I feel obliged to comment, although not with my normal HN username.
I’m 41. I retired two years ago at the age of 39. I spent 18 years working in Silicon Valley at four different companies of various sizes. At 29 I was promoted to a first-level manager.
Two of the companies I worked for were successful while I was there, although not spectacularly so. Mostly I minimized my costs. For the last five years of my career, my base salary was about $200K and I was making another $100K in equity (stock options and vesting of restricted stock). Of the $300K, I paid 40% in taxes, lived on 10%, and saved 50%. Clearly, I made good money but I didn’t get an Instagram-style money waterfall.
I retired with $3M. I’ve made another $1M off a well-timed investment of $30K in bitcoin, so my net worth is $4M now. By the “4% rule” I should be able to withdraw $160K a year. But I can’t shed my frugal habits that led me to this place, even though I feel like I’m living “high on the hog” here. I’m going through about $60K a year ($5K a month).
I think that some people I know think I hit the jackpot. But it’s really not like that. Mostly, I made a long slog of working unending sixty-hour weeks and also being effective while doing it.
I left and moved to Russia. (I speak Russian fluently as a second language.) I date a succession of girls in their twenties. 27 or 28 is about the cutoff for me. And they’re attractive girls: they’re not the twentysomething warpigs you see lumbering through the cubicle hallways of Silicon Valley. My girlfriend at the moment is 20, which is less than half my age. But I date other girls on the side.
I met a European guy with almost the same exact story: by some combination of success and saving money he is in the same position, although to a slightly lesser degree. He’s my best friend in life: I’ve never connected with another man so well since childhood. We throw dinner parties in my huge flat, and invite cure girls and stand-up guys. We get each other 100% and feed off each other’s energy. Our reputation is spreading and it seems like every week we throw a better party and with hotter girls. Today I ran into an acquaintance on the street that I hadn’t seen in a year, and he said he’d heard of our parties and would like to get invited.
We are on a first-name basis with the owners of the coolest clubs and bars in the city. When I met my current girlfriend, I invited her out on Saturday night to the coolest bar in the city. She said, “I don’t have a card.” I said, “I don’t need a card, I know everyone there.” We went there, and as usual, the bouncer smiled and shook my hand. Sometimes I invite a bunch of people to these bars and they get “face controlled,” but then I just come out and ask the bouncer to let them in and he always does. This is the closest to being a celebrity that I’m ever going to get.
I tinker around with software. I’m fascinated by Haskell. But I’ve lost my passion for it. I worked too long and too hard in Silicon Valley. Now I want to read books, drink wine, hang out with my friends, and consort with lots of girls. I don’t have the drive I had as a twentysomething.
I get a lot of invitations on LinkedIn to come and interview here and there. Even though I’ve been gone for awhile, it’s clear that Silicon Valley is booming. But I can never go back. After seeing this side of the wall, I can’t possibly go back to a cubicle. And I don’t know how I would explain my life. “I had this great 18-year career. I’m a great technologist and a great manager. But for the last X years I’ve been doing… um… well… just pure debauchery.”
Having been at companies in growth mode, I know that there are really few good candidates out there. I literally interviewed THOUSANDS of candidates during my career. I know how clueless my competition is. If I want to go back, I can. Surely, there are much better people than me. I’d say I’m at the 80th percentile in Silicon Valley. But as I write this I know I can never go back.
When I first left, I considered doing a SaaS and had an idea. I formed an LLC before I left. But I’ve done nothing and have lost interest. I no longer have the love for programming that I once had, and I don’t really need any money. I’m enjoying my life. So I just want to continue to enjoy my life.
I am happy in a way that I have never been. My biggest problem is shedding the mentality that brought me here. I got here by busting my ass, taking names, saving as much as I could and investing. It was a feat of disciple. I chewed my 20-year-old girlfriend out for not keeping the wine glasses of my guests topped off during dinner at her end of the table. She’s attracted to my status and confidence, but she doesn’t really understand my mentality, especially since it is essentially alien to her culture.
Ironically, I’ve taken a job two nights a week teaching English for $9 an hour. But I enjoy it. I connect with the students and the students love me. I think the people at the school are confused, because they know that I have this crazy life of high-end clubs and a fashionable flat in the dead center of the city, and they don’t know how I support it on my income.
TL;DR: I busted my ass and made enough money to escape. I’m enjoying my life.
Reading this post was very uncomfortable, especially the follow-ups describing women as having "no intellectual curiosity", but also the general tone. I was also perplexed at how many others described this as an ideal life -- perhaps they were just referring to the raw facts (lots of fun, dating, throwing good parties, etc.) and not actually adopting many of the implicit attitudes in there.
Still, I couldn't help but read this post in the voice of a ~19 year old college "douche"[1] type, which felt very weird coming out of a 41 year old.
Perhaps the real lesson in here for young HNers is to live their lives fully, to grow, mature, and develop our emotional maturity, so that we don't sound like that at the respectable age of 41.
--
[1] - couldn't find a better word; is there an alternative with less negative connotations, but carrying the same denotation?
I felt very much the same way reading this. I typically associate these actions (namely glorified partying and objectifying women) with severe lack of confidence, self awareness and, and individuality. These are not qualities I would expect from an emotionally mature 41 year old that is retired and happy. It sounds like iretired missed something early on (while 'busting his ass' presumably), and is trying to play catch-up.
Party life does not appeal to me at all, but I respect such choice. iretired worked hard, cashed out and now has his fun.
I think he would get bored of that party life in another year or so, marry one of his girlfriends and move back to Silicon Valley for another venture.
Edit: I take it back.
I missed couple of other iretired comments.
Now he seems to be totally fake: much younger than 41, never been successful manager and never actually cashed out.
Yeah. When I focus on just him, I feel sad for him. He took something he loved doing, software, and ruined it for himself. For half the human race, the half that he wants to be intimate with, he doesn't even know how to interact with them in a way that isn't exploitative. He's now reluctantly spending his cash hoard to buy cheap status from bar staff. It's kinda heartbreaking.
And then I think about the women he's exploiting, the one whose early, formative relationships are with somebody with no respect for them. How many of them will spend the rest of their lives thinking that men are exploitative assholes? That if they're going to make it in this world, they have to be as awful as him?
It's hideous. I hope he gets over it. For their sake, and his.
I'd like to thank the gp for his comment and his honesty; I think his participation adds a lot to this discussion.
That said, I felt just as uneasy as you.
Here's my experience from the Funemployment thread, if anyone's interested -- not FU money, but a life that feels just as free: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7932707 (I thought about commenting on this thread, but I already commented on the 'Funemployment' thread).
I think that "emotional immaturity" is a cop-out, though, one that I've seen a lot. What's mature?
I've seen, known and met dozens (hundreds?) of expats, and I fear that the real reasons might be a bit more grim: I don't think people really know what they would run away to do.
It's easy to funnel people towards technology and startups if they want to get rich. It's 'easy' in the sense that, whatever the reasons you might want to get rich, technology can probably help.
But on the opposite end?
Where do people go once they've achieved functional independence (through retirement or other means) and can basically take work or leave it?
Well ... that's pretty personal. It fans out, sometimes to really weird and specific places.
In this case, the gp has found one really good friend, who 'gets' him. The two of them have a bromance going, and they have a hobby they enjoy ('debauchery'), and they treat other people (including some women) as essentially disposable.
That makes me uneasy, but what about it specifically would you call "immaturity?" It seems that you might mean that it's empirically immature, in that it sounds like the dream and the description (and, hey, this being the internet, it might well be a fantasy) of young people without much life experience.
I don't think that having fun, drinking, knowing the bouncers, going to clubs, and having many relations (often overlapping) with much younger women is a sign of immaturity per se.
The reason I use the "emotional immaturity" label to describe the post has more to do with the way its written. Gloating in certain details and expressing certain opinions that, in my view, are reflective of a person whose life experience is (in some ways) uninformed and lacking.
Again, the women comment I think indicates that he simply hasn't talked to an accurate sample of women (or hasn't tried to have serious conversations). That's a serious lack of experience (if you presuppose as I do that intellectual women exist in roughly the same proportion as men). I personally define maturity/immaturity as something related to these kinds of experiences.
It goes without saying that I am not referring to any objective conception of maturity, but rather my own assessment of what it means.
The reason I'd be comfortable calling it immature is that shallow relationships with people are common in the young, but most people grow out of it. And very few go back from treating other humans as equal to a more narcissistic approach.
I don't think there's anything essentially wrong with narcissism. Toddlers believe the whole world is about them, and have to be trained not to hit others. Gradually, we learn that other people are independent entities, just as real as we are, and just as deserving of respect. I think that's a life-long process. This guy seems way behind for his age, which is also my age. I hope his time off lets him catch up.
I think the "bro" word is incredibly sexist towards men and negative. It's a cliché we're trying to accuse people of, and it doesn't cover the diversity of programmer styles and the desperation many of us are into about our sector not having enough women. We don't get stronger by repeating those humiliating words.
I believe, if we want to reach peace, we must drop this word "brogrammer" and the idea of tagging people with a bad attitude, altogether.
Labels are troublesome, but the specific use here seems appropriate: it's a man who is in a technical field and who people see as having an immature attitude towards women and perhaps even life in general.
Sure, "not all men" and all that - but, well, yes this man.
You're litterally right. Your comment however does not take into account the I however do not find that categorizing people under condescending labels - Blah, no way to get heard.
The post has a bizarre vibe doesn't it. The facts he chose to include.
He'll date 28 year old... but never older. Of course not. He knows all the bouncers of the hottest clubs. It's how he impressed his 20 year old girlfriend! But he has more girls 'on the side'.
Gee I wonder why he never has good conversations with any women given the types that must gravitate towards him.
> I date a succession of girls in their twenties. 27 or 28 is about the cutoff for me. And they’re attractive girls: they’re not the twentysomething warpigs you see lumbering through the cubicle hallways of Silicon Valley. My girlfriend at the moment is 20, which is less than half my age. But I date other girls on the side.
What the fuck does this have to do with anything? Go posture somewhere else you uninteresting braggart.
It's just a long-winded answer to "Do you feel happy in your life?". And we now know a little more about this classy individual! ;) Knowledge is power.
> I ran into an acquaintance on the street that I hadn’t seen in a year, and he said he’d heard of our parties and would like to get invited.
Straight from The Great Gatsby!
Do people often stereotype you as a Oligarch? Given that you probably moved to Moscow or St. Pete, what would be the relationship between an Oligarch (born with money) and you (worked for money)? What do they think about you and what do you think about them?
Thank you for posting this. As an a guy who's about to turn 27, it's very interesting and useful to hear about possible life paths.
Is there a way to contact you via message that you could share (perhaps a throwaway email)? I'd like to ask a few follow up advice questions that may not be appropriate to put publicly.
Great story, I've heard from a couple of people who have worked really, really hard that at some point they just lose all interest and do the exact opposite.
On another one, what about family if I may ask. Do you not have plans about that or only at a later point in time?
> Women have almost no intellectual curiosity. It is just how they are wired. If you want to have great conversations about anything meaningful, you must find a man.
It makes me burn with shame to see such horseshit on Hacker News.
This account is banned as a troll. Do not post anything like this again, and kindly keep the douchey Maxim-magazine pastiche off this site as well.
>Women have almost no intellectual curiosity. It is just how they are wired. If you want to have great conversations about anything meaningful, you must find a man.
This sounds like selection bias. From what you wrote, it sounds like two things are true of the women you meet.
1. You're selecting them based on looks
2. Your intention is, in most cases, to sleep with them
I'm not saying that no attractive women are intelligent, of course. What I am saying is that if you are selecting based on looks (and interest in clubs) then you're less likely to find intelligence. You're more likely to select your friends based on intelligence than looks, so it makes sense that the men you meet seem smarter. You're looking for different things.
Likewise, you're not trying to sleep with your friends. That dynamic isn't there. But if you're meeting women to at the very least explore the potential of sleeping with them, then you're probably consciously or unconsciously steering the discussion towards fun, sexual things.
I've accidentally torpedoed several first dates by having intellectual discussions with the women I was talking to. We had great discussions! But in most cases an in depth intellectual discussion is antithetical to creating sexual chemistry, at first.
You might consider finding some platonic female friends. You may discover they have qualities you don't notice when you're dealing with women mostly on the basis of trying to date them.
I'm not saying that no attractive women are intelligent, of course. What I am saying is that if you are selecting based on looks (and interest in clubs) then you're less likely to find intelligence.
I know you mean well, but somehow your second sentence contradicts your first statement.
I wasn't clear. I couldn't figure out how to express my full point concisely, so I left it short and potentially misleading. I had hoped the meaning was implied, but I see now it wasn't. Thanks for pointing that out – I definitely didn't mean to say attractive women are less intelligent!
When I said "less likely" I meant "less likely than if you were looking for intelligence specifically".
So maybe, odds of intelligence when looking for it = 25%
Odds of intelligence in general population = 10%
Odds of intelligence when searching by attractiveness = 10%
I didn't mean attractive women are less intelligent. I meant that by searching for attraction he's less likely to find intelligence than if he were searching specifically for intelligence.
Strictly speaking, "If you are selecting based on looks (as opposed to picking randomly)" simply implies that you believe fewer attractive women are intelligent, proportionally. This actually could be reasonable without thinking less of attractive women, if you assume that attractive and intelligent women are likely to already be taken, but it's still certainly an assumption.
It gets even less damning if we say "If you are selecting based on looks (as opposed to picking based on intelligence)". It should be uncontroversial that a group of women selected for intelligence is going to be smarter than one selected based on an uncorrelated (or even weakly correlated) feature.
Thank you, that's what I meant. I just wrote a paragraph in another comment, but you expressed it much more concisely.
Searching based on looks rather than (traits likely to signify) intelligence is likely to lead to less intelligence found, even if the subset (attractive women) is equally likely to be intelligent.
Women who could actually challenge you intellectually are keeping a wide berth around you. To them it's too clear what you want in life and they apparently have no interest.
I'm not jealous. I'm a multimillionaire and have no real need for additional money. Nothing crazy but more than enough to not need to do anything for money. I could do what you do, if I wanted, although it holds no interest to me.
But I build companies and in doing so I hire a wide variety of people, including women who are every bit as intellectually capable as men. Why are you not meeting them in your personal life? I don't know. Maybe because you care more about how they look and not how they think. The smart ones are written off as "warpigs".
Maybe in 10-20 years you'll find that you were never able to find an actual connection with a woman and begin wondering why, instead of purely blaming it on them. Or you'll tire of the debauchery. Or maybe you'll just be happy with debauchery and inability to connect with nearly everyone you know (except one guy) for the rest of your life, and be happy with the "nod" from the bouncer and swarms of penniless locals infatuated with your status.
The blue pill runs deep in HN. It's just the personality of nerds to be white knights. There are always a minority that have taken http://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill
Or ya know. The rest of the people here have very different lives and more often surround themselves with intelligent people of both sexes. You've made it very clear that your selection process for females is incredibly unlikely to attract someone with whom you'd have a deep, meaningful conversation. It would be exactly the same if you were gay and chasing after their male analogues.
Oh... my... god, you actually mention the red pill thing here? Red Pill is the absolute direct opposite of Hacker News, of intellectual maturity, of intellectual curiosity. Red Pill is like being a slave owner. iretired needs to go back to Reddit. I'd tell him to go back to 4chan, but even 4channers don't buy into that Red Pill bullshit.
>Women have almost no intellectual curiosity. It is just how they are wired. If you want to have great conversations about anything meaningful, you must find a man.
You are hanging around the wrong women if that is what you are really interested in (I suspect not). I would be careful generalizing your experience with certain women to the remaining 50% of the human race!
I think you posted under a throwaway, and then replied with your actual account.
> Women have almost no intellectual curiosity. It is just how they are wired. If you want to have great conversations about anything meaningful, you must find a man.
I hope you someday learn to see women in a little better light.
I doubt he will, he spends his time buying young attractive women's time and clubbing with other douchey status chasers. It's very important that the bouncer at a club recognizes him.
He seems completely unaware that calling anyone out on their lack of intellectual curiosity and "conversations about anything meaningful" is hilariously ironic.
He's just got a big case of bias that he can't see in himself. He is the one who picks young, attractive girls who can by virtue of their looks get along quite nicely in life without having to learn how the rest of the world works. How many men would choose to not be particularly interested in intellectual pursuits if they could live comfortably being taken care of by rich women?
I have found that it's harder to meet intellectually curious women than men. I don't know if that's because there are fewer of them than men on a percentage basis, or because they are more willing or effective hiding their intellectual curiosity than men.
Disclaimer: I am well outside of SF. I spent "adult" years in Florida and Texas. This is my observation of the demographics I have experienced.
I think there might be some selection bias there: if you are iretired from above, it sounds like you are choosing women based on appearance alone. While a fine pursuit, it won't necessarily lead to intellectual conversations.
I’m 41. I retired two years ago at the age of 39. I spent 18 years working in Silicon Valley at four different companies of various sizes. At 29 I was promoted to a first-level manager.
Two of the companies I worked for were successful while I was there, although not spectacularly so. Mostly I minimized my costs. For the last five years of my career, my base salary was about $200K and I was making another $100K in equity (stock options and vesting of restricted stock). Of the $300K, I paid 40% in taxes, lived on 10%, and saved 50%. Clearly, I made good money but I didn’t get an Instagram-style money waterfall.
I retired with $3M. I’ve made another $1M off a well-timed investment of $30K in bitcoin, so my net worth is $4M now. By the “4% rule” I should be able to withdraw $160K a year. But I can’t shed my frugal habits that led me to this place, even though I feel like I’m living “high on the hog” here. I’m going through about $60K a year ($5K a month).
I think that some people I know think I hit the jackpot. But it’s really not like that. Mostly, I made a long slog of working unending sixty-hour weeks and also being effective while doing it.
I left and moved to Russia. (I speak Russian fluently as a second language.) I date a succession of girls in their twenties. 27 or 28 is about the cutoff for me. And they’re attractive girls: they’re not the twentysomething warpigs you see lumbering through the cubicle hallways of Silicon Valley. My girlfriend at the moment is 20, which is less than half my age. But I date other girls on the side.
I met a European guy with almost the same exact story: by some combination of success and saving money he is in the same position, although to a slightly lesser degree. He’s my best friend in life: I’ve never connected with another man so well since childhood. We throw dinner parties in my huge flat, and invite cure girls and stand-up guys. We get each other 100% and feed off each other’s energy. Our reputation is spreading and it seems like every week we throw a better party and with hotter girls. Today I ran into an acquaintance on the street that I hadn’t seen in a year, and he said he’d heard of our parties and would like to get invited.
We are on a first-name basis with the owners of the coolest clubs and bars in the city. When I met my current girlfriend, I invited her out on Saturday night to the coolest bar in the city. She said, “I don’t have a card.” I said, “I don’t need a card, I know everyone there.” We went there, and as usual, the bouncer smiled and shook my hand. Sometimes I invite a bunch of people to these bars and they get “face controlled,” but then I just come out and ask the bouncer to let them in and he always does. This is the closest to being a celebrity that I’m ever going to get.
I tinker around with software. I’m fascinated by Haskell. But I’ve lost my passion for it. I worked too long and too hard in Silicon Valley. Now I want to read books, drink wine, hang out with my friends, and consort with lots of girls. I don’t have the drive I had as a twentysomething.
I get a lot of invitations on LinkedIn to come and interview here and there. Even though I’ve been gone for awhile, it’s clear that Silicon Valley is booming. But I can never go back. After seeing this side of the wall, I can’t possibly go back to a cubicle. And I don’t know how I would explain my life. “I had this great 18-year career. I’m a great technologist and a great manager. But for the last X years I’ve been doing… um… well… just pure debauchery.”
Having been at companies in growth mode, I know that there are really few good candidates out there. I literally interviewed THOUSANDS of candidates during my career. I know how clueless my competition is. If I want to go back, I can. Surely, there are much better people than me. I’d say I’m at the 80th percentile in Silicon Valley. But as I write this I know I can never go back.
When I first left, I considered doing a SaaS and had an idea. I formed an LLC before I left. But I’ve done nothing and have lost interest. I no longer have the love for programming that I once had, and I don’t really need any money. I’m enjoying my life. So I just want to continue to enjoy my life.
I am happy in a way that I have never been. My biggest problem is shedding the mentality that brought me here. I got here by busting my ass, taking names, saving as much as I could and investing. It was a feat of disciple. I chewed my 20-year-old girlfriend out for not keeping the wine glasses of my guests topped off during dinner at her end of the table. She’s attracted to my status and confidence, but she doesn’t really understand my mentality, especially since it is essentially alien to her culture.
Ironically, I’ve taken a job two nights a week teaching English for $9 an hour. But I enjoy it. I connect with the students and the students love me. I think the people at the school are confused, because they know that I have this crazy life of high-end clubs and a fashionable flat in the dead center of the city, and they don’t know how I support it on my income.
TL;DR: I busted my ass and made enough money to escape. I’m enjoying my life.