I'm in my mid 30's. My net worth is in the seven figures and I keep it invested across real-estate, stocks, and bonds but I still have so little faith in the future that my ultimate retirement plan is to just make peace with everyone in my life and use an exit bag when the time comes (when neither I or my husband can provide for ourselves). The only exception might be if our kiddo(s) have enough extra resources that they don't mind helping us but even then I'd be hesitant to burden them unless I can help with grandchildren or something in exchange for being kept around.
During the good decades after WWII our society relied too heavily on growth and became totally atomized. You need money for things that you used to get just by being a member in good standing with your community or by having a large family. When the economy stops growing local communities will take time to heal to the point where e.g. the elderly are cared for by default. I will most likely fall into the in between period when there are no options so early death would be the most humane option.
The thought of going from an upper middle class person on easy street to an impoverished lonely old lady is just too painful and I have zero faith in the United States and probably the world in general to not go down the tube to the point where all my investments become worthless. I'll keep hedging my bets of course but... the exit bag is the only sure thing lol.
I've worked at 50% of the FANG companies and some of their direct competitors. My co-workers are usually smart and interesting. That's the good part. I like[d] computers for the sake of it but I don't find anything the slightest bit fulfilling about helping corporations hit their objectives. I do my best to stay out of the way of too much responsibility (it's not working sadly, I keep getting promotions) so that I can at least come up with my own projects that involve at least a little abstract thinking. Infrastructure as code projects make me want to kms for example. Great, I can trigger a bunch of api calls by filling out a yaml file. Great, we can templatize the yaml file so that more people can use it. Cool cool, I want to die now it's so boring.
> My theory is if I worked in a different business then I might feel that I am positively contributing to the world rather than just helping sell something.
Meh, you say that. I worked on an open source project that did a lot of public good but it just caused me to burn out even faster. Back then I was dating for example and going on dates ate a lot of my time and energy and having a job that I felt morally obliged to do got in the way of me feeling good about spending that time and energy advancing my own personal goals (I wanted to get married and have kids). I left that job and took a boring corporate job where I didn't mind slacking and met my partner within a year lmao. It was 1000% worth it to make that trade. Being overly invested in your work just makes you more exploitable. You'll work your butt off on some open source library and make below market salary while people will work less hard making use of your code and make a lot more money than you.
In the end, boring commerce related stuff is what gets me paid. I approach it as: if I'm working harder than I need to in order to not get fired I'm working too hard. Some people will call this cynical or whatever, but to heck with that. Our whole economy is a race to the bottom in terms of price/performance so why would I not behave accordingly?
It might sound like whining but I also love the fact that spending my teenage years and early 20's obsessed with all things computer science set me up to make a very good living with relatively low stress. It's boring and unfulfilling but oh well. We're all smart people here, we can figure out ways to survive and feel good despite the fact that the economy disproportionately rewards things that suck to do.
You say that, but the memes and quotes generated from twitter posts and threads spread far and wide. You'll see people who don't even use Twitter quoting things almost verbatim 3 months after it blew up. Same with 4chan and the fringe right sadly. The memes, like "OK Groomer" start out in some weird radical place but then catch elsewhere if they are viral enough.
> And it's really weird. I assumed Moot was mega famous with tech folks.
Only a certain subsection of us. My husband used 4chan in high school and college and told me about it and that's how I learned about him. 4chan is definitely a good case study in how being popular and engaging won't lead to monetary gains if your platform is too toxic. 4chan is still quite popular but half of the site is infested with actual "Hitler did nothing wrong" types.
During the good decades after WWII our society relied too heavily on growth and became totally atomized. You need money for things that you used to get just by being a member in good standing with your community or by having a large family. When the economy stops growing local communities will take time to heal to the point where e.g. the elderly are cared for by default. I will most likely fall into the in between period when there are no options so early death would be the most humane option.
The thought of going from an upper middle class person on easy street to an impoverished lonely old lady is just too painful and I have zero faith in the United States and probably the world in general to not go down the tube to the point where all my investments become worthless. I'll keep hedging my bets of course but... the exit bag is the only sure thing lol.