[htstgrgear]

Great question and discussion. I am 40+ and I feel like I am going in wrong direction. But I think it is getting a bit clearer on what I should do next.

Right now, I work for a failing old school tech giant. I am have comfortable position with very good wok life balance. It seems you can easily not do a thing at work. No one wants change. Most of the company is made up of middle managers and non-productive compliance approvers. Seems like a great place to work for unmotivated. I have my moments where I want to accept company’s culture and move into middle management. Just coast as much as I can. But then I get frustrated and feel like I did nothing all day and feel like parasite on society.

So I apply for other jobs, sometimes at other large tech companies but talking with their developers it seems they are not much different from my current company. Then I apply at startups but I got family and I will not work more then 40 hours a week. Then I apply at FAANG or FAANG wannabe companies and I can never pass Leetcode. Also I did spend a few hours studying for Leetcode but I have family, I am not going to take time away from them to study something useless.

And yes my family, I love them but things are not exactly how I imagined they would be. I would love to live near beach and have more outdoors life. My goals were live modestly, retire early, read more, watch less TV/web. But my wife don’t want to make any big moves. She wants to live in suburbia, have a big house, vacations instead of live on the beach, etc.

When I turned 40, I seriously started to think how I can have more fulfilling life. It was either have more fulfilling personal life or more fulfilling work. I cannot change my family, so only option is to change work. So I am on quest to find more fulfilling work. Not more money but higher paycheck would be nice. I would retire once we have 3M in 401K.

For work, I enjoy working on interesting programming challenges but not so much that you find in typical large corps. Also programming is fun when working on my projects but not so much when working on other’s projects.

So after reading so many comments here, I think I want to transition to freelancing and consulting. Yes that means constantly interviewing and looking for next project. But I might be able to work on more interesting projects, control what I work on, avoid office politics, and take 3 months vacation whenever I want. Also it seems this may pay pretty well especially if I niche down.

The other thing is programming while enjoyable is still not as much as fun as my hobbies or when I had some. After thinking more about what I can do with my kids, I am looking into photography as a second income source. Photography is a hard field to make money in. But it is funner and it maybe more fulfilling than programming. I am building my photography portfolio (Instagram) and hopefully one day actually charge people for it.

I think combination of portrait photography and programming gigs should cover middle class lifestyle in suburbia, and give me more fulfilling life.

Again I don’t know if it is a good plan or even if I will be able to quit my job.