Ask HN: Tell me your stories of taking lower paid work to be happier I'm on the cusp of going back to a job I really enjoyed that paid pretty well, but I was lured away by my current, high-paying job (for the money, prestige, etc.). I'm getting cold feet because of the money, but I'm fairly sure I'd like the day-to-day much better than my current job. So tell me -- what are your stories? |
but I did have a bad commute once to a boring office park from San Francisco to San Mateo
the people in that region said my commute length was lucky, which felt like collective cope and brainwashing because of the shared compromises they made
I unsubscribed and took at 20% paycut to have a job in the Mission, which was a 10 minute walking and subway commute, and in the middle of trendy cafes and shops all day. Most of my friends could only go to the Mission at night or on weekends, and many of those same cafes were not open then, or were packed for a different crowd's rush. I felt really lucky, and in these salary ranges there wasn't a compromise in paying for things and saving.
In my case, I really needed to be "in control" of my day-to-day work for awhile. A part of me regrets the lost income, because my investments that I used to live on would have gone bonkers; but I was in a situation at my old job that was quickly getting unhealthy.
So what I'll say is:
1: There's a lot to be said for making gobs of money when you're young. If you can tough it out for XX more months and invest gobs of money, those investments might help you retire much younger than you think. (And at that point, you don't need to show up for work.) (To put it in perspective: I missed out on a rather lucrative investment because I lived on my savings for 18 months and didn't have the spare cash to invest.)
2: There's a lot to be said for work satisfaction. You might need to "scale back" a bit: Drive a Toyota instead of a Lexus, have a more modest home, ect.
In my case, I don't regret quitting my job to start a business. I regret certain mistakes I made with the business, but those are critical lessons that I'll use if/when I ever work in a "low income" stage of a startup again.
The security requirements were also anxiety inducing to me.
I've missed some me things, but mostly it's been nothing but up since then.
My best to all those out there pursuing peace of mind and happiness.
I threw ideas for 80% work time, or 1-day work-from-home (pre-pandemic), to my boss at the time, but was always met with resistance (“architects cannot work from home!” or “you are too important and need to be around all times!”).
I quickly realized my future there was “either accept it or leave it”. So I left and after some months trying to figure out my next move, I decided to take my chances in tech on a remote job (had extensive experience coding throughout my life as a hobby).
My first job in tech, 4 years ago, paid me half of what I was making in architecture. I never looked back. Got a dog, went traveling around while working, made my own schedule, never felt more free or happier.
Today, I am making more than my last salary in architecture and can never imagine working 9-5 in an office again in my life.
However, I have engineered my living situation in order to make doing that pain-free and easy. The main rule is: don't get used to having a high income. If you actually incorporate a high income into your life, then taking a lower wage can be very painful. If you avoid that, it's pain-free.
So what I have done is to determine what the lowest amount of income I can really take without it bothering me, then live on that amount of money. Extra pay above and beyond that gets invested/saved/etc. and I pretend that it simply doesn't exist.
Doing this gives me a large amount of mobility and freedom to choose great jobs that may not pay as much as others.
I quit that so I could open a music school with two of my friends and bandmates, with the idea that I could go back to part-time dev work to pay the bills while the school gets going.
And that's what happened. I got a part-time front-end job at an online game, which I had already been playing for about 3 years. They had a "come join the team" posting in the news ticker of the game. I'm making about the same hourly, but only working 20 hours a week, which is the perfect amount. The rest of the team is on a different continent so I basically just pump out my code as I see fit. No morning status calls, no scrums, etc. And I'm pretty sure I can work more hours once if needed, depending on what happens with the school.
1. I left Microsoft to join a startup and took a >100k pay cut.
2. The startup was acquired, and I quit the parent company to go teach. Again, taking a sizable pay cut.
I’m happy with all the decisions (to join and to leave). After having a high salary for a few years, the happiness piece becomes far more important.
Then I spent 6 months doing nothing and decided to learn to code. It currently pays nothing because after a year, I'm only just on the cusp of starting to apply. I enjoy coding a lot more than recruiting, but my educated guess is that I'd enjoy entrepreneurship more than working at a company. Either way, it's exciting and challenging in a way that recruiting never was.
I've done consulting here and there and going full time could easily clear half a mil a year. I make a LOT less than that.
Our customers are happy. They are warm and praise us. They are forgiving when we make mistakes because the trust is high. They tell us about all the trickery they face from most other companies all the time.
It is a true win win. I do not sleep on a pile of cash but I sleep very well nonetheless.
However in both cases during the first 1.5 to 2 years there were one or more 'senior-level' people quite aloof, disrespectful, and unprofessional in some of their remarks toward me. Not sure if it was my biased perception, or more likely they just treat everyone like that.
Point being, when you take a pay cut your more exposed to that sort of treatment.
- There's an important difference between being earning less and being paid unfairly. It's easy to work for less as long as it's enough to fund your lifestyle and save something for retirement. It's very difficult to be happy if you believe you're paid unfairly (which is subjective, of course).
- There's generally no correlation between job satisfaction and pay. I've left to work at more interesting roles and about half the time ended up earning more for the privilege.
- On average, toxic companies pay more. There seems to be a certain class of company that believes it's okay to treat employees poorly as long as they pay well enough. This includes everything from overwork to overt bullying and worse. These opportunities tend to be evergreen due to their high turnover and so are overrepresented on job listings, etc. (Your network is less likely to refer you into this sort of role.) Focusing on salary alone is a sure-fire way to end up somewhere toxic, or stay somewhere longer than is wise.
Perhaps I should have avoided a technically-specific term such as “correlation”. It seems inappropriate for an anecdotal observation.
However, I hired into my current job for stability and learned there is no stability despite repeatedly being assured that it was. The startup will yield about five-plus years of work until we sell (options). The pay bump will be nice.
I ended up taking a job developing software for medical clinics instead, which paid around $30k less. It was the worst, most demoralizing job I've ever had, and I'm counting Wendy's. A year later, they cut 50% of their development staff, including me, and I was let loose into the 2023 developer job market (0/10 do not recommend). At the time I really, really wished I took the fintech job.
Just when I was starting to feel desperate and cornered, literally the same day I got offered a job working on some legacy .NET software for an airline, where the manager gave me really bad vides, and was feeling cornered like I didn't have room to say no, I got offered a job in public transit, working with interesting technology. I'm a contractor, making around $100k less than what the fintech job offered. People are frequently mad at our agency, and it gets a lot of bad press. In other words, they care. They rely on it to get where they need to go and live their day-to-day lives, and our mistakes are visible and painful. My first production issue (a dumb mistake where I failed to account for a null value) was discovered in 15 minutes due to rider complaints. It may sound weird, but I love that. Sure, they were mad about it, and not necessarily very nice, but the fact they were upset? It meant they gave a shit about what I was doing.
Am I happier than if I had just followed the money and taken the fintech job? I can't see down that path. But this is the first software development job I've had in my 15-year career where I'm confident my work is a net positive for the world.
Economically, my space is not in a good space right now. I have been considering going back to a "normal" job for a bit more income security.
I could live even on basic income, my family not.
Tough time to jump lanes as the post-Covid layoffs have flooded the market with junior/mid-career product talent, but I would be happy to reduce my comp to get my foot in the door at a product focused company rather than keep chasing the consulting incentives.
Now I work for my county government as a computer programmer. I make 20% of what I would've been making at Facebook if I hadn't left (60k vs 300k) but I don't regret it at all. My work helps real people in my community instead of siphoning off bits of attention here and there from strangers all over the world.
The final straw for me was in October of 2019 when Zuck had a closed door meeting with Trump and then "randomly" the next week announced that politicians are now allowed to lie in ads on facebook. Hmmm, I wonder who would disproportionately benefit from that policy change??
(There is always another point of view.)
I can't take the hype cycle anymore. First it was big data this and big data that, now it's all AI. It's always about something other than crafting sensible solutions to real problems.
A breaking point for me was getting scolded to figure out how to apply LLM technology for a sewage utility contractor. Like, WTF.
I'm not too moral to take money for stuff people want but don't actually need. But it gets old. I'm tired. Now I can do little projects that I enjoy after work.
Maybe they'll go somewhere. Maybe they won't. They're not my real job anymore so it doesn't matter.
It's felt like I don't have a job for the past decade. In those ten years I've barely felt any stress, have read hundreds of books, mastered several hobbies, and started a family. Would I trade that for more money? I'll let you guess.
would be pretty cool if i didn't have kids
8 years later, just last month, I closed on buying that second company from the founder.
Obviously, no one knows the future or could plan this stuff out, but in my experience, prioritizing your overall life over purely your financial life is worth it. We have a weird obsession with "more money, more good", and I haven't found that to be inherently true. It's true to a point, but like a bell-curve, there's a downturn and diminishing returns at some point. And that point is different for everyone.
Now I work part time for a small local Eastern European company started by my high school friends. We're around ten, I learn a lot, and I have potential for a lot of impact.
My real hourly take-home pay is 20% of what I used to make and I work less than half the hours, so I make less than 10% of what I used to make. And I'm happy with this trade-off! I get to work with very smart people on things that matter in a relaxed environment. Couldn't be happier!
While I'm annoyed about the money, I have an improved quality of life in Toronto. My wife and I were raising kids alone in Seattle whereas we have a village here to co-parent with. I also found much more cultural identity and roots here in Toronto compared to Seattle. I also prefer the climate and politics of Toronto more than PNW. I certainly miss the hikes, but we make that up with non-stop beach trips.
If I can achieve the same financial security here in Toronto that I had in Seattle, I would never move. Unfortunately, this has been difficult to achieve, but I'm confident I can get there.
As a parent with small kids, this really piques my interest. Could you share more details about this? Are you referring to a tighter community; neighbors that you actually know and interact with?
We're moving to the Midwest soon and hope to experience more of that compared to the where we are now.
you might Google and read up on the concept of "coast fire", which is essentially front loading retirement savings then working lower paying jobs while you let your savings compound.
The work and people are amazing. I learned more in 1 year then the last 10 and just really like my work. The pace and culture is levels orders nicer than the corporate or startup world.
My personal belief is that happiness in life comes from being able to deal with adversity rather than away from it - the biggest advantage that it gives you is that you often find there are "have your cake and eat it too" choices you can make where there only seems a binary choice. For example, it may be possible for you to secure a job offer at a start date a year from now, ride out the high paying job, save/invest money, then you go back to a lower paying job while having a nice reserve of money to play with.
Try this thought experiment:
Think of the best memories you have in the last 1-2 years.
Think of the best memories you had between 5-10 years ago.
I’m willing to bet that the “core” of all the memories/episodes you thought of was people and experiences. Family and great friends. Travel, parties, hobbies, whatever is your thing.
You did not think of money or things you bought. You did not think of a nice pay check.
Now, I’m not going full hippie here. Money is important, but only up to a point. If you have just enough money to do the things you like with friends and family, that’s all you need.
The job you really liked vs the high paying one is fun experiences vs pay checks/things. Pick the good experience b/c in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years you won’t remember the money.
Caveats: If you are very young 20-something and no kids or serious relationship, you should consider gunning hard for the money for a few years to build some investments that will help you, enable you, to take the pay cut when you get older and esp. when you have kids. If it turns out that you like the little suckers, future you may be eternally greatful to now you for laying down the foundation for future you to not worry that much about money and instead focus on kids, family, experiences.
These things generally require a "nice pay check" though.
For travel there are probably many destinations in your own country, that people actually visit your country to see. Those a typically cheaper to do. Then there is asia - I’ve traveled tree months in asia for the same budget as 10 days visiting the States. Also in general very much depends on how/where you say. Hotel in Auckland vs pet sitting gig for a week 15 mins outside of the city (housing for free).
Same for hobbies. Depends so much on what you pick for a hobby.
Probably one of the healthiest changes I've made recently tbh.
And I LOVE the work. It's so challenging and so rewarding. Not only do I get to just have fun exploring CS all day and sharpening my own skills, but I have the meta-challenge of learning how to be a better teacher. I'm passionate about that, and I'm likely never going back to industry.
I'm not really proud of a lot of the programming I did in the marketing sector. But this is something laudable; I feel like I'm genuinely helping people and leveraging my skills in a way that makes the world a better place.
I did this just a few months ago. Worked in the Blockchain industry, earned around 240k in my local currency, which is a lot for what I did. The company got bought, would have gotten an additional 300k (more or less) after 2 years in bonus.
Instead, I joined a company more aligned with what I want to do and become, and the people I want to surround myself with. I now get paid just 140k in my local currency, so I take around 100k a year pay cut.
My wife will start working soon, so we will top up our household income again.
But, I realized, I don't have money problems. My needs are met, and what makes a difference now is my emotional and physical health, and my friends and people I see every day. Filling up my account doesn't help anymore, and the opposite, it made me more stressed every day.
There was a high profile breach resulting in legal actions. In December they laid off all but a handful of devs and planned to nearshore everything. Many close coworkers, including a good friend I’ve worked with for 17 years who was probably half the reason I stayed, all unceremoniously dumped. All projects cancelled except what was necessary to shore up a few things, clearly we’re headed to the boneyard. The company is sinking and on fire, and has been for some time. My job was going to get worse and there was a very real danger that this job would kill me one way or another if I stayed. The heavens gave me hundreds of signs to move on over the years and I ignored them. This was one last chance.
Five months ago, a former coworker offered me a way out. He couldn’t meet me at my current salary so I lost a pretty painful 12%, the total benefits aren’t as great, but the total opportunity is better, there is almost no stress, and I love the team and their vision and focus. I’m thankful to him and the company for making a spot for me. The worst that could happen, being out of a job, is a wash. The most alarming thing is coming to terms with how bad off I really was, and how much it was bringing down my partner, family, and friends. It’s going to take me some time to get myself sorted and be back to a whole person again, but for the first time in a while I have a bit of hope and when I think about what tomorrow looks like I don’t see blackness. So far, the only regret is I didn’t do it sooner. That was worth the 12%.
That was 2017, been 100% freelance since then literally flying by the seat of my pants (no insurance, no benefits, no PTO, no guaranteed income, nothing) and never been happier. Some years I've made more money, some years way less, and that's 100% on me. It's very freeing to take responsibility for your perceived success or failure, rather than be a cog inside of a machine that you truly can't control.
FWIW, I'm in my early 40's with a wife and kid, single-income household, eating what I kill. It's the only lifestyle that makes sense for me, and I would NOT even begin to recommend it to anyone else; I have a suspicion that people who are cut out for the risk are living like this already.
Anyways, I don't tell this story to brag or posture, or to invite dark karmic retribution upon myself -- I just think it's worth articulating that there are so many different paths in life, some you choose, some you're forced into, and it might help paint a fuller picture of options for somebody who is curious about how other people are getting by in the world. Not everybody can/should "be bold", but I do advocate for people to try to find what brings them joy and contentment and inspiration and motivation, and be brave enough to pursue that if it's even a remote possibility.
Also early 40s with a kid and I spent many years working for myself before getting a job about five years ago. The security and lower stress has been nice, but I miss being self-employed. Fortunately I'm remote and my WLB is great, so I try to think of my employer as just another client, and I work on projects of my own. Golden handcuffs and a VHCOL city mean that there's little realistic chance one of those projects enables me to quit, but I fantasize about it daily.
Now I design synthesizers for a living. Way happier!
I took a few months off and got connected to a co founder of a local seed stage startup through a friend. I convinced one of my best friends to join me there as well.
While we are making less money, the work has been really fulfilling. No more big company bullshit, I help determine direction with a handful of other leaders, and I feel like I make an impact. We have product market fit, we’re growing, and the hardest part is scaling to keep up with the growth.
It’s been fun, I’ve learned a ton. I probably haven’t worked this hard in a long time but I really do feel fulfilled in my work which I haven’t been able to say in a long time.
YMMV
Only problem was I made only barely enough to cover my expenses so wasn't getting ahead in life but it was still worth it.
I left for a manager role that saw me with a lower title, but never having to worry about fundraising ever again. I have less responsibility, a lower title, and more red tape, but my stress level and work/life balance made the move 100% worth it.
I've thought the same thing. So many people in software just pretend to chase after some meme and being around them makes me really cynical
It's just buzzword this buzzword that to some people. Who gives a shit about solving problems when you can just shuffle a couple buzzwords around and pretend to do shit?
After 2020, it feels like more and more people are full of shit and only care about money
When I think of what would bring me back to dev, I always think of jobs supporting some kind of science work, like weather or GIS.
Something had definitely changed. But I am not sure how much of that is me.
At one point I was doing my job and vividly hallucinating what I was going to do in dwarf fortress later that evening.
Honestly one of the trippiest experiences I’ve had and a sign that I should probably be applying my mental abilities to something else, which I did eventually.
Was a front-end developer, then tried to go full-stack and it was just too much to deal with. I worked at a huge corporation and the team I was on was full of the "rock star" types - like you said, always chasing the latest thing. I finally had to get out when someone said, "Bruh, you still use Angular? Pfffft, SVELTE is where its now, you're practically a dinosaur!" Same thing, it became so consuming trying to know the coolest thing instead of just being able to build something robust, accessible and easy to use. I look back now and just think how bizarre that mindset is.
I moved into accessibility and love it. I'm further up the chain and work closely with business owners and designers which is really fun to work with and I get to indulge the UI/UX side of my brain now.
I'm doing the same thing. I do some fun dev stuff on the side and have a few freelance clients I work with to keep a nice side income coming in. I have a lot less gray hair now and actually enjoy having free time to decide what I want to work on and when I want to work on it. My wife says I hardly ever complain about my job now so I got that going for me, which is nice.
Interesting story.
I worked in a bike shop a number of years ago. Guy came in and I helped him find some stuff for a long distance ride he was going to do. I noticed he had a black baseball hat with the initials "NJTTTF" sewn into the front of it and I had no idea wtf it meant so as he was checking out I asked him. He said, "You don't want to know." and I said, "I really do." and he said, "Its boring, seriously." and after some more bantering he said, "It stands for National Joint Terrorist Tracking Task Force." I just stood there confused, then asked him, "So you're CIA or NSA and track terrorists? That's pretty cool." He then said, "Not exactly NSA or CIA, but I do work for the government and yes, we do track terrorists. You ever hear about Weather Mountain? I was stationed there. Conspiracy nuts love it, but its not as cool as they say. I was in a windowless room with a sealed door listening to radio chatter and analyzing radar signals. Since the room was sealed, we had to open the door every 30 mins because we would run out of oxygen otherwise. It was hot, it was miserable, and the work was pretty boring when you get right down to it."
I asked him if he was still working for the gov and he said he was, in a different capacity. I asked him what he was working on and he said a few different things, but his favorite was cryptography. I told him I was fascinated with cryptography so he gave me a few books to read and then we parted ways.
Of course after he left, I went right to google and couldn't find a single thing on the task force but did find a bunch of conspiracy stuff on Weather Mountain, just like he said. Very interesting meeting and a very interesting guy for sure.
It was from networking and timing. I was on a team that was being dissolved because of some internal politics and at the time I had been talking with some people in the UI/UX department about some openings they had for designers or UX researchers. By chance a director heard I was poking around and wanting to move over and reached out and said they were going to need to fill some backfill roles and asked if I ever considered accessibility.
After meeting several people on the team, I thought it would be a good fit and a role I could use a lot of my development background as well, so the learning curve wouldn't be so steep. The final weeks of my team being dissolved was basically spent being onboarded onto the accessibility team so when I moved over, it was a really smooth transition.
>> What's the job title?
I'm an accessibility engineer. We do mainly two things - consulting and assessments. Its a great place for me as a developer because I get to work with designers and developers so I'm in the middle of all the action and interface with everybody on the team. Its been a great move and its an area that is becoming super important so demand is only going to increase in the future.
This contract working as an linux engineer bank only allows me to work 24 months without having to take three months off.
Working 15 years none stop since the age of 17, time to rest for a bit.
I hope to work in a old persons retirement home next year. So much wisdom and knowledge that year by year goes and is forgotten, I would love to hear past time stories.
Majority of people choose to maximise money/prestige. I'm pretty sure you end up happier than them.
I wonder if this is what writing code for the feds feels like
That is the voice of the current somnambulism.
Suppose we were to say, "Apple pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value." Or, "The smallpox virus is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value." Again, "Firearms are in themselves neither good nor bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value." That is, if the slugs reach the right people firearms are good. If the TV tube fires the right ammunition at the right people it is good.
I am not being perverse. There is simply nothing in the Sarnoff statement that will bear scrutiny, for it ignores the nature of the medium.'
For the record, I disagree with McLuhan, but perhaps I don't fully understand his argument.
You can use a hammer to screw and a screw to hammer, but the biases for their respective uses are embedded in their affordances. McLuhan argues that the same can be said for any tool, whether it's a binky or a bomb.