I feel trapped in my job and city

I'm going to be the contrarian. Keep the job. Power through it and retire as early as you can, then you can do whatever you want. If you're in $finance$ or $FAANG$, don't go to a non-FAANG. Definitely don't quit your job unless you have another one lined up, and definitely don't take an extended leave to travel and find yourself. Don't believe "CS grads will always be employed." There are people on HN who graduated in 2010 and have worked a decade without experiencing trying to stay employed in a bear market. It can and will happen again, and suddenly having savings is going to be super important. Work is not supposed to be roses and sunshine. That's why it's called Work and not Fun Hobby.

Remember, the goal is to not have to work. Then, you can do whatever fun thing you want, even a fun job!

I wish I would have had a quant finance salary and aggressive savings plan in my 30s. I might be retired already if I did. Instead I kind of flitted around doing "fun" jobs and didn't get serious about retiring until I hit 40. Don't be me.

There's a couple of constraints here that seem to be dominating your decisions.

One: early retirement

Two: the idea that the recruiter was right about not being able to find the money elsewhere

You have a PhD in Computer Science, one of the highest academic accomplishments in one of the hottest fields for the last 30-40 years. I want you to know how far ahead you are of people like me who just taught themselves to code and glue web apps together for 6 figures. You need to dispel the notion that you can't find your current salary elsewhere and that recruiter was likely lying to you. Finding meaningful work is a different beast, but you're staying attached to a job for a financial goal that isn't really clear.

Assuming you stayed at this job, how long until early retirement? It might make more sense to enjoy things now and take a break from working, move to a new city with a lower CoL (plus you don't even like London), and try a better work/life balance.

Depending on your flat's rent and joint savings, it might actually make more sense to leave the flat, put that money towards traveling (which probably won't even come close your rent), and figure things out. It's not like you're building capital renting the place anyway.

As a final bit, career suicide is a dead concept in CS. That seems like extremely outdated thinking especially with remote work's popularity now.

This sounds like a combo of mild depression, burn out, and concrete/legitimate issues. I would try and disambiguate which of these is the driving vs contributing factor. Reductionist reasoning trends to nihilism for every job/activity (including travel, meditation, etc).

Maybe you are expecting too much from your job in terms of fulfillment/meaning? Or too little?

Community and people make our lives richer than money. Maybe find a job just as meaningless but with people you really enjoy working with?

Keep taking time for yourself and dig into this. What do you need the money for? Why? Why do you think retirement will be meaningful? What is meaningful to you? How can you optimize for that?

You might find working at Google utterly meaningless (I mostly do) but the pay would be excellent and more importantly you would have the potential to work remotely... at least 2/5 days a week and potentially fully remotely as well. And that's just Google. There's lots of companies offering full remote at this point.

With CS and stats in your resume you are well set. Stop selling yourself short.

It sounds like you're bummed out and not feeling great. Much like myself and many other people after this last year and a half. Save a bit of coin, and then go on leave or quit your job, take some time off, go hang with your family, and then try a new job with a fresh head.

99% of what we do as engineers is utterly meaningless. That's why we don't do it for free.

Quant finance is notorious for being extremely unmotivating and depressing to work on. You say:

I'm interested in computers and programming in general, but doing it for a living ruins the joy.

Well... maybe. But maybe it's just the soulless nature of quant finance that ruins the joy. You need to quit your job, because you hate your job, and try something else. Anything else! Don't conclude that you hate programming for a living just because you hate programming at a quant finance job.

Google and the other huge tech companies is one reasonable thing to try. Yeah, it might not be the most inspirational job in the world, but based on the experience of my personal network, it's far more interesting to work at Google than it is in quant finance. If I were you, I would also check YCombinator companies for ones that are willing to hire remotely in a European time zone, since it sounds like you don't really want to live in London.

Hi, I'm the same age as you, born in the UK but have been working in USA for a few years now. I am also feeling burned out by my job, spend a lot of time fantasizing about retiring early.

This is a shot in the dark but I feel like a lot of my mental state has been caused by covid, missing regularly seeing my friends, family and the alienating nature of interacting with my colleagues only via screen. Because of this I have resolved to not make any large decisions until covid is completely over, since it's hard for me to assess how much differently I will feel once things get back to normal. Till then I save as much as possible to give myself more options.

Life is too short to waste years in a job you dread.

Let me say that again.

LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WASTE YEARS IN A JOB YOU DREAD.

You are selling yourself short, though. Sure, you might take a bit of a compensation haircut stepping away from your current role, but money isn't everything, and people retire early without spending their career making crazy money. It just takes more planning.

Your degree is a money-printing machine. You can find work that will be fulfilling and not awful and not underpaid. It won't be EASY but worthwhile things often aren't.

You're also in a world where remote work is 100% a thing people DO. This introduces the challenge of your partner, though -- under the surface of your post is a possible other problem. Does your partner love London? Does he love his work?

It's not uncommon for a sort of "oh shit is this it?" feeling to start happening in one's 30s. It doesn't mean you have to act on it, but you also shouldn't ignore it entirely.

I dealt with a lot of the same issues around meaninglessness vs. golden handcuffs (at Google incidentally) and recently took a job at a smaller company, albeit without a pay cut. I specifically resisted switching jobs for several years for the same reason: having to grind Leetcode only to end up with the same alienation and cynicism. Turns out all that salary isn't just for hard work. Anyway, honestly, having now finally taken that step, I'll say that Leetcode isn't really a huge cost (you do it and then you're done for a while) and that simply working on new stuff does get you over one hump, namely the boredom. Not sure how long the new-stuff momentum will carry me past the possible onset of meaninglessness, but I'm trying to just adopt the "one must imagine sisyphus happy" mindset. Not a strategy but maybe at least a tactic? Happy to discuss further

Edit: I'm aware this is a very privileged situation to be in, honestly that doesn't help much with coping though and everyone wants to be happy. I seriously had just decided I never would be. Even that (temporary?) feeling is mind-blowing

I'm late to respond, but I hear you. I mostly work with startups or startup-like projects. The few gigs I had in Finance I found the day-to-day to be lacking any meaningful challenge. The only plus was the higher pay. And it seemed like the less attractive the role, the larger the sum that was placed on the table.

On the job front, you'd be surprised what you can earn in London NOT doing finance. Start contracting. There is a lot of work, in or out of IR-35. There is a lot of interesting work too.

And the best part - remote work is becoming more and more viable. I have not been in an office in nearly two years.

On the city front - that is harder for me to relate. I love living in London, but I don't live at the heart of the City. I live on the outskirts (within M25), next to the river, two massive parks, yet still a 15 minute walk to a major town and 30 minute train ride to central London. Rents in central London are not reasonable. Here they are more palatable.

Change your job to a place that allows you to remote and you can live anywhere. You're looking at things from a slightly 2018 point of view. We're not there anymore I don't think.

When you absolutely need to make a change the way i handle it is to think of the worst thing that will happen. Generally the worst isn't that bad so it makes the critical decision much easier to make.

I quit my FAANG job with no backup in place during the pandemic and so far have done a bit of traveling. No one blames me. It's 2021, the year of the burnout. For me the breaking point was watching the movie Whiplash where everything is given for the career and thinking it all seemed reasonable. The movie wasn't intended to be perfectly reasonable at all.

I've lined up another job already but will still be a little while before i start that. I was never that bothered by unemployment at any point except that i may have had to move back to my home country if i didn't line up the next job within the visa grace period. But that's not as much of problem as a mental break. One of the nice things about having some savings is that you can prioritize your mental health now even if it cuts into your early retirement plans.

Maybe you don't get another job for a while but if you are on track for early retirement being unemployed in 2021 isn't going to break you.

You're burnt out in 2021 after the chaos of a pandemic. Completely understandable. Do what you have to do.

I can quickly comment as I was in the same situation not too long ago. I was a semi-quant in a fund in London until recently. I stayed from the intern stage to the very top. I spent my entire time working. I hated London with a passion, it's a cold city where people are cold, the weather is cold and wet, the food is terrible, never made any friends there, you're expected to join the rat race in short. It has a huge impact on you if you don't like because you're reminded of this every day, you may be thinking of other places where life is not like that, that your life is running out getting a paycheck. I'm not sure if this is your experience and I talk for myself, but maybe it is. Also I wouldn't think of things in terms of optimising career/money. These things are only good if you're happy and it doesn't sound like you are.

Here's what I've done: I left (I left far far). Life is too short. Quant skills can be applied in various things, including startups. I would suggest looking at Cambridge because you cannot leave your partner apparently. Cambridge has a bunch of funds, but also has a lot of startups working on interesting projects, you should have a go and visit the place. Things are greener, nicer, people are calmer, and you're 1hr away from your partner. Good luck.

Just wanted to chime in and say that I'm feeling the same way. I'm 34 years old, and have a wife + kid. In my twenties, programming was exciting and cool. In my thirties I view myself as a powerless slave doing tasks out of a never ending backlog. Been at my job for 7 years and don't have the willpower to LeetCode. Even if I were to land a FANG I don't think I'd want the workload that comes with it. Fantasize about retirement on a daily basis. My dream is to have a cabin somewhere at the base of a mountain and to never touch a computer again.

I'm going to suggest an alternative: treat your job like a job and don't derive personal value from your occupation.

I used to work insane hours trying to get ahead and when I was doing that I always thought badly of people who left when the clock struck 5pm. The older I've gotten the more I've realized how much those folks had right.

Work to Live. Don't Live to Work. You'll be a heck of a lot happier.

I see a couple comments to the effect that you should find something that you like to do, and that's good -- liking things is generally easier than not liking them.

But to me that doesn't go far enough, and ignores a deeper question: what do you believe in? Like, in life? What are your values, your principles? This may be a bit dark, but if you died tomorrow and could witness your own funeral, how do you wish the people who know and love you to describe how you lived your life?

The things we do can be connected very deeply to the things we believe (to crudely paraphrase Bob Dylan: the things we "serve"). In my view, human beings have a higher probability of flourishing and overall contentment when they are connected. Conversely, when they're not -- when what we do doesn't serve what we believe, or when it goes against what we believe -- our species risks a lot of trouble.

So, my two cents: if you know your own values, come back to them concretely (write'em down, for instance). If you don't know them, or haven't ever articulated them very clearly, do so. But once you've got them nice and clear, find work (a career or not, just small-w work) that serves them. It's not a cure-all, by any means. Just consider them a little talisman and use them like that.

On the one hand, you may never end up a millionaire. But on the other, you'll never again spend much time in places like the one you're currently in.

Edit / addendum: this'll be cliche, and I'm sure you've heard it, but I say it anyway: take the time to develop a relationship with a good psychotherapist. Not even necessarily for your "symptoms", whatever those might be, but for the broader existential stuff.

Finance in London is very hot at the moment, there is a lot of hiring going on and substantial upside available for talented individuals. Why not start speaking to recruiters and see if you can find a better and more exciting team? Stay way from banks, focus on funds and HFTs.

PnL wise, a lot of firms are starting up coming off a bumper 2020 year. It sounds like fundamentally your problem is being in a bad team/firm that you are not excited to work with. On a good team, you should be getting in to work early feeling pumped that you are all going to smash it today. If you don’t have that feeling, just find a new team.

You mentioned that your partners job is more stressful. Would suggest seeking out a more stressful job for yourself. The low stress jobs in finance are not fun, interesting or lucrative, while the high stress jobs can be all three.

Also, through Brexit, the EU have successfully caused many firms to put Real Jobz in other capitals like Amsterdam, Dublin, or Paris. It sounds like you might enjoy the lifestyle in one of those cities better than London.

I spent a long time working alongside quants in the City, in several large and small companies. Some of the quants seemed to enjoy their work a lot, a few less so. It depends on the team and the company to a large extent I suspect.

If you really can't find any fun place in the City as a quant, consider eg a data scientist role elsewhere.

I don't think that I have yet paid myself (eg a CTO of start-ups, with an MSc) what you probably got as your opening salary. I worked in IT, but the money wasn't a motivator and so I never moved to trading as friends did, or into management...

If you moved back to your home town today, what would you do for a living? Do that in London, or something related to it.

As for the ⅔ pay cut, aren't you spending a good bit of that now on excessive London costs? Plus the intangibles of feeling like shit?

Finally, there must be someone who will pay you remotely (even if "remote" is just WFH in the City) for your skills, or for your fundamental abilities that your skills are built on. For example, an advanced engineering firm that uses statistical quality control, informed by ML.

36 here, and in a similar spot, though in a very different field (and country.)

That said -- where you are now feels hopeless, and the first thing to really do is try to figure out what you want. I mean that in an almost tactical way -- clearly you have some competing priorities, and it would help to know what you would want in an ideal world, and then make the compromises that are required.

It sounds like money isn't as much of a driver for you as you had initially hoped. So -- what would you want to do if money weren't an object? Does your partner want to stay or just not in as much of a hurry as you to leave?

There are options/possibilities. You might be able to work remotely from somewhere with a lower living cost but with a London-esque salary. There are also places besides London and your hometown.

I say this having been in a similar spot, as mentioned earlier. Burnt out completely at my job -- the one that I had wanted since I was 12. I've been working on a startup now for a little while -- and its by no means a success at all -- but I at least have something to work towards. There's a fantasy. There's something I can imagine working where I can be happy. And with that, there are real conversations I can have with my partner and myself about what we should do. It's not easy, but I have a vague idea now of what I would find rewarding, and at least a path to get there.

I feel this post is really hard to understand. You are:

* A phd in quant finance in London

* You joined due to high comp

* You say getting a home would cost 10 times your salary

* You have a partner earning multiples of your salary (?!)

* You want to retire early

I guess I just feel like this story doesn't seem like the numbers make any sense? A quant finance phd should be able to afford a home. A quant finance phd with a partner earning multiples of them should easily be able to afford a home. Maybe not in cash, but certainly with a mortgage, even in this market. You say "an 'adequate' house in London would cost at least 10 times my salary", but that seems manageable with your partner's help?

It seems like your economic position is incredibly favorable to me, and that you wouldn't really experience any difference economically if you got a more pleasant job with lower income if your partner is going to be the breadwinner, in such a way that you can make life better for the both of you.

edit: The housing thing is really throwing me for a loop. Perhaps I have no sense of the London market, but I'm going to assume no person can be unsatisfied living a million dollar home, that a quant finance phd must earn at least $100k per year, and that a partner earning multiples of that must earn at least $300k per year. How do these numbers check out?

Linton Kwesi Johnson must have felt trapped in London when he wrote the lyrics

  Inglan is a Bitch
  Dere's no escapin it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isMjvRpAckU (with music)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq9OpJYck7Y (recitation only)

Mebe you feel bedder fta listenin to dis.

Set a deadline - 6 or 12 months. Cheer yourself up by using that time to plan carefully some of your desired activities. Save as much money as you can during that year.

Then quit.

It will take three months at least before you find your balance again. At least, that's how it was for me after my company closed and sent us all away with nice severence packages. One of my colleagues literally stepped into a nicely paying contract gig the following Monday. I took a month which turned into three which turned into six. I did the cliché thing and went to Bali. And still my mind was so focused on the rat race and how to live by its rules that I almost forgot to enjoy my time.

I did some contract stuff, did some nice travel, and then got a "real job". Now, 1.5 years later, I hate almost every day. I have money again, and safety, and a comfy house with a big yard (great fortune to be stuck here during COVID compared to a flat in Amsterdam). But knowing I have to get up each day and do nearly pointless tasks just to keep the ship moving in the right direction has been making me question the point of existence. That questioning can easily reach a point of danger, because ultimately you will reason that there is no point (and there isn't...); so you should be doing something that makes you happy or that you find passion in.

Tomorrow I quit. I worked out a contract where I have total say in how the tech stuff is built, and I have total flexibility in location and nearly total flexibility in hours of the day.

Given your skills, if you wish to leverage your unique and pretty valuable talents, you should be getting involved (networking) with entrepreneurial finance people. One of my other colleagues was a quant, and now he's investing and managing investment for a few clients. It took him about 5 years, but now I believe he has surpassed his income level from when we were at a professional finance shop. He travels for work and pleasure, and he mostly keep hours of his choosing.

There are really so many things you could probably do... you just need to start getting to know people and seeing which opportunities present themselves.

Due to the pandemic there is a lot of remote work available these days. You can probably find a freelance gig or a full-time position with a North America-based company that pays better than most London-based positions. And I don't mean Google, but one of the thousands of smaller companies. Often their interviews have almost no technical aspect, it's just chatting. At least that would be a partial solution.

I had middle six digits in the USA with a green card. I abandoned everything to go back to my home country. Ill never make as much money as I was making in the USA in the same field here in Europe. But I am much more happy. every day I walk in my city, everyday I eat some home food I rejoice that I did not chose the money. u won't make the same money back home but ur life will be cheaper, and youll be happy. Thinking money first as a person with a family that built wealth is not really needed. If you were an immigrant from a poor background it would make sense but if your parents built wealth most likely ull get some of it... why care about making six or five digits?

Going to push back a little here. The two of you are miles ahead of most of the world (and your own country) in income and education. You'll be able to retire likely decades before the rest of us slobs. In the meantime, find some awesome hobbies, you can certainly afford it. Learn some fun and difficult shit, get really good at it, rinse and repeat. Your job doesn't have to have meaning, just enjoy your life; you're set up to enjoy it a lot more than most. If you can't find any fulfillment outside of work, then good luck.

Yeah I was in pretty much the same situation a while ago. Big salary, stress, London, job I didn't like. I quit. I started a services consultancy and got the work/life balance I wanted, and got to pick my own work. Personally, if you can hustle as well as think, I'd suggest that.

"I would love to be able to retire and get into meditation / travelling the world / learning about things for fun."

This makes you human. Unfortunately the best life for human beings was probably the farm and those days aren't coming back anytime soon.

You're in a tough spot, especially if your relationship is solid and not going anywhere. London is a large enough area you may be able to find something that suits you? I would stay in the area, and just find another line of work. Everyone is due the opportunity to change their situation.

I would recommend considering changes like that, but hold strong overall, don't toss both of your lives into massive change. You can work there, and then semi-retire early out to where you're from. Talk to your partner about that as a potential option. He may agree more than you think. Talk it out with him and go from there. That's about all you can do. I wouldn't just throw everything you've worked for into the trash immediately.

I'm actually in a very similar situation, but Chicago. I'm from a more rural area as well, and I've been grinding out my existence for a while longer than you.. I am financially prepared to move back to the countryside. Just hard to even find places at market-rate today. My wife and I are both willing to live with less money at this point.

You may have more in agreement, or come to an agreement for the longterm view once you two have a full discussion.

I didn't make anything like as much & was much earlier in my career but: I was utterly msierable in consulting in London, at what I thought was a baller salary but actually by US/global standards wasn't really. People told me I had to stick it out for minimum 2-3 years. I quit after 8 months and have never, ever regretted that decision. Two career changes later and I still don't make as much as you, but I could feasibly retire (with restraint or some smart investing) or semi-retire by my 40th birthday. 'Retiring' is way cheaper than people think, because they always assume that they would spend as much as they currently do, and that they would never make money again, and that they would pay the same income taxes. I would talk it over with your partner, and so long as he's happy to have you in a search phase for a while, start spending a lot of time on working out things you could conceivably be good at & enjoy, and just neglect your job while you do it (within ethical bounds/don't cause a 2008). You might need to stay on good terms with 2-3 people for references, but honestly the rest of them will only matter to the degree that you find them to be authentically valuable/interesting/good humans.

Lots of what you don’t like, little of what you might? Seems just about where so many of us have been in the past, so don’t despair!

The general advice is to sit down with your partner and plan out the outside-work five-year and ten-year plan. Does it involve kids? Moving? Founding a startup? Having a proper weekend hobby or starting already on checking off bucket lists?

The only way out of a rut is change. The longer you leave it, the worse the choices will be.

While it does sound like you are burned out, I lived in London for 6 years and hated it - I left as soon as I completed my Ph.D. - it's not a good spot if you are not a city person. My suggestion is to look at remote work, take a pay cut if necessary, and work from where you want to live, at least for a while. Just because you have a Ph.D. this does not mean you have to live in the middle of a large city. Use the money from that job as a vehicle to develop a small, focused piece of software that solves a problem, preferably somewhat related to your Ph.D. work. Get a business person involved in this early to validate the concept, so you sure you are not making something you can't sell, and start selling it. Two outcomes - either you make money (in which case fine) or you don't, and have something to point at showing that you can be self-starting - and then look for a job related to that. Do be rigorous though, and finish what you start (ALWAYS finish what you start). You could begin by doing some focused research to aid in deciding what field you think your academic background confers an advantage in (and is not fintech :))

I am seeing a lot of comments here about depression, though it doesn't ring true to me - the situation you're in is one that myself and a lot of the other comments can understand from our own experience of similar situations and it really does suck. My take is that you're feeling the way you do in response to the situation you find yourself in, and perhaps due to the loss of control and ensuing hopelessness.

As a first step I recommend taking a look at a book called Ikigai [1] (There is some fair criticism of the author taking that japanese word somewhat out of context, but don't let that take away from the key point of the book). It certainly helped me to work out a way to think more about how to find a more rewarding and meaningful career and ultimately life. It's a nice gentle read too.

As a second step, you could seek out a career coach or someone who you can talk to in order to uncover your needs and dreams - they're in there somewhere buddy.

I've only recently taken the second step myself to start learning more about how to feel more meaning in what I am spending a good chunk of my life on. I've found a good coach who has been enormously helpful in asking the right (and difficult) questions at the right time.

Final thought: money matters come up a lot in your post. You don't have to measure yourself in that dimension if you don't want to anymore. You can add a great deal of value to the world without $$$ being the base unit, and/or have a lot of fun!

[1]: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ikigai-Japanese-secret-long-happy/d...

This just screams depression to me. You have dedicated so much of your life to CS and now dream about meditation and learning about things for fun.

It may be worthwhile also to think about why started your Phd in the first place. What did you find so fun back then. Just trace to the past and find your initial reason and try to chart a path from here to what problems you want to work on.

I won't try to tell you how to live your life, but I did want to chime in on one thing you said: "I find it difficult to muster up any enthusiasm during job interviews, which is probably a red flag for potential employers..."

This is the opposite of my experience, and having worked as a consultant/contractor for the past decade I've done quite a few. It's a lot like a first date, in that an excess of enthusiasm is off-putting (why are they so desperate?), and appearing not yet convinced you're interested is a bonus.

Of course you want to be professional and courteous, but going into a job interview not sure if you want the job, is often the best way to get it.

No job is always fun, that's why they pay you instead of the other way around. But you shouldn't be in tears when you start the week. Start "fishing" for a job, and see what's out there, and because you are already employed, you can be patient and choosy. Good luck.

I feel you; I too went through the same sort of thing -- PhD in CS from Cambridge, girlfriend in London who thought the center of the universe was London and parents back home screaming at me to 'get a house and settle down in London'. I was slogging it, being paid incredibly well only to end up at work before the sun came up, back home when the sun had gone down, forever damp, wet, cold, windy even when it was sunny outside.

A lot of your post centers around your living situation and being unable to buy a house in London even though you're well paid. You don't like London and hate it -- don't force yourself to live in it. I did that, and I got really really sick. The stress basically broke me.

Like you I was scared -- scared that I'm unemployable and tied into my job, scared that I have no skillset, scared that I'm not good enough. I ended up being pushed, and that was not great. In the end I realized all the things I thought would mean the end of my life didn't mean anything at all:

- Not living in London didn't matter - Not owning a house in London didn't matter - Not making my parents didn't matter - Not being with my ex-girlfriend didn't matter.

What did matter was being happy and doing things that made me happy. I spent a year sitting at home learning about digital design because it seemed interesting. Today, I'm in a research commercial research position, doing well and happier than I've ever been.

The (long winded) point I'm making is -- sometimes deep down (or not so deep down) we KNOW something isn't for us but we plug away anyway. Once you know, you know. Start making steps to change, do not continue to fight it. If you have to fight every day it's not for you.

Don't be like me and break into two. Just start taking steps to fix it. Don't be afraid if the steps mean some uncertainty.

Having said that, here are some practical ideas: - Have you thought about a research position? Take a look at the Alan Turing institute, they usually have interesting positions available. - Take a look at DAMTP/Stats @ Cambridge. They are really getting into ML/Stats for machine learning. Imperial too is ramping up their research teams in that area. - Have you thought about applying to one of the bigger, older insurance companies? Everything I'm hearing leads me to believe they want to ramp up the ML/technical side of the underwriting and claims process but don't have the technology skills to pursue it.

If any of these seem interesting, ping me. I can make intros.

With a phD in CS, the likelihood is you could probably find something outside of Quant finance at a big tech company. Try and connect with some recruiters at Google etc and see what they have going on.

A better job can make a big difference, perhaps one that will allow you to spend more time visiting home (remote work supported).

The biggest impediment to your breaking out of circular thinking, might be thinking automatically that any other job would entail a big pay cut. Because first of all, maybe not. Your skills are in high demand. If anything it's the opposite problem: If you don't decide for yourself what direction you want to go in, someone out there will always have an opinion. In your case that person was the recruiter you mention, but everyone of course has lots of ideas about where they can put talented people to use. Which is a nice problem to have if you're said talented person, but it becomes about being selective. The recruiter decided where you should work, not you.

Analogies:

1) Maybe I'm quite handsome and let's assume heterosexual for this example, and I never have to ask women out; I just wait for them to ask me. Corollary: I date only the women whom said women want me to date (themselves)!

2) Maybe I'm an accomplished musician and someone's always asking me to join their band. When I do, inevitably the band ends up sucking. Maybe I don't like music anymore?!?! (No, probably I should start my own band, or at least not limit my search to only the bands that go looking and find me. Maybe I should even write to my very favorite band, refer them to some of my amazing work and say I hope we get a chance to work together someday. You never know!)

Secondly (and yes I realize it's been a long time since the "first of all"), just for the sake of argument - if you did take a pay cut, so what? What do you need all that money for... to throw away on rent in a city you hate? Work remotely from someplace cheaper and you might find that the differential amount that you can save each month remains the same or even increases. Just food for thought. Or to get more extreme and "Shit My Dad Says" about it, experience complete unemployment for a while, or be in the army for a stint, and see how much more appealing that "low" salary job is!

Bottom line: Don't be a prisoner of the golden handcuffs!

It seems to me that you're in a place for which you've worked hard in your early adulthood, a place you no longer want. Where you're struggling (based off your post and your replies) is that in any direction you look - it's going to take more hard work to get there. Like you're saying: I've worked so hard up till now - surely there's an easier way?

I can easily see how your CS PhD, however impressive, doesn't actually confer a lot of practical skills for a different job. It's the nature of PhDs. It'll look good on paper for a quant or FAANG job, but probably doesn't help much beyond, right?

And the same kind of applies to quant jobs: the level of maths in interviews is different from the day-to-day drudgery, so not only does it feel like getting a similar-paying job will be pointless, it's also hard. And getting other high-paying tangible skills (like web development) is also hard!

To me, the early retirement is a fantasy people paint when they dream of escaping everyday life. What most people dreaming of retirement want is not to be out of productive society, but FREEDOM. They want financial freedom to choose what they do and where. But that's not the same as not having to work.

So the metric you're optimizing for - money - is different to the metric you're actually after - freedom. Think of it this way - if you could work from anywhere, would you still mind working as much? If you could also manage you're time so that you meet deadlines but otherwise free to set your day - meditate in the morning, take a walk in the nearby hills - would you still mind working as much?

If you're answering No to these questions, early retirement is literally standing in your way of achieving your goals in life.

(Just as a note, as all these things are tied up together - even if you had a fully remote job you're assuming you're tied to London as long as your partner works there? Because that's a whole other kettle of fish, which has nothing to do with your job and cannot be fixed by it.)

I'm sorry you are in this state.

You share a lot of details about what you don't like and what you wish were better in your post. Perhaps HN can help you in a different way if you write about what you want to do and what you like (careers, cities, dreams and ambitions etc).

> I have racked my brain trying to figure out what field I would prefer to work in, but I can't think of anything.

I assume you mean that you want to do some things but can not make the money-partner-city-family proximity balance work.

If you share what you really want, even if it is totally impractical, HN might be able to find a way to make things work.

On the other hand, if you don't have some idea for what you'd rather be doing, I recommend seeing a therapist. When the world appears uninteresting in all dimensions, it's a sign to seek help.

Hey mate, I've been there. You're blaming a lot of general extraneous factors. That sort of generalized dreariness... might you just be depressed? I mean, the sort of non-"meaningless" is quite hard to come by. A few generations ago most everybody was farming or mining coal or something. Actually, probably most people are doing jobs like that outside of the bubble we live in thinking worldwide anyway. You really ought to delineate what you want in a house-- surely you can afford something in a nice neighborhood on the outskirts-- but then you'd be tied down and have to maintain your own house.

And, there are worst places than London, believe me. It's just too easy to fantasize about other lives-- the grass is always greener.

Personally I'd chunk these feelings down into bite-sized goals, and work to completing them one by one. For example, 1) Find a remote job 2) leave the city 3) own a home 4) travel 5) retire early

Each will have it's own complex requirements and take time to achieve, but I think taking some time to lay out your goals clearly, and staring to feel progress towards them will help make the trapped feeling go away.

Also, in my personal experience it's become important to separate my job from my hobbies. I used to spend all my free time on the computer, but these days it's my full time job and then some, and I've found it very refreshing to find other hobbies to pursue in my free time.

You really need to go to couple of job interviews and generally look around for things you want to do. It doesn't mean you should instantly switch your job, but you obviously lack perspective. You need to understand how easy of IT to find new job. Moreover nowdays more and more companies offer remote positions. Pay might be smaller, but you can move further from center and find cheaper place to live. You basically trap yourself with thoughts like 'I won't find better paid job' and 'my partner will never follow me'. There are quite a lot of options between 'live in London' and 'live in the middle of nowhere'.

I appreciate everyone's advice regarding your job, but as others have alluded, I suggest the bigger point is to go deeper into your values.

It sounds like your job is tightly-coupled with how you see yourself, so perhaps consider things outside of your job (volunteering, extra-curriculars, investing, etc.) that are closer to what you value.

One way to handle getting through these low periods is to shift your mindset of your job being a reflection of what you like and more your job enabling you do, participate what you like.

Personally, being of service of others, using my vacation days to help others, and investing in projects and people I believe in has helped offset some of the feelings you may be feeling.

> I find it difficult to muster up any enthusiasm during job interviews, which is probably a red flag for potential employers. I'm no longer young and excited about this stuff!

A thought: instead of focusing on what the job is, find a job where you care about what the job accomplishes. You're in quant finance. Does that excite you? I'll bet not, or else you wouldn't be where you are right now.

Everyone needs software these days. Charities, non-profits, lots of companies that are doing good for the world. They all need software people, technical people, and what they accomplish might be of more interest to you than the specifics of how you accomplish it.

> I could probably grind leetcode for a couple of months to try to get into Google, but I would find working at Google utterly meaningless as well.

How are you so convinced you'll hate Google as well? The big plus of working at FAANG is that they have lots of projects and you can switch to something you are interested in. You don't to working on ML in Ads, you can always switch to compilers (dart?), databases (spanner?), VR (daydream?) .. the list goes on. Of course the rat race for promotions, and perf can get disheartening, but you can reach a terminal level (L4) relatively quickly and then focus on what genuinely interests you.

Try looking for a role on this job board. The world is bigger than Google/finance.

https://80000hours.org/job-board/

A lot of people have a weird emotional fixation with "owning" a home when it really shouldn't matter at all.

You're in finance, so you should understand opportunity cost and you should very easily be able to model out the full financial burden and projected ROI of home ownership. Once you get honest about the work, hidden costs, loss of flexibility, and opportunity cost involved in being a homeowner, it'll start to seem like a not great and potentially even stupid idea, particularly in this environment with rapidly inflating housing prices.

What is it that you hate about the job? A lot of times, I find that hating your job is really a symptom of something deeper. I think this might be true for you because you also mentioned that you wouldn't be satisfied working for Google. You have a PhD, maybe you're yearning to return to a research oriented career in academia? I honestly recommend seeking therapy before quitting. It might highlight something deeper that might help guide you. Even if you do end up quitting, at least it will guide you towards the right path.

Also, remember that even having these types of thoughts means we are in a relative place of tremendous privilege where our basic needs are met and secured. Many in the world don't have that privilege. That's not meant to guilt you, but to help you put things in perspective. Usually when we are materially satisfied, we start to seek higher levels of meaning and since we spend so much of our waking time working, we try to seek satisfaction through work. But the world doesn't value our individual satisfaction.

Finally you seem to have some conflicting goals (or maybe not). If you want to retire early and stay with your partner, it might mean making the sacrifice of living in London and also working in a high paying job where you are disconnected from the value it brings to society. You can potentially speed up this process by working on building a high value company, but working in quant finance you should be able to assess risk-adjusted returns and determine if that path is feasible or makes sense in your individual circumstances.

You don't need to retire to meditate, travel the world, nor learn things for fun. Sounds like you need to figure out what you want, and one way to approach that is to try doing something that isn't what you're doing now. Probably if you leave your job, you would be able to find something like it in the future - software isn't a career path where gaps in your resume make you unemployable, and it absolutely is one where you can experience location flexibility.

The answer is get a different job that you don't hate, that allows for some or all remote work. In Seattle, we pay college hires 100-130k us $. If you have 5-10 years experience, you are making probably 250k+ total comp. My experience was the UK pays a lot less money, outside of some London jobs. With 20 years experience, or special expertise, you are making 500k us. Are you really making a £900k / 1 mill $? Principal engineers at top companies in seattle make $700k

> Given that anything else would involve a massive pay cut, I think I would regret leaving the job I'm in.

Are you sure you aren't willing to trade some amount of money for a difference in work / lifestyle? Have you tied your sense of identity to tightly to this high salary?

> I would find working at Google utterly meaningless as well.

How do you know? Google also isn't the only option. There are a decent number of other high-paying tech companies. And if you are willing to take a salary a tier or two below Google (which is still quite good money, at least in the US -- can't speak for London), then there are tons of options.

It sounds like you may need also some sort of break / mental reset. Life is often hard and confusing! Lots of people struggle with types of difficult decisions. Be kind to yourself :)

Don't be afraid to experiment, try different things out, and then re-evaluate later. There is always more to learn about how to life better. Best of luck to you :)

---

P.S. This is super trite but make sure to exercise a few times a week! Get your blood pumping. I just got back into exercising after a few years of not doing it much, and it has been really helpful for me. It doesn't solve all of one's problems. But our bodies really need to move -- they evolved to do so -- and they feel much better when they do. Plus it's a great way to not worry about all of this bullshit for a time, as our brain is busy managing the physical load. For me personally, rock climbing and running are my favorite ways to exercise. I love rock climbing in particular as it is quite fun so it doesn't even feel like exercise.

Golden Handcuffs can be a real bitch. I feel for you.

How long have you been working at this job? You might just be burned out for the specific company and colleagues.

> But doing that would ruin any chances I ever had of being able to retire early.

> I would love to be able to retire and get into meditation / travelling the world / learning about things for fun.

I lost some of the best years of my life because of thinking among the same lines. What I had failed to consider:

- The more you make, the more you want, you never have "enough"

- Whatever you save, keeps losing its value, sometimes rapidly, and there are no bullet-proof investments

- An injury or sickness can suddenly make your long-term plans impossible

- Being miserable/depressed deteriorates your health and shortens your lifespan

- You change as you get older, the stuff that excites you right now may not be as exciting to the future you

My advice would be - don't waste your life chasing an arbitrary financial goal. You'll either burn out, or keep pushing it forever forward, or be too old and miserable to be happy when you get there.

Consider that you'll never again be as young as healthy as you are right now.

Better find yourself a job which you'd be happy doing even if you could never retire, and build some happy / healthy / harmonious lifestyle around it.

> he is making multiples of what I'm making

> Given that anything else would involve a massive pay cut

That's one solution right there: talk to your partner obviously, but it looks like you could quit the job that you hate, and could still maintain your lifestyle using your partner's income. Then find something to do that you actually enjoy. I hope your partner would be happier when you're happier.

I'm not sure how you can't afford a house in London with your jobs; maybe you're not as highly paid as you think, maybe you need to save / invest more, maybe your standards for housing are above what you can find in London (truly horrendous overpriced properties).

That said, as a fellow Londoner who is about to leave for sunnier places, I think you can find a better balance in terms of location and compensation.

If you can't work remote for less in your field, learn some coding and spend a couple of years in some medium sized company / startup in London. Not Google, find a place you enjoy working for: most likely you won't have to grind leetcode to pass an interview, you'll get more flexibility, less stress - and you'll get way less money. I've seen (capable and very smart) people switch jobs, do a bootcamp and earn 80k£ per year 2 years after the bootcamp. Likewise, I've seen people with 15 years experience making 40k£ (and being less effective than the 80k£ person).

Once you have some experience in London as a developer you should be able to land a fully remote gig and then you can work from wherever you prefer.

In terms of motivation, I think I will never be satisfied working for someone else, hence why I decided to run my own business (after both contracting and full time positions). You get to solve a wider array of problems (from accounting, to coding, to whatever is needed), there is no politics, promotions or performance involved. If you do a good job and solve problems for someone else, you get more money, else, you starve. Spend some time thinking if entrepreneurship is something for you. In case it is, set yourself small goals. Start by thinking where you want to live, how much money would you need, etc. Maybe use your existing savings from the high paid job to purchase a property (surely cheaper than London) and have lower expenses (bills, food, entertainment).

In regards to your partner - life is all about choices and it's too short to waste. Some people care a lot about their career. Some people see it as a rat race.

If you strongly care about living somewhere else and your partner can't find a compromise, maybe it wasn't destiny. I lost a 5 years old relationship because our goals weren't compatible, with me dreaming of running my own business from the beach and her dreaming a safe, high paying government job in her native country.

Best of luck!

Hi,

1) You're only 34, far too early to be thinking about retiring. It's ok to think about switching careers, though.

2) Quit blaming luck for your placement in the financial spectrum. Every generation has opportunities and pitfalls-- maybe yours just haven't shown themselves yet. (Maybe it's crypto? Maybe the next Amazon? Maybe just boring index funds? etc.) If you still feel sorry for yourself, just consider the people who came of age in 1915 or so. A world war, followed by a pandemic, followed by the great depression, followed by WWII!

3) If you truly hate your work, find something else. Maybe work a short while more, to pack away some money, but get out of it.

4) Consider strongly that your mental outlook might be influenced by Covid. Don't make a long-term change unless you have good reason to suspect you'd feel the same in the post-Covid world.

5) Good Luck to you. There's a bright future ahead for someone with your brains. You just have to make the right decisions to navigate towards it.

I’ll note that it doesn’t seem that you’ve tried anything. You haven’t changed your circumstances at all.. different job at a similar company, different part of town, save any money at all to open something of your own in your hometown, etc.

Also, maybe get really engaged in something unrelated. Maybe having a thing to look forward to will re-balance things.

Btw, you seem to be underpaid. You should be getting 300K-500K GBP total comp. Shouldn't have an issue buying a house.

London is hard. My take on it was; People go there to "make it" and put huge pressure on themselves to, and as a result live to work. People end up socialising pretty much only in work circles, and ex-work circles (including uni), a lot of the time because after work is the only time they're in proximity with their social group (as nobody lives closer than 30 mins to anyone else) As a freelancer I tried to fight this and floated from group to group. Looking back on my career, the best jobs/work were based almost solely on whom I was working with.

Whilst its not a quick fix (finding the perfect place), if you can't leave london, my perspective would be to try and find an employer/job with people you enjoy being around. If a job is inevitable, spent 50 hours a week amongst people you want to be around.

Money comes and goes. Sure housing is always good to have N-10 years ago.

Hi, I totally understand what you are going through. It is tough and not easy. 34 is not old, you have whole life ahead, at least 10 years more to really redo everything you want to change. You have great background and years of grilling work schedule (I worked in finance and banking) and stress. I feel you need 2 more week of break (first) if you can afford. Have you thought of Product Management? It is something different, you are still closer to tech. With your skills, crypto, fintech and other payment startups will benefit a lot. Forget about pay, dont compare one thing with other, its OK to take a paycut if its short-term. Product Management has no limits, there are lot of roles that are remote. Good luck and stay safe. life is beautiful, do not hate anything. Accept whatever it is as is, as there is saying nothing last forever (even pain.).

Is there no way that you and/or your partner could switch to remote work? At least in the U.S., remote working is sweeping the industry. Failing that, could you get a remote job for a U.S. company?

If none of the above, is your relationship serious enough that your partner would be willing to sustain both of you on their salary alone? Could you quit your job, take some time off to recuperate, and then find a job you don't hate, even if it pays much less?

If none of those options work, and it just comes down to "my partner is unwilling to leave the city and I can't possibly be happy here", then it may just not be a workable relationship. Though before jumping to that conclusion, I'd have an honest heart-to-heart with them and tell them how you feel. It could be that you're more important to them than their career; you never know until you ask.

Best of luck.

Yes, it's tough! And yes, London is cold. The rest of the country is not like that. However, you're not really trapped yet. Reading between the lines you don't yet have children, and a huge mortgage and school fees geared to your banking salary. Which is where I was post GFC in 2009/2010. In that situation, with banks and HFs firing and nobody hiring at the salary you need to meet obligation, you are in a tricky spot. I saw some pretty nasty stuff happen at my employer in 2008/9/10. IMHO the solution is to move out of London. There's lots of interesting dev work outside London in Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol, Birmingham etc. And very healthy salaries too. Check my profile and email if you want more on how I solved this dilemma.

Is it the social situation? Everybody needs enough encouraging, supportive, friendly people in their lives.. and if you have discouraging, apathetic, etc people then you need even more of the former.

This could be the good money + toxic environment deadlock. I guess it's mostly the social environment which discourages you from looking elsewhere. The pay could be better elsewhere, the social environment almost certainly could be better elsewhere.

I recommend that you start interviewing for other positions immediately - maybe 1 per month - just to keep yourself grounded. Your interviewing/networking doesn't imply a decision to make a change, it just informs your decision regardless of if you decide to switch or stay. Interviewing could encourage you to stay where you are, etc.

Switch jobs and get a 5 to 10% increase, and keep doing it for a while, this way you will retire earlier and the excitement and optimism of the new job will keep you going for the first year at least.

Persue an alternative that you find interesting and learn how to make a living out of it.

You can create a small SaaS company on some niche, freelance remotely, get creative and learn how to invest, maybe invest a little bit in crypto, take what you have an invest in real estate buy a studio and rent it and start making some extra income.

Make a plan, there has got to be a way.

Look around you, do you see anyone over 45? This means they all figured out an alternative, so with time, so will you, but don't make the mistake of thinking that you are "trapped", you have a lot of alternatives and choices.

“I would love to be able to retire and get into meditation / travelling the world / learning about things for fun.” So you are motivated by the idea of meditation but not enough to save/use money you have to attain it? Genuine question.

That aside - cyber security is an option for your skillset. You sound like someone who should take the plunge and go contracting 4 days per week. It’s either change job, change the terms of the job or quit. If you are that unhappy and your partner loves you, then tell them and they’ll say “ok quit the job and see if you’re happier, we’ll be fine”. If they don’t say that then there is something wrong with the relationship too. Is it the situation or the job that’s the problem?

Ask for a sabbatical to see if you can figure out what exactly makes you hate your job. Read up on the history of finance and the great depression.

Helping orient your mindset on the big picture of how you are helping people can be illuminating and good for mental health.

Sounds like you've got a bit of burnout. I felt like this a while back, I got though it by working for a company I really felt I had an impact and enjoyed the work culture.

I'd counter argue that leaving London doesn't have to mean the end of a career. Have you tried looking at other places in the UK to live/work? I'm a bit bias but Bristol is a fantastic city to live in and the tech scene is really well developed. Lots of start ups, mid sized and large companies. Plenty of banks/fin tech companies are based here too.

One of the things that have helped me get though burnout was to do other things outside of work. Be that go for food, cinema or even visiting tourist sites.

You could fly to London on Monday morning and work until Thursday afternoon (4 x 10 hours/day or 4 x 8 hours/day). You would sleep in a hotel for 3 nights/week in London and most probably pay less than for a monthly rent. Then you could build your home almost everywhere (the only limitations are good flight connections to London). Maybe you could even negotiate partly remote work. During work you would sleep 4 nights at home and 3 nights in London. During holidays you would be at home all the time. If you manage, you can even retire early. Since homes one hour flight from London can be much cheaper you would be able to pay for them faster...

What is it about computers and programming that interests you or sparks a fire? You said in general, but I feel like that is a very wide array of possibilities.

I don’t think any amount of money is worth your mental being if you’re showing up to work in utter distress. Based on your credentials only...you seem to have your head on straight and a bright individual, your skills will be valued elsewhere. I would look to save more of your income by cutting expenses, and figure out a way to quit your current job. Take a few months off and work on yourself, find out what you actually want to do and find a path to that.

Good luck!

Where do you plan on retiring to? Moving back home? Why not move back get paid less and start retirement early. Wasting all your money on London rent means you are breaking even over a lower salary.

Have you looked at non-FAANG companies for remote work? If you know web apps or could learn there are a lot of companies with remote SW dev openings out there.

After working for years at a large company, I am happy with a much smaller company, working directly on products. Happy as I could be, it still is work though. You feel more connected with the work when its usage isn't so distant.

Sounds like you have some burn-out. Maybe looking at other industries than finance would help? Take a break/sabbatical and do fun programming?

About number 4. If you are miserable, why is it important to retire early? Most people can't do that, and they are not miserable, in general. Scratch 4 from your list of priorities.

Bank enough money to formulate an exit plan that includes what you're going to do for money next, after this.

I just bought a 10-acre farm in Ireland. I paid cash. Not all of my cash. There's cash left to buy a pickup, animals, spruce up the house, startup capital for some farm enterprises, etc. That's what my sometimes soul-killing job in Finance-Tech has done for me. That's what yours can do for you: provide you the means to do something else. Figure out what it is, and do it.

Take a job in an early stage startup doing something that leverages your background (e.g. computer vision). You'll take a pay cut for now but if you become someone that early stage startups want to hire you can hop around until you hit the unicorn jackpot while still drawing a good salary. Also there's a better chance you'll find the work meaningful. If nothing else, you'll have more say/agency

Seems like equal or better EV both in terms of $ and QOL over next 10-20 years

Seems like you should be able to work remotely with your skill set even if you have to change jobs. If you can convince your partner to also go remote, then you could both become digital nomads and get your travel in. Or, you don't have to go full digital nomad, you could both just leave London.

There's not much point to staying in a job you hate if you have other options. Money isn't everything and not everyone survives to retirement (even early retirement).

If you have access to an extended leave program try and take advantage. FMLA in the USA allows for 90 days of leave, my last employers disability insurance paid 80% of salary during leave. I expect there is something similar in the UK. All it took was a letter from a doctor, most of the people taking leave had stress related issues. The letters were primarily from psychologists. Several people submitted their notice in the last few weeks of leave.

Just take the easy street finance money and find other ways to entertain yourself. FAANG gotta work harder for less pay and the work isn’t any more interesting.

in your present circumstance you cannot have it both ways i.e. money as well as enjoyable work. You have to compromise and let go of something either money or your time at work. My suggestion is to let go of money take the 2/3rd pay cut for enjoyble job. I was in similar situation few years ago with golden handcuffs but somehow i just quit one day without thinking much about it, that was the best decision of my life, initially i thought i made a mistake, everyone else i.e. colleagues, bosses, friends, siblings also thought it was a mistake but after few months i was amazed how i was able to live with that miserable job for so many years. I also realized that money wasn't that much of an issue as i assumed it to be. My health improved, my relationships improved, my perspective in life improved and my happiness and contentment in life in general also improved. Moreover when i look at people making billions i no longer feel that have anything more than me , they can just experience some exotic things that money can buy but ulitmately what is the point of that experience? happiness? if you are happy nothing else matters. Set your priorities right.

Talk with your partner about all this. How you feel, what you dream doing, how you dream doing it.. You said you want to be living/building-life together.

So.. start doing it.

just put all facts on the table, and only facts. Avoid wishfull thinking and definitely avoid "they will hate me" or "i'm no good" black-for-the-sake-of-black thinking. Look for any (kind of) opportunities..

i am sure you will find a way. you HAVE to. No point going insane, for money or not.

good luck

I'm definitely very confused about point 4. Perhaps it's a UK thing, but taking a 2/3 paycut should not ruin your chances of retiring early, if you're living in a city as expensive as London. If you consider the cost of rent, and cost of living in general, your 2/3 paycut should end up being like a 95/100 paycut after accounting for CoL. In other words, it should hardly impact your retirement plans.

I'd offer an idea like "How about going back to college? Is that something your partner would be okay with?"

But I have the feeling that you are showing signs of depression. It removes all color from an otherwise colorful life. Get out of that situation as soon as possible, it is damaging your mental health.

As for early retirement, check out the leanfire subreddit. I think your view on retirement could use a different perspective.

It seems you joined a field you thought you would enjoy, but that didn't work out, and you don't mention anything you would like to work on. Is there any job you think you'd like, or is pay the only motivator?

If pay is the only thing that makes a job worthwhile, then maybe you should stick with the high paying job and just retire as soon as you can.

Admittedly, you might not enjoy retirement either. But at least you can sleep in.

Retirement is not a binary. Why don’t you go do all the stuff you want to do for 6 months or a year? Maybe do a few short freelance/contract gigs during that time so there’s no resume gap. F*** the recruiters who expect zero resume gaps in a lifetime anyways. I mean life is just too short for this kind of crap, go have fun and have some faith that things will work out. You either jump or you don't.

There's no meaning to be found in jobs. It's just something you tolerate (and, if you're lucky, sometimes enjoy) in exchange for money. With that mindset, I've found jobs are much easier to bear. Also, with every passing year, as my savings grow and you're closer to early retirement (you ARE saving a lot every year, right?), I find the job gets easier to tolerate.

Use your knowledge of ML/statistics and your quant finance skills to play the market with high risk options. If you do well enough you can make enough to quit your job. Of course once you have enough money don't bet it all on options.

Obviously this is like gambling but with your background and many financial advisors may recommend against it but with your background it might be worth a shot.

I'm interested in where the OP lives. As I live in NE UK, so probably as emotionally and culturally far away from London as possible.

There were def times that I thought I'd made an error career-wise however, that's not the whole meaning of life. And there are interesting jobs outside of London. OP would probably be very competetive skills-wise compared to locals.

There are interesting startups and academic labs in London, Oxford & Cambridge solving meaningful problems related to human health.

You could easily find a job there where ML & statistics skills are required and live in a more rural community, while your partner would still be able to commute to London by train.

Drop me an email (contact details in my profile) if you are interested.

Coming a bit late to the party, so you may never see this, but I wrote a post about a similar situation I was in years ago:

How to survive a job you absolutely hate : https://www.pythonforengineers.com/survive-job-you-absolutel...

https://vimeo.com/80973511

https://de.findagrave.com/memorial/120975457/zina-nicole-lah...

Some leave their life much too early, some much too late.

Dead inside.

Pay and meaning are often a tradeoff. Arguably the reason pay is so high for some jobs is that they have to pay that much to stop people from leaving. I took a pay cut before in life and it came with massive happiness increase. Maybe join a startup where you can get a good chunk of equity, and pick a team that you like being with.

Find a small company to work for. There are a lot around and many are hiring. You may take a pay cut (or maybe not), but the QOL is so much higher at well-run small company than any big company could achieve. The work impact feels much higher when you're not just one tiny cog in an enormous machine.

I'm roughly the same age as you and I'm in more or less the same situation.

It was joy of programming and computers that got me into this line of work, and though I still enjoy it, I can no longer rely on that intrinsic motivation to get through the day.

I'm finding my 30s to be a time of major transition. I am forced to evolve from a young, intrinsically motivated and excited 20 something year old, to a more disciplined, appreciative, albeit less "happy" 30 something year old.

I miss waking up every day with a bursting energy for coding. I'd love to have that again. But the reality is, after 10+ years of doing this work every day, I cannot get that excited about it anymore. I absolutely have to find a sustainable path and the first step in that is realizing that the old me is gone.

The story of my mid 30s, maybe even all of my 30s, will be one of discovery and adaptation. I hope to arrive at the doorstep of my 40s, a well tuned and well adapted individual. I need to monitor myself, day in, and day out, and find systems that work toward the simple goal of getting up every day, doing good work, and feeling healthy. Happiness and joy are feelings reserved for mostly novel experiences. Work is a day-to-day art, the kind of thing ripe for a disciplined mind that can be productive without necessarily being massively stimulated (intrinsically or otherwise).

I am nowhere near the end of this stage in my journey. I have made mostly dismal progress up to this point but have recently started tweaking new levers and twisting different knobs with the hope of making some positive progress. I still struggle, daily, with burnout and feelings of inadequacy. I struggle to get excited about my work and so I struggle to do the work. Struggling to do the work, means I feel shitty about myself.

All that said, I do think the first step is in recognizing where you are in life. You likely haven't yet accepted what it means to be a 30 something year old programmer. Maybe there is still time for you to change your path, but it doesn't sound like it. Take stock of the positives in your life and find a determination to preserve them. That will mean first recognizing and appreciating what you have, and then, understanding that it's through your daily work that you're able to maintain those things. With that understanding, embark on the long journey of optimizing your life. Find a way to make this sustainable. You have to.

(Or, get out, and do something else!)

Once you've fully accepted your situation and are ready to work on solutions, a bunch of interesting conversations can be had. Start learning about what works for others, and try those things out in your life. Always been a late sleeper? Try a 5:30 AM routine for a few weeks. Always been a coffee drinker? Cut back to 1 a day, or drink tea. Finding these things give you a small boost to productivity? Keep doing them. Find they don't help at all? Stop doing them.

Turn the knobs, twist the levers, but always keep your eye on the goal - productive work, healthy life.

Nobody is going to tell you what to do and how to get there.

There’s a framework for thinking about it though. Start with your goal(no matter how unrealistic it seems to be). Then go backwards to where you’re now. Ray Dalio laid it out pretty well in Principles.

I think I’d get a remote job and move part time back to the country, an area with direct train to the city. Partner should understand after a good talk. Personally would rather have a part-time happy partner than a full-time miserable one.

Might doing something in the impact space help?

80,000 hours have some resources, that might help guide your choices, if this is something you would be interested in.

https://80000hours.org/

My first and last employers damn near killed my passion too. It was just specific employers though. Consider switching jobs before switching careers. London is also its own thing. There are far more relaxing places to earn a living.

Have you checked for depression? Sounds like one for me. BTW what's your partner's story so far? Sounds like he is not eager to leave London.

BTW I'd say don't compare your parents life with yours. World was different back then.

Just a side-comment:

There's a large misconception or myth in the both the OP and in a number of comments: "figure out what you/I want to do."

A quick thought experiment to prove my point: If you have never tasted or experienced pizza, can you know that you "want" pizza?

I think a lot of people grow up with the myth that if you think enough about yourself, you can figure out what you really want.

Personally, I think that it's the opposite: you can only make a guess at what you want and figure out if you want it by doing it. This of course can be very risky but I don't think there's a way around that. This is also why a lot of people stay in jobs (and relationships) that they do not like.

However, there are a lot of cases where you can learn to enjoy an activity that you have never done before. (See below).

Another thought experiment: many children refuse to eat certain foods because they have an initial "weird" experience with them: tomatoes, sour cream, celery, bread crusts, fish, shrimp, etc. However, many of these kids also end up if not regularly eating but sometimes even very much enjoying these foods as they grow older.

The only difference between children and adults is that adults are older. And, my theory is also that dunning-kruger is WAY more pervasive than anyone thinks: how much do you know about yourself? About life? What are the chances that dunning-kruger applies to you on these subjects?

I also agree with a number of other comments about how your environment has a far larger impact on your enjoyment than you think. Most people think that the content of a job is the largest deciding factor in whether or not you enjoy it -- but it may be your colleagues, your commute or simply even your health. How sure are you that it's the content of your work and not the team around you?

One last comment: psychology in the 21st century is comparable to medicine in the 15th: mental diseases are categorised by symptom (not cause) and there's a reproducability crisis, to start with.

Tip for the OP: at the very least, do this: write down 5 possible jobs, find people who do them and go talk to them about them for an hour: buy them lunch or dinner. Everyone likes talking about themselves. Ask them about what they enjoy _and_ what they hate.

Also, it sounds like the OP is slightly perfectionist: you don't have to be young or excited about stuff, you just have to be interested in it. Stop being a perfectionist with yourself.

Get out, there are more options than you realize. Even another firm in your industry might be a better fit. You are free to move. You are probably better at your job than you realize.

Start applying find out what options you have.

hey,

this reminds me of the speech Rasmus Lerdorf - the creator of PHP *) - delivered to the 25th birthday of the language ...

* https://youtu.be/wCZ5TJCBWMg

you don't have to watch the whole speech, but during the last 5 minutes he says:

"work on things that matter (to you)"

imho. don't fall for the "money-trap", life is what happens between the (un)planned progress of your career ... and happiness has no price-tag attached to it!!

just my 0.02€

*) yes, the silly little language, which powers around 50% of the web ;)

If you decide to look for a job, there are resources here to help w/ the job search (edit: do a ^F for "identifying"): https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/share/church-resources?l...

But: carefully and well-choosing a purpose in live helps with so many things. To be successful, we must learn to act rather than being acted upon. To bring joy and stability, I think it needs to be realistic and at least partly or largely unselfish. I wrote more on past related HN discussions, and many more thoughts (in profile).

My father had a pretty average salary, bought a massive house for a reasonable price, and saw his wealth multiply many times over. It's not like that for my generation.

With the housing market this is certainly so. I'm one year younger than you, but have managed to triple my networth since 2020 (thanks Federal Reserve!) through stocks, mostly tech.

Obviously there is a lot of bias in this statement because I've only been investing for 7 years which have all been bull markets. But the data is there for you to see, if you can just buy and hold S&P500, you would have done very well over the last few years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPSvdKTEZug

Maybe move to the bay area. Lots of high paying jobs.

I think the answer is: quit. Fuck all this shit. Life is not about being miserable.

Find something that does interest you. And if it doesn't try again. :)

Is your work time demanding?

Why not try spending 25% of your work day on a business project you love? Make it profitable and do it full time.

You come across as pretty whiny and entitled.

If you're partner is earning multiples, take a 6 mmonth sabbatical to figure out what you want to do.

If you want I can offer a fairly straightforward path from where you are that leads to more money.

Housing and location can be solved by switching to remote and moving somewhere more rural if you're up for that.

But it sounds like you've already come to the conclusion both of those things would lead you back to where you are now.

For you friend I prescribe reading Sidartha.

If your partner prefer his career over you, you should have serious talk about that.

What are some things that you connect well?

Things you love doing without looking at the clock?

Although my unique circumstances are different, I'd like to share that you are not alone in feeling trapped in one's job and city since I too have felt the exact same way in recent years.

I unfortunately can't offer very many solutions since I am in basically the same "trapped" situation currently (but towards the end here I can hopefully share a few things that keep me going).

For myself, the position I currently have in my hometown is the best I can hope for in this area, but the work/team environment have steadily become worse, particularly the last few years...being able to work from home last year helped out tremendously since it was something I had been hoping to have for some time, but the main kicker was simply being able to be around my kids more and have those smaller interactions with them on a more frequent basis and not deal with the office drama constantly.

Age-wise, we're the exact same, but education-wise you're further along than I'll likely ever get (I have some work towards a Masters in CS, but I'm poor at math, so with a completed PhD in CS in hand for yourself, I feel that opens up so many more doors than I could hope to receive). Housing-wise, I fortunately live in a somewhat rural area so housing prices aren't nearly as high as they are in other parts of California so we were able to take the plunge to purchase a home about two years ago (at times I feel that renting was definitely easier, but we were outgrowing our old place so I echo the sentiment of having one's own place to make "home" as being a positive).

I think the big thing I'm reading in your post above though is potentially that proximity to family and a city where you actually do feel like you're home and I can also echo that sentiment too. I spent a year in the Bay Area for school, but always felt that it was different than my home area, and later on during a short stint at a tech company in the Bay as well, those sorts of feelings returned too (it's difficult for me to say though whether I might have eventually felt "at home" if I had given myself more time but I'm not sure if that would have occurred or not).

In the last month my workplace has had myself return to the office and it created an immediate sense of sadness since I would no longer have the comfortable environment I had built up at home, nor would I get to see my children as often I had grown accustomed to. That I feel is the great drawback of so many companies pushing to bring their staff back onsite rather than adopting proper remote work options and allowing for it moving forward.

On top of that, I took a short (less than a week) vacation with the family, and had similar feelings as yours in my first day back in the office afterward since I just resented the thought of coming back into the office again so much after enjoying a few days away.

Also like you however, I've even shied away from wanting to apply for Software Engineering roles at other companies because I have the same concern regarding whether I would prefer the new work more than my existing work...or would it in fact be worse? That's the big concern (aside from the larger questions of whether remote work would be allowed and if I would be forced to make larger changes such as completely moving my family away to another city, etc. which also doesn't seem as appealing to have to put them/myself through either if it can be avoided).

So I wonder, what's my alternative to this line of work I've been in over the past decade+? And it's a really sobering thought since there would basically be nothing (that I can think of) that would come close in terms of salary so I feel forced to continue on in it (even though I do enjoy software development overall, I've also worked mostly independently since I'm basically a team of one, so I'm never sure if working in a larger software oriented organization might take away some of the enjoyment I've had working independently on software projects due to the extra rigor that might be needed on larger teams...overall though I'd still hope that the extra comradery would be a net plus on that scale).

Since you mentioned that your partner earns several multiples of your current salary I'm not sure what kind of accelerated timescale that might provide you as a couple to a potentially early retirement elsewhere (potentially closer to your hometown), but that might be consideration (although it doesn't help out with the here and now feelings which can't be worked around if you're still needing to go to work and experience those feelings daily).

For myself, it is difficult too...in years past what would sometimes help is me making attempts to get hired at tech companies (providing some small hope for that short period of time before being eventually rejected...which is also a not so great feeling so that's one reason why I've shied away from doing much of that lately), but at the moment I'm actually exploring Y Combinator's Cofounder matching area to see if that might provide me one path away from my current role I feel so stuck in and maybe take me into a new role (e.g. CTO) where I can provide more impact in a smaller company and get to stretch more of my brain and what I feel I can bring to an organization. I'm not sure if this experiment will pan out or not, but I'm hopeful for now :-).

Feel free to reach out via my email in my profile if you feel like sharing any more of the "struggle" we both seem to have (it's good to know I'm not alone in feeling that way either :-)!

What do you like to do?

It almost sounds like you don't know what you want to do.

>My parents, like most boomers, had a much better standard of living when they were my age.

that is BS. 198x and even 199x were much worse economically than today. Your parents grinded through it to give what you have, in particular education. Of course, because it was given to you and you didn't have to work for it really, you don't value it. There have been no better time in human history than what is in store today for a person with a high CS degree. And your experience just confirms it. Great job by all the standards and 10x house with a very low mortgage rates in the world top real estate destination and total affordability with just a bit of very convenient commute.

And what does your partner think?

> 2. ... an 'adequate' house in London would cost at least 10 times my salary.

Then buy outside of London something much cheaper, save a shitload and retire early, while keeping that well paying job.

> 3. London is a horrible place to live. I have no affinity for it whatsoever. Even if I could afford a house I would not want to live here.

It is a known fact that there are many people working in the city who live outside of London, nearby a train station, in the fancy suburbs: in the morning they go to the train station by car (which takes no time because they of course pick a quiet place with no traffic jam) then they go to the city by train. The parking lots of these train stations are, during the working days, full of Bentleys and Porsches and whatnots, which gives it away.

Would that be an option? (not the car type: the suburb near a train station)

FWIW in Brussels there are people doing exactly the same: living in the fancy suburbs (like the posh Waterloo suburb) and dodging all the traffic jams thanks to the train, while enjoying the high paying job (compared to the median salary in Belgium) the city offers (cough European institutions cough cough).

My father-in-law, now retired, did that for 20 years: working on the trading floor for a big bank in Brussels, 1 minute walk from the train station, then going back to his on the countryside...

I'd say it's not just extremely common: it's also very smart. You do away with the traffic jams, do away with the city stress, do away with the real estate price, can save more, etc. All the while enjoying birds chirping and squirrels at home every single day.

> 5. My parents, like most boomers, had a much better standard of living when they were my age. My father had a pretty average salary, bought a massive house for a reasonable price, and saw his wealth multiply many times over. It's not like that for my generation.

Common' now... If you work as a quant in the city, I'm sure it can be like that for you.

I don't like the city either: any city. Not my thing. Lived in a city (not London) for 40 years, it's enough. A few years ago I moved outside the city and I love it.

What % of your life right now is determined by external factors and pressures? Are you truly living this life right now for yourself?

It seems to me that you do have ideas of what might make you happy, but there are quite a few blocks, the most apparent of which is that you don't seem to believe that it is possible. But, it is fully possible to start designing a life that works for you. Millions of people have done it, but you will need to really look inside and listen to yourself.

Don't look at what everyone else is doing, or have done. If you consider what everyone else considers, you might as well continue to play a sort of video game where the rewards are determined by whichever bubble/society/conditioned norms you are surrounded by, and end up spending 90% of your time living a the collectively conditioned life. 90% of your life stressed and unhappy.

If you out in the garden and observe, you might notice how unique each plant is different from the other. The century plant (agave) likes dry conditions and blooms once every 10-30 years, but Hydrangeas need shade to thrive and bloom only once a season.

You are a completely unique individual, and what makes you happy will certainly be different from other people. Perhaps financial stability is important, but you've recognized that traveling/meditation/learning other stuff brings you joy also.

As a start, think about what your ideal life might look like. What would you be doing day to day? Give yourself the space to imagine something different, it might seem far from where you are now, but you need a direction to start moving.

When I was working in animation, there was an engineer who would work for a couple years at the studio (ultimately burning out after "crunch time" like everyone else), quit, then spend a year trading stocks in New York to recover from burn out and make up for the $ lost working for a studio. Then he'd come back to LA and work on the next production.

That was so fun and inspiring to me. What a creative way to make things work!

I'll end by saying that part of my vision was to live and paint in Hawaii (I also studied cs/did research). I was also thinking that maybe I'll have to wait till I'm 50 to start living my life. But this past weekend, I was out here with my new easel painting Kaneohe valley ;)

It took me 2 years - many small but significant steps along the way - being very honest with myself at each step. I did take a bit of a paycut/maybe sacrificed a promo, but I am 100% happier where I am now, doing what I am doing now, spending time on things that truly matter to ME. And, there are tons of people I've met here, who've done the same and took charge of their lives in the same way :)

Give yourself the permission to go after the life you want.

Many high paying jobs are meaningless for the reason they are high-paying: they (the company) needs someone to do the job, and the combination of required skill and meaninglessness means that nobody who can do the job really wants to do the job.

If a lot of people who could do it wanted to do it, the pay would drop. The other way around also applies: if a lot of people want it, and a lot of them actually can do it, the pay drops as well.

But now that not a lot of people want it (because it might be meaningless and/or unfulfilling) and it requires a specific skillset and isn't highly available, you get in exactly your position.

Instead of focusing on early retirement (which signals that working seems to equate 'bad'? and being free from the 'bad' is the ultimate goal?), focusing on what you actually want (instead of focusing of the negation of what you don't want) might get you much more of a direction to look for work/life.

In the end, money and by extension, wealth, doesn't really mean all that much. It's what you end up doing that has the meaning. And 'doing' doesn't always require a lot of money (or wealth in general).

Regarding technology, you'll have to find out what it is in technology that you actually want. Some people want to think about things and try things out. Others want to build things. Or perhaps you're in to managing people and enabling them to do the thinking/building/operating. All of those types of jobs can be done remotely (as in: fully remote). This means that you are neither bound to a specific city, nor to a specific office building to 'go to'.

The other part of the story, the city where you live, that's a different problem. If you simply don't like the city, then there is no way around it (like doing something with your job), you'll end up leaving the city so best to start working on that.

Retiring doesn't equate having fun. Neither does travelling the world. That's just an instagram crutch. Perhaps the problem lies in stress, top-down management or 'targets' or something. There is plenty of work where those don't apply. There is also plenty of work there those do apply. It's very easy to be stressed or getting 'managed' when you are retired and not working. The same applies to targets.

Perhaps it's my personal experience (or your personal experience) but there is a huge difference between the way 'work' can express itself in its various incarnations. Work that requires being managed, having some rate, ratio or target to hit, fight-for-your-bonus or work more than 35 hours a week no longer something I'd personally be willing to accept at this stage. Depending on what you have to offer and what the company has to offer, that is a choice you can make with plenty of options left to pick from.

I lived in NYC for about a decade, I did not work in Finance, instead I was a consultant at one of the big consulting companies that has > 200k employees worldwide. I hated it, I would physically dread going to work some days, compounded by the fact that I would have to go out of town to places I didn't want to be. I was miserable, and it was making me physically sick, which I suspect you'll start feeling or already are feeling. Then one day, my partner could see I was suffering, and told me to quit, she was right, and I did a few weeks later when I found a different job.

A few things I took from that experience.

1) If you hate what you do, the money only works for so long until it doesn't matter how much it is and you're getting physically sick. Earning a good living and being healthy is so much more important than retiring early with ulcers or other problems.

2) If the money can't buy you the things you really want, what does it matter if you have more of it but still not enough. This is a really hard one, that took me a while to come to grips with, and I'm probably still coming to grips with. Ask yourself what is really the value of money. for me I want money to live in a nice home (modest by most peoples standards, middle class without the huge mortgage), buy a car that doesn't break down constantly (VW has been great at making these), save some money for retirement and for a rainy day, try to take a vacation once in a while (hello road trip), then I just want to spend time with family and friends.

3) Change is scary, we stay in bad situations a lot longer than we should because we don't know if the alternative will be worse.

4) A similar job at a place with a different culture can massively change things. I currently work as a consultant and it's great, my coworkers are great and one of the conditions is that I don't travel more than one week of every month, although with Covid I haven't traveled at all. This is so much better for me and lets me spend so much more time with my family.

The rest is some advice I would give to a friend if they said the same things you've said to me.

If you can't afford a place in London where you would like to live, you could look to an up and coming neighborhood, in 10 years it will likely look a lot different and you'll be happy you got in when you did. Alternatively you could buy a house in a place you want to retire, you could rent it out or have it as a vacation home on Airbnb, that way if real estate continues to do what it has been doing you'll have a nice asset, and a place you like to visit. Also, your partner sounds like they're really hitting their groove, but they also might grow to dislike their job in 5 or 10 years.

edit: make sure you tell your partner how you're feeling, they might just tell you to take some time off to regroup, sometimes we get so wrapped up we don't see how others are suffering because we're not.

It's called capitalism

Have you talked to your partner, and what does he say? He seems the main reason you are stuck in London, but maybe it doesn't even have to be that way?

You could think about ways to do most of your work remotely.

Is this sarcasm?