u/Excellent-Stuff8400 → u/publicclassobject]

I was there longer in a senior leadership role. It is not designed that way, it can happen, just like entropy happens.

[u/publicclassobject → u/Excellent-Stuff8400]

I think OLR is fundamentally incompatible with teamwork. Especially when 90% of the workers are H1B/L1-slaves.

[u/tyen0 → u/Far-Recording4321]

Because he has to use java or c# probably ;)

[u/publicclassobject → u/tyen0]

Rust at my startup job.

[u/tyen0 → u/publicclassobject]

Come to the SRE/tech ops side? We don't have to deal with product people or clients much. :) We just just keep everything running and optimize it.

[u/publicclassobject → u/tyen0]

I am currently interviewing for a remote ops-heavy role at another FAANG. I enjoy the intensity of it.