I'm a self-taught 19-year-old programmer. Coding since 10, dropped out of high-school and got fist job at 15.

In the the early days I was extremely passionate, learning SICP, Algorithms, doing Haskell, C/C++, Rust, Assembly, writing toy compilers/interpreters, tweaking Gentoo/Arch. Even got a lambda tattoo on my arm after learning lambda-calculus and church numerals.

My first job - a company which raised $100,000 on kickstarter. The CEO was a dumb millionaire hippie, who was bored with his money, so he wanted to run a company even though he had no idea what he was doing. He used to talk about how he build our product, even tho he had 0 technical knowledge whatsoever. He was on news a few times which was pretty cringeworthy. The company had only 1 programmer (other than me) who was pretty decent.

We shipped the project, but soon we burned through kickstart money and the sales dried off. Instead of trying to aquire customers (or abandoning the project), boss kept looking for investors, which kept us afloat for an extra year.

Eventually the money dried up, and instead of closing gates, boss decreased our paychecks without our knowledge. He also converted us from full-time employees to "contractors" (also without our knowledge) so he wouldn't have to pay taxes for us. My paycheck decreased by 40% by I still stayed.

One day, I was trying to burn a USB drive, and I did "dd of=/dev/sda" instead of sdb, therefore wiping out our development server. They asked me to stay at company, but I turned in my resignation letter the next day (my highest ever post on reddit was in /r/TIFU).

Next, I found a job at a "finance" company. $50k/year as a 18-year-old. CEO was a good-looking smooth-talker who made few million bucks talking old people into giving him their retirement money.

He claimed he changed his ways, and was now trying to help average folks save money. So far I've been here 8 month and I do not see that happening. He forces me to do sketchy shit, that clearly doesn't have clients best interests in mind.

I am the only developer, and I quickly became a back-end and front-end ninja. 

I switched the company infrastructure from shitty drag+drop website builder, WordPress and shitty Excel macros into a beautiful custom-written python back-end.

Little did I know, this company doesn't need a real programmer. I don't have clear requirements, I get unrealistic deadlines, and boss is too busy to even communicate what he wants from me.

Eventually I sold my soul. I switched parts of it to WordPress, because I was not given enough time to write custom code properly.

For latest project, I switched from using custom React/Material/Sass to using drag+drop TypeForms for surveys.

I used to be an extremist FLOSS Richard Stallman fanboy, but eventually I traded my morals, dreams and ideals for a paycheck. Hey, $50k is not bad, so maybe I shouldn't be complaining? :(

I got addicted to pot for 2 years. Recently I've gotten arrested, and it is honestly one of the best things that ever happened to me. Before I got arrested, I did some freelancing for a mugshot website. In un-related news, my mugshot dissapeared.

I have been sober for 2 month now, and my brain is finally coming back. 

I know average developer hits a wall at around $80k, and then you have to either move into management or have your own business.

After getting sober, I realized that money isn't going to make me happy, and I don't want to manage people. I'm an old-school neck-beard hacker. My true passion is mathematics and physics. I don't want to glue bullshit libraries together. 

I want to write real code, trace kernel bugs, optimize compilers. Albeit, I was boring in the wrong generation.

I've started studying real analysis, brushing up differential equations, and now trying to tackle machine learning and Neural Networks, and understanding the juicy math behind gradient descent.

I don't know what my plan is for the future, but I'll figure it out as long as I have my brain. Maybe I will continue making shitty forms and collect paycheck, while studying mathematics. Maybe I will figure out something else.

But I can't just let my brain rot while chasing money and impressing dumb bosses. If I wait until I get rich to do things I love, my brain will be too far gone at that point. I can't just sell myself out. I'm coming back to my roots.

I still feel like after experiencing industry and pot, I'm a shittier developer than I was at age 15. But my passion is slowly coming back.

Any suggestions from wise ol' neckbeards on how to proceed?

Does anyone else fantasize about giving up programming and go live in a jungle or doing other things that require more physical effort?

I've been learning carpentry, farming, DIY power generation etc. The goal is to be self-sufficient and go live in a fucking jungle someday. Or legally buy some cheap land far from the city and automate the shit out of it. No wait, I'll just live there as a normal farmer and write code if I feel nostalgic or something.

I think anyone other than me could have expressed that better.

I think my MacBook Pro from early 2011 is ready for retirement 😔 froze two times today during gaming...

I don’t love to code. It kinda sucks, TBH. I love to make money and get closer to a hopefully early retirement. Coding is only part of how I’m getting there.

F@#!k my year,

After a year long Mobile app project finally shipped where I served **two lead roles (UX design and mobile dev)**; I had my status meeting with my manager to discuss my next phase of my career. To which I was told I would be promoted to Chief or partner level at my workplace, if shipped on time, which we did.

The response I got was unsettling, I've been asked to "step down" from my architect role and join our innovation sales team since it was discovered I also have an MBA. So much so my skip level manager cut off all my dev licenses week of release. 🤣

The overall need was for me to oversee H1B and contractor resources moving forward on new engagements, as I was now "too expensive". I like coding, but it doesn't sit well with me at all...

I've been working as a developer for 10 years now... I got my first software development job when I was still learning for my masters.

After all this time I have switched programming languages and product types a few times from web development to mobile apps to desktop software (C++, CEF, QT,).

And I have come to the conclusion that I want early retirement... like right now retirement... I'm done dealing with management that doesn't understand shit... dealing with people we have outsourced part of the shit to... needing to fix stuff that is broken after some other person refactored the code and didn't fully test it and it somehow got approved... dealing with people that think that "know better" and implemented things like that 5 years ago because they thought like "THAT" and will not accept my merge request because of that.

Like don't get me wrong I love to make and develop software, but since this is the 3rd job in the row with a toxic environment like this I feel like I need to move to the country side and open up a farm or something :|

With COVID going on, we're pretty much stuck at home, so

Vacation = staycation = early retirement

I took off 2wks ago, going back to work next week but it actually felt pretty nice.

Not having to really care about anything or rush to any schedule.

So yes maybe give it a try. Just do whatever it if you imagine yourself doing in retirement.

The difference is your body isn't old and disabled so you can actually do it.

Been working long hours and 6-day weeks for not much gain these days. At this rate, I think I will likely end up poor after working myself toward an early grave. My retirement fund actually looks kinda nice when combined with family wealth inherited or that may be inherited sometime in the next 20 years. But the high taxation that’s coming, inflation, and public debt problems that will feed inflation spirals will way more than halve my net worth by the time I am old enough to retire. At that point, I won’t be suicidal but I will be praying to die before I run out of money. From what I see of the local homeless population we try to help, being dead is preferable to sleeping on the street.

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