Ask HN: How many of you gave up working as a professional coder?
I retired from my job managing a group of software engineers in Silicon Valley a few years ago.  I&#x27;d been quite frugal, mostly driving old beaters I bought outright.  I owned a condo outright.  I ate the free and discounted food at work.  I was making $300K+ a year in base salary and equity compensation, and my expenses were only about $20K a year.  (My biggest bill was my monthly homeowners’ association fee of about $400.)  So, I was able to save a metric ton of money and invested it all in the stock market.<p>As a child, I loved computers.  I taught myself 6502 and x86 assembly languages, as well as some other languages.  When I got to the university and actually understood how digital circuits worked, I was so fascinated.  When I finally landed in Silicon Valley, I felt like I was in a dream.  I was good at what I did and I met awesome people who were good at what they did.  Actually, the greatest pleasure was meeting and working with people who were much smarter than I was.<p>Eventually, the thrill wore off.  I’d seen so many bugs and new projects that they started all feel the same, kind of like my personal version of the film Goundhog Day.  I didn’t love it anymore.  And then later, I didn’t even like it anymore.<p>At one point, I calculated my net worth at a few million dollars and realized that I could just quit my job and live off the investment interest.  So I just did it.  I’ve been retired for four years now.<p>I travel a lot, which was something I couldn’t do much when I had a job that only gave me three weeks of vacation.  I can also travel in a different way: taking the time in a new place to see un-touristy things, meet locals and study the language a bit.  I read a lot of books, none of which are about computers.  I haven’t been back to the United States in over a year.<p>Thanks to my frugal habits and the runup in the stock market, my net worth is higher.  My “burn” rate is under 2%, which means that I can do this indefinitely.  I don’t miss Silicon Valley and will never live there again.  In fact, I probably won’t ever live in the United States again.  And I don’t miss my cubicle one bit.<p>What I did is unusual.  But the thing I don’t understand is <i>why</i> it is unusual: most of the professionals I worked with could have made the same choices and had the same result.  I guess they found more enjoyment in the cycle of work and consumption than I did.  And like most people who lived in the Valley, I knew and had friendships with people who were far richer than I was: whose net worth was $10M or $30M or more, who could retire today and have a very comfortable life anywhere in the world.    But they continued to work.  I can only guess that they found more enjoyment in work than I did.