Never Retire(economist.com) |
Never Retire(economist.com) |
_Lots_ of people dream of retirement, and _lots_ of people retire happy. Not everyone's lucky enough to love their jobs, or have stimulating positions at companies, or work with people they get along with.
Lots of people work in customer-facing jobs in industries where customers are rude, entitled, and just generally disrespectful.
Many of those people don't have the option to retire because the venn diagram of those jobs, and jobs that pay too little to afford retirement, is pretty close to being a circle.
There's also the issue of there only being so many work opportunities, and whether or not it's correct for someone of traditional retirement age to hang on to a job, possibly at the expense of someone new to the workforce having one fewer opportunity.
I would give this article a bit easier of a time if it didn't conspicuously dance around the issue of having an aging population combined with (in many countries) social insurance-type systems not geared to support an age pyramid that top-heavy, but lines like this are just... bad.
> But can anything truly replace the framework and buzz of being part of the action?
Yeah, lots of things. Travel. Hobbies. Going dancing with your partner. Gardening. Hell, using your retirement and pension to kick off a startup of your own. For many people, above all, not being under constant pressure to perform at a certain level.
I say all of that as a millennial who both (a) loves my job, and (b) is unlikely to ever be able to afford to (comfortably) retire, barring major shifts in the economy.
Most people are not, I'd say. Remember, you don't have to hate your job to be miserable. You merely need to not "40 hours a week + commute for decades" love it. That's love.
It's simply logistically impossible for the majority of people to manage to match themselves with a job like that.
Furthermore, who is this article for? People deciding whether to retire, but who weren't around for Seinfeld?
Well, it's an author's column. Very much reflective.
I agree, but I know a whole lot of people who are no longer working but who struggle to fill the gaping void in their lives once filled by a job and ameliorated by a paycheck.
So they do often turn to the shiny objects, and are doubly disappointed when the expensive things they do or buy fail to produce lasting satisfaction.
Sadly, I can report that more than one person in my life who retired at the top of their field is usually to be found bent over their phone, playing weird videos from Facebook at full volume.
There may be a correlation between excellence in a highly competitive career and failure to connect with other seniors at the community kitchen, I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for growing old _contentedly_.
Best damn thing that ever happened to me.
I had enough to retire, when I did, but had no intention of doing so, for another ten years.
That was a bit over six years ago, and I am wondering what all the fuss was about.
The "retired" was in quotes, because I never stopped working. I just stopped writing code on someone else's orders, and started writing the code that I always wanted to write. It's a lot more professional, high-Quality, documented, and bug-free, than anything I ever did, when I was being paid to do it.
And I really enjoy it.
I have no intention of ever stopping. The coroner is gonna have to rub "YTЯƎWϘ" off my cheek.
I know three chaps that retired from my old company. They had worked there for 30+ years, and moved out of state, to relax. They were all in their sixties.
They are all dead, and achieved this transcendental state, before they reached 70.
I think that's the point. Actually retiring as in not doing any work is statistically speaking a steep slippery slope to death.
This is a point I wish the article leaned into more. I disagree with your position, but it's a discussion that needs to be had. Our existing social safety nets, like you said, are incompatible with the direction society's going.
My opinion is that we're in a place where high levels of automation mean that we have the tools to start moving towards a post-scarcity, or at least reduced-scarcity society. It won't happen overnight, and maybe not even this century, but the idea that we've replaced many lower-paying jobs with automated solutions which are much cheaper (typically a fraction of the price for similar or better throughput) in the long run, while an affordability crisis is in full swing, seems like we're missing some clear ways to pump more money into social services while letting those companies using this automation get away with really harmful behaviours.
And yeah, I'm an optimist about post-scarcity, but I'll die on the hill that it's worth the effort to at least try and direct ourselves towards that.
They are pursuing their passions and setting any goal they want. I don't get why so many people in this thread are dismissive of different views.
> feeling empty because there are no meetings on your calendar, no OKRs to hit and no bosses to answer to
This isn't the part that people miss when they stop working. You can at least try to argue in good faith.
It's probably because the title is a command: "Never Retire." Nah, I think I will, thanks.
you don't have aggregated metric how many people have energy and time after hours of for-paycheck-and-med-insurance job to pursue passions and goals now days.
Thus, HOAs are dominated by retirees. It gives them a new routine (with a side order of authority), through which they promptly impose their outdated ideas on everyone else.
The flip side of this are the hedonists who buy an RV and tour every swinger venue across America. Even this "freedom" establishes a routine-- usually involving driving, partying, finding an urgent care clinic for more Doxycyclene, and repeating until death/disability.
My grandmother was neither an HOA Nazi nor a swinger. She watched TV until she got Alzheimer's and spent her final decade dismantling every bathroom fixture she encountered. Even in extreme mental illness, we seek routine.
I've never really understood the folks who strive for the day they can just park on the couch and call it good. I'd go stir crazy in a week.
Anecdotally, some of the happiest people I know work until the end of their life. They really love what they do, and don't feel the need to stop.
If you can, I say retire and if you have the skills, find an Open Source project to work on, or create you own. That way you control what you want to do as opposed to doing what you are told to do.
Articles like this, to me, only proves there is a very large the wealth gap in today's world.
If you need to be super entreprenurial, start the volunteer organization you'd like to see in the world.
I would assume that an "extremely driven" person is capable of finding a useful hobby, but apparently not.
"Why you should never retire. Pleasure cruises, golf and tracing the family tree are not that fulfilling"
Sometimes both of these coincide. Lucky! Sometimes you grow into accepting 1) to become also 2). Well, lucky too! If you also have a choice to enjoy doing this in later years, then you are very much lucky and happy.
Otherwise, like lots of people, we keep on our pursuit of happiness. Retirement from a well-paying yet not that rewarding job, just gives us another chance to catch that happiness, perhaps now being able to detach the 1).
Living long and remaining active is no less lucky!
Work for him looks like this:
- Working damn near anywhere on the planet he wants from a rental that costs $20k a month - Having a housekeeper, traveling nanny, nutritionist, chef, fashion consultant, etc... - Having $250M to fall back on at any time - Going to industry events, conferences, etc... and having everyone praise you and dote over you - Being able to just not work anytime you don't want to
It's alarming that someone is pushing this to the mainstream, I'm not sure how to counter a slow creeping push like this.
They pursue other interests or find another outlet for their competitive urges.
The problems he faces at work are the same. He will be treated the same by the people he interacts with (and by all reports this can be one of the least fun things about being a billionaire). There aren’t any new toys he can buy with his extra paper billions. His wife and kids - one of the most normal things about Zuckerberg - aren’t going to care.
Taking a broader perspective, at least some of the ultra wealthy don’t seem to be terribly happy people. Would you like Elon Musk’s life as of 2024? What about Jeff Bezos? Or, for that matter, Vladimir Putin?
They seem to be enjoying it. There's a stratum that believes in their right to do whatever they wish and all of them are in it.
Labor also fought hard for shorter work hours and work week. I suppose The Economist would like us to work longer and more days a week so that we can really be "fulfilled," too?
Not to trip Godwin's law, but there was a "camp slogan" this reminds me of . . .
There are people thinking of living forever, be careful what you wish for as good luck finding enough things to do for even 100k years let alone 1billion
1. You "live to work" rather than "work to live." Your personal fulfillment is derived from your utility as a workplace tool.
2. Your job doesn't damage your mental health and finances every need (e.g. food, shelter, utilities, healthcare, savings, furnishings, vehicle, debt repayment, etc).
3. You have sufficient leisure time to satisfy personal desires & obligations (i.e. connecting with your partner/friends, hobbies, caring for family members, chores, parenting, etc).
Unfortunately, for myself and everyone I know, these premises are deranged. But if they resonate with you, then work until you die! Live your best life!
Where I am now is the realization that I aspire to base my self-esteem on how I treat others and not how they treat me. The vanity, rivalry, and search for power that feels inherent in the work world has no place in my world.
I would much rather have the time to spend an hour with my elderly neighbor who is stuck in the hospital than to have the income that would allow me to fly to Tokyo for a Taylor Swift concert, or even just eat at a chic restaurant or drive a new car.
I enjoy working and don't plan on ever fully retiring, but certainly plan to leave the 9-5 lifestyle and working for others eventually to be a full time entrepreneur / indie hacker at some point. My first project towards that end is Grizzly Bulls (https://grizzlybulls.com/), an algorithmic trading platform which is certainly going well enough to support myself full time, but I really enjoy my current FTE work too much to consider it for now.
I find it hard to believe that video games are a more fulfilling past time than something creative like woodworking or knitting.
I find it hard to believe video games are fulfilling. They're a past time, not an achievement.
Every hobby is a pastime, regardless of how outwardly creative it is. You get out what you put in.
I trained and live to work, but I spend way too much time getting permission (in one sense or another). And repeat.
My ideal "retirement" is to have enough money in the bank that I can actually apply my hard-earned skills to real problems, without the friction of cargo-culting interviewers, dysfunctional organizations, misaligned individuals, BS/evil missions, etc.
And early retirement, for me, is partly about getting use out of the skills in which I've invested, before my interests shift horrifically to playing golf, taking cruises, and bingo.
If I ever have to play golf in any serious way, I'm doomed. I can hit the ball sideways, or along the ground, but unless it's just put-put golf, I'm in trouble.
My most recent manager is just over 70 years old and still putting a lot of his time into AI (not the current fad of LLMs, he's been dreaming of his own AI breakthrough for decades). He vacations, sure, and maybe he even plays bingo once in a while. But I suspect he's only going to stop trying to make real AGI when he keels over. He's still pretty sharp all considered.
All of that said, I look at my current life and job role, and compare it with friends, and I have to same I am honestly pretty spoiled, it could be a ton worse. That said, more freedom is the name of the game for me.
This is usually called financial independence, not retirement.
I really like the "Manna" series because I'm increasingly of the opinion that this is where our society is going with automation -- the computer thinks for me and if I'm not a suitable candidate to be automated by a computer, then I'm shoved in a box somewhere to live out my days with almost no comforts.
Just because automation could be used to eliminate scarcity it doesn't necessarily follow that that's the only way it will be used. It's far more likely to be used to further entrench the already existing structure of our society.
In many industries, automation also leads to higher reliability. Aircraft with flight envelope protection are a direct result of automation, and while poor design (like the original set of MCAS-related issues on the 737 MAX) or bad crew doctrine (like AA965 in 1995) can still lead to bad outcomes, automation, on the whole, has saved countless lives.
These tools exist, we just need to keep improving them, and use them in a strategic, smart, and forward-looking way.
I wouldn’t swap his life for mine.
It's much harder than it looks. Even when you are skilled at it, making a significant knitting project is still a very large time commitment. Because of that, creating a knitting project and giving it to someone you care about can be a very deeply meaningful act for both the knitter and the receiver.
So is Super meat boy.
>Even when you are skilled at it, making a significant knitting project is still a very large time commitment.
I don't think I know anyone who plays dota and would consider themselves skilled without having made a very considerable time commitment.
>Because of that, creating a knitting project and giving it to someone you care about can be a very deeply meaningful act for both the knitter and the receiver.
People can find meaning in just about anything.
And how marvelous that is.
I've been reading about Putin being offed for quite some time now. Anything could happen but a lot of predictions have been wrong.
The whole "omg, I'm 40 - no tech will hire me" is a bit overblown...
My employees were close to my age, and got jobs, but it took years. These were top-shelf C++ geeks.
I was treated pretty badly, and decided it wasn’t worth it.
I have noticed over the years that interviewing has gotten more onerous and ghosting has gotten more common. There's never any reason to treat people badly/ghost them. Even a thanks-but-no-thanks is better then radio silence.
In another 20-30 years, Java might be a lot less popular then Go, Rust, Python, Ruby, etc? So lots of Java that needs maintenance and not many people left to do it??
PHP is actually a good bet.
[0] https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/programmin...
Those could be good bets too. Always fun to speculate whats still gonna be around in 20-30 years :-D
That's A LOT of websites...