Early Retirement Extreme Forums

2023 in Review I'm not updating as much as I used to, but I figure it's worth taking stock of things at least a few times a year! Life We ended up buying the land that I mentioned in my last update. It's on an island near Seattle that's pretty accessible, and as I said it's 10 acres - about 300 fee...

January-June 2023 It's hard to believe that it's already June - I thought I'd just skipped one or two months. Well, the infrequent updates at least mean that each update is meaningful. Work My team has continued to grow - I'm managing a bit over 30 people at this point. That's something I really wo...

2022 End of Year Roundup Looking back at my journal, I see that I disappeared for 8 months So rather than an monthly update, I'll do an annual one. I'm still around, but ERE has not been a focus since a lot of things are on "auto-pilot." This year was much of the same. It was busy - mostl...

Life LIfe is... fine. There's really not a lot of updates. I got into fishkeeping in November and it's not the best hobby from an ERE perspective. If I could snap my fingers, get a refund, and move on, I probably would. I do really enjoy the hobby, but I worry about the little guys, and it makes tr...

2021 End of Year Roundup Work Work is going well. At the start of the year I was managing about 9 people. I'm now managing 13 and by the end of January will be managing 19. I don't mind managing but I don't enjoy it as much as programming. I think it was a good career move for me and I don't regret...

October & November Work Work is going well. I'd expected based on some hints to see some additional responsibilities headed my way. And that's happened - I'm going to be absorbing another team, taking the number of people on my team from ~13 to ~20. It's an exciting team and although I don't li...

I don't log in that often anymore and didn't realize there were so many responses. I'll respond before giving my latest update! @Gilberto de Piento - my company is actually offering coaching courses to managers and I signed up. I'll probably start in December/January. It was a good idea :). @DutchGi...

July, August, September Work Work is going well? I guess? My boss really likes me and I've found an area where my balance of diligence and pragmatism is good (there are *many* areas of software development where I would be a terrible fit and my style of development would simply be too haphazard... ...

June, 2021 Work So far, work has been going better than before. My team (now 14 people including myself) seems to be happy with me as a manager. We've suffered from no attrition, even as other teams have had difficulty. I don't know if that's because I'm a good manager, a lax manager, or random cir...

Hi DutchGirl, glad to see you're continuing to make progress on your FI goal! Sounds like you're really close.

I like sporadically working hard, it helps me enjoy the status quo when things are less hectic. I guess like your rabbi . It's like the reverse of hedonic adaptation.

@DutchGirl - Thanks for the suggestions! I'm tossing a thousand here and there into the mortgage as a way of "diversifying," since it's early in the term these should have outsized returns in reducing interest paid. As for moving this post by authoritarianism and WWII expert Timothy Snyder...

April-May 2021 Work Has been pretty interesting overall. In the past two months or so, I've gone from 7 direct reports on my team to 13. Ironically, so far that's been *less* stressful, because I've been forced to delegate more. With 7, including some people who weren't that active, it was possible...

January - March 2021 I was meaning to post over the past few months, and I think I had a draft that got lost in February. But here we are, well into 2021 and I ahven't posted yet! Gilberto and DutchGirl were right - all the plants started returning to life in February, and things are green again. P...

December, 2020 I could have sworn I'd updated this journal after August, but now it's December and here we are! Another year, almost in the books. Work Quite a tumultuous few months at work. About two months ago I was hit by some pretty serious burnout. The manager position is stressful to me, I ha...

August, 2020 Work I guess not much has changed since my last update. Still stressed out at work. We're entering the period where performance reviews start. I think it's part of the whole end-of-year compensation discussion. Understandably, this is more work for managers. My impression is that overa...

July, 2020 Work Really busy, really stressful. I mentioned most of the major updates ~2 months back. I feel like I've been muddling along, but there's a lot on my plate and I feel like I don't have a lot of options to delegate. And meetings swamp my schedule. So I end up feeling like I'm perpetuall...

May/June Update It's been an absolutely crazy two months here; hence the lack of updates. Of course, part of that is the pandemic, and now the protests, but my personal life has been pretty crazy as well. Work I'll start with work, as that's simpler: * It looks like I'll be working from home for at...

Hey akratic, glad to see you're back and doing well!

March, 2019 Work/Life All of March I worked from home. That will continue for April, as the quarantine here in Seattle was extended to May 4. It's been pretty weird, and not as bad as I expected once I got a monitor, mouse and keyboard. I continue to like the new position, and my boss is very happy...

February, 2019 Work/Life Work continues to go well. I'm (mostly) enjoying the new role. It's more stressful, but it's exciting, there's a lot to learn, and I think I'm pretty good at it. At least, my boss (and boss's boss) seem to be very satisfied with what I'm doing in the position. The downside ...