Hey Sabaka. Probably quite belated in terms of how it feels in your life but:
- Sorry to hear you felt you had to drop from the Army. I left the RN after a fairly short stint too (about 5 years in my case) but, like you, not in the way I would have chosen. You may wish to consider joining the Int Corps as a reservist, if you haven't already, on account of your linguistic aptitude.
- However, it sounds like this has also all turned out to be a classic case of "when one door closes, another door opens". I'm delighted to hear everything going so well for you, and congrats on your engagement
- If I can offer any advice on your tech career, being at a similar stage of seniority, it's that testers always seem to be the poor cousins of developers, even if they do nearly 100% coding/automation tasks. As a developer myself, I'm biased, but I'd recommend a pivot into dev work if you can find a suitable opening. Even if your desire is to do SRE/DevOps, coming from dev feels easier than coming from test. A good chunk of my dev work is to use Terraform to create infrastructure (admittedly all AWS so not as intense as managing traditional infrastructure) and have found this experience to be one of the things that is now starting to open doors to higher pay; that and having some demonstrable experience of cloud-first system design. If you can get that experience as a tester, great, but I haven't seen this sort of task be given to testers in the places I've worked
Freedom through Frugality: Sabaka's Journal
Re: Freedom through Frugality: Sabaka's Journal
@Slevin
Thank you for the advice, it's encouraging to hear that someone has broken out of manual testing! I'm basically trying to do what you've laid out, anytime there is a more backend/devops type task available at work I try and get involved, as well as doing some frontend e2e tests using Cypress (I see what you mean about flaky!
).
@Egg
Thank you for your advice! I feel the military door is certainly closed now, especially with an upcoming relocation to the US (unless I join Uncle Sam's forces... ). Tbh, I think that what I miss most about the military is the friendships I formed with other people. They're lots of ways to form such friendships (I hope to find some), but for more introverted people the military puts you into an environment where it just happens.
I agree with you regarding how testing is viewed. Even at my current company, where everyone is pretty cool, when I put my hat in to help with some code reviews I was pretty quickly shut down When I first get to the U.S I plan to use the 3-6 months where I cannot work (waiting for a work permit) to improve my dev skills. I will then apply for a pretty wide range of jobs (ie. automated test roles, junior dev roles, security, sys-admin stuff) and see what lands.
Happy new year to you both (and anyone else reading
)
Thank you for the advice, it's encouraging to hear that someone has broken out of manual testing! I'm basically trying to do what you've laid out, anytime there is a more backend/devops type task available at work I try and get involved, as well as doing some frontend e2e tests using Cypress (I see what you mean about flaky!
). @Egg
Thank you for your advice! I feel the military door is certainly closed now, especially with an upcoming relocation to the US (unless I join Uncle Sam's forces...
). Tbh, I think that what I miss most about the military is the friendships I formed with other people. They're lots of ways to form such friendships (I hope to find some), but for more introverted people the military puts you into an environment where it just happens. I agree with you regarding how testing is viewed. Even at my current company, where everyone is pretty cool, when I put my hat in to help with some code reviews I was pretty quickly shut down
When I first get to the U.S I plan to use the 3-6 months where I cannot work (waiting for a work permit) to improve my dev skills. I will then apply for a pretty wide range of jobs (ie. automated test roles, junior dev roles, security, sys-admin stuff) and see what lands. Happy new year to you both (and anyone else reading
)Re: Freedom through Frugality: Sabaka's Journal
Time to set out some goals for 2024...
1. Get married.
2. Hit 100 Munros (Scottish mountains over 3000ft - a popular pastime is 'bagging munros' - I am currently on 32).
3. Hit $10,000 cash savings, currently on $ 2,300 (I have started saving in USD in preparation for my move to the U.S).
4. Finish my degree
5. Produce at least 1 youtube video
6. Read 1 book per month.
7. Complete at least one IT certification
8. Get a cushty I.T job in the U.S (cushty being defined as salary over $65k pa).
How this all plays out:
1. In the process of getting a visa to move to the U.S (Texas) and get married. Predict I will make the move in late summer/early autumn.
2. I plan to leave my current job a few months before the move to the U.S, and will therefore be able to devote all my time to hiking Munros. Last hurrah in Scotland before leaving!
3. This looks low, but factors in that I probably only have 6 months of earning left, and I am paying off my degree upfront.
4. Hope to finish the degree by May 2024. This is gonna be a lot of work, but I think I can do it!
5. I liked making youtube videos, and want to start again. This will probably be towards the end of the year, once I have finished the degree.
6. Again looks low, but lots of time will be studying for the first half of the year!
7. I like IT certs .
8. This will probably be right towards the end of the year (it could even be 2025...). I hope that with a fresh degree, 2 years of experience and a stack of certs (as well as not being too picky) this will be possible.
Summary:
I predict that I'll probably be finishing 2024 with a lower networth than currently, but hopefully will have some wicked times and also set the foundations for strong savings in the future. My fiance works, but high family obligations mean it is unlikely that she will ever be able to save significant amounts for the future. I also want this year to be one where I develop more friendships, so I have some plans in place to that end.
Looking out 5-10 years from now, my plan is to use a good paying IT job to set the foundations for a future in which I can do the following things:
- Have a family homestead.
- Transition into a Coast FIRE lifestyle, where I have sufficient financial resources to work in a lower-paying but more meaningful job (outdoors related) whilst supporting a lower-middle class lifestyle on a single income (I favour an approach which reduces monthly required expenditures - pay off a mortgage, reduce food and energy bills, etc).
Happy new year to everyone, and I wish you luck with all your plans!
1. Get married.
2. Hit 100 Munros (Scottish mountains over 3000ft - a popular pastime is 'bagging munros' - I am currently on 32).
3. Hit $10,000 cash savings, currently on $ 2,300 (I have started saving in USD in preparation for my move to the U.S).
4. Finish my degree
5. Produce at least 1 youtube video
6. Read 1 book per month.
7. Complete at least one IT certification
8. Get a cushty I.T job in the U.S (cushty being defined as salary over $65k pa).
How this all plays out:
1. In the process of getting a visa to move to the U.S (Texas) and get married. Predict I will make the move in late summer/early autumn.
2. I plan to leave my current job a few months before the move to the U.S, and will therefore be able to devote all my time to hiking Munros. Last hurrah in Scotland before leaving!
3. This looks low, but factors in that I probably only have 6 months of earning left, and I am paying off my degree upfront.
4. Hope to finish the degree by May 2024. This is gonna be a lot of work, but I think I can do it!
5. I liked making youtube videos, and want to start again. This will probably be towards the end of the year, once I have finished the degree.
6. Again looks low, but lots of time will be studying for the first half of the year!
7. I like IT certs
. 8. This will probably be right towards the end of the year (it could even be 2025...). I hope that with a fresh degree, 2 years of experience and a stack of certs (as well as not being too picky) this will be possible.
Summary:
I predict that I'll probably be finishing 2024 with a lower networth than currently, but hopefully will have some wicked times and also set the foundations for strong savings in the future. My fiance works, but high family obligations mean it is unlikely that she will ever be able to save significant amounts for the future. I also want this year to be one where I develop more friendships, so I have some plans in place to that end.
Looking out 5-10 years from now, my plan is to use a good paying IT job to set the foundations for a future in which I can do the following things:
- Have a family homestead.
- Transition into a Coast FIRE lifestyle, where I have sufficient financial resources to work in a lower-paying but more meaningful job (outdoors related) whilst supporting a lower-middle class lifestyle on a single income (I favour an approach which reduces monthly required expenditures - pay off a mortgage, reduce food and energy bills, etc).
Happy new year to everyone, and I wish you luck with all your plans!
Re: Freedom through Frugality: Sabaka's Journal
Happy new year to you too, and good luck with your plan!
Re: Freedom through Frugality: Sabaka's Journal
Thanks for the recommendation! Scots are certainly an inventive bunch!
Well another quarter year has passed since the last update, the weeks/months/years fly by...
Let's have a review of where I am with my goals:
------------------------------------------------------------
1. Get Married
Not yet, but still on track for this year (unless I get dumped
)2. Hit 100 Munros (Scottish mountains over 3000ft - a popular pastime is 'bagging munros' - I am currently on 32).
Currently on 39... 100 is not gonna happen. Perhaps 50, fingers crossed.
3. Hit $10,000 cash savings, currently on $ 2,300 (I have started saving in USD in preparation for my move to the U.S).
Currently at approximately $6,000 cash savings... again, unlikely I am gonna hit this savings goal, for reasons I will explain below.
4. Finish my degree
Done! Finished my bachelors in February. Quicker than expected. Just waiting on official conferral in the next few weeks.
5. Produce at least 1 youtube video
This... probably no longer a goal. In fact I deleted my old youtube channel. Maybe at some point down the the line I will consider youtube again, however it would have to have a strong purpose behind it (homesteading perhaps?).
6. Read 1 book per month.
Currently on track.
7. Complete at least one IT certification
Not yet, and I am unsure this will happen this year. Never say never however...
8. Get a cushty I.T job in the U.S (cushty being defined as salary over $65k pa).
Unlikely this will happen this year due to visa timing.
------------------------------------------------------------
So like most New Year's resolutions mine are mostly not going to be achieved. But life constantly changes, so what can you do?
Changes for me:
I have nominally sold my flat, bar the contract being concluded and me moving out. This is expected to take place in the next couple few weeks.
It has sold for a good price, better than I initially expected.
Due to this, if the sale does complete without a hitch, I will probably take the opportunity to resign from my current job a bit earlier than I had previously thought, finishing in June or July. I expect I will then be moving to the U.S in September/October. So I will have a couple months to make use of cheap flights to Europe and have some cool experiences (with my Fiance, who as an employee in the education sector gets quite a big chuck of the summer off work
)Lots happening!
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Other thoughts:
- I am considering changing the title of my journal, because I am a very bad example of frugality
. I am semi-frugal in some areas, but I still spend far too much money in others... - Long term, I feel like I am gravitating to much more of a Barista/Coast FIRE type mentality. Basically, use a cushty IT career to supercharge an early start to financial independence (low mortgage, healthy retirement accounts) so that I can move into a more enjoyable/purposeful career. I worry however that any job will have similar downsides, and that therefore my efforts are best placed finding the job with the greatest financial award for the least amount of effort. I'm still trying to work this out.