kudokatz's comments

> when you have enough money to not worry. Unfortunately for most people ... paycheck to paycheck

This is some truth to this argument, but the frequency with which it's brought out as an excuse to just dismiss any argument one doesn't like is too high in North America.

Simply bashing every argument with, "but some people are in a bad situation" doesn't really further discussion all that much.

In about 1930, Keynes wrote "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" [1] wherein he wrote:

"I believe that this is a wildly mistaken interpretation of what is happening to us.

We are suffering, not from the rheumatics of old age, but from the growing-pains of over-rapid changes, from the painfulness of readjustment between one economic period and another. The increase of technical efficiency has been taking place faster than we can deal with the problem of labour absorption; the improvement in the standard of life has been a little too quick ...

We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come--namely, technological unemployment. This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour."

While there's no guarantee that what Smith got wrong then is the same as now, it can be a reasonable outcome that "the jobs" won't just disappear.

----

Keynes also speculated on what to do with newfound time as a result of investment returns on the back of productivity [1]:

"Let us, for the sake of argument, suppose that a hundred years hence we are all of us, on the average, eight times better off in the economic sense than we are to-day. Assuredly there need be nothing here to surprise us ... Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well."

The modern FIRE movement shows that living at a dated "standard of living" for 10-15 years can free one from work forever. Yet that's not what most people do today. I would suggest that there are deeper aspects of human drive, psychology, and varying concepts of "morality" that are actually bigger factors in what happens to "jobs".

[1] http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

I heard they did this for the Amazon Fire Phone, too

> It is true that working for free is bonkers. Priority number 1 is always rent, at minimum cover that so that business is priority 1.

You can work "for free" if investments cover all your basics ... so only bonkers under the assumption that you haven't taken care of your basics already.

At $45,000/yr of expenses (do-able in SF), it'll take 7 years to have passive income from a stock+bond portfolio cover those expenses.

https://ibb.co/qyFz1C3

Of course, a bad market makes it longer, but the converse is also true: it's more likely a good market makes it shorter! (historically markets go up more than down, of course)

Add a spouse that also saves and invests, and you can have MORE than $45,000/yr of expenses covered within 7 years of earning at that rate. You can also back off to part time or have one spouse continue working after having kids, and all you need to do is cover SOME (not even all!) of your expenses.

> I want to do that? - living at that spending level is likely to affect my long-term health and happiness

The freedom of not dealing with "the cult of impact" [1] and other such silly things is amazing. Having a huge pile of money allows solid peace of mind in a way most people can't even conceive.

And finding out how much happiness you can get independently of spending money is truly eye-opening. Most people are too scared to even TRY finding fulfillment away from what society tells us is "fun".

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1bh80wl/go...

> But that actually creates a deferred tax obligation. Let’s say the tax rate you pay that at is 20% (very optimistic

There are also ways to get at this money with almost no taxes paid later IF you are not working--look for "Roth IRA conversion ladder".

Also look into "Mega Backdoor Roth" for more tax sheltering.

> That seems challenging in Northern California

You don't have to retire to California. Just pay minimal costs while you're there. Many places in US are beautiful, have great infrastructure and health care, and don't cost as much.

And investment growth is a LOT; don't ignore it. And after just a few years of not working, unless you have a bad start you can probably live off of much more than the initial safe withdrawal rate.

> If you save a third of that (which is not easy)

This is very easy, actually. You just happen to like fancy things and houses, probably.

> Now if you’re dual cogs with no kids, maybe. If you do have kids, you’re not retiring until long after ten years.

I find it depressing that so many people use kids as an excuse to avoid facing their own problems with money and spending. Look deeper and you can find happiness with a lot less.

expected time to retirement is MUCH, MUCH higher at FAANG if you can save 50%+ of take-home pay after taxes.

> You also can’t withdraw at as high a “safe rate” as people planning for an ordinary retirement at ~65 do

Solvable, including consideration of valuations via CAPE PE 10. Based on past data, the safe withdrawal rate (SWR) happens to be around 3.25-3.5% of assets to extend to a 60-year time horizon [1]

> at constant 2% inflation (ha!) you need a very safe source of consistent (not average!) 6% returns to retire with 80,000/yr income on $2m, without eating into principal.

For most of this research, "failure" constitutes running out of money. Preserving the initial portfolio value in inflation-adjusted terms can also be solved for. It takes the SWR closer to 2.8-3% for 60-year horizon with high equity valuation corrections.

> You’ll be exposed to tens of thousands in risk per year on top of (low) tens of thousands in premiums per year for a family Exchange plan.

Better to cap expenses and be ready to pay for it than live in fear. Save, invest, and move on with life.

> $2m isn’t “retire at 35” (… or 45) money. It might be “take a big gamble and maybe get lucky… for a while” money. Or semi-retire money.

Depends on how much money you need to spend every year to be happy. Sounds like you need a lot of it. For many, $2m would be fine, even with a very long time horizon. And if any problems crop up, there would be a 15-20 year warning during which a small income boost could top things up.

----

Things don't always have to be so gloomy.

[1] https://earlyretirementnow.com/2017/09/13/the-ultimate-guide...

tl;dr: "You can't raise the bar if you can't pick the bar raisers. "

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729619#21732841

> if this is the case, it doesn't feel like they tried very hard?

I don't think you get it. The way this stuff is done is just as described - totally blindsiding, and potentially flat-out gaslighting. There's no actual metrics or data until they fabricate a paper trail and force you out.

You don't win these things. Rather, you take your money and go elsewhere. Then turn down the subsequent job offers you get from them, using them only as leverage to juice your pay elsewhere with a competing offer ;-)

> If you actually want to control the hardware you own, install Linux. It's not as if the alternatives to corporate control didn't exist.

They exist, but break my touchpad upgrading to kernel 5.19 from 5.15. I'd rather pay for something locked down than something that breaks.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/2002356

> What can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence? What are the economic possibilities for our grandchildren?

> ... for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.

> The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.

> ... We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while.

"Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren", Keynes, 1930

-----

Didn't exactly end up that way.

> never bothered to tell the part of Microsoft that writes the generic Windows UI code

no, they just don't care.

> Android (and I believe iOS does too) enforce that.

This is absolutely not true. Android simply detects that there has been no progress on the UI thread "for a few seconds" before force-closing the app [1]. By this time, the interaction has been janky/frozen for WAY too long. If you have seen bad iOS scrolling and lock-ups, you know this as well.

I have worked on mobile software for these apps that have billions of users. When I pointed out how much stuff ran on the UI thread, there was a collective "this is just the way it is" response and life went on.

It's super-depressing.

-----

[1] "Performing long operations in the UI thread, such as network access or database queries, blocks the whole UI. When the thread is blocked, no events can be dispatched, including drawing events.

From the user's perspective, the application appears to hang. Even worse, if the UI thread is blocked for more than a few seconds, the user is presented with the "application not responding" (ANR) dialog."

https://developer.android.com/guide/components/processes-and...

> Are there some fundamental aspects of git that would make it either very difficult to improve that, or that would sacrifice some important benefits if they were made?

I can't speak to improving git, but I think some light on this area can be shed by Linus' tech talk at Google in 2007.

1. Linus says there's a specific focus on full history and content, not files ... so it's a deliberate, different axis of focus than file count:

https://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8?t=2586

... AND it's a specific pitfall to avoid when using Git:

https://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8?t=4047

2. As Linus tells it, Git appears to be designed specifically for project maintenance while not getting in the way of individual commits and collaboration. But the global history and more expensive operations on things like "who touched this line" are deliberate so lines of a function are tracked across all moves of the content itself.

Maintainer tool enablement: https://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8?t=3815

Content tracking slower than file-based "who touched this": https://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8?t=4071

===

I have no answer, but ...

Practically, I've used lazy filesystems both for Windows-on-Git via GVFS [1][2] and Google's monorepo jacked into a mercurial client (I think that's what it is?). Both companies have made this work, but as Linus says, a lot of the stuff just doesn't work well with either system.

Windows-on-Git still takes a lot of time overall, and stacking > 10 patches of an exploratory refactor with the monorepo on hg starts slowing WAY WAY down to the point where any source control operations just get in the way.

[1] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/announcing-gvfs-git-vi...

[2] https://github.com/microsoft/VFSForGit

> I found myself spending time debugging basic issues like passing the wrong number or wrong kinds of arguments to functions

You'll get over that pretty fast. The bigger issue is looking at some code and wondering "just what in God's name is in that 10-level map and why?"

same here - didn't realize it was the chair! Too lazy to have tried debugging it.

> How much of your unhappiness is your job, or more so a function of having a continually growing list of responsibilities

I have none of the other, suggested, confounding factors. Quitting my last job was fantastic and 100% the best thing I could have conceived of to improve my life.

I also had a very similar sentiment re: cog+machine, although found it more of a combination of amusing and tragic (rather than unappealing).

It's my understanding that firecalc uses only US data. Japan has "lost decades" of price-weighted, non-dividend returns that are flat since 1988 (Nikkei 225). Seems worth considering that some version of this has some future probability of happening in the US and hedging that.

Another similar and popular US-data-only tool that is fun to play with is cFIREsim: https://www.cfiresim.com/

(Edit: of course, US companies have non-US revenues - helps out a bit)